Monthly Archives: May 2005

Fencing rearranged; sheep and lambs enjoyed some fresh pasture – lambs ignored the electric fence again; Hmmm.
Hartley and Duncan helped Karola get the lambs back in in the evening and also put up some more electric fence.

Brown hen is at it again – 7-8 eggs laid in full sight on a hay bale and she’s sitting again despite the brrrrr cold weather.

Presumably because of the shut gates yesterday the mailman gave us a miss today. He’ll have seen the exit is clear again so maybe will come tomorrow.

Gout persists, but less severe.

Weather: 1°C—14°C, westerly wind and a beautiful, bright, cloudless day in Hawkes Bay.

After a good nights sleep – helped by the magic pills prescribed for me on Saturday afternoon – I went to eye specialist who administered tests and then assured me he could not say that I had anything wrong with my eyes – in fact they might be perfectly OK – which suited me. More tests in 6 months.

On the way to the surgery we saw that the front gates to the new drive were closed – which must have annoyed the mailman somewhat. Karola started imagining she saw our sheep in every paddock down the avenue – obviously the closed gates meant we’d had some escapees while we were away. But why was our main gate open then?

Later we got the story straight:

• Jim Cornes had been moving his sheep along the avenue yesterday and had gone along closing everyone’s gate – apparently not having time to reopen them later – he might not be able to remember which ones were open before anyway so safer to keep them closed.
• When Hamish Ladbrooke and his mum came over to feed the cat and chooks they opened our main gate again.
• Karola put the sheep and lambs back in their night quarters and her rough counts then tallied – so no sheep are missing.

End of mystery.

Weather: 5°C—12°C, south-westerly, 2mm rain in the early morning.

Karola started the day by taking Bicka walking to the shops and for exercise. Anna More, Bridget’s mother-in-law, came in to town and we four (plus the mokapuna Natallie) lunched at the local restaurant called’Taste’ – excellent food. We then finished packing and took Anna with us, dropping her at her home in Silverstream on the way. It rained most of the way up to Karamu – we stopped briefly for afternoon tea in Carterton and then drove on through the evening – arriving home around 8:00pm.

Weather: 5°C—19°C, northerly wind, 1mm rain.

Left Pitoitoi in the morning. Karola drove up to Bulls for a funeral – both her brothers were there too – and drove back in time for tea.
Bridget and I worked together on her computer web application. In the afternoon Bridget took me to the Wellington after-hours doctors clinic where they diagnosed my swollen foot not as a spider bite (glamorous) nor as a wasp sting (rural) but as gout! Disease of the plump and well-fed! Hmmm.

In the evening I went to Mary’s and watched UK TV; Bridget and Karola stayed in and watched a DVD film – Gosford Park.

Weather: 5°C—18°C, no rain, westerly wind in the afternoon.

Staying at Pitoitoi in Day’s Bay – talked to Charles, our project manager, about what remains to be done there – some underpinning but otherwise we’re getting close to finishing on the house – just leaving the garden.

In the afternoon we went in to Station Rd and Karola dug up several Hydrangeas and small shrubs for replanting at Pitoitoi – Bridget is getting rid of most of the existing shrubs and roses and has plans for a new garden layout. Karola and I went back to Pitoitoi just as dusk was falling and she replanted and watered the shrubs – mostly by torchlight I think. We ended the evening by sampling the fish at the Eastbourne Thai restaurant – which was better than expected.

Weather: 6°C—16°C, no rain, northerly wind.

Swollen toe since Tuesday night – I thought it was a bite or sting and would soon go away, but it remains, impeding outside activity.

However Karola and I did move some fences so that the sheep would have food enough until we came back on Sunday. Karola also did some more of her autumnal leaf-sweeping – in the afternoon we packed and drove over to Palmerston North for a restaurant dinner with Harry, Karola’s brother, and two others – carrying on from there and arriving in Wellington around 11:00pm.

We’d left Hamish Ladbrooke in charge of feeding the cat and chooks, and bringing in the paper.

Weather: 4°C—16°C, no rain

Started in on the 180+ apple trees that are to be removed – averaging 30 mins a tree just to get the foliage off for mulching, leaving the trunk up to the first set of laterals ready for extraction like big teeth. I think I’ll get it down to 15-20 minutes with practice.

Weather: 5°C—15°C, southerly breezes turned to northerly in the afternoon, no rain, cloudless clear blue sky all day.

Made a new fence break in the Top paddock for the ewes, Horace, and the 4 ram lambs – though the ram lambs are not electric fence trained and basically ignore it.

Karola helped me pen up the 47 lambs (33 of ours and 14 of Hartley’s) and I spent the whole afternoon doing 33 x 4 sheep feet; Hartley’s little Romney lambs seem to have pretty good feet, unlike our ‘composite’ Texel/East Fresian mixtures, so I didn’t do them. Only one lamb had actual maggots in one hoof – 7-8 of them – which was somewhat revolting; about 10 had some form of scald or footrot and another 4-5 had feet that were just growing too fast and were worth trimming. I HOPE NOT TO DO THIS AGAIN FOR AT LEAST THREE MONTHS. My back complained after doing the first one; it was certainly not any happier on the 33rd. Karola brough cup of tea and sandwiches for lunch – which I ate carefully holding the sandwiches in paper as my hands were Ugh horrible. Because the lambs urinated all over the pen it quickly became most unpleasantly muddy – so I got a load of old tree mulch in the wheel barrow and made myself an island of less mucky ground in one corner – my surgery. At the end the sun was setting and I was disgustingly dirty – clothes all stank – a long hot shower was most welcome.

Around 7:00pm the power went off – rang the neighbours, yes their power was off too and they’d found out it was the power lines people replacing/repairing poles opposite them. Later I went round the block in the car to see what was going on. At least two new poles were being put in – to replace temporary repairs to two poles broken by boy-racers earlier this year. Didn’t look like anywhere near finished – strange they didn’t tell their customers before just turning off the power. We went to bed, reading by torchlight and with hot water bottles from the hot water while it was still hot. Power came back on at 01:05am and I got up and turned off all the lights.

Weather: 6°C—17°C, a calm day with no rain and patchy cloud.

Ewes are making reasonable inroads on the Top paddock; the lambs are enjoying about 1/3 of the orchard and have plenty of food.

Bought a depth gauge (also known as a drag gauge) for the chainsaw, and a flat file to complete the toolkit. In theory I can now begin the chainsaw massacre of 180+ apple trees. We plan to mulch the small branches and leaves and burn the roots along with some of the bamboo already cut. The trunks will become firewood, but we need to leave them intact for now to assist the tractor which will pull them out roots and all.

Weather: 14°C—19°C, westerly breezes, 1mm rain, a few bright spells.

After a night in a bach at the Porongahau beach – breakers crashing on the shore – grey skies streaked with rays of red and gold – took Bicka out on the sand for 30 minutes. The minute I took my eye off her, on our return to the bach, she was off after the scent of rabbits – there were lots of them last evening and some scampering around the gardens even in broad daylight. Bicka returned 20 minutes later looking a bit sheepish – can a dog look sheepish I wonder.

We got back to Karamu around 2:00pm after the usual lengthy farewells at Wallingford – the Maori culture seems to predispose them to long drawn-out goodbyes with speeches and song.

Sheep all in right places and numbers are correct.

Weather: 12°C—16°C, northerly breezes in the afternoon, 1mm rain, mainly cloudy.

Lambs into the orchard – they’ll stay there until we get back. Ewes will also be allowed the night out in the long grass.

Morning tea with Alan and Julie Ladbrooke. Alan and Karola signed the lease; I admired Julie’s bantams, frogs, goldfish, budgie etc.

Johnny Ormond had invited us to his farm, Wallingford, for Saturday night banquet and Sunday breakfast, This was a mini-reunion of the movers and shakers from the main Ormond reunion at Easter; a chance for the Mahia Maori cousins to see Wallingford and for the committee to wrap up the finances etc.

After lunch we motored down to Wallingford, going on past the farm for another 20km to the Porongahau beach. There we met up with several other attendees and found ourselves bedrooms. The place was crawling with rabbits outside, which made Bicka quite excited. Around 3:00pm we left for Wallingford – speeches, drink, and later a beef banquet.

Weather: 12°C—19°C, northerly and no rain.

Got the paperwork ready for signing the lease tomorrow.

Set up electric fence so that the lambs could have about a third of the orchard – that’s supposed to last them a month. Also set up a fresh piece for the ewes in the Top paddock. Bicka enjoys being outside with us. Troughs emptied – at this time of year they collect a lot of leaves which turns their water into tea so I empty them every few days. After the rain up here while we were in Wellington the troughs were full to the brim – and much heavier than usual. I don’t think I should have tipped the water out – I should have baled it as my back is now complaining.

Weather: 14°C—16°C, northerly breezes in the afternoon, quite bright, no rain.

In the morning took a load of building rubbish to the Wainuiomata Land Fill (aka ‘the tip’). Ugh, the stench! A mountain of urban rubbish.

Left Wellington around 4:30pm and arrived in Hastings at 9:40pm – large dinner in Masterton. Hard to tell in the dark but some sheep still alive and kicking – tomorrow will see a census and report.

On the way home we passed several cars abandoned by the roadside – including a new-looking white van just outside Woodville. To our surprise and annoyance it flashed a very bright light at us as we passed it – potentially making Karola swerve off the road. I guess the guy coming the other way who dipped his lights as he passed us just before the van should have warned us. Oh well.

Weather: 14°C—18°C, barely any wind and no rain. Not cold at all.

No news from Hastings.

Weather: 13°C—16°C, 22mm rain.

Funeral today. No news from Hastings.

Weather: 10°C—14°C, Easterly winds, 39mm rain.

We confirmed with Alan Ladbrooke that he will lease Karola’s orchard for the next 5-8 years. His rent is quite good and I think we’ll be able to work in with his orcharding very well. I also called the Thows and ‘vmr’ed them (Very Many Regrets …) – nicely of course and didn’t sound like there was any hard feeling. Sent amended lease agreement off to our lawyer in Hastings for a final check – Karola expects to sign on Friday.

Alan said that with the heavy rain forecast it’d be really good to give the Braeburn’s a dose of nitrogen fertilizer – so I went out with Bicka in the rain and took down the electric fence after putting the lambs into the Front paddock – where they can stay until we return on Thursday. Alan and his son Adam came over and applied the fetilizer mid-morning.

Karola and I let the ewes and rams out into their daytime patch in the Top paddock – left the gate open so they could wander back to the shelter of the Island paddock if they wished. They too should be fine until we get back.

I tried starting Karola’s chainsaw as per the training last week – it started straight away. Then I went into Hastings and bought new chain for it, ($45.00) leaving it with Mr Fix-IT to add a chain stop peg – which he says he’ll have done by Friday. In 1976 the chainsaws lacked several important safety features – there’s no Chain Brake, no Knuckle-Guard, no Chain Stop Peg. The latter is the most important and the instructor suggested I get one made up. New chainsaws are much lighter too – so if my experience in cutting down 189 apple trees is a success then I may splash out on a small modern one – there’s always branches coming off the trees here.

Weather: 10°C—13°C, Rain and drizzle from breakfast onwards, mainly southerly winds, 28mm rain.

The morning after. Yesterday Karola went to a pre-natal shower for Chrissie & Marcus – a real feast for afternoon tea she said – then we had friends over for a main meal last night – so we’re recovering from too much delicious rich food today. Also, yesterday Hartley came and helped Karola move the temporary electric fence in the orchard and let the combined lambs into it.

This morning I let the lambs out again and could only count 11 of Hartley’s 14. Consternation – I thought I saw sheep on the roadside in the hedge opposite – so I thought they must have somehow got out. We went over and found that what I thought were our escapees were in fact 5 sheep belonging over there – and they were in a paddock behind the hedge, not actually on the roadside. Three revellers standing round outside the cottage over the road, chatting in the sun, told us they’d seen 3 sheep running flat out for the river earlier in the morning. Karola and I went down looking for them but after a fairly cursory search gave up.

Karola then went and rechecked and all the lambs were actually present and correct after all. Sighs of relief. The revellers were just winding us up. Karola then went out and strengthened the road fence so that we wouldn’t even suspect any had got out next time.

Weather: 3°C—16°C, Some northerly wind around midday, cloudy, no rain.

About 8 of us went out to Horonui Station (David Campbell’s place) south of Hastings off Route 2. Our classroom was a stand of old, tall, and spindly pines with some windfalls, in a wide gully. We disassembled and reassembled our chainsaws – mine being Karola’s 1976 Echo 16″ antique. We were shown some basic cutting techniques and tips – a lot of tips and very useful. The course ran out of time; we may get an extension; so some of us didn’t actually get to do any cutting, but the advice was solid and relevant and helpful.

Course finished at 3:00pm – we’d brought our own lunches and eaten them sitting on the hillside in the sun – really quite warm except for 30 minutes when a few cold squalls came through.

Lorrie (Lawrence) from Smedly Station was the instructor – very good.

Mr Davenport (I’ve forgotten his first name) – one of the other students, and working for Regional Council – most of the students were working for Forestry or Council – well he worked for the Bendalls for many years on and off – apparently knew the Dickens family too in Pahiatua – he’d stayed with Graham and Allison and with Chris at various times – was actually there when the old homestead burned down. I’d have been 3-4 years ahead of him as an R.O.Bendall apprentice – I owe a great deal to the Bendalls. Apparently their Romney sheep improvement programme – which they were founding when I was there in late 1950s – is still carrying on today.

We celebrated Karola’s birthday all evening.

Weather: 4°C—17°C, Mainly sunny and blue sky, no rain, occasional westerly wind.

In the morning, walked Bicka round the orchard – off her leash and she hasn’t run away recently so she can snuffle round to her hearts content as long as she’s within 20 metres or so – which suits us both. After that I did some measuring along the road frontage – noting the positions of the three drives and the Avenue trees outside our fence.

Afternoon, pour-on for lice put on all the old ewes and Horace, and four treated for footrot. Then, with Hartley’s help, we did a similar job on our 33 lambs – noting that about 4 needed foot attention but leaving that for another day. Karola dagged 3-4 of the worst daggy lambs and we marked the ewe lambs more obviously as different from the ram lambs this time too.

Then, as the sun sank in the West, we penned up Hartley’s 18 Romney and Blackface lambs and sorted them. The ram lambs were put in with Horace and the old ewes – presuming that Horace will chase off any unwelcome attentions from the ram lambs. Hartley’s ewe lambs were combined with our lambs and will together graze the orchard for the next few months.

Weather: 4°C—15°C, Mainly sunny and blue sky, no rain.

Another beautiful autumn day. Long walk round the orchard and homestead blocks with Bicka this morning – visualising a fence here, a hedge there, a driveway extension here.

Got two aerial photos of the blocks today – laminated – taken 11 May 2004 – very good detail.

This evening went to 3 hours of Chainsaw education – the practical is on Saturday. Very interesting once they got past the horrifics and safety – important but gruesome.

Weather: 7°C—19°C, Clear blue sky, no rain.

Spent much of the morning talking to prospective lessee Alan Ladbrooke who is already leasing Craig Vernon’s place next door and has his own orchard the other side of Craig’s place. An important advantage for him is that (as Craig suggested to him) he can put a gate in the fence and treat all three orchards as one big one – saves a lot of travelling time over a year compared with an orchard he used to lease just 7 km away. Alan wants a longer lease than we’d suggested – 5 years renewable for a further 3. But we’d just been using what was in the lawyer’s draft common orchard lease so not a problem for us. I think we’ll probably choose Alan and will get on very well. Adam, his son, has been coming over and doing bits of tractor work for us (pulling out the odd post etc) ever since we came back so we know them reasonably well – also Alan’s father and his wife used to be gardeners here way back. Small world.

Weather: 3°C—14°C, Clear blue sky, no rain.

Took Bicka for a morning walk around 7:30am – frost on the grass, gently steaming trees in the early morning sun – delightful.
Spent much of the morning reading on the balcony in the sun – very warm.

Weather: 0°C—16°C, A light southerly breeze at midday, clear blue sky, no rain. TV reported 20 degrees in Hastings today – highest in NZ.

Graham Thow and son came to look round the orchard today – were very agreeable, made some good suggestions, and offered a fair price. We wait now for Alan Ladbrooke to talk to us. Greg Cornes is interested if neither of these two meets our needs.

I went in to Aerial Mapping and ordered up to date aerial pictures of the Homestead and Orchard – they should be ready on Friday – the photos were taken in 2004.

I also spoke to the District Council planners and they confirmed that we could change the boundary between the Homestead and the orchard by up to 10% of the smaller title – 1.2 acres. The area I intend to clear of 189 apple trees and make part of the Homestead is about an acre, and if we straighten up the top fenceline – adding about 1/2 an acre to the Orchard – then we can add two more rows of apples and increase the length of four more – about 90 trees.

Harry has agreed to come over on Saturday for Karola’s birthday and to give us his opinions on how to develop the combined blocks.

Weather: 4°C—12°C, overcast with a cold southerly breeze, no rain.

Bicka was due for her worming pill today – well overdue – and she defeated both Karola and my attempts to get her to swallow it. To top it she was sick in the back of the car. She bears no grudge though – after struggling like anything when I did the vet thing – popped it into her mouth, stuck my finger to the back of her throat, and held her muzzle firmly I thought Bicka might be a tad depressed or annoyed – not a bit of it – she spat out most of the tablet and then wagged her tail and came up for a pat.

Lambs went into the orchard for the first time today – well a piece of the orchard – and they were delighted. Ewes and Horace got a new slice of the Top paddock. Karola returned both flocks to their night quarters as dusk fell.

Weather: 8°C—18°C, northerly swung round to southerly in the afternoon, just a sprinkle of rain – in the morning the day was glorious sunshine again.

Our Brethren helper Hartley didn’t come today – his mum and brother were both down with the ‘flu so he kindly didn’t bring it on over here.

Karola picked buckets of Feijoas and also marked out where her new circular, collapsable washing line is to go – on the small green in front of the garage.

I spent happy hours pacing out where new fencelines might go between the Homestead and Orchard blocks.

Weather: 5°C—16°C, northerly wind at mid-day, no rain – in the morning the day was glorious sunshine again.

Tomorrow we plan to dose the sheep for lice – never a dull moment, and certainly very down to earth. However, after a glorious occasional spell today it’s pouring with rain right now so we may have to postpone.

That terrible smell isn’t Bicka – not even, as suspected, a Bicka that had rolled in some rotten thrush eggs. Turns out it is a decomposing possum near the garage – so I buried that little corpse and the smell lessened.

Hartley’s lambs are now in the Back paddock, our lambs are in the Front paddock and Tall Trees paddock; the ewes and Horace are in the Island and a sliver of the Top paddock. We’re monitoring the ewes’ eating of the sliver – trying to judge how long the Top paddock will last.

Karola noticed a special on gates at Farmlands so we bought a pair to use as sides of temporary sheep yards – our current yard sides are old gates which are too heavy and one has great holes in it where Horace took a dislike to it last time he was here. A lamb escaped though the hole last week so guess it was time for an upgrade. Someday we’ll figure out where to put real sheep yards and make our lives quite a bit easier.

Three of our lambs have a bad foot; two ewes and a ram lamb.

Weather: 8°C—17°C, southerly changed to northerly wind in the afternoon, no rain – in parts the day was glorious sunshine.

Karola and I put up the waratah and netting fence in the morning; all lambs and ewes seem healthy, happy, and well fed.

I have bought a distance-measuring wheel – an extravagance I think – but it certainly beats trying to get anyone – anyone at all – to hold the end of a 30 metre measuring tape. Pity I couldn’t get Bicka to do it. Anyway, have been making a few measurements since I got it 2 weeks ago and today I found that part of the boundary fence is markedly different from what the deeds show. That explains why on my computer map of the orchard I couldn’t get the fruit tree rows to match up with the bends in the fence. Whew!

Weather: 8°C—17°C, northerly wind, rain eased, 1mm rain.

Well, as I suspected, the sick ewe died in the night and I played the gravedigger role again. Karola helped and filled in afterwards. We also got Hartley’s errant lamb out of the ewe flock, hopefully before she became the object of Horace’s desire.

Hartley’s lambs are now allowed into the Triangle during the day – they’re getting very well fed. Our lambs still await their worm egg count results.

We decided to break-fence the Top paddock – the grass is quite long now, maybe 20cm or more – and feed the ewes a slice at a time. Preparatory work today was to take down a Waratah (metal post) and netting fence so that we could re-erect it tomorrow – the nett effect being that we can keep the ewes in the Island paddock overnight and let them out into a piece of the Top paddock during the day. As it’s set up right now, the netting fence separated the Top paddock from the Island and Middle paddocks.

Karola (with some ‘help’ from Bicka) put the ewes and Horace into the Island paddock for the night, and moved a trough so that they’d have water there.

Weather: 13°C—17°C, southerly wind turned to northerly in the afternoon, heavy showers all morning, 39mm rain.

Today Gerald, who was minding the house for us while we were down in Wellington with Bridget, called and said he’d found a lamb wandering round in the garden and had put it in the Back paddock. Sensible move and it explains everything – Hartley’s lambs are in the least lamb-proof paddock, the Tall Trees road frontage – and that’s how one of his lambs got from there into the same paddocks as the ewes and Horace. I wonder if it is a ewe lamb.

There were a couple of faxes waiting for us when we got home; they told us that there were no worm eggs in the specimens we collected from our ewes, nor any in the specimens from Hartley’s lambs. We have to wait for another couple of days before we can take specimens which will let us know whether our lambs, which we drenched last week, are also worm-free – and hence whether it’s a good idea to put them in the Orchard and/or mix them with Hartley’s lambs.

Hartley’s lambs are pretty hungry so I extended their grazing onto some of the lawn, behind the Feijoa bushes, and they gratefully descended on it – they’re good little lawn mowers.

Late morning Karola went round the ewes again – I’d had a quick check last night. However she found one of the ewes was really sick – looked like it’d spent the night on its side in one spot. We heaved it up into the trailor and took it into Hastings to the Vet. She said it was indeed pretty crook – but not of anything specific that she could be sure of. All she’d say was that it wasn’t Pulpy Kidney, nor Facial Ezcma, nor internal parasites. Sheep had a slight temperature and had neurological problem as well as . . . (the list went on). The vet gave it some antibiotic and thiamin (I think that was the trace element she said just might be part of the problem) and we took the sheep home again, propped it up in the woodshed between couple of bales of hay out of the wind and rain – it’ll either be dead or fast recovering tomorrow, was the vet’s diagnosis – I’m thinking another hole will be required. :-(.

Karola’s Orchard is not only bought – it’s now bought and Paid For – it was settlement day today and we had a small celebration with the neighbour who sold it to us.

Weather: 13°C—19°C, southerly wind in the afternoon, raining all day, 24mm rain.

Returned to Hawkes Bay late morning – arriving around 4:45pm.

Counted and checked out the sheep.
– There’s a lamb in with the 21 ewes and Horace the Ram. Hmmm.
– Our 33 lambs are OK although 3 of them are limping a bit.
(I remembered eventually that we had 33 not 35 lambs to account for as we gave 2 to Kaz last week)
– I can only find 17 of Hartley’s 18 little lambs – so somehow it must be one of Hartley’s lambs that is in with the ewes.
Either that or it’s a stray from further down the Avenue.

All 8 bantams and cat present and correct. Bicka glad to be home again.

Weather: 15°C—22°C, northerly wind, no rain.

Spent the day at Pitoitoi – Rashbrookes for lunch – dug up some plants to take back to Karamu, plants that were growing right next to the house and had to go to make way for concreting the area round the house; We’re hoping to prevent further incursions of water under the house and foundations. All major stormwater drains now unblocked and with the sealing of the area immediately adjacent to the house on three sides it should make a big difference, stopping most of the water coming off the native bush reserve above us.

Weather: 11°C—21°C, northerly wind in the afternoon, no rain.