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Monthly Archives: November 2006
Tree Guards Refurbished
Karola finished her tree guard refurbishment. We let the sheep into the bonfire area and they relished the wide variety of weeds. A short shower after lunch made everything wet but no lasting impression. Wind gusts were fierce during the night and intermittently during the day – yet another big branch of the lemonwood under the big oak came down.
I had a little foray to White Traders – 2 large stainless steel mixing bowls (for geese water pots), and a couple of nuts, washers, and bolts – all for $21.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—24°C; north-westerly winds, very gusty; 1mm rain. [79.8]
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Karola Improves Totara Tree Guards
Karola laboured on improving her tree guards for the totaras – the sheep treat the netting enclosures as personal rubbing posts and quickly demolish them; sometimes they get up on their hind legs to reach in and sample the tender shoots and tall weeds growing inside.
Mike Croucher came and mowed the lawn.
I made some detailed adjustments to the leaky pipe layout in the Front paddock planting area along the orchard drive; I added a 3rd 30m length to one pipe and used it to visit 5 trees at the end and 15m of ngaios nearest the road which were not getting any water. I’ve also rerouted the ngaio pipe at one point where the hard pan is creating a puddle on the drive. Finally I added a 15m length of leaky pipe to water the 2 bottle brushes and several Grisolinia in the corner by the orchard gate onto Ormond Rd.
We’ve just returned from seeing Singing Behind Screens, the last showing of the last film in a local Italian Film Festival – about Chinese pirates, honour amongst thieves, stories of legend etc.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—21°C; southerly wind changing to northerly in mid afternoon; no rain. [79.9]
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Sheep and Lambs To The Triangle
Set up electric fence and moved sheep and lambs into the Triangle paddock. Started electric fencing the bonfire area – one more day and it’ll probably have burned up all we’re going to do for now. The surrounding paddock is clear; our orchardist has burned some stumps he had on his orchard waiting to burn; and some large pieces of poplar trunk have also been burned. The Front paddock needs a break as we’ll have to put the sheep back in there while we’re in Wellington in 2 weeks time – the only other physically fenced paddock is the Middle paddock which is shut up for hay. Bruce the Shearer rang to say we’re on his list for 8:00am Monday 4th December.
Spent late afternoon speculating on where the cottage might be moved to and where the drives and gates would need to be.
Karola enlisted me to try several gate combinations for the North entrance, off the orchard drive. Karola agreed to continue with the current single green wire gate which is almost invisible from the Homestead.
Karola spent hours mowing the barley grass round the Oak and Canary Island Pine in the Triangle paddock, using a catcher to remove the barley grass seed heads.
A white bantam hen emerged today with three chicks – two yellow and one mainly black.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 4°C—20°C; occasional southerly wind; no rain. [80.1]
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Ewe #403 Has Healthy Ewe Lamb
Topped the Triangle and the Island paddocks. Chopped a few thistles in the Island and west of the Island paddocks, the strip of the Top paddock left between the Island paddock and the newly planted peaches.
Ewe #403 had a healthy, clean, well fed, active ewe lamb, #632. So it must have been ewe #407 which had the stillborn ram lamb a few days ago. That completes the lambing for 2006. I bought some rubber rings and an applicator for these last 4 lambs – the whole process of cutting off their tails with a hot iron takes too long to set up for just 4 tails.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 12°C—19°C; southerly wind; no rain. [80.3]
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Back Paddock Topped
Fire has burned itself out – probably still burning deep inside the small hill of earth and stumps, but no smoke – and there’s a fire ban beginning 8:00am tomorrow.
I topped the geese enclosure, aka the Back paddock. Growth is slowing as the weeks pass without a decent rain so it shouldn’t need another topping for a while.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—26°C; no rain. [81.2]
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Mary Returns To Wellington
Quiet day after taking Mary to the airport. Sent off cheque to the O’Kane’s for felling the poplars.
Checked the sheep; all seemed OK. Gathered up about 50 bantam eggs from various nests. Put 4 in the airing cupboard and left a dozen under one white broody bantam – some are starting to hatch.
Pushed in the edges of the bonfire – still a dozen or so big stumps to put on. At Karola’s request I pushed over the 1.5m high rotten tree stump near her yew hedge.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—25°C; southerly wind; no rain. [80.0]
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Weighed The Lambs; Trimmed The Ewes’ Feet
I put up a temporary electric fence linking the Front paddock (aka new-grass paddock) to teh Island paddock across the Triangle. I also did some overdue trepairs to our makeshift sheep yards in the Island paddock; then Karola, Mary and I spent the afternoon weighing all the lambs and “doing the feet” of all 20 ewes and Nelson. A hard afternoon’s work.
One of the O’Kane’s came over wondering why we hadn’t paid for felling the 60 poplar trees along Craig Vernon’s boundary. Seesm there’s some mis-communication about who is going to clear up the felled trees; I am leaving it up to Alan Ladbrooke to organise it. In conversation with Alaln in the evening I agreed we should pay the O’Kanes and Alan would try and get a firm plan to clear away the debris.
Looking for the newspaper I almost trod on a quails nest on the road verge outside the main gate – a dozen eggs in it.
Luke Curry came round in the evening and I said he could have 2 of the broody brown bantam hens – he’s still trying to raise pheasants.
Karola, Mary and I went to the West Shore Fish Restaurant for a long, relaxed, and filling dinner.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—27°C; northerly wind veering to southerly in the afternoon; no rain. [80.3]
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Bonfire Day 3
Mary and I picked up a trailer-load of stray branches and sticks from the bonfire paddock.
One of #403 or #407 had a still-born ram lamb which I buried.
Adam did some more piling on of stumps and the fire blazed.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 9°C—27°C; no rain. [?]
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Bonfire Day 2
Wind moved around but mainly northerly; cloudy. Adam has completed about 3/4 of the apple stumps and roots; it’ll burn for days. Karola took all the palm fronds and debris from around the Chinese Photinea, took them in the trailer over to the bonfire, improving the look of the Photinia immensely.
In the morning we – Karola, Mary and me – went to Hastings and Napier. We looked at a refurbished, repainted 40-foot container for Kaz; he hopes to buy it ($4500 incl. GST) and ship it ($600+GST) back to his place to store some of the agricultural tools and accessories he’s still got in the Rola farm sheds. The container won’t be sited near his new house, Ngaio Glen, but by Mary Wilson’s woolshed, just over the road from Rola – the farm that she bought from Kaz. A large crane ($120/hr) will be needed to unload the container.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—23°C; mostly northerly wind; no rain. [80.3]
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Bonfire Day 1
The wind was perfect – northerly and even slightly north-easterly, stronger than yesterday so the fire will burn well and the smoke and cinders will blow well away from neighbour’s plastic hydroponic sheds. Adam Ladbrooke came with tractor and buckrake and made quick work of 2/3 of the area – meanwhile Karola and Mary had put quite a lot of smaller branches on and I’d managed to push a few stumps and piles into the blaze with the bucket of the Fergie.
I was pleased that we didn’t seem to disturb nesting birds – they have nested and moved on. The cleared ground looks much better and larger too.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—19°C; northerly wind; no rain. [79.8]
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No Fire Ban So Far This Week
Quiet, warm day. Prepared for the big bonfire. Weather forecast favorable for the next 3 days; no fire ban as yet; Adam Ladbrooke will be able to help with tractor on Wednesday or Thursday. We decided not to start today but probably will start tomorrow if the weather stays right – gentle breeze roughly from the north-west. Would be better with a stronger constant northerly or north-easterly but we’ll take the slower burning with assured gentle winds that won’t get us into trouble even if the direction eddies around a bit. Mary is looking forward to striking the match.
We went over to the Ladbrooke’s to pick up Zen – he was bigger and very very clean and white. A few hours after we’d taken Zen home, Crystal’s mum Julie came over and asked if they could borrow Zen for a bit longer – of course we agreed.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—23°C; no rain. [80.8]
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Return From Wellington
Karola, who had hired a car on Saturday for the purpose, drove herself to Wellington airport at 7:00am and was up in Napier at an Ormond function in the Ormond Chapel mid-morning. Mary and I and Bicka cleared up and then drove quietly over the Rimutuka ranges, up through the Wairarapa – late lunch in Masterton – along through southern Hawkes bay – icecreams at Woodville and Waipawa – arriving home before dark.
Kaz had had an exciting night. He’d come down with Harry, Chloe and their young ladies Tessa and Laura on Saturday morning. Kaz was planning to stay with his son Francis in Haitaiti after the party and then go back up to Fielding with Harry et al. Someone at the party volunteered to drop him off at Francis’ flat in Haitaitai – which they did. Unfortunately Francis didn’t come home that night so after waiting outside till 2:00am Kaz went inside, setting off the alarm system. Kaz then hid in the loo – he’d had to go in for the loo – while various neighbours came to investigate – someone came and reset the alarm sometime after 3:00am. For fear of setting the alarm off again Kaz stayed in the back of the house till morning – in fact until 1:00pm the next day when Francis finally came home. Meanwhile Francis had rung me from the party where he’d overnighted, looking for Kaz. He’d rung home but got no answer – because Kaz couldn’t reach the phone without tripping the alarm again. Shortly after that Harry rang me, also looking for Kaz. It wasn’t until I rang Kaz that evening and he related the sorry saga.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—23°C; southerly wind; no rain. [?]
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Party Time – Day 2 in Wellington
The big party at The Pavilion in Day’s Bay, Wellington – my 60th and brother-in-law Ben Bell’s 65th. Over 50 people attended despite atrocious weather earlier in the day. Bridget, Chris came with Natalie and Alex for over an hour; Mary, to our surprise, stayed right through to the end. There was enough food and wine and the weather turned out quite clear as the evening progressed. I think in future I’ll prefer to go out for a meal with one or two of the couples at a time – you don’t get enough time to talk when there’s so many people.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—25°C; northerly wind; no rain. [?]
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1st Day In Wellington – Wind And Rain
Stormy weather; lots of slips in the surrounding hills since we were last down here. 3-4 more houses condemned due to slips and mud slides.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 20°C—28°C; northerly wind; no rain. [80.3]
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Off To Wellington
A dry, hot, cloudy day. Zen, the little crook lamb, taken to be looked after by Crystal Ladbrooke – she took Zen to the vet this afternoon and he’s been given antibiotics and is apparently drinking more now. We also took her my moveable A-frame chicken run for the bantam and 4 chicks that she’s also looking after for us.
Gerald, our house-sitter, is going to feed Karola’s other foster lamb, Frank, while we’re away.
A hectic morning; the Subaru finally got its WOF and 2 new tyres by 10:30am. I picked up Gerald and then some more lamb milk powder and teats from Farmlands before having a haircut and then coming home to finish clearing weeds along the ha-ha, then putting up electric fence to stop the lambs and ewes trying to climb it. The thick weeds would have shorted out the electric fence, hence the clearing.
Karola checked the sheep – all OK – and the new leaky pipe irrigation which is working mostly but needs a bit of tuning. It’s turned off while we’re away.
We originally thought we might leave for Wellington around 10:00am – we actually left at 3:00pm and arrived at Bridget’s place around 7:30pm. No rain on the way down despite dire forecasts of torrential rains in the Wairarapa and Wellington.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—27°C; no rain. [79.3]
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Netting On, Lambs Kept Out
Karola and I spent the day finally putting the netting onto the fence. It was a remarkably hot day.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 17°C—28°C; no rain. [80.1]
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‘Mistral?” – Hot, Dusty, Strong Winds
In the morning I went to Farmlands – purchased working gloves (we seem to go through a pair every couple of months), 2 strainer chains to go with the 2 strainer handles that Kaz gave me, and 25kg maize. I let them know that the quality of the Farmlands maize, wheat, and sheep nuts had been dropping – more dust and crumbs in the maize, more husks in the wheat, and a lot of crumbled nuts in the sheep nuts.
For the rest of the morning I replaced the 2nd and 4th rails either side of the orchard road entrance with the 1/2-width 75mm x 40mm rails – to match what I did yesterday for Karola’s entrance off the orchard drive. Again, getting the existing rails off was much harder and more time consuming than putting up the new rails. It was exceptionally windy and dry so I watered the rails and the surrounding area before grinding off the heads of the 5″ (125mm) nails holding the existing rails in place.
In the afternoon I completed straining up the 3 wires which will support the netting on the fence alongside the new tree planting. They are now tight and stapled to the posts; next job is to attach the netting. We have one more day before going to Wellington for a long weekend.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 12°C—27°C; northwesterly gales; no rain. [80.0]
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Grinding Nail Heads For Pleasure and Profit
I’ve been meaning to try a change to the 5-rail railings at Karamu. I mean the new ones at the orchard road entrance and off the orchard drive at Karola’s entrance. At present they’re made of 5 rails each 150mm wide, 40mm thick and the gaps between them are about 50mm which makes them look rather heavy. I do want an odd number of rails and substantial rails. I used decking timber for the rails at the new drive entrance and they look insubstantial and weak so I also want to redo them once I find a combination I like.
The railings are 1050mm – 1100mm high and the first rail is 50mm-80mm above the ground. The new design I’ve tried today combines 3 of the 150×40 rails with 2 of 75×40 in between the heavier rails. It certainly does look better in my opinion, much lighter without losing any heft. Getting the old rails off (the 2nd and 4th rails only, of course) was difficult. I managed to get the 100mm nails out of the ends of each rail but couldn’t budge the 125mm nails – 3 per post, skewed for maximum grip – in the three intermediate posts. For the 100mm nails I just used a cordless drill and drilled holes around the nail head until I could grip it with my Eze-Pull fencing pliers. Finally I found a simple if messy way to do the big 125mm nails – I took out the petrol generator on the trailer and ran my electric grinding wheel off it, grinding off the heads of the nails. The nails then pulled through the boards and I could yank them out with the Eze-Pull with the board out of the way. Grinding off the nail heads made much noise, smoke, sparks.
So this morning I set off to buy several metres of 75mm x 40mm rails – but it turns out no-one stocks that size; 150mm x 40mm is a special size for yard railings and there’s no call for something narrower. I tried Tumu Timber and compared what mixing narrower but thicker or thinner rails (50mm thick or 25mm thick) would look like ifused in combination with 40mm rails. The difference in thickness would show, so that’s not an option. So I then went off to try Benchmark; on the way to Benchmark I suddenly realised that it would only take one cut down the middle of the 150mm x 40mm to give me two 75mm x 40mm rails. Benchmark couldn’t cut the rails; didn’t have a ripper. Benchmark suggested I try Waitane Mill in Fern Hill – as I set off I thought I’d call Tumu Timber and see if they could rip the 150mm wide rails for me – yes they could so I went back to Tumu Timber and got them sawn – no charge – and was home in time for lunch.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—20°C; no rain. [80.4]
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Topping Day
No deaths today – we went with Kaz to another Rev. Simon Acland monologue this morning. Kaz left for home late afternoon.
I topped the front paddock and the geese enclosure with the Fergie and motorised topper. Sheep are still enjoying the Triangle paddock. Little mite #631 is alive and, though feeble, a bit more lively today.
Karola planted 9 replacement Karamu trees in the area alongside the orchard drive and 7 more in the natives corner by the orchard entrance – and added 3 bottlebrush trees to the corner, making it “almost all native”.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 9°C—22°C; no rain. [80.8]
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Docking Day
Karola and I went to hear a monologue by Rev. Simon Acland held at the McHardie’s place in Havelock North – about his forebears, early New Zealand settlers, and his own boyhood memories. Quite good.
Kaz arrived after lunch – we then had lunch and I took him on a quick tour of properties; then we did the docking. This time, at my request, he acted as teacher and I did the actual vaccinations and the cutting off of the tails with the docking iron – that way if Kaz isn’t able to do it next time then Karola and I can do it ourselves, just borrowing the equipment. Ugh, the sizzling flesh, the blood etc and the loud hollering of lambs displaced, however momentarily, from their mums. It still amazes me how quickly the lambs settle down afterwards, sans tail, and are eating and drinking as usual – displacement activity says Kaz. Karola grabbed and held the lambs for me to dock – apparently she used to do this in the school holidays many years ago. Karola even leapt upon and captured a runaway lamb at one stage, very athletic; usually it’s me who throws himself at sheep to catch them.
The 27 older lambs have been docked; the 3 newest arrivals are all still alive and improving, but too small to dock. After docking we put all the ewes and lambs and Nelson back in one paddock, the Triangle which has plenty of grass having been spelled for 3 weeks. The ewes are delighted, having been made to clean up the Island paddock for the last 3 days. Kaz says that grass grown under trees isn’t as palatable to sheep as open paddock grass and that does seem to be true. Nelson and the two ewes which haven’t lambed really don’t like the geese encloure despite there being plenty of grass – most of that grass grows in the shade of trees.
Kaz thinks that the 2 ewes without lambs will have them in the next 3-4 weeks; he doesn’t think they are ‘lamb-free’.
Karola’s orphan lambs (well, not being fed by their mothers anyway) are OK. The oldest one, Frank, is heavy and quite aggressive – and likes being left with the rest of the sheep except for feeding time. The tiny little ram lamb, Zen, dodders about on the brink of exhaustion but is drinking better now and seems to be getting a bit stronger. Zen spends most of the time in a cardboard box in the sun porch.
Brown bantam hen appeared on the lawn with 5 chicks – 3 black, 2 yellow.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—23°C; no rain. [78.9]
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Much Fresh Snow on the Kawekas
Very cold night but bright day and warm in the sun. To my surprise Karola’s TLC had the triplets survive another day – I still think the littlest ram lamb will snuff it despite the heaps of special attention Karola is giving it – poor little thing.
Finished installing the extensions to the irrigation supply pipe; the 20mm pipe runs from the garage out to the road, under the front drive culvert, along the fenceline to the orchard entrance and up the Homestead side of the orchard drive to Karola’s entrance off the orchard drive. There are several access points:
- mid-way along the 60m of yew trees along the road frontage north of the front entrance there are 2 taps; one feeding leaky pipes in either direction along the yews; the other for normal garden hose connection.
- at the far end of the Australian section, about 30m from the orchard entrance, a 4-way tap feeding 2 leaky pipes into the Australian section and ready to provide 2 more leaky pipes along the five-finger, kanuka/manuka/toitoi stretch
- 2 taps in the corner by the orchard entrance; one ready to take a hose under the orchard entrance culvert and water trees that will be planted on the far side of the gateway; the other to take a normal garden hose
- 2 taps, each with 3-way splitter for 3 leaky pipes; one tap each side of Karola’s entranceway
Hawkes Bay Weather: 1°C—20°C; 14mm rain. [?]
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Miserable Day, Especially for Lambs
Temperature halved over yesterday – cold southerly blast bringing rain. The new triplets took it hard – we gave them collostrum medicine and the ewe had a dose of Ketol sugar pick-me-up. We put them in the green shed and later Karola fed the two weakest lambs and put them in a cardboard box in the porch with a heater. I still doubt that they’ll make it. The ewe has some milk, but not a lot, and her udder has some hard lumps – maybe mastitis. She was limping so I looked at her feet but found no problems.
Meanwhile Karola’s foster lamb, called Frank, aka #615, has found out he can jump out of Bicka’s pen, over the metre-high fence. He’s fed and has somewhere dry so at the moment has agreed to stay put but tomorrow he rejoins the flock, assuming the temperature rises and the rain abates.
Docking put off till next week at earliest.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—12°C; 14mm rain. [80.3]
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Triplets for #204
Ewe #204 has at last had her lambs: #629 (ram), #630(ewe), #631 (ram) – all very small and weak, but walking and drinking a bit.
Young ewes #403 and #407 may not be having lambs this year; they’re the only ewes not to lamb and they’re stuck with Nelson in the geese enclosure for now.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—24°C; no rain. [79.7]
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Stay That Post
Just a smidgen of rain but enough to keep me indoors most of the day. I did complete a couple of stay posts and gently strained up a couple of wires on one segment of the netting fence – only to have the post at one end – a very temporary post, more temporary than I’d expected – pop up out of the ground. Two steps forward . . . Karola is continuing with laying the leaky pipe. She is also still feeding her orphan ram lamb several times a day.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—23°C; <1mm rain. [80.3]
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Irrigation Extensions
Today we worked a little on the irrigation system – I extended the alkathene pipe from the orchard entrance up along the orchard drive to the Homestead entrance off the orchard drive. The extended irrigation pipe needs taps either side of that entrance which meant putting a pipe underground across the entranceway. It was hard digging – the pipe is down 200mm (8″) in compacted gravel – being on the edge of the drive. Meanwhile Karola continued installing the rolls of leaky pipe along the 4-metre wide planting area containing our Ngaio, Karamu, and Lemonwood trees.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—22°C; 1mm rain. [79.7]
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More Chainsawing Erecting Stay Posts
More work on the fence – stay-posts. Karola unloaded the trailer and landrover of the goods scavenged from Rola; she cleaned the landrover inside and out. Karola also cleaned the wooden skis (her mothers) rescued from Rola yesterday.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 12°C—24°C; no rain. [80.3]
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Kaz’ Docking Day
Went over to Kaz’ new place, Ngaio Glen, between Fielding and Sanson, and we helped him vaccinate and dock his 15 lambs – 11 ram, 4 ewe lambs from East Fresian ewes. He plans to come and help us with our lambs in the next fortnight. Ugh, its a horrible job; blood and burning flesh etc. Glad it’s over.
We also scavanged a trailer-load of stuff from Rola, Kaz’ farm that he sold in July – he still has a lot of stuff to dispose of, one way or another.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—23°C; no rain. [80.0]
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Karola Mowing
Quiet day – Karola did a lot of mowing round the edges of the lawn and ha-ha; I finished installing a strainer post and began on the stay posts needed for the netting fence along the orchard drive planting area. The strainer is embedded 1.3 metres, it gets quite tricky digging a hole that deep.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—22°C; no rain. [79.4]
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Karola flew to Wellington for the day
Mostly sunny, warm with cool breeze from the north.
Karola flew to Wellington for the day to see Natalie and Alex and their mother Bridget.
I did party administration (my 60th party in Wellington on 18th November) and a bit of post hole digging.
Amy spent the night here – Francis picked her up and took her home around mid-day. She fed the lamb before she went.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—19°C; no rain. [?]
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Geoff and Edwina Leave For Wellington
Balloon cruises by just before Geoff and Edwina took their leave at 7:15am for Wellington.
GST is overdue – spent much of the day doing this.
Francis and Amy Wier dropped by – over in Hawkes Bay for 2 days; Francis is over here with his girl friend for a funeral.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 4°C—18°C; no rain. [?]
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