Monthly Archives: June 2005

Advance Booking Required

Set up electric fencing under the big Oak tree and bamboo – hoping the sheep would clear it out a bit before the Mulching Man comes. We have several large piles of branches that will be turned into piles of chippings which make a good mulch round our new trees and in gateways, reducing mud. Some of these are from my felling of the apple trees, some from the year-round shedding of dead branches and wind-damaged limbs from our several hundred oaks and firs, elms and other USA western seaboard natives that were planted here at the turn of the century – the 19th century. The ewes are pretty good at obeying the intent of electric fencing but the 4 ram lambs from Hartleys flock of 18 – segregated to avoid our lambs getting in-lamb – are not at all impressed and charge through it. When they actually break or tangle the fence up then the older ones do get out as well. {sigh}.

Did a bit of clearing and chain-sawing in the garden today – some long overdue clearing of a noxious Privett and a dead Hickory and part of an Orange tree. Making space for our Rimu which is a bit one-sided due to 50 years of overcrowding.

Got Karola her air tickets for her October trip to see Anna and the two grandsons in London – she leaves on 3rd October and arrives back on 16th November – including a week in the USA on her way back. The last ’round the world’ trip using my American Airways ‘air miles’ – Karola goes to the UK via Hong Kong and back via Boston and Los Angeles.

I heard today that Gill’s Ben is back from his South African trip with 100s of photos and exhiliarating tales of lions, gazelle, etc.

Mary gave us a Centigrade Max/Min thermometer which we’ve fastened to the old Wysteria trunk up the front of the house. Be interesting to see how cold it gets on the front porch this winter – my weather reports are from a weather station some 15km from here so are only approximately correct.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 0°C—11°C, southerly wind, 1mm rain around 5:00am, afternoon sunny.

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Fencing with Fencing

After a late start I spent the day mending and assembling Harry’s Spiderfence electric portable fencing. Harry’s focus in electric fencing is to make up or break down each fence in just one pass – be it a single wire dairy or beef fence, or a three-wire sheep fence.

I have an old video from KiwiTech – Harry’s firm – that describes how to assemble and use the various technologies – it is a really elegant set of reusable kitsets, some very smart gadgets, and some ingenious procedures. I hadn’t realised quite how far he’d driven his ideas over the last 30 years. He visited us in England back in the 1970s with some of his earlier designs that he was hawking around Britain and France, but the whole kit has simplified and become a very cleverly designed whole system of fencing that dovetails with his holistic pasture animal management system he calls TechnoSystems.

Anyway, I am now thoroughly sick and tired of his video – having spent the morning in stop-start mode as I figured out how to assemble his pack and fence items. Then, the rest of the day I spent mending and tightening the fence posts and clips I already had, and assembling 20 or so extras that I got last week. We now have 60 temporary electric fence posts, probably a couple of kilometres of conductive ‘polywire’, and two ‘end-assemblies’ – the two-post assemblies that can take the strain at the end of severla hundred metres of fence. The dining room floor has rather a lot of mud on it, but the job is done.

Karola spent the day outside – a much better idea – grappling with Tradescantia – a weed that makes up in abundance for not having thorns or stings, or being particularly stubborn against being pulled out. Anyway, Karola has cleared many square metres and planted the Hydrangeas we brought up from Bridget’s garden on Monday.

Our other foray was to go to our accountant, Murray Mclean in Clive, to get his blessing on Karola’s first GST (UK = VAT) return. This is the one where we claim back the 12.5% GST that was included in the price of the orchard. The return is due tomorrow.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—15°C, southerly wind, gusty around mid day, another brilliant sunny morning after quite a chilly start; clouding over as dusk fell, no rain.

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Brilliant cold sunny winter’s day

… and we spend almost all day inside doing Karola’s first bi-monthly GST (or VAT as she calls it). However we did get out in the late afternoon for a walk with Bicka.

Sheep all active and well fed. Bantams and cat all present and correct. Pruning is well underway in the orchard.

Weather: -1°C—14°C, southerly wind in the brilliant sunny day after a very cold start; no rain.

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Rosie Doole unreserved

In the morning we had our on-site consultation with Rosie Doole from the Hutt District Council; the topic was weed eradication and planting of natives on the reserve land adjoining our flat in Pitoitoi Road at Days Bay in Wellington. Our property is a tiny patch of steep land at the bottom of a hill; the land above and to seaward of us is reserve land belonging to the Hutt District Council and designated land for endemic native bush. Rosie observed the small open ditches that took stormwater from the reserve land across the top of our section and also from the carport area across our tiny lawn – strictly speaking even that amount of fiddling with nature is frowned on in reserve land – but they’re going to ignore that unless it becomes a problem, eroding the steep clay bank directly to seaward of our section.

As Felicity Rashbrooke, our local friend and advisor on conservation matters, had said yesterday, it’s too late now to get trees planted this spring – there’s just not enough time for a spray programme to eradicate the Jasmine, Banana Passionfruit and other noxious weeds and get new trees planted by the end of August. So our programme will aim to do the planting next autumn. Rosie originally wanted a ‘scorched earth’ approach to thoroughly control the weeds before introducing new trees however she agreed to modify that – her team will poison most of the area but leave the few trees that are desirable species and over a meter tall. Meanwhile she said we can transplant anything smaller than that onto our land if we like. There are some small Kowhai and Totora and Cabbage Trees that we might want to save. Rosie and I will keep in touch by e-mail and we’ll meet again to talk about the types and numbers of plants after the spray programme is complete, probably early next year.

Rosie was somewhat against Karaka – apparently while they may be native trees endemic to the area they are just a bit too vigorous and compete too well. She was enthusiastic about the fine stand of mature Kanuka. Rosie suggested we have a separate conversation about possibly felling the three tall Australian Wattle and Eucalypt trees on the reserve above our section.

We left Pitoitoi around lunchtime, going to see the mokapuna (grandchild) Natalie and mother Bridget in Khandallah on the way. We packed most of the Hydrangeas we’d dug up from Bridget’s garden into the car, to transplant along the old front drive at Karamu. We also tacked up some plastic fencing over the more obvious escape routes, making Bridget’s garden fence somewhat more Bicka-proof. On a previous visit we’d had a phone call from a nearby house asking if we’d lost Bicka – we hadn’t noticed but she’d escaped and gone visiting some dogs along the busy Burma Road. This fencing was to try and avoid a repeat escape.

Arrived home to Karamu around 9:00pm – no snow on the Rimutaka mountain pass, in fact it was 8-9 degrees there, dropping to 2 degrees as we crossed the Takapau plains towards Hastings. Due for -1 degrees here tonight.

Weather: 2°C—11°C, patches of southerly wind; no rain.

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Kaz and Yvonne depart Pitoitoi

Kaz and Yvonne left for home late morning.

We went to friends Felicity and Geoff Rashbrooke in York Bay (two bays closer in) for dinner and to discuss native plantings suitable for Pitoitoi. We spent time pouring over Salmon’s Trees of New Zealand; Felicity and Karola gave us their favorite lists; and at Felicity’s suggestion Geoff printed off the Wellington Regional Council’s web site list of best native trees to plant in the Wellington area. Much discussion about ‘endemic’ness of various species. Our goal is to find trees to plant at Pitoitoi (and at Karamu too, but that’s a different list) which are not only endemic to New Zealand but endemic to the specific area around Wellington. So there’s debate on whether certain species were brought to Wellington and planted as food crops by Maori before the Europeans arrived – and if so, were they counted as endemic or not. A pleasant evening passed.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 2°C—8°C, southerly wind; no rain.

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Brother Kaz Comes to Pitoitoi

Karola’s brother Kaz and his wife Yvonne arrived down from Sanson as expected after lunch. They asked to camp on the floor at Pitoitoi to avoid the high motel tariffs in Wellington. They were down to visit their son Francis and daughter Amy who have both moved to Wellington to get jobs. Francis and Amy also arrived with their parents.

As planned, Kaz and family went off sightseeing in Wellington for the afternoon; meanwhile Karola and I went in to see our mokopuna Natalie and her mother Bridget. Before we went there was an hour or so of excitement because Bicka escaped. She was located playing with other dogs on the beach – which means she crossed the busy coast road by herself! What happened was that Bicka was so excited to see Kaz, Yvonne, Francis and Amy that she peed on the carpet downstairs. Karola’s attention wavered as she attended to this and Bicka took the opportunity to slip away – she has a 6th sense for when we’re paying her attention, the little Beagle.

At Bridget’s place we helped her dig out the Hydrangeas that she wanted removed. Meanwhile I went off for the evening to visit Mary and watch Sky TV – the UK TV channel – to watch Foyle’s War in fact, a programme that is a bit like Morse and just as good.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 5°C—8°C, southerly wind, 29mm rain in heavy squalls.

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Mokopuna-sitting

Our Hawkes Bay Mulching Man contacted us and he’ll take a look at what we want done over the weekend. He charges $80 an hour for himself and his magnificent machine – $95 an hour if he brings a helper.

In the morning we had an on-site meeting with Project Manager Charles Bagnall. He had drawings of the underpinning for our approval, and we also discussed the new carport roof – it’s going to be made of clear polycarbonate sheets.

In the evening we babysat for Bridget until 12:30am – got back to Pitoitoi around 1:00am and had the usual anxious minutes when Bicka barked and we hoped and prayed she’d stop before the neighbours lynched us.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 5°C—10°C, southerly wind, 1mm rain.

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Off To Wellington Again – Hamish In Charge

We trimmed and felled another 6 apple trees in the morning; leaving for Wellington mid afternoon and arriving at Pitoitoi in Day’s Bay around 8:45pm. Hamish Ladbrooke (and his mother Julie) are in charge of animal nutrition while we are away.

We’ve done about a third of the 189 apple trees that we’re felling to extend the rough lawn beyond the huge Tulip Tree north of the Homestead.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—14°C, westerly turning to southerly wind, 1mm rain.

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Fruitful Openings

Lambs allowed into the whole orchard. Up till now we’d been trying to restrict them to just 1/3rd of the orchard at a time. The ewes get free range over the Top paddock. This is where the flocks will stay while we’re in Wellington – we leave tomorrow.

We deconstructed and stowed all the electric temporary fencing. Alan Ladbrooke, our orchard leasee, and his worker and his son Adam, installed a 14-foot gate in the boundary fence with our neighbours, the Vernon’s.
Alan’s own orchard is next to the Vernon’s place and he leases the Vernon’s orchard so now he can operate all three orchards as one and move about them without going out onto the public road.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—14°C, south-westerly wind, 1mm rain.

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High Culture – Cinema in Napier

Felled another half dozen apple trees. Let lambs graze a new third of the orchard during the day.

In the evening we went to a film “Seducing Dr Lewis” – Canadian, in French with sub-titles. This was one of the films circulating as part of the 2005 New Zealand Film Festival.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 3°C—16°C, northerly wind; no rain.

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Web log doesn’t work

As part of the web site move I tried to copy over the Karamu Homestead Farm Log and the programs that run it. Due to a bug in the system software up on the server – something that I don’t control – the WordPress ‘blogging software’ doesn’t work – but it’s taken me ages to check that it wasn’t something I’d done. There’ll be a gap of several days in access to the Karamu Homestead Farm Log but I hope not to have any breaks in the log entries.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 3°C—14°C, northerly wind in the afternoon; no rain.

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Web Site Gunge

Spent a lot of time trying to extricate myself from the current hosting provider – but it’s beginning to work. I’m trying not to break anything that’s working as I move the places the URLs and e-mail addresses point to so that they point to the new space.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—15°C, westerly wind in the afternoon, 1mm rain.

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Time to move our Web Site

Several days of experimenting with our new web space, beginning to move the stuff over from the old site hosted by EasySpace in the UK. Half the cost per year, 10 times as much space, and lots of extra facilities thrown in. Our new hoster is a very new company that Bridget selected from a shortlist of 3-4 – she was impressed by the professionalism of their home page. It turned out that AceWebHosting is a company providing web space for small businesses and personal use that was recently set up by a large commercial hosting company – so they really do know their stuff. Bridget’s intuition was right. Support has been excellent so far.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—13°C, northerly wind, 6mm rain.

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A lot of firewood, it will be

More apple tree cutting.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—14°C, northerly wind in the afternoon; no rain.

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Departed But Not Gone Forever

Gill and Mary set off for home in Wellington by car – it takes 4-5 hours if you take it quietly; 3hrs 45mins if you hoof it and the traffic is very light.

Used the new chainsaw in felling another row of apple trees – that is, using a very sharp pruning saw I remove the branches – anything up to about 5-8cm diameter – and the chainsaw handles the trunk and largest branches. At present I leave a metre or more of the trunk standing to make pulling the roots out easier – the mechanical pullers like to have something to grip. So I’m creating a ghost orchard of bare trunks.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—13°C, southerly wind veering northerly in the afternoon; no rain.

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Te Mata Peak

Not so wet today. Took our visitors to Havelock North for lunch – Havelock North and Tarradale are the two local districts where the well-to-do and more mature citizens flock – the shops cater for their well-heeled patrons and Havelock North is up with Wellington street cafe society – almost. After lunch I took Gill and Mary up to the Te Mata Peak lookout – across much of Hawkes Bay with mountain ranges to the South West (Ruahines) and North West (Kaiwekas). Te Mata Peak sports several launch stations for hang-gliders – the east-facing slope is precipitious down 100s of metres to the Tukituki river valley. In the right conditions you can see several winged humans playing the thermal currents above the peak.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—11°C, southerly wind, 11mm rain.

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Unhanded Moccasins

When we have visitors it seems we get into a routine of just pottering about and eating a lot. Today we went to Clearview restaurant on the way to Cape Kidnappers for lunch – vineyard surroundings just across the road from the beach. Heavy showers, including through lunch.

Went back through Napier – visiting the Sheepskin Shop again. I got some moccasins – ideal for the forgetful as they are enantiomorphically-agnostic – you can put either moccasin on either foot.

Picked up the new chainsaw – it is tiny, with a 10-inch (250mm) blade and I can carry it easily with one hand. Will make my apple-tree felling much easier, and it’ll handle up to 20-inch (50cm) diameter logs which is larger than anything I’m likely to tackle.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—11°C, mainly southerly wind, 26mm rain, it really poured.

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Farmers Market at the Showgrounds

Relaxed day sight-seeing and shopping with the visitors – the Farmers Market is held every Sunday morning at the Hastings Showgrounds – if warm and dry it’s out in the open, otherwise it’s underneath the grandstand. So it was under the grandstand today. I like the free samples of beef, ostrich and sausages offered by the meat vendors – there’s a lot of ‘fruit and vege’ and it’s very hard to escape without being laden down with organic and home-grown produce. After the market we visited the Woolskin shop in Napier – rugs, shoes, blankets, and so on at a fraction of the price in Auckland Airport departure lounge, of course.

We also went up to the lookout on the bluff at Napier – excellent 180 degree view up to Gisborne (in theory, if it was clear enough) and down to Cape Kidnappers. Coastal shipping to and from Napier, and along the East coast is mainly large container ships or small bulk carriers.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—13°C, southerly wind, 1mm rain.

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The Day Slips Away

Another pleasant day, if rather damp and cold.

Went into Hastings and ordered one of the new lightweight chainsaws – 3kg versus 7kg for Karola’s antique (1976-ish) one, and with significant safety improvements. We agreed to retire Karola’s chainsaw permanently rather than get the oiler fixed.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 9°C—12°C, southerly wind, 17mm rain – that is, it poured.

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End of the Chain

The chainsaw course, provided by Agriculture New Zealand and Telford Rural Polytechnic, over-ran its initial evening of theory and day of practical so today I went back for a couple of hours of practical. Karola’s antique chainsaw started OK but then the automatic oiler wasn’t working so after some fiddling about they lent me another chainsaw and all was well.

Sister Gill and mother Mary arrived today after lunch – for a few days rural R&R at Karamu. Gill’s Ben is away on a biologists trip in South Africa for 3 weeks and there was much cellphone texting between them.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 2°C—13°C, northerly wind around noon, no rain.

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Crisp and cool

Brrr it was cold this morning.

Karola’s routine: sheep go out to eat. Sheep get put back in their evening paddock.

I sawed and chainsawed a few more apple trees.

Weather: -2°C—11°C, sharp frost first thing, bright clear day, calm, no rain

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Of Mice and Welcome Swallowss

A tad chilly this morning. This time last year we nearly froze poor Bicka to death, caught out by the sharpness of the first frost. She was very very stiff and didn’t really recover her bounce for a week or so – still, she was just a young puppy then. We were so upset that she had her own oil heatrer on every time there was a hint of frost all winter – somewhat expensive. This year Karola just puts a dog blanket over her travelling box and a warm dog blanket inside and Bicka seems quite chipper in the morning, despite the frost. Before you have visions of a bedraggled dog out in the open while the frost settles; her pen includes a dog-door into the sun porch and it’s in the sun porch that she spends the night inside her snug little travelling box.

Got some new glasses recently and as usual they did some eye tests – nothing really unexpected but a loss of some peripheral vision which may, or may not, indicate problems later on. Anyway, I had been seeing movements out of the corner of my eye when sitting at the computer up in my room – had put it down to imagination or maybe I was in a world being simulated by pan-galactic super-mice and the flicker was the edge of my reality – where the simulator didn’t bother to simulate because I couldn’t really see it – those who know a bit about computer games will know that’s a common trick – why spend energy on creating a world your subject isn’t experiencing this minute. But, and you knew there was something coming, eventually I saw what was flickering at the edge of my vision; a real, non-pangalactic, and not so super mouse. Worse, it started making a din behind some boxes on the floor as it chizelled a hole through the floor boards – Kauri floors are hard; mice teeth are harder.

Karola dispatched one up here; another one ran along the corridor and launched itself into the stairwell, skuttling into the living room. Another one was running hither and yon in my room today. Karola has another trap waiting. She’s got a couple in the kitchen; this time of year they do like the warmth and the crumbs. One jumped out of a maize sack in the garage yesterday while Karola was getting a treat for the sheep, which startled them both. At least they’re not rats – the cat seems to have a mission to keep the rat population down and show us the remains – long may she continue doing that.

For the last week there’s been a few Welcome Swallows swooping round the house and lawn – they come every year, presumably on their way to somewhere else, very pretty and up with the gannets in terms of flying graces. Grey and blue with a metallic sheen, and orange under the chin.

Did a bit more chopping/chainsawing in the orchard today – good work for these weather conditions, cold and dry.

Weather: -1°C—10°C, sharp frost first thing, southerly wind in the morning, no rain

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Moving Website Providers is Frustrating

Late afternoon spent clearing some of the apple tree cutting – we expect to mulch the smaller branches and cut the rest for apple firewood.

I have signed up with a new website provider, in consultation with Bridget and after comparing 20-30 different USA web hosting providers. I got it down to two possibles and Bridget chose the more professional feeling one – very new but have turned out so far to have a superior support team. Trying to migrate the domain names is proving very trying.

Weather: 3°C—10°C, southerly wind, no rain

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Outside again at last

Finally I got out for a while – chainsawing for an hour or so – slow work. Karola managed the sheep who were being a little unruly.

Weather: 0°C—11°C, westerly wind, no rain

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Wintery week begins

Weather: 2°C—13°C, southerly wind, no rain

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Routine winter day

Weather: 5°C—13°C, southerly wind, no rain.

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A day indoors

Sheep still quite good at keeping within their electrified space; lambs disregard and wander all over the orchard – teenagers!

Weather: 0°C—15°C, southerly wind, no rain – winter weather, much nicer outside in the sun than indoors..

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Winter weather

Usual routine for the sheep – Karola doing the honours, somewhat aided by Bicka. I’m still fairly immobile. Late start as it was bucketing down – which it did off and on through the day. Karola mowed the semi-circular lawn in front of the garage yesterday – just in time, there’s too much surface water now.

Weather: -1°C—11°C, southerly wind, 10mm rain – winter weather.

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Hobbled

Fairly immobile despite multiple potions and poultices – Karola let the sheep out and brought them back in this evening.

Weather: 5°C—13°C, westerly wind and bright in parts, no rain.

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All that’s missing is the snow

Cool but sunny again – quite warm if you pick your spot on the verandah or sheltered by a large tree – as the chickens and cat can testify. Karola mended the back orchard fence today – banged in some metal standards and completed it with wire netting across a piece of the fence that had slipped into the big stormwater ditch along the back boundary. She also dropped the heavy standard rammer on her foot – which was v. painful.

Bicka made a couple of long unaccompanied trips into other orchards but came home eventually; muddy, damp, and happy.

Hartley came round and helped Karola tighten up the electric fence – he thinks his little lambs are electric fence trained – but by observation we’d say they basically ignored them.

I started in on a dozen of the 180 or so apple trees I am cutting down – getting off all the easy ground-level foliage with a pruning saw. Chain sawing will begin once I can put my gouty foot into my metal-tipped regulations footwear. The lambs like apple leaves.

Weather: 8°C—14°C, southerly wind and another beautiful, bright, mostly cloudless day in Hawkes Bay.

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