Monthly Archives: September 2005

Ewe had twin ram lambs today.

Murray called in at 8:30am and we discussed techniques for putting in a couple of posts where the boundary fence changes direction slightly. He then went off to play golf.

I spent too long today trying to ensure that the path of the fence was optimal. I cleared the remaining 30 metres of the path the fence will take, after trying out many different permutations of fence dodging different obstacles and avoiding the lip of the deep roadside drain. At Karola’s suggestion I strained up a single wire from one end to the other. It turned out that by felling a rogue 7 metre high gumtree right on the boundary line I could get a straight run from one end to the other – not surprising seeing that the title shows a straight boundary. I tied the gumtree trunk to the uplifted front-end loader on the Fergie – to avoid it falling across the road or onto the telephone pole 2 metres away. Then, with Karola watching for traffic, I felled the gumtree exactly as planned, into the big drain where it’s out of harms way for the present. We’ll still do a detour round the large Copper Beech, but that won’t be obvious to anyone driving past.

The Batts insulation was installed today in the Homestead attic.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 2°C—21°C; mostly sunny; northerly wind; no rain.

Another ram lamb born; ewe and lamb both well.

Karola talked to Sue, the mother of boys who is bottle feeding two of our lambs. Apparently one of the lambs is jumping around and very lively; the other one, one of the first quadruplets, is very shakey on its legs and not a very enthusiastic drinker. It may be infectious arthritus so I got a shot of penicillin from the Vet and administered it. Florence was a lamb we hand-reared two years ago – she had arthritus and the penicillin seemed to cure it – though she was always a bit fragile ever after.

Bought a couple of large long strainer posts for hanging gates off – 200mm diameter, 2.4m long and quite heavy! Karola painted the new heavy metal (no, not musical) 4.2m wide gate to go across the Karamu Orchard entrance – part of our redoing of the road frontage boundary – and we plan to use a big strainer for that. The other strainer is to hang an old lichened, weathered 5-bar wooden gate off, once I’ve repaired it. It’s even heavier than the metal gate even though it’s only 3.8m wide.

Iused the chainsaw to trim back the last of the 5 stumps in the way of the wires of the replacement boundary fence. This was the wire-entangled stump that I cut from 1.5m to .2m last week, ruining a chainsaw chain in the process. To get half of it down to ground level so that the fence wires would run freely would have been easy but for the additional 5 strands of wire embedded deep inside the stump at about ground level. I found these the hard way – another chain needs repairing.

Murray turned up around 3:00pm and I worked with him putting in the 2nd strainer post and its stay-post on the replacement boundary fence.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 3°C—16°C; mostly cloudy and cooler; northerly wind in the afternoon; no rain.

The lamb triplets of yesterday became quadruplets today. We counted and it wasn’t a stray from another mother so we suppose it was hidden by its mother yesterday. Anyway, so far they’re all OK although a great strain on the mother. Another ewe lambed today, with twins. Karola also found a small lamb corpse several days old – tiny it was.

Spent several hours chainsawing the 5 stumps of large eycalypt trees that are on the boundary fenceline – 4 done, one to go.

We visited accountant mid afternoon. Batts insulation for the Homestead roof space arrived today – will be installed shortly. Murray the fencing consultant/contractor didn’t ring, didn’t come.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—22°C; mostly sunny and warm, but cold southerly sprang up in late afternoon; no rain.

Another ewe gave birth today – triplets. Only 8 more to go.

Today the fence construction began with much measuring and remeasuring to try and get a straight line from end to end without needing to cut down trees or cut into roots. We ended up with two quite small angles, but because trees had been planted on the boundary 50 or more years ago it was essentially impossible to get a straight line end to end. First strainer post and stay was installed – post buried 1.3 metres into the ground with a fixed foot and two pegs securing the foot. So, even though the ground is soft, even a metre down, the post is quite firm.

When Murray the contractor/consultant ($30/hr) was dropping the strainer into the hole we’d dug he clipped the edge of the hole with the foot and the strainer tipped over and whacked me on the head with a bone-sickening thud. I was thrown to the ground and am still in shock I’m sure. Karola didn’t know whether to laugh or cry – at last count laughing was winning.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—21°C; mostly sunny and very warm, northerly, no rain.

Murray Cranswick was due after lunch to begin helping with the fence – there’s a pattern here with several of our contractors – now he says he’ll be here tomorrow morning 8:000am.

Trailer needs WOF (warrent of fitness) and road license Then I noticed I’d pulled the connector off the cable feeding the trailer tail lights and indicators so I had to fix that first – then I took it to the garage at the end of the avenue and they gave it WOF ($22), and then off to the Testing Station for a license ($35). Having just paid the insurance ($50) makes you wonder where the break-even is between owning and hiring a trailer – although it is very convenient to have a trailer here full time.

Dentist in Hastings in the morning. Dental mechanic in Napier in the afternoon, taking pictures and colour-chart matching for a new crown he’s making for me.

Karola gave Bicka a bath – much needed after she rolled in lamb poo yesterday – I can pick her up again – nice clean dog.

No new lambs today. The ewe hoggets are really bouncy, teenagers – Karola thinks they’d make terrible mothers – too fey – but then again, maybe early motherhood would settle them down. We’re wondering whether to mate them for an autumn lambing.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—19°C; sunny, turned cloudy with some light drizzle in the afternoon , northerly, no rain recorded.

Two more sets of twins today.

Brother-in-law Harry Wier visited today and we looked over the Homestead and Orchard and discussed what Karola and I planned for them in the future.

Mary caught the 2:00pm bus from Hastings for Wellington.

Six of our ewe hoggets got into the orchard for a couple of hours and snacked on apple blossom. We hustled them back into the Top paddock without too much damage being done.

Karola contacted a friend of a friend and a young mother with two boys borrowed our two hand-rear lambs – promising to return them in several weeks time. Bicka took advantage of the freedom she got while the lambs occupied her place in the sun porch – she sneaked upstairs and curled up on our bed – something she’s been dying to do for a long time.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 2°C—20°C; sunny , southerly, no rain. TV said it was again the hottest place in NZ.

TV said Hastings was the hottest place in NZ again today – 21 degrees they said.

Two more sets of twins born overnight. We’ve now had 20 lambs born to 9 ewes; one died shortly after birth, two are living in a cardboard box in the sun porch and we’re hand rearing them.

Six young cock Californian quail were chasing each other around on a pile of mulch under the big oak tree in the morning sun; meanwhile others were calling from the Back and Middle paddocks. Nice to have them back.

Another large, slow rat is rustling around exactly where the one Marcus shot was. I failed to connect with a shovel, so it lives to rustle another day.

A lone Monarch butterfly “cased the joint”, presumably looking for suitable places to lay eggs.

Mary helped on the fence again for much of the day. We pulled out some concrete and wooden posts with the Fergie, completed the removal of all the old wires and battens, and chain-sawed down a large eucalypt stump left standing by Tricky Trees, the tree surgeon, because it is riddled with embedded fence wire. In fact it took help from neighbour Andrew Parker and his box of iron wedges to cut the stump off at ground level, and I took a tooth off my chainsaw chain on a large bolt embedded deep inside the stump.

Foster lambs still alive and bleating. Dead lamb and dead rat both buried. All nine ewes with lambs shepherded into the Triangle paddock where there’s a bit more feed – also making it easier for us to see if there are newcomers and who belongs to whom.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 3°C—18°C; sunny , southerly changing to northerly in the afternoon, no rain.

Until mid afternoon, I, Karola and Mary went to the Napier Home & Garden show – including attending a seminar by Peter Ormond on local garden design. A sunny hot day until late afternoon.

Karola found her glasses, in the Subaru.

Another set of twin lambs born.

We brought in two lambs in that seemed to be rejected by their mothers – we’re not completely sure but think that one is from the quads and one from a set of twins – we’ll try to confirm that tomorrow, but the lambs do mix up and run around. These two lambs are being fed artificial colostrum and AnLamb milk powder.

Mary and Karola helped take down another long stretch of the front boundary fence.

Julie Ladbrooke came over after dark and borrowed two of our bantam roosters – to improve her flock’s gene pool.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—18°C; sunny spells, southerly, no rain.

Sheep News:

• 1 ewe had twin ram lambs but one had died shortly after being born.
• 1 ewe had quadruplets, all drinking and gambolling when I saw them this morning
• 1 ewe had 2 ram lambs, mother and sons both well
• 1 ewe had twins this afternoon, both seemed OK

Murray Cranswick turned up late after lunch only to say he was delayed yet again – now he’s expecting to come on Monday afternoon. Meanwhile Mary and I have removed the wire from about half the fence, and this afternoon we used the Fergie to pull out 4 old concrete posts.

The Fergie wouldn’t start again today, despite being left running for 2 hours yesterday hoping to charge up the battery. It’s either the battery or the alternator/generator – the battery had water OK – and I suspect the tractor alternator/generator. I tried recharging the battery with Karola’s ancient charger – well it definitely worked when we were in England about 15 years ago – but it doesn’t seem to work now. So i went into town and bought a modern charger and we’ll see if that can recharge the battery – it’s a marine heavy duty battery and doesn’t look very old. Diesel engines are notorious for sucking huge amounts of charge out of a battery when being started. I know the trick about warming the plugs before trying to start it, even that didn’t help. We got the Fergie going today by jump starting it again from the landrover.

Marcus Ladbrooke came over with a slug gun and dispatched the big, bold, and slow rat that scuttled about during the day at the end of the geese enclosure.

Karola has ordered the insulation installation for Karamu; she’s also taken the Subaru to the car wash to try and remove some of the salt we undoubtedly picked up in Wellington driving through the spray and seawater in the storm on Monday night.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—16°C; sunny spells, northerly veered westerly then to southerly by evening, and it started to rain. Weather station recorded no rain though.

Murray Cranswick rang around 8:00am to say he’d be able to begin helping on the fence tomorrow.

In the morning, having tried unsuccessfully to start the Fergie (flat battery) I took Mary into town and we bought a 10l can for diesel for the Fergie, car-washed the landrover, and got 10l of diesel. Jump-started the Fergie from the Landrover and used the Fergie for the first time to tow the trailor over to the front boundary fence which we continued dismantling. With Mary’s help we completed about 1/3 of the post and batten removal today.

A hawk had settled in the Back paddock and I chased after it, thinking it might be after a newborn lamb. No, it was the same big slow rat I saw yesterday – still very much alive. Another blue-tag ewe has lambed – a nice healthy ewe lamb this time. Our lambing percentage halved in just one day. 🙂

Karola got an estimate for roof insulation for the Homestead today – we’ll set the installation in motion tomorrow – we should have done it years ago. Bridget has been bugging us to do it; Contact Energy have been more successful by charging us huge amounts for electricity throughout the winter plus a $150 discount if we get insulation installed. So we’re finally doing it; it’ll cost just over $2000 and should be done before Karola leaves for the UK next month.

Sarah Horn, the photographer that took Bridget’s wedding photos, came round to make final arrangements for bringing a wedding party here on Saturday – people do like the trees as a backdrop for wedding photos.

Mary drove the Fergie back to its current parking place under the big oak tree – at age 81 this is the first time she’s driven a tractor in many many years – she was thrilled.

Karola and I visited the Ladbrookes and took a look at the black bantam and its 4 chicks – they’re being better looked after there than they would be here so can stay there for now. We also talked about a possible rooster loan so they could have some fresh genes in their chook gene pool; and we talked about the frost.

Some helicopters and wind machines are out again tonight although it doesn’t seem like there’ll be a heavy frost again.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 0°C—15°C; sunny spells, northerly wind; no rain.

Set off around 10:00am; stopped in at Bridget’s to say goodbye; picked up my mother, Mary Brackenbury, who’s coming up to Karamu for the week. Arrived home at 4:30pm to find that Julie and her children, Chrystal and Hamish had not only looked after the animals but had adopted the black bantam which hatched 4 chicks over the weekend.

I checked round the sheep and found that one of them had 3 lambs – ‘triplets’ as we say – they were only a few hours old, all walking and drinking and with a good mother, protective and with plenty of milk – 2 ram lambs, 1 ewe lamb. As I remarked at the time, “300% lambing – it’s all down hill from here” 🙂

I saw a large, slow rat down at the end of the geese enclosure; also several pheasants jumped up from cover as I passed. The oaks are in leaf – in fact almost all the trees are sprouting green.

Although the day began as overcast and blustery in Hastings, by nightfall it was calm and clear and quickly getting very cold. Around 10:30pm I joined Alan Ladbrooke, our orchard lessee, at our orchard pump shed and tried to make the irrigation system work. Watering the orchard keeps frost at bay – I presume it’s condensation of the irrigation spray that releases heat and warms things above freezing. Anyway, we were partially successful and I went off to bed; Alan was up till 3:30am, and then up again at 6:00am going round his 4 orchards.

Most of the night there was a roar of helicopters and wind machines and occasional sprayers in neighbouring orchards – overshadowing the noise from irrigation pumps. Vinyards, stone fruits and early pip fruits were all at risk with open blossom.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 1°C—12°C; southerly wind, cold, no rain.

Karola went shopping and on the Bridget’s in the morning. I met Alistair Thompson, managing director and co-editor of scoop.co.nz, a NZ political online news-gathering and analysis business, and afterwards went on the train to Bridget’s place in Khandallah. Alistair said that the Johnsonville line is the steepest urban railway line in the world. Maybe it’s true; it is in fact a delightful scenic route through a few small tunnels and winding its way up the side of a steep wooded gully, Ngaio Gorge. The trip took only half an hour, it cost $1.50NZ – compared with a taxi fare that would be about $20 or so. Dependable, clean, frequent public transport has much to recommend it.

Late afternoon Karola and I took Mary to a Vodafone shop and bought her one of the Vodafone “Simple” cellphones – it really has made it simpler to use – big buttons, big screen (by cell-phone standards) and focus on the main things most people want a phone to do rather than the extra functions that make phones so complicated. We put it on a pre-pay scheme so that there’ll be no monthly charges. Karola is thinking maybe she should have one like that, instead of the feature-laden one she has now. Neither of us use a fraction of the functions our cell-phones offer – nor do we even want to.

A strong southerly storm was racing through the South Island all day, reaching Wellington late afternoon. In the evening our trip round the Eastern Bays back to Pitoitoi were through flooded roads and heavy sea spray drifts with stones and driftwood tossed right across the road – getting close to impassable in places.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—15°C; sunny spells, southerly wind; no rain.

Beautiful day in Wellington – tuis and wood pigeon outside our window, glorious sunshine. Beach walks with Bicka, the indoors town dog she transforms into when we visit Wellington. She gets to sleep upstairs by the fire and really believes that’s her proper position in life.

Lunch at Pitoitoi with Bridget’s MIL, Anna More. Then back to Bridget’s place for the afternoon and an evening meal.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 9°C—16°C; northerly wind and rain; 28mm of rain.

Karola went to a Suffragette Remembrance breakfast. We then went to Mahora School to vote and carried on down to Wellington from there. Called in at Bridget’s on the way, arriving for takeaway tea at Pitoitoi just in time for the beginning of the evenings TV election coverage. Steve and Margaret Thompson joined us and we watched the unexpectedly dramatic 2005 NZ elections until the end was clear (except for the 200,000 special votes). Summed up neatly in several papers as “The people have spoken – but what did they say?” No outright winner and it’s still an outside possibility that the current opposition could form a government, although more likely that the current government will scrape something together. Interesting stuff this MMP voting.

Karola has mislaid her glasses.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—20°C; sunny spells, southerly wind; no rain.

After trying for a couple of days to de-rust an old towing ball and reuse it on the Fergie I gave up and went to Super Cheap Auto in Hastings and bought a new one for $12 – less than the cost of the penetrating fluid supposed to unlock rusted bolts.

However, fates conspired. The Fergie has a bar that joins the two lower links of the three point linkage with nine holes for attaching implements. Using this you can set the drawing height with the hydraulics. First problem is that the bolt is too fat to go through the holes in the bar, so the solution is to attach it to a fixed-height plate intended for towing heavy implements – although it really is too high for pulling the motorised pull-behind mower. Next problem is that there are (at least) two sizes of towing ball, and this one is too big for the mower and trailer. One learns something new each day.

But all is not lost. Mike Croucher arrives to mow the lawn and offers me the towbar ball off his truck. He’s extended his truck bed and built a canopy for it, and the tow bar is so far under the tray that he can’t use it anyway – so he gave it to me. It’s the right size and the bolt is a little thinner so it can be bolted onto the equipment bar. Things are looking up.

Next to start the mower – battery flat as usual after many months without use – use Landrover to jump-start it and that’s the last obstacle. I spent a relaxing late afternoon mowing the nettles and other weeds in the Middle paddock. Our remaining nine ewe lambs thought this was fun and rushed around the place in a bunch, like teenagers. The ewes, some now only a few days from lambing, just drifted around the Middle paddock so they could keep an eye on things while still eating and avoiding being actually mown over by the tractor.

Vacuum cleaned the inside of the Landrover – many many dog hairs and quite a lot of mud.

A few days ago I noticed the Wysteria buds were swelling – today it’s a riot of purple Wysteria flowers – no leaves, just flowers – over the front of the Homestead.

Tomorrow is election day; Karola is going to a Suffragette remembrance breakfast and then, after voting, we plan to go down to Wellington for the weekend – see the mokapuna and perhaps bring back mokapuna Natalie’s great grandmother, Mary, on Tuesday.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—20°C; sunny spells, strong westerly wind in the afternoon; rain beginning in the evening. Hottest place in New Zealand today, according to the TV.

There’ve been a few Californian quail running around the place over the last 10 days or so. Today we saw a family group of 10 birds working their way across the lawn and out onto the regrassed area – 5 cocks, 5 hens. The regrassed area is tinged with green, mainly due to growth of some of the finely chopped sod rather than our new seed.

Liz and Patrick Cooney called round – Patrick wants a brace of geese to cook for Christmas – I may get a couple more from Heather and keep them until he wants them.

Not very nice out so more programming for me today; Wednesday is Karola’s housework day. As part of that I continued last night’s attempts to de-grime the Landrover.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—19°C; partly cloudy, southerly wind in the afternoon; no rain.

Using the Fergie and a shovel I extracted the large concrete strainer up by the big shed. It, and several other large concrete strainer posts, will become part of Karola’s grass bridge across the meander. I also pulled up 4 short posts out by the washing line, next to the green shed – Karola has been wanting them moved for a while.

Black bantam hen still sitting on over a dozen eggs. Geese getting tamer – coming up to the gate with much hissing and posturing for their morning maize.

Bought and installed brass hose couplings for all three troughs and a couple of other hoses.

Karola planted most of the rest of the native trees we got a couple of weeks ago, a Kaka Beak, several coloured Manuka, and 3 Rewarewa.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—18°C; good rain overnight, partly cloudy morning, sunny afternoon changing to cloudy by evening, light northerly breeze in the afternoon again; 4mm rain.

Mostly inside today; in the afternoon Karola and I tidied up the new gateway into the orchard by the big shed. Karola also tried to restart the stump heap fire, but the wood really is too damp and there needs to be much more wind. I swapped one of the water troughs onto brass fittings and so far it looks the best non-leaking and easy-to-connect solution.

Using the Fergie I pulled out the old broken concrete stay in the entrance to the new gateway – but even the Fergie coupldn’t shift the large concrete strainer itself – must be firmly anchored with a large foot I think – will need some digging out.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—19°C; partly cloudy and some light drizzle , light northerly breeze in the afternoon again; 3mm rain.

At 9:00am the sheep truck arrived; 20 minutes later the 9 ewe lambs and 14 ram lambs were loaded and on their way. We went to the sale yards at about 12:30pm – the sale started at 11:30am but there were more lambs entered than expected so our pens were not going to be auctioned for an hour or more. We listened to the auctioneers for a while and noted the prices for some of the larger mobs, then went home for lunch. I returned to find our sheep had just been sold. The ewe lambs were a bit of a disappointment at $82.50 each rather than the $90+ the agent had expected; the ram lambs were spot on his estimate at $103.20 each. Karola’s income from stock sales this year – $2187 less agents commission.

A dull day so Karola spent the afternoon weeding and I worked inside – except for a quick trip down to Tractor Dismantlers to retrieve the spray boom forks and to take a 44 gallon drum Karola wants made into an incinerator – they’ll cut the top off for her. Oh, and I dropped in to Harris Machinery and took back some of the plastic hose connectors and got a set of brass connectors to try – see if using them stops the leaking.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—19°C; partly cloudy and very light drizzle all day, light westerly turning to northerly breeze in the afternoon again; no rain recorded at the weather station; maybe a mm or two here.

After sterling help in recent days, chasing the brown ram, finding my lost mobile phone and so on, Karola today lost her glasses again, but I was out doing a bit of retail therapy at Mitre 10 – buying hose fittings. Karola found her glasses a couple of angst-ridden hours later.

Karola has decided that the farm water pipe fittings are hard to connect and disconnect, they leak a lot and the pipe is very stiff, so we’re converting the fittings to regular garden hose fittings. Each water trough has to have an adapter from 20mm alkathene down to 12mm garden hose, then an adapter to snap on/off a garden tap fitting. Our farm water consists of 12 garden taps and 8 irrigation outlets; the water troughs and Karola’s tree watering use the taps so once adapted from alkathene 20mm down to garden hose 12mm there shouldn’t be any trouble. Hmmm.

The inexpensive plastic garden fittings leak more than the farm fittings; mainly because wherever a plastic fitting attaches to a metal fitting the join isn’t watertight and the metal thread tends to cut into the plastic. I brought home three plastic connectors for the three troughs; Bicka took a liking to them and – although they were only in her reach for a couple of minutes – she chewed one beyond recognition. I ruined the other two by cross-threading them on the metal taps – they just wouldn’t screw up properly. Maybe that’s why these particular fittings were on special at about 1/10th of the usual price. Maybe I should try using brass fittings – they are twice the price of plastic but might actually work without leaking.

The fence removal continues – today I took down and rolled up 100m of netting that in part was protecting Karola’s native tree corner and in part keeping the sheep off the road.

Craig Girven (stock agent) called; then the transporter called – lambs to be collected at 9:30am tomorrow.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—16°C; partly cloudy and light drizzle all day, light westerly turning to northerly breeze in the afternoon; no rain recorded at the weather station; maybe a mm or two here.

The day started well; we went down and picked up the Fergie from Tractor Dismantlers – it now has a serviceable front-end loader and proper sized tyres front and back. The hydraulics can be switched manually between the back 3-point linkage and the front-end loader. Couple of small things (reminder) – the bucket quick-release catch spring doesn’t work and I need to retrieve the front prongs that were on the tractor – they may need modification and refitting if ever I want to use the boom sprayer.

Then Karola noticed one of the geese was lying down – it was dead. I’d seen that one of them was hanging back from the other three this morning – but it came and ate maize with the others; I suppose that’s now the one that is dead. No idea why – maybe it was shot (hard to find shotgun pellets without post mortem), maybe it ate something poisonous or deadly. Karola has unkindly suggested it either was starved to death by its wicked captor, or it just pined away, being a wild creature and wanting its freedom. But there’s plenty of grass in the 1/4 acre pen for 4 geese – and I’ve been giving them a supplementary cup of maize every day, and fresh water – so it must be the fjiords – you know, pining for the Norwegian fjiords like the famous parrot. I’m thinking of ringing Heather Gregory and asking if it’s still under warrenty. Maybe three is a better number anyway – the literature says geese naturally group together in pairs or with one gander to two geese.

After lunch Karola and I tried to set light to the heap of apple tree stumps – they need to be cleared away before Alan can plant new apple trees. These are the trees that’ll extend short rows due to the diagonal boundary between Homestead and Orchard so that they become complete rows to the Scott’s boundary, taking in some of the Top paddock to do it.

We used lots of old cardboard boxes and a couple of months of newspapers, and a litre of elderly 2-stroke petrol mixture and some rotten wood not worth making into firewood. These burned splendidly, but last time I looked the apple roots and stumps were barely charred – we need more wind and more drying out of the stumps.

Mid afternoon I took down about 30m of wire and batten fence and laboriously wound up the wires. Hope to do more of that tomorrow; there’s another 200m to do, clearing the way for the new roadside boundary fence.

This evening Karola took me to the Wellington Symphonia playing in Napier – a most unusual thing for us to do. It was well attended and the audience were mostly a bit older and there was no mad bar rush at the interval which was a refreshing change. About 2/3 of the Symphonia players were women. Over 1/3 of the audience had grey hair, though, as Karola remarked, there were some children too.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—16°C; partly cloudy and calm, light northerly breeze in the afternoon; no rain.

Dentist for us both in the morning. After lunch I took two heaped trailer-loads of eucalypt firewood from the roadside Tall Trees paddock up to the big shed; Karola helped unloads the first load.

At last I mended a hole in the partition wall of the big shed. I screwed a large piece of plywood over the hole in the fibre-board inner wall – been meaning to do that for over a month.

Mike Croucher came and applied his “weed eater” (strimmer) to the edge of the new drive and around some of the lawn – he’ll be back next week to mow the lawn and trim the box hedge up the old back drive.

Karola says that Othello (the brown part-Merino ram) is happy in the small paddock at the Stables opposite, with a couple of mangy wethers for friends.

Kerry rang this evening – the Fergie is ready.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—16°C; cloudy with westerly wind turning northerly in the afternoon; no rain.

Bicka had her annual “well dog” check this afternoon (similar to the UK “well man, well woman” idea) – and she came out as being “in excellent condition”. She had her vaccine without fuss and, with a different kind of tablet, took her worming medicine with much less fuss this time.

Late morning Tim Averill arrived and the drilling began – seed is now sown – deep drilled so that the seeds get the undersoil moisture. Tim made a special effort for us, drilling lengthwise and then again crosswise to help get an even distribution of grass plants. Now, having wished so hard (and successfully) for the rain to stay away, we’d love it to rain long and hard. A lot of dust was thrown up as the tractor swooped back and forth, first harrowing then drilling and then chain-harrowing the hectare – maybe we’ll need to get the house washed down again soon.

Late afternoon Karola began clearing grass and weeds along the road boundary fenceline – starting at the northern end and “releasing” her plantation of native toitoi and manuka in that spot. I’ll begin taking down the fence there probably tomorrow. Based on our experience a couple of years ago, when there’s easy access from the road people have no compunction in stopping and helping themselves to our firewood. So, our stacks of eucalypt firewood are in jeopardy once I take the existing boundary fence down. Rather than risk that I’ve begun taking the firewood up to the big shed – one big load done, another 2 or 3 to go – then I can enjoy taking down the fence.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 5°C—18°C; cloudy with southerly wind turning northerly in the afternoon; no rain.

Regrassing not quite done yet – Tim Averill brought a tractor over after dark and took away the sack of seed – says he expects to do it tomorrow.

Al Park (0274-527-618) is the Williams&Kettle (aka Wrightsons) seed expert I spoke to last week, and on his recommendation we have enough seed for 1.4ha (3.5 acres) – the actual area being regrassed is almost 1ha (2.5acres). The mix is (per ha, at 28kg/ha):

• 18kg “Impact” ryegrass with the AR1 endophyte (fungus) that makes it weed resistant and avoids poisoning sheep (as the standard endophyte does – gives them grass staggers)
• 4kg “Sensation” red clover – Karola and I both like red clover, there’s lots of bumble bees round here too
• 3kg “Tribute” white clover, and
• 3kg “Apex” white clover

Al believes we’re fairly insane regrassing in the spring – there’ll be terrible broadleaf weed problems, and the summer sun will burn off anything that survives them – and the expected drought will mean we’ll have to irrigate. So that’s a good idea then :-).

We are regrassing now primarily to get the area well levelled and rolled – and with a bit of grass cover – so that we can plant native trees in their preferred time, the autumn, and not move them ever again. We expect to oversow the grass again later, in fact Al suggests oversowing with a bit of plantain and/or chicory later, once we’ve conquered the weeds we’ll undoubtedly have.

When I took the Fergie in to have its (2nd-hand ex-Kubuto) front-end loader fitted I reminded Kerry of Tractor Dismantlers that I wanted proper sized tyres as well. He wasn’t sure – but the loader should be fitted by Saturday.

Re hiring some equipment to use with the Fergie – a post-rammer ($150/day), post-hole auger ($95/day), and single tine for ripping bamboo roots ($95/day), I spoke to Mike Smith of Stortford machinery today (06-876-6012 x4, home 06-876-9871) and he confirmed what Murray Cranswick pointed out earlier today – that the small wheels on the Fergie will likely mean that the post hole auger won’t lift fully out of the holes, nor will it raise up to transport behind the tractor from Stortford Lodge. Mike even said he might be able to find one back wheel if Kerry (Tractor Dismantlers) could find the other. I declined Murray Cranswick’s kind offer to use his Fergie M35 and auger for only $60/hour and determined to speed up getting the tyres for my Fergie. So, later in the afternoon I went back to Tractor Dismantlers and Kerry had a bit of a think – he is tall and thin and what I think you call ‘laconic’ – man of few words and fairly lengthy periods of staring into space – but everyone recommends him warmly. I told Kerry that Mike Smith wanted to help and lack of tyres was slowing my hiring of Mike’s equipment. Kerry, who already had located two front wheels of the right size, then remembered he had some rather old and worn (but not as worn as my current tyres) Fergie back tyres, and some good rims. that would suit my situation – after all I’m not a contract ploughman, the work on the Fergie will be light and sporadic. So that may solve the problem.

10:00am Murray Cranswick turned up right on time (as you may guess, this is not completely normal among our argicutural contacts) and we planned the “bill of materials” for the boundary fence – well for the 120m from the north side of the front gate up to the Vernon’s boundary, so including the entrance to 145 Ormond Rd, Karola’s orchard.

ROAD BOUNDARY – 120m along the road boundary; half of it is on the edge of a 2m deep roadside ditch; most of it is near trees, in fact there are large stumps and a couple of trees actually in the fence line. There is a shallow “meander” or mostly dry creekbed that crosses the boundary amongst some tall gum trees and this will be retained and culverted as part of the fence building. There is some tricky chainsawing to do to get rid of the above-ground stumps – some have embedded fence wire.

• 2 x strainers – 2.4m #2
• 2 x stays – 2.1m #2 round posts [we have something suitable for these already]
• 2 x stay blocks each made from half 1.8m #1 half-round posts [I have these already]
• 30 x posts 1.8m #2 half-round
• 150 battens 1.12m 50mm x 50mm
• 1 x batten staples – 5kg 30mm x 3.15mm [I have these]
• 1 x post staples – 5kg 50mm x 40mm [I have these]
• #8 wire for 6 of the 8 wires [reuse what’s there now]
• barbed wire for the top and third “people-repelling” wires[I have 100m used, Murray will donate the other 140m from disused stuff he doesn’t want]
• #8 wire for footing the posts and anchoring the stays etc [I have plenty for that]

RETAINING WALL is about 60mm tall and 10m across. I plan to install the culvert back for 4.5m from the opening into the roadside drain; natural litter and perhaps garden refuse can fill in around it without impeding drainage – and it’s intended to fit in with a roughly 4m wide planting belt along the roadside boundary and with a “grass bridge” Karola wants across the meander into the regrassing area – but that’s a longer story

• 1 x 2.5m 225mm diameter concrete culvert – a “second’ with a damaged end sold at half price
• 1 x 2m 225mm diameter concrete culvert – salvaged from when we did the new drive a couple of years ago
• 4 x 3m #1 half-round posts to hold the retaining wall planks and act as fence posts too – 1.3m into the ground, 1.7m above the ground
• 12 x 2.4m edge-trimmed half round #1 posts (150mm wide) for the retaining wall, three sections each three planks high

ORCHARD ENTRANCE

• 1 x 4.25m heavy metal gate (Karola will paint it Karaka green so it doesn’t look quite so ugly)
• 1 x thread-through 20mm top gudgeon
• 1 x screw-in 20mm bottom gudgeon – the one with a long pin that has a hole near the top so you can lock it against the phantom gate-snatchers – well more against poachers who like a locked gate which they can just lift off its hinges
• 1 x strainer – 2.4m #2
• 1 x stay – 2.1m #2 round posts [we have something suitable for this already]
• 3 x posts – 1.8m #1 half-round hand picked for evenness and solid profile
• 6 x rails – 4.8m x 150mm x 40mm, no large knots
• 1 x galvanised nails – 125mm (5 inch) x 5.3mm
• #8 wire and bits of half-round for footings etc [I have these]

I went to GoldPine (my usual outdoor timber merchant) and to Tumu and got the order priced – $70 less at GoldPine. Later I went in and got the stuff ($721.88 + GST); took two loads and Karola helped unload, whech meant I just got the second load before they shut.

Just after lunch I went out and bought another 2.5m x 225mm concrete culvert ‘second’ ($80 + GST) – this one for Karola’s grass bridge. While in the shop I asked about my leaking cap on the irrigation and one of the guys there said maybe I hadn’t put the white plumbing antileak tape on correctly – only put one layer, he said, and always wrap it in the opposite direction to the way you screw on the cap. Worth remembering and maybe I’l redo it if the leaking gets too bad.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—19°C; mainly sunny, warm and mild northerly wind; no rain.

Our stock agent, Craig Girven of Wrightsons (now amalg. with Williams & Kettle), came out and looked over our sheep. He thought the 14 ram lambs might fetch $103 or more and the 9 smaller ewe lambs over $90. He’s arranging transport ($1 a head) and they’ll be in the Stortford Lodge market next Monday. Prices are really high right now and are likely to soften rapidly as the early lambs born this winter become available – so the timing is auspicious.

Othello jumped out of the yards overnight but is still with the ram lambs. Jim turned up early afternoon – I’d been expecting him early morning – and we agreed he could delay taking Othello away until tomorrow.

Before lunch I went into Stortford Lodge and bought some more irrigation connectors – retail therapy for me – and after lunch set about testing the irrigation system, specifically the repairs I did yesterday. As neither I nor the orchard lessee had ever used the irrigation system in Karola’s orchard I asked Graham Velvin to come over and take me through the procedures. We set the system to come on for 5 minutes. Aside: I also learned that Graham and Anne have decided tourism is more of a growth industry than apples and so they’re hoping to buy and run a lodge in Taupo – expensive bed and breakfast actually.

The irrigation came on in Block 1 as expected. My repair of the main pipe was partially successful – the joins were fine but the cap leaked – even when I applied liberal amounts of the plumbing tape used to make screw-fittings watertight. But it’s good enough; doesn’t drip too much. The little feeder pipe however was a different story. My mend held just fine but somewhere further along it was gushing out. Investigation found we’d cut through the feeder in at least 3 places. I fixed these, we retested, and then filled in the holes.

The feeder pipe feeds the sprinklers along an entire row. It connects to the mains pipe over 1/2 a metre underground but surfaces and runs along on the ground between the trees. The mends were to the underground part of the feeder pipe.

Just as we were beginning to feel we’d completed the job I ran my shovel completely through the feeder pipe where it ran overground but was underneath the earth we’d excavated. Exasperation! Muffled curses! Another kettle of hot water and another join. But eventually it was done and Adam, son of Alan, the lessee (and one of Alan’s two full time orchard workers) planted a new Braeburn apple tree on the spot – there happened to be a tree missing where we’d located the mains pipe and he happened to have a couple of new trees over from planting in another of his orchards.

The regrassing was supposed to be completed today – the drilling of the seed. No-one turned up, no reason given. I spent a couple of hours smoothing out some of the rougher spots and another hour or so picking up rubbish – mainly old and shredded plastic irrigation pipe and apple roots – from the regrassing area.

Karola continued her heroic moving of 40 or so cardboard boxes of books brought from England in 1999 or 2001 from her study upstairs out to the store room in the garage. The last 9 were lugged downstairs and out to the store room today; her study now has many pictures and photos on the wall where once was a wall of brown cardboard boxes.

I mixed 1/2 a drum of Roundup ready for spraying along the boundary fence. Unfortunately the spray drum already had several inches of murky water in it – not the sort of water you’d want to empty onto the garden. So somehow an estimate of the quantity was needed so I could add the recommended amount of the hateful Monsanto chemical. Finally I measured the depth and then added measures of water until the depth doubled. I wanted 30 litres but established that the “several inches” of murky water comprised 45 litres – of course the drum now held 90 litres – so I topped t up to 100 litres and added the 10% noxious concentrate. Latest thinking is that I won’t need to spray the boundary anyway, still it’ll be there for when we do need some serious weed suppression.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—21°C; mainly sunny, mild northerly wind; no rain.

The day began with excavation around the irrigation main so that I could terminate it where it feeds the last row of apple trees (the old row 12, now the last row as we’ve we taken out the first 11 rows). The main is a 63mm (2.5 inch) white plastic pipe buried down about 700mm. Then a quick trip into Stortford Lodge, first to Stortford Engineering (tractors etc) to pick up their pricelist for hire equipment, then on to Harris Engineering (pumps and pipes) for an elbow and a terminating bung for the irrigation main.

Fixing the main was very quick – the fittings are expensive but simple to fit together. A solvent melts the plastic and the resulting join is a merging of the plastic into effectively one continuous piece. I’d cut out a piece just long enough to bring the pipe to the surface and this was joined to the pipe below with an elbow. The top of the upright pipe has a bung screwed onto a threaded fitting. At the same time I (think) I fixed an accidentally severed feeder black alkathene 10mm pipe. Tomorrow we’ll turn on the irrigation pump and see whether the new pieces leak.

I made a call to our Wrightson’s stock agent – hope he’ll call back tomorrow. I also arranged for Murray Cranswick, Lifestyle block consultant, ($30/hr plus 75c per km) to come out. He came after lunch and we looked at the boundary fence project – we’ll probably begin that later this week – and together the three of us chose the ewe lambs to send to market. I also left a message for Paul Scott (Grey Skills – fencer) saying we’d decided not to use his services.

After Murray left, Karola and I drafted the sheep so that the 20 ewes and the 9 ewe lambs we’re keeping are in the Back/Middle/Top paddocks, the 9 ewe lambs for market are in the Triangle paddock, and the 14 ram lambs for market are in the Island paddock. At the same time we caught Othello (see yesterday) and kept him in the yards for collection by his rightful owner tomorrow. While the lambs were being sorted we attended to footrot in about 4 of them.

As darkness fell I collected up large stones, bits of plastic irrigation pipe and other rubbish from the area to be regrassed, raking some of the rough areas at the same time. Also filled in a rabbit burrow dug last night and several hollows that Bicka dug in an attempt to help and mimic her pack leader.

In the evening I called Harry about coming over here in October, and did some more programming. Karola continues her sorting-out of books and pictures.

Hawkes Bay Weather: ?°C—??°C; mainly sunny; no rain. (Weather station breakdown today)

We woke this morning to heavy mist and the erie sound of dragon’s breath. Somewhere above us – not very far above and only a little to one side of the house – was a hot air balloon. A few of these gaudily painted windbags visit us every year – usually when we can see them (and they us) – and their blasts of burning gas to make more hot air is most distinctive.

I looked out of the window down onto the lawn and saw Othello, the brown Merino-cross (we think) ram walking up and down the electric fence along the edge of the lawn – it was all that was between him and 18 young ewe lambs. So, Karola was completely correct, it would be too tempting for him and in the night he’d left the orchard across the road and returned to his intended ewe-friends. This time we shut all the right gates and were cautious – we used our 14 ram lambs as enticement – all sheep like to be in flocks rather than alone – and in an hour or so Othello was behind a proper fence along with our ram lambs.

The ram lambs really didn’t know what to make of Othello at first – and they ran around avoiding Othello as if he were a dog. Meanwhile he chased after them for the company – quite hilarious really. It all settled down after lunch.

Our plan was to notify the police and run an advertisement in the local paper to see if anyone claimed him. Karola narrowly avoided the council’s animal control team coming and impounding Othello – the police quickly put Karola onto them and they were keen to come and get Othello.

Late afternoon and Jim Cornes knocks on the door – turns out that Othello is his ram, escaped from a pen Jim made that was sheep proof, just not Othello proof. Jim bought Othello a few days ago for $80. Jim says his wife wanted a ram with big curling horns to make a sporting head on her sitting room wall. Isn’t there a biblical story about a woman demanding heads on platters?

Karola and I dug down to the irrigation main pipe that is leaking where we took up the apple trees – it’ll be simple enough to terminate the pipe where the apples end.

I fed the ewes hay and checked the three water troughs – all stock seem contented.

In the evening we attempted to see a film in Napier – but it was sold out so we had dinner in a local restaurant and came home. The bill seemed high and when she checked it Karola noticed they’d charged us for two bottles of wine instead of two glasses – hope that was a genuine mistake and not a common practice – overseas tourists think its so cheap anyway I suspect they’d mostly not notice.

Hawkes Bay Weather: ?°C—??°C; mainly sunny; no rain. (Weather station breakdown today)

Quite a cool day, so inside much of the time. Bicka started barking – her “that’s interesting – maybe I should chase it away” bark rather than her “glad to see you” or “drat that possum” bark. I couldn’t see what she was barking at out in the orchard. Karola finally shouted “There’s an alpaca in the orchard”.

Not so, but there was a large brown Merino ram with big curling horns up against the fence where the 19 ewe lambs are grazing. Must have followed a nice smell up the Avenue I guess – we don’t know of anyone close by with Merino black sheep.

So, another saga began. I went round on the Fergie and closed the orchard road gate. Then I drove up the orchard until spotting the ram. I drove it back towards the gate we put in recently between the orchard and the Top paddock and called Karola on my cellphone asking her to come and open the gate so I could shoo the ram through, maybe.

At the critical moment Bicka appeared on the scene and chased the ram off; 30 minutes later I found it again, down by the orchard road entrance – presumably that’s where it came in. I approached quietly, intending to steer it back towards Karola and the open gate. The ram sprinted off across our newly ploughed regrassing area … and then I realised with sinking heart that it could get out of the front gate – we’d removed the fences for the regrassing.

Next time I see the ram it is 200m down the Avenue on its way to Hastings. With help from various passers-by the ram is turned and starts back towards our place. Just as it is about to duck into our driveway it sees an open gate into Jim Cornes orchard opposite – and runs off into there instead. Much cursing and grinding of (remaining) teeth. I shut the gate so it won’t get out on the road again.

Karola went to a smallholding about 2km away where they had alpacas and black sheep – Monica Logan’s place – but she’d just dagged her flock and her big black ram was definitely still there.

Several hours later Karola and I go over to Jim’s orchard and find someone has opened the gate – it is a farm entrance to several outbuildings. I also remember that the ram may well like tasty young shoots of the early flowering apples, so it’d be better if we could get it back with us. One sheep is very hard to drive; small groups are comparatively predictable and biddable. Anyway we wandered around Jim’s large orchard for an hour or so, sighting the ram 3-4 times only to have it run round us and go to the opposite end of the orchard. Hmmm.

So we gave up and just hope it doesn’t do too much damage or cause an accident – and just maybe it’ll come back for another social call on our ewe lambs. We’ll maybe give Jim a ring tomorrow and see if he and his dogs can corner it.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 4°C—??°C; cloudy southerly spell that’s supposed to be passing quickly through; no rain. (Weather station breakdown today)

Tim Averill and his apprentice came this morning with the same large SAME tractor and the apprentice made two passes over the hectare of regrassing with power harrows in tandem with a roller. Suddenly the chopped up ground became a smooth seedbed. Power harrows have horizontal blades that create a fine tilth, and levelling boards that smooth the humps and hollows.

I broke a tooth in half last night on a hard ginger biscuit – lucky to get a cancellation and get it temporarily fixed at lunchtime today.

I took the Fergie down to Tractor Dismantlers and Kerry measured it up for fitting with a second-hand Kuboto front-end loader. He’ll do the fitting next week. The Fergie also would be more powerful and more comfortable if it had original specification tyres so Kerry is looking out for these for me as well – the current back tyres are much smaller, they are truck tyres and the front tyres are car tyres chosen to match – that was done to make the tractor lower, the better to work under orchard trees.

On the way back from the dentist I called in at Stortford Lodge Machinery’s equipment hire department – and took a look at a fence post rammer, a post-hole auger, and a mole-drainer. The hydraulic post rammer thumps fence-posts directly into the ground – no digging, no hand ramming – and the posts are firmer than if done the old way. I expect to use an auger for the larger strainer posts (over 200mm diameter, 2.4m long) and the rammer for intermediate posts. The mole-drainer is used for creating small drainage holes maybe 600mm below ground. These usually feed into ceramic field tiles as part of an agricultural drainage scheme. It has a vertical steel blade with a metal blob welded to the bottom – the ‘mole’ – a sort of metal torpedo. The equipment I saw also had a way of feeding wire or small flexible piping into the hole made by the mole; a very efficient way of laying telephone cable or small irrigation pipes without digging a trench. I hope to use the mole-drainer as a claw to dig out bamboo roots – they are shallow but tangled and very hard, and we have 1/4 acre of bamboo that needs to be cleared.

Karola swept the green shed roof – it still had a heavy layer of leaves and small branches from the autumn gales. She also ferried me to and from Tractor Dismantlers and stacked some firewood in the Back Paddock – we’re stacking the really good firewood – apple, eucalypt, and some cherry – in the big shed, but other stuff, mainly oak and conifer branches, has a stack in the geese enclosure in the Back paddock.

To our surprise, the regrassing area sprouted a couple of springs this afternoon – leaks from the orchard irrigation. Karola uplifted the surface pipes from the area we cleared of apple trees, but at the time we ignored the irrigation main pipe as it was deeply buried. The sudden appearance was explained when we talked to Alan and he said he’d turned the irrigation water supply on to fill his tanks when spraying this morning – and the natural head of water from the well would be enough to bubble up wherever there was a break. All we need to do is dig down to the main and put a fold in it, sealing it off.

Around 4:00pm two lads Johnny and Jackson came to help us with the sheep. We separated out the 20 ewes after giving them another 2mm of 5-in-1 vaccine and a 10mm stripe of Wipe-Out down the back to kill off lice. They are BIG sheep, strong and thickset, made all the bigger by the lambs they’ll be having in 2 – 3 weeks time. I can barely lift them up on their haunches or hold them still. We then drafted the 19 ewe lambs separating them from the 13 ram lambs. Karola would like to sell the ram lambs next week, and we’ll probably keep say 10 of the ewe lambs. Not sure whether to sell the remaining 9 ewe lambs with the ram lambs or as a separate run. Also we wonder if the number 13 would affect auction price for the ram lambs by themselves. Must say that they’re all looking big and strong and clean right now.

I had a chat with Alan Ladbrooke, our orchard lessee, who was in the next door orchard, pruning. He wants to go ahead with planting some more apple trees in our orchard this month, extending six short rows – perhaps 100 new trees. The diagonal boundary between the Orchard and Homestead properties forced the existing short rows; we’ll just square off the area, move the fence, and extend the short rows across to the Scott’s boundary. Our tall pile of apple tree stumps and roots will have to be burnt soon as it’s on the area to be planted; I was hoping to wait till November and add a lot of bamboo rubbish to it first.

Mike Croucher came after lunch and finished mowing the lawn.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 2°C—19°C; again; sunny, warm until late afternoon; no rain.

A beautiful day. Wysteria buds are out; Chinese Photinia is a mass of blossom; plum tree at the back is cascades of white blossom. Next door orchard has pink (peaches) and white (some early apple I think). In the Island paddock the Claret Ash is in leaf – a delightful bright fresh green. The grass is growing and in the sun it’s really like a summer day.

In the morning I chainsawed up some of the large prunings we gathered in the big shed last month – making way for moving the hay from the green shed up to the big shed – the green shed will become the Fergie’s shed. Meanwhile Karola did a long and thorough search for my missing cellphone.

Now, the full story on the cellphone. Day before yesterday, as I began to drill the holes for the gudgeons for a new gateway into the orchard, I asked Karola to look after my cellphone. It’s usually hung off my belt and I didn’t want to get it damaged. Karola decided to put it on the mudguard of the trailer for safety. We then both forgot about it and subsequently when I hooned about the place fetching posts etc it fell off and was lost. But, all is well, two days later Karola found it and it still works, despite two nights outside on the ground and really heavy dew. The display was misted up, but even that’s gone now and I’ve switched in the new SIM card and it all seems back to normal. Whew!

After finding the cellphone – which I think relieved her mightily – Karola brushed down the concrete apron in front of the big shed. The lambs camped there when they were grazing the orchard; it is a sheltered dry spot and hence they liked sitting and playing around there, making a real mess. Then, before lunch, with direction from Karola and a certain amount of (probably justified) yelling and screaming, I chainsawed down a dead flowering cherry Karola wanted removed from the side garden near the water tanks.

As we were having lunch I saw a large hawk come plummeting in under the large oak tree and make a grab for one of my bantams. The bantams ducked for cover in time – it was a big hawk and really quite close to us – no wonder the pheasant and quail chicks have high mortality.

After lunch Graham Velvin came round again and we tried out the flail mower he gave me. Unlike the experience with the spray equipment, this went very smoothly and I mulched a thick stand of nettles in the Middle paddock. Graham gave me an additional top link for the Fergie three-point linkage – it had belonged to some other tractor but with a bit of metalwork was made to fit. This is adjustable and enabled us to set up the mower so it is just the right height and angle – doesn’t behave like a rotavator and dig up the topsoil. I also learned of the PTO’s third setting – where the PTO goes round in time with the wheel speed rather than the engine revs. There’s more to the Fergie than just ‘forwards’ and ‘back’.

Late afternoon I went out and collected 39Kg of grass seed – I’ve got enough for 3.5 acres which means we should have quite a lot over for sowing round the edges and reseeding any areas in the autumn where the spring strike is poor. We’re hoping it’ll be sown tomorrow. On the way back I dropped into Tractor Dismantlers and asked about getting a front-end loader assembly for the Fergie. I’m to take the Fergie down there tomorrow for a fitting – a suitably battered front-end assembly from another small tractor that might just fit.

Late afternoon, Mike Croucher came and started mowing the lawn – he’ll be back tomorrow afternoon.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 2°C—19°C; sunny, warm; no rain.