Monthly Archives: December 2005

Hawkes Bay Weather: 16°C—30°C; south-westerly wind in the afternoon; no rain. [?]

Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—26°C; northerly wind in the afternoon; no rain. [?]

Hawkes Bay Weather: 12°C—23°C; northerly wind in the afternoon; no rain. [?]

Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—21°C; no rain. [?]

We are in Hastings in the North island – 39 36′ 40” S and 176 49′ 24″ E on Google Earth.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—26°C; no rain. [?]

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Hawkes Bay Weather: 17°C—26°C; south-westerly turning to northerly wind in the afternoon, no rain. [?]

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—22°C; northerly wind, no rain. [?]

Hawkes Bay Weather: 12°C—21°C; southerly wind, no rain. [?]

Wet and windy drive down to Wellington through the Wairarapa – we left about 9:00am. Pitoitoi town house was delicious – rain drumming on roof, wind lashing the windows, hot log fire in the wood burner, Bicka snoozing on the couch. Mmmmmm.

All Christmas e-mails finished and sent at midnight.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—23°C; westerly turned to southerly wind, 3mm rain. [?]

Jackson completed taking the staples out of battens on the old “Craig’s Fence”. Richard Rolls came and baled up the hay and, despite raindrops that kept threatening to soak our bales, Jackson and Karola, with me as Fergie driver, got all 138 bales into the shed without mishap. Very surprising given the multiple soakings the cut hay had had.

I topped the Middle paddock; Karola then put all the sheep into the combined Top, Middle, and Back paddocks – where they’ll stay until we return from Wellington early in January.

Karola and I mowed the goose enclosure.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—24°C; mainly sunny day , southerly wind in the afternoon, no rain. [74.6]

Began the day by completing the bit of fence we were working on yesterday – added a few battens where they were missing, filled in a large gap under the bottom wire by making a pallisade of old batten fragments.

Removed the electric fence between the Middle and Top paddocks; checked the water trough in the Middle paddock; now we’re ready to put the sheep into the combined Back / Middle / Top paddocks before we go to Wellington. Richard Rolls, who came and turned the hay into windrows preparatory to baling, hopes to bale it all tomorrow. We’ll stay here until it’s done and now plan to go to Wellington early Friday morning.

Dug up the strainer I put in near the front gate, now that our fence plans have been modified and the tree protection roadside strip doesn’t extend all the way along from the orchard entrance to the Homestead front gate. Used the hole to bury the flapper goose that died yesterday. Completed installing two posts in the tree protection fenceline.

Added stay posts to the end strainers of the tree protection fence enclosing Karola’s native trees near the orchard entrance. Jackson came to help in the afternoon; we put up two more wires to hold the netting and began attaching the netting. When Jackson left, Karola took over and we put up the netting with a few temporary staples – leaving a more complete job until we return in January. We put up some rails across one open end of the tree planting strip and used a gate as a hurdle across the other open end. Put up a bit more electric fencing and then let the sheep come and feast on the weeds and long grass under the eucalypts and other large trees between the new grass and the roadside boundary strip of natives.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—24°C; mainly sunny day , northerly turning to north-westerly winds, no rain. [74.8]

Hartley and Jackson arrived for their work experience at 8:30am. Today Karola and I decided we’d finish various bits of fencing in the Top paddock – where the mown hay has been rained on for each of the last 3 days. So Hartley and I began on mending a small length of 8-wire fence behind the orchard pump shed; Karola and Jackson put netting up round her line of 5 totora and dozen walnut trees. It rained early today, around lunchtime for about 15 minutes. Jackson and Hartley left at midday.

In the afternoon I completed the work Hartley and I had started; in the evening Karola and I hung the adjoining gate. To my surprise the gate opened and shut adequately riding on the gudgeons screwed into the first two holes I drilled – without any adjustments. I don’t think I’ve had this luck before. Now if the sheep get into the Top paddock they cannot get into the orchard.

Richard Rolls turned up mid afternoon; he thinks that as long as there’s no more rain he could bale on Thursday – he then proceeded to “flick” the hay – turn it over to “brown on the other side”. We thought we’d lost it all after 4 days of being rained on – Kaz, Karola’s brother, suggested making baleage of it – large round bales encased in plastic – something like silage but less runny, but it seems possible we’re in luck and will get our 100 bales of meadow hay this year.

Tomorrow the relations of Patrick Cooney come to pick up their 2 Christmas geese. I have to pick the 2 geese up from Mahora Stud after 4:00pm today. So, just before 5:00pm I went into Hastings and collected the two geese ($10 each) – each in its own sack – and picked up my very old JVC turntable and Technics amplifier that were being serviced by Ridge Electronics. We hope to use them to convert LPs to CDs.

One of the geese was rather calm – the other rampaged around in its sack. The calm one was fatally calm, I found out later. Rather than keep them in sacks all night I made a small netting door for the old goat house (aka Bicka’s outside playhouse) and put the geese in there – it was during this transfer I found one gooes was dead. At Karola’s insistence we went out and caught one of my fine 5 white geese and it awaits collection tomorrow along with the surviving flapper goose.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 17°C—25°C; mainly sunny day , northerly and north-westerly winds, 1mm rain. [74.1]

Karola and I worked on the fence to protect trees along the roadside boundary. I kept the post rammer for a 2nd day (Sunday and Monday) and pounded in another 6 posts. In total I rammed in 14 posts and later re-did 4 of them. It takes about half as long to use the post rammer as to dig and ram a post by hand and it works out that ramming is only better if there’s a lot of posts to do – 14 posts doesn’t qualify.

Today we changed our minds about some fence positions. We’re both pretty pleased with the new route which captures most of the area along the road frontage which is likely to grow grass while providing a protected 4m wide strip for planting trees and keeping the sheep out from under the driplines of the large English beech, the lime, and various other trees with nice low foliage (much appreciated by sheep). The only rework this new plan caused was to obsolete the large strainer post I put in near the front drive entrance

In the morning I put a strainer into the hole Hartley dug on the Homestead side of the meander; I dug and installed two other strainers, and rammed 6 posts. This, together with re-doing 3 rammed posts that went in on a lean or ended up too far out of line, was a very demanding day and I lost weight.

I took the post rammer back around 3:00pm and purchased a new top linkage bar for my Fergie 3-point linkage ($40). Mike Smith of Stortford Machinery also tried to sell me new back tyres for Fergie ($800), and a new seat cushion ($35) – so I bought the top linkage bar. I should get a roll bar ($250) as he suggests.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 12°C—23°C; mainly sunny day though cloudy wet evening, northerly breezes in the afternoon, 4mm rain. [75.6*]

Morning spent with Karola getting some parallel lines identified, taking the Homestead as the origin, for deciding where the fences are to go in the new grass and adjacent roadside areas.

Afternoon I used the post rammer to put in 8 posts; a 9th post will have to be hand dug as I couldn’t get the tractor close enough – eucalypts in the way. Six of the 8 rammed posts are OK, two went in crooked and will have to be redone by hand.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—24°C; mainly sunny day though cloudy wet evening, northerly breezes in the afternon, no rain recorded, but it rained quite hard for 15 minutes here this evening – re-wetting the hay (sigh). [75.6]

More fencing work today. Strainer posts dug or finished off and posts installed, well rammed, in their holes.

It’s raining now so the hay is wet. Hmmm.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 15°C—24°C; mainly sunny day though cloudy wet evening, northerly breezes in the afternon, 5mm rain. [76.0*]

Hartley and Jackson arrived soon after 8:00am and we continued with the tree protection fence. Hartley completed two holes started yesterday and dug two more before retiring with heat fatigue just before lunch. Jackson began taking down the wires from a fence, now surplus, for reuse in the tree protection fence. We then pulled out the posts, also for reuse.

Late afternoon Karola and I went in convoy (me on the Fergie) to pick up the post rammer.

It was such a warm, bright day that Karola decided she wanted the hay mown – so Richard Rolls came round mid afternoon and the meadow is now mown.

Tricky Trees came – three of them – and did various tree pruning and cutting and mulching jobs – the old Prunus severly cut back; the dead branch stuck in the American Oak in the Island paddock pulled down; the old Robinia along the new drive cut down – it’s shading the Titoki and in danger of falling and damaging them.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—25°C; brilliant sunny day though cloudy evening, northerly breezes, 1mm rain. [76.0]

In the morning set up electric fence and some temporary gates so that the sheep could go back onto the new grass for a while. Karola helped lifting some of the metal gates; my back is complaining after we moved the heavy elm baulks over the last few days. Gave lamb 543 its 2nd shot of antibiotics. It seemed better than 2 days ago, less of a limp.

After lunch used the Fergie with mulching mower to clear most of a 4m wide strip along the northern roadside boundary, preparing to make the inner tree-protecting fence. The lads arrived around 3:00pm and helped clear and then do some measuring for placement of the strainers. At Karola’s suggestion we’re going to fence the strip in three segments; one from each end taking up 1 50m role of netting, then a 24m piece, including fence over the meander, joining the other two.

Richard Rolls came – he thinks the weather is unsettled and, although he’s ready to cut our hay, warns that it may be better to wait until we come back in January – rather than have the hay rained on. We’ll decide next week.

The lads and I began digging the holes for 2 strainers; Hartley got his down 1.2m very quickly; two others were just 300mm or so deep when it came time to stop for the day.

Karola took Bicka to the vets mid afternoon. She then helped the lads clearing the weeds and grass from the tree strip; after they’d finished and gone home she planted a wysteria she’d bought – about 1.5m tall – under the Chinese Hawthorne. Karola and I then went and selected the strainers and posts from my stockpile for tomorrow – the lads are due to begin at 8:00am.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 17°C—23°C; mostly cloudy, northerly breezes, no rain. [76.6]

In the morning checked the sheep – 36 in the Middle paddock, 36 in the Triangle. Not much improvement in the limpers. Some daggy lambs in the Middle paddock – perhaps just that they have plenty of grass, or maybe a sign of internal parasites. May have to drench them all when we come back from Wellington.

In the afternoon Hartley Curry and Jackson Smith came over to help and the lads took a trailer load of the clean fill from near the orchard entrance and filled up the damp hollow near the front gate some more – I’d already put in about 20 Fergie buckets of fill from the pile behind the garage. Karola meanwhile “released” some of her natives in the corner next to the orchard gate. Later we started clearing a strip along the roadside boundary fence, about 4m wide, where we’ll protect with a netting fence and plant trees.

Early evening went to a film in Napier followed by a good Thai meal at the Onekawa “Thai Chefs”, fairly unusual for us.
This evening assembled the pieces of Anna and Marc’s old Sony hi-fi system; it all seems to work OK though I saved it from Anna sending it to the dump in Ealing. So Karola now has a hi-fi system in her Homestead living room.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 18°C—22°C; mostly cloudy, northerly breezes, 1mm rain. [76.3]

Out most of the day but mid afternoon Graham Cameron (Tricky Trees) and his worker came and mulched the Camelia prunings and severely pruned the Chinese Hawthorne. This is the tree that had developed a split in a major branch; the branch collapsed the day after Karola called him. The tree looks much more balanced now and will no doubt regrow with vigour.

I took the last of Karola’s elm baulks up to the big shed and completed the hay stack platform. I then took the firewood created by pruning the Chinese Hawthorne up to the shed and stacked it with the apple wood.

Karola noticed that one of her orphan lambs, #543, was limping so I caught it and we gave it an antibiotic injection – its feet were OK so we assumed it was a recurrance of the infectious arthritus it got when a young lamb. Then I fed the 3 orphan lambs about a litre each of warm diluted milk.

Karola found my old hi-fi equipment upstairs in a cupboard in the cottage. I reassembled the radio and turntable with some newer speakers and we tried it out – this is equipment bought 20 years ago in the UK playing records bought before we were married – and everything still worked. I’ve been thinking of converting some of our 100s of LPs to CD-ROM so this was a great find.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 19°C—23°C; mostly cloudy, northerly breezes, 1mm rain. [76.5]

The towing ball on the Fergie keeps coming loose so today I went to White Traders and, after fossicking around at the back amongs 100s of boxes of bolts and washers and nails etc I found a spring washer of the right size. I bought a pair for $0.50.
I’ve fitted it but I’m still not sure that it’s done the trick. On the same trip I called in at Harris Machinery and bought 3 20mm-25mm alkathene pipe connectors and some more brass garden hose fittings – intended for irrigation of the native tree shelter belts. While I was inside I left Bicka in the car and the driver’s side windw wide open. When I came out Bicka had gone – hopped out of the window. A rather frantic 5 mins or so and she was located just casing the joint down a nearby alleyway.

In the evening I took another heavy load of Karola’s elm baulks up to the big shed, unloaded it and loaded the last of the baulks in the old packing shed come chicken shed onto the trailer – but it was too late to take that load up to the big shed so I’ll do that tomorrow. Ironically, not having heard from Jim Cornes for months, he turned up just as I was coming in for tea and asked if he could have some elm to make an outdoor table. If he’d come yesterday he might have saved me some heavy lifting, as he himself remarked.

Just after tea Karola went to feed the cat and yelled for me to dispatch a very large rat just sitting by the back door. Strangely the cat, which was only a few feet away, seemed uninterested. Bicka chased it around a bit and I tried to bash it with a heavy nobbly stick Karola magically produced – presumably her secret weapon against intruders. The rat escaped, scared if not wounded. It was the size of a grown hedgehog.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 18°C—23°C; mostly cloudy, very humid again, northerly breezes, no rain. [76.3]

Apart from letting the Island sheep back into the Triangle and setting up electric fence round the new grass, nothing new today.
No possum caught neither.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 16°C—23°C; mostly sunny, northerly breezes, 1mm rain. [76.0]

Went to White Traders at the end of the Avenue today, looking for a bolt for the gate on the big shed partiton I put up yesterday. I got one ($2.00) and also noticed a nice sledge hammer so I got that too ($40.00).

In the afternoon Karola and I moved about 30 more of her baulks of elm wood up to the big shed; two trailer loads. We now have a most robust floor for the haystack – 21 three metre planks 200mm x 400mm resting on about 6 rows of offcuts and broken bits on edge. There’s enough room underneath for a cat, I hope, and the hay will be kept dry and sweet with the good ventilation.

Later on we penned up 1/2 the flock from the Triangle and I attended to the following sheep:

• 201 – old ewe with footrot in front right foot
• 504 – front right foot, footrot
• 519 – front left foot, bad footrot
• 521 – daggy, so a danger of fly strike – Karola de-dagged it and applied anti-flystrike spray
• 527 – back right foot, footrot
• 529 – front right foot, footrot

We left that half of the flock in the Island paddock for the night and moved the other half from the Back paddock into the Middle paddock. We have 12 grazing days until we go to Wellington for 12 days and planning for grazing for 72 sheep is not easy, especially as the weather is capricious and no rain for a few days quickly slows down grass growth. Whenever we go away, even for a day, we ensure the sheep are behind secure physical (ie not just electric temporary) fencing, which is what complicates the grazing plans somewhat.

Richard Rolls came and looked at the hay in the Top paddock today; he expects to mow next week and predicts up to 100 bales.

At the end of the day Karola mowed the semicircular lawn in front of the garage and I set the Timms possum trap baited with peanut butter.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 18°C—28°C; mostly sunny, mostly northerly breezes, 6mm rain. [76.3]

The little white chick was missing at breakfast today; I thought it’d finally been eaten by a cat or rat, but no, it turned up later unscathed.

Checked out some of the sheep – 1 ewe and 5 lambs need a bit of attention before we leave for Wellington in 2 weeks time.
Gerald will house-sit for us but we also need someone to check on the sheep every couple of days.

At last I got round to putting up the partition between our bays and the lessee’s bays in the big shed. It comprises three lengths of an old picket fence from Bridget, and a small gate that goes with it. Karola helped with design and final assembly. Bicka did the sniff test. It has heavy metal plates and coach screws joining the pieces; each join is supported using a short metal fence post (Waratah or “standard”) with a bit of wire neatly threaded through the waratah top and bottom and wrapped round a coach bolt either side.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—30°C; sunny until late afternoon, no rain (but we got 10 mins hard rain here early evening). [75.5]

Checked the sheep and then the main task for the day was moving some of Karola’s elm planks from the old decrepit packing shed come chicken run up to the big shed – to make the floor of a hay stack, 6 bales by 4 (or 8 bales x 3).

Landrover serviced. Code for radio is possibly 4104 (not 4104, IFB 13May06), not the one in the owner’s manual. Garage has the right code on computer.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—24°C; mainly fine, northerly breezes, no rain. [75.5]

Karola had a discussion with Alan Ladbrooke, our orchard lessee – it transpires that he does want use of a 2nd bay of the big shed, so I rearranged things to make Bay 1 our firewood bay and Bay 2 our hay bay. Fencing materials temporarily stored under Lawsoniana tree on the old back drive.

Then we did a Spring Clean of the old wash house – finding missing garden tools and much rubbish, as well as Karola’s mound of old bits of tools found around the place – her “museum” of stuff left here over time since the Homestead was built almost 130 years ago. We took a trailer load of rubbish including a lot of bits of old wire and metal, and an old fridge and an old, cheap door, to the Transfer Station en route to a landfill. Karola followed that with cleaning the Landrover ready for it to get a tune-up for Christmas tomorrow. Meanwhile I cleaned the chainsaw. Karola and I then severely pruned a moth-eaten Camelia in the shrubbery in front of the Homestead – it had been pruned at head height some time back and was totally tangled up with blackberry. We cut it back to about 300mm and expect it to sprout from the base – “coppiced” I suppose you’ld say.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—23°C; mainly fine, a few brief showers. [76.0]

Moved the sheep in the New-Grass paddock, the ones without foot problems, onto the Triangle paddock in the morning; mowed the new grass with the Fergie towing the powered mower, just to get the stalks and remaining weed heads cut. A hectare takes quite a while to mow.

Put a hose down the large old drainpipe and flushed it for about an hour with mains-pressure water. The water came out the other end but it didn’t dislodge the earth that is almost blocking the drain.

As expected, Mike Croucher came and trimmed the box hedge up the side of the old back drive.

Roger Hughes called and we agreed that they’ll come here for Feb 4-6 next year, as part of their NZ tour from the UK.

Patrick Cooney called yesterday about his two geese for Christmas – his sister is going to prepare them so long as I catch and deliver them. I have become somewhat attached to the five geese so I think I’ll try and get two more as the ones to be eaten at Christmas.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—25°C; fine, no rain. [75.5]

In the morning I wandered round the Middle paddock trying to match up ewes and their lambs; late afternoon I did the same with the ewes and lambs in the new grass. This evening Karola and I made a first stab at aligning the numbers on the sheep tags with their birth records – we have a page per sheep that lambed this year showing the colour tag (back then we just had coloured tags in the ewes: red, yellow, blue), number and condition of lambs. It seems clear that one or two lambs hang out with other than their birth mother and siblings.

Fencing in the morning – couple of posts and lots of old totara battens. Chasing drains in the afternoon – the old drain from the east side of the Homestead across the drive and through the shrubbery into the meander/depression doesn’t go anywhere – I excavated a trench across the meander but found no pipes. Karola had seen some fragments of tile drain further up the meander so I dug around there too but only found an old tile drain crossing the meander from the lawn out into the paddock.

From the “strata” showing in the sides of my exploratory trench it is possible that the meander was deeper many years ago so maybe the drainpipe fed an open drain down to the roadside ditch.

Graham Cameron (Tricky Trees – tree surgeon) came round in the early evening – Karola asked him to come and look at the Chinese Hawthorne which has a major branch that is quickly splitting and threatens to run the split down the main trunk. He’ll be back later this week to fix that and do some other tree surgeon things.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 16°C—26°C; fine, northerly breeze, no rain. [75.7]

Morning spent with sheep. Yesterday Karola and I separated out the old ewes with bad feet from those with healthy feet and we attempted to get the right lambs with each group. Today we made a few swaps to the point where there was no more yelling and we also split out the 9 2-tooths and put them by themselves in the Back paddock. After treating their feet we put the old ewes with foot problems into the Middle paddock; the old ewes with healthy feet remain on the new grass.

In the afternoon, a little more fencing – sorting out batten replacements and moving a couple of posts that were rammed in a bit out of line.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—27°C; fine, south-westerly breeze, no rain. [75.8]

Karola and I got all the sheep into the yards in the morning. It became obvious that it was turning into a scorcher of a day so we decided to defer most sheepwork until early evening, however we did catch the badly arthritic ewe lamb and give her the 1st of 2 injections of antibiotics. It may in fact be too late; the antibiotic destroys the cause of the arthritis but the knee joint may be damaged permanently.

After lunch I straightened up the strainer on the corner of the orchard/new-grass fence and the fence going up behind the big shed. Karola had observed that it was leaning way over. By pulling it straight with the Fergie and then re-seating the stay post it is much improved. Then it was easy to strain up and tie off the 8 wires. All that’s left to do is to replace some missing battens and possibly re-do a couple of the posts that are a bit out of line.

Evening came and we penned up the sheep again – they’d been let out into the Island paddock for shade and water – and I had a foot clinic. All 9 2-tooth ewes were OK; 12 of the 20 old ewes were OK; 8 of the old ewes had foot rot in at least one foot. As part of the inspection and basic trim the 2-tooths and ewes with footrot were separated out from the healthy-footed ewes; I only trimmed the healthy feet for fear of contaminating the healthy feet if I trimmed infected ones as I went along. Tomorrow I plan to attend to the footrot cases. One side effect of today’s sheep work is that as we had previously only matched up 33 of the 43 lambs with their mothers, by ear-tag number, when it came to putting the lambs with their mothers we had a few vocal lambs we couldn’t place protesting that they wanted their mother – and a couple of ewes also ran around looking for their lambs – what a noise and commotion. Tomorrow we’ll get the allocation right, I hope.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 9°C—24°C; fine, south-westerly breeze, no rain. [75.6]

In the morning Karola and I discussed various options for the location of outbuildings and fences, and what to plant where. After a trip into Stortford Lodge ( see below) and lunch I did a census of the sheep – and pairing ewes with lambs. Some were not cooperative but I got 30 lambs identified with their mothers. The large numbers on their big yellow ear tags make identifying ewes and lambs considerably easier.

Karola found a quail sitting on eggs under the Ginko in the circle at the front of the Homestead; Bicka also showed an interest so Karola put a shade netting fence round the Ginko to try and keep Bicka and cats out.

Yesterday when trying to tighten the wires on the fence going behind the big shed I found that using one wire strainer was not enough. What happened was that I’d tighten one wire and tie it off, then tighten another wire. The tightening of the second wire made the first wire go slack – so that’s why the professionals use one wire strainer per wire and tighten them all up to about the same tension before tying any of them off. So, I had 2 wire strainers and needed 8. I borrowed 1 and a half from Graham Velvin across the road – by some strange luck I had an unmatched half that I could pair up with Graham’s half – so now I had 4. Then I bought 4 new ones from Farmlands and was ready to spend the afternoon doing a spot more fencing.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—21°C; fine, northerly breeze, no rain. [75.8]

Used the Fergie and its blade to grade the path from the Homestead front gate to where Karola intends to have a grass bridge over the meander/depression. Then cleared the meander/depression itself, including the dilapidated chicken run attached to the old English beech tree, so that it’s ready for Murray Cranswick to come with his laser level next week. The idea is to have the meander be as deep as possible – at least as deep as the bottom of the old clay pipe I located on Monday – yet still have a fall all the way to the big ditch at the roadside.

Moved the electric fence so the sheep now have all of the new grass area and the orchard driveway.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—17°C; cloudy, southerly wind turned to northerly in the afternoon, no rain. [76.8]