Monthly Archives: July 2005

Julie Ladbrooke called last night to ask if her menfolk could come possum shooting again, and to let us know that the stump pulling contractor would be here on Monday with his magnificent Green Machine. Just a week ago the possum hunters got 5 possums on our property; last night they got another 4 and I can still hear possums screaming at each other tonight out by the garage – so there’s no shortage of possums eating our grass, chewing off the tops of trees we’ve planted etc etc.

I did some more measuring, this time along the boundary shared by the orchard and homestead titles. I am within 2-3 metres of the same results when I measure and remeasure through mud and manure along 300 metres of fenceline. But all my measurements are at odds with some of the title deed distances, sometimes by as much as 10 metres.

Karola got Julie and her two youngest sons and a friend to come and help bail out the cellar – the recent heavy rains raised the water table significantly and that’s probably what filled the cellar with water.

I’m hoping the stump pulling man will also pull out some fence posts – it takes him a minute or so per post whereas it takes me 15 – 20 minutes to dig out each post. So, today was spent demolishing about 100m of fence between the Front paddock and the piece of the orchard that’s to be destumped tomorrow. There are 25 posts ready to be extracted; I’ve taken off the 8 wires and the 100 or so battens – whcih means I’ve pulled out around 1000 staples today.

If I’d been using conventional fencing pliers, we have three pairs in various states of disrepair, I’d have retired with aching wrists after the first 20 battens. However, anticipating this last week I bought a hefty thing called a “Pull-Eze” which has a bolt cutter action and so can put a great deal of pressure on gripping the staples – it just made the staple-pulling so much easier. Also I find cutting #8 wire with our fencing pliers is about at the limit of what I can do – sometimes I’m reduced to hitting the handles with a hammer to cut through particularly tough #8. The “Pull-Eze”, using the bolt-cutter action, slices through #8 like butter. Highly recommended. #8 mild steel wire (4mm) used to be the primary fencing wire in New Zealand 20 years ago. Nowadays farmers use much thinner high-tensile wire, 2.5mm or thinner, which is very hard to bend and whips around when you cut it – endangering life and limb – at least that’s how I feel about it, so we use #8.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 4°C—15°C; Cloudy with a cool northerly breeze; no rain.

Roger Kennedy and his sidekick Tony arrived around 9:00am and spent almost 6 hours mulching the trimmings from the 150m of Casurina shelter belt; Karola helped. They still have a 70m windrow, 2m high and 2m wide, of apple orchard branches to mulch – maybe next week . . .

Karola and I used the Landrover to pull a large branch out of a 10m Titoki tree; it had fallen from the Wellingtonian close by and got hung up in the Titoki. I whiled away some time adjusting three more gates to make them swing clear of the ground and replaced broken hasp on the orchard road entrance gate. Karola cleared rubbish from up at the big shed.

We used our American plastic “measuring wheel” to pace out the road frontage, including where each tree and drain and driveway and utility pole is; 35 of these features were recorded.. We went south to north and then repeated them north to south – 289m in one direction and 288.5 on the way back – not bad. The title deeds show 286.6m though.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 3°C—13°C; Absolutely perfect winter’s day. Sun shining, barely a cloud in the sky with a cool northerly breeze that veered to westerly in the afternoon; no rain.

Quiet day – lunch with Lis and Patrick Cooney at their NZ home in Haumoana, between Napier and Cape Kidnappers.
Haumoana being Maori for “sea breeze”, apt!

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—14°C; Partly cloudy, calm, no rain.

At last I’ve got the MikroTik router in the garage set to allow anyone who browses http://spiderfence.com to access our LAN and get to a web server holding a copy of the ormond reunion site running on a laptop on my desk. Now I’m concentrating on setting up a computer map of the Homestead and the Orchard land titles using DesignCAD Express – a very cheap, but not free, 2D CAD package.

I’ve tried several times over the last 3 years to create a computer map of the Homestead but when it comes to planning what we want to do I find that not all the boundary fences are the same length as shown on the title and when I try to plot driveways and gates onto the computer map things don’t all match up. Karola believes that it’s happened when an old hedge or shelter belt has been cleared leaving the fence that ran along the hedge as the boundary. Adding to the difficulty, and the charm, the boundaries consist of 13 separate straight lines and there isn’t a single fence that’s parallel with or at right angles to any other fence. So, I’ve asked a surveyor to come and help – perhaps bang in a few white pegs.

In the future we expect to do a ‘boundary adjustment’ between the Homestead and Orchard titles. The district plan permits you to adjust your boundary as long as the area doesn’t exceed 10% of the area of the smaller title. For that we’ll need to have the Homestead and Orchard titles surveyed and white pegs hammered in. These have to be accurate to within 5cm and are checked and registered – the whole process is quite expensive.

We’re expecting our surveyor, Andrew Taylor from “Surveying the Bay” (recommended by our lawyer, Alan Pierce) to call soon. He plans to come out and bring with him an aerial photo overlaid by the boundaries from the land titles. Apparently this is what the council use for their planning and it’s accurate to within 1/2 a metre. He suggests that if I can make do with what the council use it’d be a lot cheaper than getting him to do the white pegs now.

This afternoon I helped Karola dig out a big old tree stump in the roadside Tall Trees paddock. We dug down half a metre or so and chopped through some major roots and then pulled it out with the Landrover, (1996 2 tonne V8 petrol Discovery). This was not as simple as it sounds – the Landrover, even though in diff-locked low ratio, skidded and heaved and we pulled from various angles and different directions and after about an hour out it popped like a big tooth. Bicka enlivened proceedings by eating some sheep nuts that we’d given the lambs and then sicking them up in the back of the ‘disco’ – some sort of passive resistance protest at the noise and commotion – she really didn’t like the skidding and revving stuff.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—14°C; Some drizzle in the morning, a cloudy day but quite bright. The weather station I use recorded no rain, so the drizzle was local.

Karola went to town this morning and I rehung a couple of gates that were drooping sadly and dragging on the ground. When Karola came back we did some fence maintenance, tightening wires and adding battens to one of my experiments in invisible fence. The idea was to have 9 wires instead of the usual 7 and posts every 4 metres but no battens – this being less of a visual distraction than the conventional 7-wire post and batten fence. It probably was less intrusive but unfortunately boisterous lambs just pushed their way through it. So, with that experience we’re now adding battens before the next crop of lambs due late September.

Late afternoon Karola’s helpers and owners of the 18 lambs (Hartley and friends) came and we picked up logs from the orchard using wheel barrows and the landrover trailer, carrying on from where karola was doing the salvage yesterday. These are 4-5 inch (100mm-125mm) thick logs from the leased orchard; Alan the lessee prefers not to use the mobile hydraulic platforms needed for tall trees but instead to have trees that can be picked from the ground or an orchard ladder. Hence the rather drastic pruning of the tops of some of the older trees – mostly Braeburns.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 5°C—20°C; A sunny day, becoming cloudy by evening; light northerly wind; no rain; warm.

It’s only in winter that you see how un-alone you are here – house and yard lights twinkle in every direction through the bare branches of deciduous trees – oaks, apples and planes mainly.

Another morning of firewood cutting then off into town (Hastings) for the afternoon. We called in on Heather Gregory on the way back; Richard and Heather have an amazing over-abundance of everything on their property, Mahora Stud in Pakowai Rd – about half a kilometre from us as the crow flies – the other side of the Hastings-Napier expressway. They have five children; five dogs; four horses and a donkey; chooks; ducks; tens of geese; 20 or so sheep; and a couple of orchards.

The Gregorys are cousins of Karola’s school friend and widow, Cynthia Chalmers – that’s how we know them. We called in to see one of their oak trees which was reported in the paper last week – it just fell over, quietly and without warning – it’s nearly as big as our big oak and probably of similar age, hence the interest. Looked to me as if several of the main branches and the roots were rotten and it had become lopsided through injudicious pruning so with the recent very wet conditions it just leant over till it touched the ground.

I also want some guard geese and Heather has agreed to collect a few of their whitest (most Pilgrim-like – Pilgrim is the breed which has traditional white plumage and yellow beak and legs) so I can choose 3 geese and a gander. I plan to keep them in the back paddock so they can hiss at anyone coming up the drive.

Surprised we are not – Roger the Mulching man has postponed until Saturday.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 4°C—15°C; A sunny day; light northerly wind; no rain; cool.

Cool but all-day sunshine with just a few whisps of high cloud and a light westerly breeze – idyllic!

The two oldest bantam cockerels had a big fight – the white one got a serious pecking and retired with bloodied head. He skulked around some distance apart from the rest all day. He should take consolation in the white hen which must surely be his offspring.

Took Bicka around the orchard perimeter and I saw a dead rabbit – carefully cajoled Bicka past that area and she never noticed it.

I spent another couple of hours chainsawing firewood, meanwhile Karola carted in barrow-loads of logs pruned from the Braeburns – older trees that had grown too high and were severely shortened this year.

In the afternoon I did a little retail therapy at a low-priced fence materials depot – got some treated timbers for some low retaining walls we plan to put in supporting grass bridges across our wet-weather streambed. It’s only a couple of feet lower than the surrounding areas and about 3 metres wide with very gently sloping sides so barely qualifies as a creek.

After dusk I went across the road to Anne & Graham Velvin’s place – I’m helping Anne put together a small and simple website advertising her flower arranging business at http://annevelvinflowers.co.nz

Our lessee Alan is helping organise someone to pull out tree stumps – our 180 or so and his 400. He says it’s still a bit too damp and sticky this week so maybe next week – of course if you wait too long there’ll be a rainy spell again and you have to wait for things to dry out again. Could go on all winter. Alan also generously offered to run the orchard mower over the Back paddock – if he knew the animated opposition I run into when wanting to do the same he’d not have asked :-). There’s something very satisfying about whacking down great swathes of weeds – and it looks tidy for several days afterwards – but Karola’s policy is to use her hand-propelled motor mower and gradually tame the paddock that way, intending to make permanent gains rather than engaging in an orgy of destruction.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 3°C—16°C; An absolutely gorgeous sunny day; light westerly wind; no rain – can this really be winter?

We began by cutting and stacking firewood for a couple of hours, then we penned up the ewes and that way got hold of Horace with his collar and chain. Earlier today Karola had hired a small trailer with high mesh sides, put mulch on the floor and a hay bale on each side to form a mobile pen where Horace could stand or sit but not get into trouble.

After some high kicks and cavorting – a bit like a miniature rodeo horse – Horace suddenly seemed to recognise what was required and jumped up into the trailer. We tied his chain to the mesh and put a tarpauline over the front of the trailer so that it formed a wind-break – after all, he had several inches of wool on yesterday and he’s just got a thin woollen jersey today – the sheep were shorn with ‘winter combs’ leaving a layer equivalent to about two weeks growth behind.

We set off around 1:00pm and were at Kaz’s place, Rola, on the other coast, around 4:00pm. Horace was unloaded without ceremony. Kaz agreed that Horace was in really in good condition. Karola and I then went into Bulls and had a late afternoon tea with Karola’s 80-year old Cousin Hiliary Haylock at her house, Lethenty. We returned to Karamu, having dinner at a pub on the outskirts of Dannevirke and arriving home around 9:30pm.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—17°C; Beautiful sunny day; a westerly wind; no rain.

A cold start as the sun rose in a cloudless sky and glinted off fresh snow on the Kawekas to the north-north-west. You can see the Kaweka ranges from our bed on clear days; the Ruahine ranges, to the south-west, are hidden by the bamboo; Mount Ruapehu can be seen occasionally, when it’s exceptionally clear air, out to the west-south-west.

Roger Kennedy and Tony were expected at 8:30am; they turned up late so mulching of the apple branches began after lunch, and then only for a couple of hours – the machine broke down yet again.

Kyle from Mobile Shearing arrived with the pie-cart (mobile shearing shed) at 10:30am as planned. Karola and I had the sheep work planned like one of those games where you move 8 squares round inside a 3 x 3 box. The lambs were brought into the Front paddock then into the Top paddock via the Triangle. We brought up our two new gates from the Front paddock (where they’d been used for dagging a few weeks ago) and made a superior version of our improptu sheep yards in a gateway of the Island paddock. The 20 ewes and Horace and the four ram lambs were penned up by 10:45. Then the 47 lambs were moved from the Top paddock into the Island paddock ready to take their turn.

Kyle and Karola and I pushed and pulled to get the sheep up a steep ramp onto the holding pen on the back of the truck – it holds about 12-15 sheep, depending on their size. Kyle, who has worked for many years as a shearer, including a stint in the AgroDome in Rotorua – the Godfrey Bowen sheep-shearing tourist attraction – and joined Hawkes Bay Mobile Shearing a few months ago, took about 3 minutes a sheep. Karola was ‘fleece-o’ and sorted the wool as it came off the sheep’s back (and other regions). As each sheep was shorn it was popped through the shearer’s legs onto a slide out of the truck and into the Triangle paddock.

The last of the first flock was Horace – who after initial hostilities settled quite calmly to being shorn. However he really did not appreciate the collar and chain we put on him before he was released – the better to catch him and take him home tomorrow.

Continuing our master plan, the ewes (and Horace etc etc) were popped into the Middle paddock; the lambs in the Island paddock were put into the yards and as each of them was shorn it slid down the chute into the Triangle. After they were all shorn we took the lambs back into the orchard and, later, Karola put the ewes back into their regular night-time accommodation in the Island. Well, that’s over for another six months – the ewes all look in excellent condition which bodes well for lambing in 3 months time.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 2°C—15°C; Frosty start and sunny until late afternoon when it clouded over; a westerly wind; no rain.

Karola uplifted the irrigation hoses from the felled apple tree area; we began sawing up the logs. Bicka, for the third day running, had great games with the Ladbrooke’s 2 year old fox terrier.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 2°C—13°C; Mostly sunny with a chilly southerly wind; no rain.

It’s beginning to dry out and if rain keeps away the puddles will be gone and the ground will be firm again in a couple of days. Hoping there is no more rain for a while, the shearing and the mulching are scheduled for Saturday.

Today Karola and I carted all the firewood created when we trimmed the apple trees to the big shed, and we started our firewood stack. We almost finished – about 5 trailer loads – when it got dark. There’s still the lower trunks to do once they have been uprooted, but for the rest it’s now a matter of sawing the upper trunks into firewood lengths. The apple firewood needs to be stored for at least a year before being used, but it’s said to make excellent fires.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—11°C; cloudy morning but sunny afternoon with a chilly southerly wind; no rain.

Much less water standing today although there are still large areas of the pastures that are almost under water – every hoof mark is a puddle.

Started making the internal partition between our bays of the big shed and the lessee’s bays – Karola suggested using the picket fence which she brought here from Wellington when Bridget had her garden remodelled and wanted to get rid of it. Finally, a real use for it even though its pickets are on a slant – the original fence was up a slope – and it’s only about 80cm tall. It even came with a little gate we can incorporate.

The lessee’s workers, son Adam and employee Ivan, were over in the orchard pruning yesterday and took shelter in the shed during one of the longer, heavier showers. They spent the time completing the levelling of the new lime floor so today we were delighted to see that all done. Today they were back doing more pruning and brought their Fox Terrier with them. Bicka was so happy to have a dog to play with – I guess we’re not that hot in the ‘run and bark and roll in the puddles’ games that Bicka likes.

Roger Kennedy, the Mulcher Man, rang to say he’d come out on Saturday – with the rain he’s all backed up with unfinished jobs.

I picked up the chainsaw from its first and free service.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—13°C; cloud and scattered showers throughout the day with a southerly wind; 3mm rain.

It rained hard off and on all night and in the early morning. By the time I surfaced (Karola was about for a while at 5:00am and fed Bicka a bone to the cat’s surprise) it had cleared and the rest of the day was mild, high cloud and quite bright.

The hanging of the big shed gates continued – we got a 3rd gate from Farmlands plus hinges for the gate (called gudgeons) and a latch. Also got the usual sundries one gets when visiting Farmlands – some chainsaw lubricant, umpteen D-cell batteries for torches and electric fence energisers, a new handle for a shovel (Karola doesn’t always know her own strength).

The big shed is an ex-broiler (as in chicken for eating) house that Graham Velvin, the previous owner, had moved from his property across the road and reassembled after adding about 80cm height so that his truck for transporting apple boxes could be loaded/unloaded in the dry. It is 10m x 18m enclosed on three sides with tasteful (not) paper-thin corrigated galvanised iron sheets, one 18m side being open to the north-east. The main structural elements are 5 welded I-beam arches each 10m across at 4.5m centres. So, if you can visualise it, that gives us the appearance of 4 bays each 10m deep and 4.5m wide. In our lease we apportioned the 2 western bays to the lessee and kept 2 for ourselves. There’s nothing separating the three easternmost bays inside; it’s only the I-beam arches that give the appearance of separate bays. The westernmost bay has been lined and fitted with a concrete floor and roller door- it’s currently housing three hydraladders and two orchard sprayers.

We’ve been improving the three open bays. Karola has almost completed distributing the 6 cubic metres of lime over the floor and today we installed 2 more gates so each bay has a 14′ gate across it to keep inquisitive lambs at bay, so to speak.

The bays are separated by the I-beam arches . These go straight up for about 3 metres and then have a fairly steeply pitched roof V. Each bay entrance is flanked by I-beams and so fitting the gates to these wasn’t quite straightforward – not having a welder to hand nor any welding skills ourselves. So we took a couple of very large half-round 200mm x 2.1m fence posts and trimmed the sides so that it fitted flat-side-first into the trough of the I-beam and left a rounded surface to act as gate post. My first attempt at this wasn’t successful; using a smaller 180mm wide half-round didn’t give enough wood to screw the gate hinges into. The 200mm really hunky half-rounds worked just fine.

So, each gate post comprises a 200mm half-round trimmed to 120mm wide and 1.2m tall, fixed by a single long bolt to its I-beam upright. The hinges or gudgeons are short pins that fit into short welded pipes on the end of the gate and have a fat screw thread at right angles that must be driven into the gatepost. Our large half-rounds had just enough wood that when the gudgeons were screwed right in they just touched the metal of the I-beam through the wood.

So, 3 gates hung and they swing free and clear of the ground. Time will tell whether they stay that way or the pins tear out of the gateposts. Getting the gudgeons screwed in to the right depth at the right angle and the right distance apart takes a little skill – and as I have repeatedly proven to myself over the years, just a bit more skill than I have. I’m getting better though, (Karola thinks that shouldn’t be hard, given the state of the 8 other gates we’ve done here), and the 3 gates look tolerably straight and at same approximate height. I do the top gudgeons first and then use a level to check that the top and bottom gudgeon screw holes align, which is a bit namby-pamby, but the 45 degree angle into the post and the slightdownwards slant for the gudgeon screw holes is ‘by eye’.

You mentally draw a line across the posts and along the top of the gate when closed. You decide which way you intend the gate to swing and drive the gudgeons into the post at 45 degrees from the imaginary line towards the opening side. You also drill the hole for the gudgeon screws just a little bit downwards so that when you’ve finished the far end of the gate is a bit higher than the gate hinge end. Over time gates and their posts tend to settle and the far end drops a bit, hence the up-tilt when first you put them up. Alas and alack, on the bottom gudgeon of one gate I measured and marked the position of the bottom of the gudgeon screw – then I drilled the hole as if the mark were the top of the screw. Oh well, it still works OK because the pins are long enough to compensate for an inch off-positioning, but I was doing so well up till then. (sigh).

Karola says the big shed, with its yellow lime floor and shiny gates, now looks like it could be a circus ring, or for pens of prize livestock, or even a small dressage ring – and we plan to store firewood, hay, and fencing materials in it. c’est la vie.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—13°C; cloud and early morning rain with a westerly wind; 3mm rain.

Just wet-wet-wet. Ground sodden. Hung one of the gates today. Bicka is a smelly wet and very muddy little beagle. Ewes looked so bedraggled this morning that I gave them a strip of the top paddock in sympathy – it’s fresh grass even if it also is waterlogged.

Saw a strange encounter between two plovers who had claimed a big chunk of the Top paddock as their territory and one of the ram lambs in with the ewes. The plovers made a tremendous racket and went right up to the lamb, one on either side, and made as if to peck the lamb. To my surprise the lamb took absolutely no notice and just went on munching. Plovers went on screeching for over an hour.

There is a gang of at least 8 pukeko who range over the Top paddock and the Scotts’ orchard next door. Bicka enjoys chasing them, despite our discouraging noises, but they just lazily flap or walk out of the way and basically try to ignore her.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—13°C; cloud and persistent rain with a northerly wind; 30mm rain.

It rained all night, it rained all day. Karola and I went to Cynthia Chalmers’ 60th birthday party, 40 min drive up the Taihape Road. We saw several paddocks of newly shorn hoggets, shivering in the rain no doubt. Also a few paddocks of early lambs, all looking quite perky despite the weather.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—11°C; cloud and persistent rain with a northerly wind; 28mm rain.

I bought a pair of 14′ (4.25m) netting-on-steel-tube farm gates and started hanging them across two bays of the big shed in the orchard. Now we’ve got extra lime on the floor – to build it up a few centimetres more above the surrounding ground – and something to keep the lambs out, we can start filling our two bays with the apple firewood and with the 70 bales of hay currently filling the green shed under the big oak near the back door. Karola would like me to move the bantam perches from the leanto asbestos-roofed woodshed behind the green shed into the green shed so she can demolish the woodshed and get rid of the asbestos. So many projects, so little time.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 2°C—10°C; cloud and rain with a northwesterly wind; 14mm rain.

Karola and I finished our preparation of the 189 apple trees for destumping by morning tea time. Now we’ve just the trunks to cut into firewood which will mainly happen after the stumps have been uprooted. About 80 metres of fenceline are lined with the branches in a 2-3 metre high pile ready for mulching.

Soon after lunch the lime arrived – 6 cubic meters of yellow coarse-grained lime dumped on the floor of the big shed in the orchard. Karola has already spread most of it. The truck, from Awakiri Drainage, a company owned by the Bishops, did a second trip with a load of ‘base course’ – mixed crushed rock and sand – and filled in the muddy bog around the front of the shed. This place becomes very muddy and soft after a decent rain and it takes several days to really dry out.

Soon after the lime arrived, the hedge trimmer from Brimar Hedge Trimmers arrived and did a really good shaving of the Casurinas. Now the windbreak is much more porous, slowing rather than stopping the wind, which is much better as solid windbreaks cause a lot of turbulence downwind that can be worse than no break at all.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—19°C; sunshine and a really strong northwesterly wind, veering westerly by evening and dying away; no rain.

Man to cut the windbreak called today at 7:30am, saying he’d be along sometime during the day. So I hustled out and pulled up 10 metres of temporary netting fence from the Island paddock to the Scotts boundary – the Casurina wind break is 150m of 10m high trees along the boundary with the Scotts, planted by Karola’s mum in 1980s – when we were considering becoming Kiwifruit growers.

All day we ensured someone was keeping an eye out for the hedging man with circular saws on a boom. No show. Karola spent the morning revitalising the Hastings shopkeepers’ economy. Otherwise we were both out clearing/cutting apple trees.

Neighbour Graham Velvin – the man Karola bought the orchard from – dropped by while I was out cutting this morning. We discussed the value of lime to make the floor of the big shed higher and dryer – he recommended not using the Paki-Paki lime works – their white lime was the finest grained and very dusty. Instead, he suggested another works which had yellow lime with big grains – or, even better in many people’s view, “crusher dust” – the fine material left over when rock is crushed and graded for chips for roading and for building aggregate.

Awakiri Drainage – the Bishop family business, well, one of them, are prepared to deliver the stuff – we will discuss it tomorrow morning by phone.

Once the big shed in Karola’s orchard has the improved floor we’ll have two of the four 10m x 4.5m bays for our hay and firewood. I plan to cover the floor with large tarpaulins and put the hay on that – should stop damp getting in from below. The firewood can go straight on the floor, as is. We’ll have to figure out something to stop the darn lambs messing up the big shed once we’ve got the new floor – they’ve torn insulation off the lower walls and made a hole in the fibreboard wall of the 4th (enclosed) bay, and left copious manure everywhere – I guess it’s out of the wind and dry so they like it and have pushed through all attempts to fence them out so far.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—16°C; Very overcast day, the moderate temperatures cooled by a brisk northerly wind, no rain.

The Mulcher Man, Roger Kennedy arrived with his sidekick Tony around 8:45am and worked through till 2:30pm – in the process converting large piles of branches to precious wood chippings and mulch. He did all the Back paddock stuff but still has all the apple branches to do. He says he’ll be back next week to finish, which gives us a chance to complete our orchard felling. Yes, and orchard felling is what Karola and I did all afternoon.

Trivia: Morning for me was a trip to town – haircut and pick up Dominion and a latte for Karola from “John’s” pastry shop, oh and do the biennual clothes shopping – Alexanders in Hastings has a sale right now.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 0°C—14°C; Another bright, sunny day; cold morning with westerly wind turning to northerly by evening; no rain.

No shearing today – sheep standing in water and fleeces wet through. No mulching till late afternoon and even then ground was still sodden and lying about a lot. However the Mulching Man did come around 3:00pm and did the first pile under the big Oak.

Karola and I did the rest of the apple trees – that is, all 189 trees that are coming out have now been trimmed up to the 2nd tier of branches. Over 1/3rd of them have been reduced to metre-high stumps; we have the rest to do before we can call the stump pulling contractor.

Lime – to add to the floor of the big shed – is $16 a tonne; we’ll probably want 4 or 5 tonnes – the trucking of it may prove to be the more expensive part. Of course it’s way too wet to get heavy trucks onto the orchard today. Probably going to rain again by the weekend so heaven knows when it’ll be dry enough – we’ve been skidding and sliding in the Landrover today just pulling the trailer with apple branches.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 5°C—12°C; It rained hard most of the night, then a bright, sunny day; 15mm rain.

We’ve decided that the bad and sheepy smell in the Island paddock – where the ewes and Horace the ram and 4 ram lambs camp at night – is the rams, not necessarily something dead nor a dietary condition. The ewes smell OK – well like sheep really. The same unpleasant smell is under the Macrocarpa in the Tall Trees roadside paddock – thats probably our crypto-wether lambs. The dead possum under the poplars probably wasn’t the cause – although after a couple of days it had its own interesting (to Bicka) aroma. Karola took the possum carcase up to Alan Ladbrooke who has been pruning (not felling, pruning) the orchard for the last week or so – he remembers shooting it and not finding it in the dark and will dispose of it.

Going like crazy to get as much of the twiggy stuff off the 189 apple trees we’re taking out into the pile for the Mulching Man. His machine had a broken camshaft and he says he’ll be here tomorrow morning for a day and a half – and now its raingin so we’ll see. Karola has been helping me for the last couple of days and we’ve half-done 50 trees together. First, using a lethal double-toothed pruning saw, we trim the lower limbs of everything that won’t be firewood and take it in the Landrover-drawn 2-tonne trailer to the mulching pile. The next stage is to chainsaw the reachable limbs directly into firewood lengths – much easier while still attached to the tree. Then the tree is cut just above the first tier of radiating branches – well just above the stumps of those branches – and, back to the pruning saw, the top part of the tree is trimmed. The tops of the trees are stacked for later conversion to firewood length.

We discussed with Alan a possible plan to put another 3-4 cm of lime on the floor of the big shed, and a load of gravel on top of the muddy crossroads just in front of the big shed. The idea is to use our two 4.5m x 10m bays for firewood and hay storage.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 0°C—10°C; Cloudy with westerly wind veering to the north in the afternoon. Rain began after dark; 12mm.

Expecting to have the sheep shorn on Tuesday afternoon; also the Mulching Man says he’ll be coming on Tuesday too. Karola and I spent the day wrestling with the apple trees.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 1°C—13°C; Cloudy and a mid-day southerly breeze; no rain.

Finished clearing the Back paddock ready for the Mulching Man. We have three large elm trees – 20-30 metres tall I suppose – and they havn’t succumbed to any Dutch Elm disease or other lurgy as yet. They have produced a couple of small groves of suckering shoots. I’ve left one grove and a couple of well developed suckers and cleared the rest..

Karola has cleared a large area under the big Oak tree of the remnants of a huge branch that fell down last year and a lot of bamboo rubbish that Campbell and I left when we tackled a reef of 20 metre tall bamboo stretching out to the north from the main clump last year. The roots are reef-like, running out into the paddock and sprouting the stalks every metre or so – and the roots near the surface are like steel – a spade just bounces off.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 4°C—13°C; south-westerly wind dying out by evening; cloudy; no rain.

Frank Ormond dropped in from Mahia for lunch.

More branches and blackberry cleared in the Back paddock – almost done.

Ewes given the whole Triangle paddock now – but still only during the day. Karola had some Leylandii cypress hybrids planted a year ago and protected with some biodegradable bright green mesh sleeves – the ewes were curious and pulled off the sleeves and munched the Leylandii a bit – well at least they left the totaras alone – they are protected with drums of chicken netting and shade cloth.

Two years ago Karola planted a row of a dozen Karo natives in the same place and the sheep got the lot. It takes them a few minutes to demolish two years growth or more. Ah well, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” – as I suspect they say in the Mahia. I think “makes you grumpier” is more accurate.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—17°C; calm and cloudy; no rain.

Before continuing with the Back paddock, Karola and I went out onto the Avenue and cleared a couple of large windfalls just outside our boundary fence. Chainsaw was invaluable as the branches were up to 250mm in diameter. Not sure which tall tree they came from – either a redwood just outside our boundary or one a few metres away inside the boundary – only thing for sure is you would not want to be around when they came down.

Bridget rang around 10:30pm with the terrorist bombings in London – I switched to Sky TV’s BBC World channel and stayed there till 2:00am. I sent e-mail to UK asking if Anna and family were OK. Around 11:30pm Jenny (Anna’s nanny for Felix and Barnaby) rang me to say they were all safe and sound. Anna e-mailed me from her Blackberry PDA in a cab going home from work to say she was alright. Marc e-mailed with from work.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—14°C, northerly breeze in the early afternoon; cloudy with no rain.

Hartley and three of his mates came round at about 4:30pm and dagged the lambs – about 1/3 of them were very mucky. I continued with my chainsawing and was thankful. Karola and I cleared some heavy windfall branches off the roadside; in addition we’ve nearly finished clearing the Back paddock and under the big Oak tree.

Hope Hartley will come back and do the ewes as well – only 4 or 5 of them need doing plus the 4 ram lambs (which are in with the ewes to segregate them from our ewe lambs). It’s about time Horace the ram went back to Kaz’s farm on the other coast – he’s a bit daggy too – too much long green grass I think. Karola gives the ewes 1/2 bale of her hay each night to try and give them a bit of of fibre.

Contacted a hedge trimmer contractor today – expect he’ll come next week to do the casurina shelter-belt. Karola’s mother planted it 20 years or so ago and the trees prospered – 400 metres of 20-metre high shelter. In those days there were no rules about planting 5 metres from the boundary so our casurinas are right on the boundary and the neighbour cuts his side, we do ours. It costs $140 an hour – our side will probably only take 30 minutes. Imagine a large circular saw on a hydraulic extending pole – fearsome to see and hear in action. Not quite as bad as the chainsaws slung from helicopters which chased James Bond around in a recent movie.

I also booked the mobile shearing man with his travelling woolshed to give all the sheep a winter shear – they leave about 2 weeks worth of wool on to stop the sheep getting too cold. It’s supposed to make the lambs eat more and gain more weight once they’ve lost their woolly insulation – and the ewes are supposed to seek more sheltered spots when they lamb too.

And I got the name of a fencing contractor from Alistair Ormond (one of Karola’s many relations) so we can at last do the road boundary north of the old driveway – we did the southern end 2 years ago but the northern end is a lash-up of broken posts and makeshift temporary mends.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—13°C, another calm and mainly cloudy day with no rain.

Gill and Scottie Scott popped in for lunch and then went back on up to the Mahia. Karola had bought a large lamb roast in case they stayed the night.

In the afternoon we carried on with our clearing and stacking, accompanied by Bicka. At one point she disappeared indoors for about ten minutes and came out carrying something and ran off into the bamboo. It took a couple of minutes but I tracked her down just as she was snuffling around at the base of a heap of cut bamboo. I couldn’t see anything – I even ran my fingers through the leaf litter to see if there was anything there – nothing. Karola said it was a little airlines courtesy bag – we have small mountains of them from my travelling days. She came over and had a look herself – there’d been no time really to bury anything and there was nothing lying on the ground around.

Karola then dug into the ground and unearthed the end of a plastic bag. It didn’t look like an airlines bag. It wasn’t! What Bicka had buried was our evening roast – heavy and about 1/3 her size – and she’d buried it several inches down quite completely covered in just a few minutes. Beagles! Luckily Bicka hadn’t chewed very much so we still had a delicious roast lamb dinner.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 5°C—13°C, a calm and cloudy day with no rain.

Mulching man didn’t come – at least he didn’t mulch – just turned up to say there’s something wrong with his mulcher machine – head gasket or something. Still, he hopes to be here later this week.

I took the two butchered trailer tyres in and got them replaced – $115.

More sawing up branches and piling up twigs etc. Mid afternoon I took in the new chainsaw to have its free 1st service; it’ll be ready tomorrow afternoon. Lambs, the usual routine. Ewes got the morning in the Top paddock and then a new strip of the Triangle until put to bed in the Island as usual.

We’ve been putting the cat in with Bicka in the sun porch most nights – the cat actually seems to like it – we found her this morning snugly on a blanket just in front of Bicka’s box – with Bicka inside the box – so I suppose they keep each other a bit warm and it’s company for them.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 9°C—16°C, north-westerly winds and a cloudy day with no rain.

Karola watched the women’s final from Wimbledon till after 3:00am this morning – she’s remarkably alert considering. I watched a rerun of most of it after lunch today.

I awoke this morning to a phonecall from our next door neighbour Shelly Vernon. “Some of your sheep are out on the road”. Well, turned out that, just like last time, it wasn’t our sheep but three errant lambs that were attracted to our lambs that are in the roadside Tall Trees paddock. Anyway, I got them off the road before someone did themselves harm and we got Jim, the owner, to come and take them back. Jim has had trouble with his rather dilapidated orchard fences for a while now – maybe he’ll actually get them fixed this time.

In the afternoon we did more chainsawing and gathering of branches – there is no end to this. Mulch man expected tomorrow morning.

Hawkes Bay Weather: -1°C—13°C, north-westerly winds in the afternoon, partly cloudy day with no rain.

Alan Ladbrooke, Julie and their two youngest children, Marcus and Hamish, came for morning tea. He had 5 possum carcases in the back of his truck, proceeds of a late night shoot here yesterday. Probably means that there are 50 possums living here; they eat the tips of the trees we plant and new growth on most of the trees – but they can eat grass or apples when they run out of tree tips.

We spent the afternoon with more chainsawing and piling up of branches for the mulching man on Monday. Unfortunately Karola spiked both tyres on the left side of the trailer when negotiating a narrow gate with a sharp turn – so we’ll need to get replacements on Monday.

All Blacks versus British & Irish Lions game was on TV tonight – a major cultural event for New Zealanders. Almost up there with Michael Campbell’s winning of the US Open golf.

Hawkes Bay Weather: -1°C—10°C, southerly breeze in the morning, a mainly sunny cold day with no rain.

Our mulching man plans to come on Monday so we have three days to get more material for him to mulch. Yesterday we tackled part of the garden north-east of the house. Today we started on the Back paddock. Last year Campbell Ewing, an old friend, helped me cut free some storm-damaged branches from an elm and a spruce in the Back paddock. We got the branches down but in the process crunched into a couple of Karola’s “paddock Camelias” and generally made a mess. Having been on my chainsaw course I also know that what we were doing – clambering around in the trees with a chainsaw – was exceedingly hazardous – we were very lucky.

Anyway, today, with the new lightweight chainsaw, I cut up the branches and with Karola’s help we cleared up most of the mess.
There’s still a fair bit to do, but the Camelias are looking much less bedraggled.

Bicka wandered onto the edge of the Avenue today – we took our eye off her for only a moment – and a kind person saw her and brought her back. After her adventure last week where she escaped onto the Day’s Bay beach, which means she crossed the road – she is quite a worry. Doesn’t seem fair though to keep her penned up all the time even if it’s for her own good. She likes SPACE.

The ewes have done their work in the rough under the big Oak so they were allowed into part of the Triangle for the day – that’ll be their routine for a while now – daytime in the Triangle, nighttime back in the Island.

Hawkes Bay Weather: -2°C—13°C, a sunny, calm day with no rain.