Monthly Archives: January 2007

Henry O’Kane took me to see the old vineyard posts he’s offering for facing the ha-ha – he lives in Havelock North and seems to have leased most of the cropping paddocks between here and there. He has more than enough of the posts so I bought 450 of them, 2.4m long and about 150mm thick. He will get suitable ones sorted out and trucked over but it’ll take a while.

In the morning I carried on fencing, and again when it got cooler in the late afternoon – working on the boundary 7-wire fence from the gateway to just north of the big shed. I amused the sheep by not looking where I was going and falling into one of my own strainer post holes. I was tracking Bicka, hoping to nab her before she went off chasing rabbits, and got a terrible shock when I trod down on air. For a while I was wedged in this big hole looking particularly foolish and the sheep, they laughed, they cried, they laughed until they cried – well it took their minds off weaning for a while. I got a bruised thigh and dignity but lilttle other damage as far as I know. The thigh is very stiff and sore; I hopped around in the afternoon just to keep it moving, it seizes up if I rest.

Oh yes, and as I was quietly fencing I noticed one of the ram lambs squatting to pee and that didn’t seem right. Sure enough, its tag is in the correct right-hand ear; we missed her in the twilight, a big hulking ewe lamb. And she was sniffing round Nelson the Ram (it’s usually the other way round – a bit forward is that ewe lamb). I penned the ram lambs up and bundled her off to be with her mother; she seemed quite keen to go.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 9°C—25°C; no rain [79.5]

Over 800 staples driven home; 140 battens stapled, all 7 wires up, and the 110m of boundary between the Scott’s fence and the new gateway into the orchard is finished.

After that Karola and I put up temporary fence across from the gateway to the Island paddock and blocked up the opening (soon to have a gate and rails) at the Scott’s end so we could let the ram lambs and Nelson have that strip of grass from the Island paddock up to the boundary with the peaches.

Then we drafted the sheep into males and females, merging the females with the 10 new Romney ewes in the Front paddock and letting Nelson and his mates back into the (now extended) Middle paddock. This is officially “weaning” and we expected a noisy night but there was much less fuss than we expected; the ram lambs were diverted by having a bit of fresh pasture; the ewe mothers were busy making aquaintance with the 10 new ewes.

Three ewes had footrot: #209 (left front this time), #212 (getting a bit better), and #215 (red tag, erk, maggots a plenty). All repeats.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—24°C; no rain [79.9]

Crimp-joined the strained-up wires and then completed stapling of the wires to the posts, continuing the fencing of yesterday. Laid out the battens – 5 between each pair of posts – and suddenly it was lunchtime. Later I did an inventory of the gates we have, a plan of the gates we need, and a shopping list for gates along with more battens, staples, strainers, stays, and 1/2-round posts to support railings. Retail therapy at Tumu builders merchants and I came away with a heavily laden trailer load of fencing:

• 2 x 3.05m netting gates
• 3 x 3.66m wire gates
• 2 x 4.25m netting gates
• 7 x lock-through post gudgeon 20mm x 275mm x 30mm short pin
• 15 x screw-in gudgeon 20mm x 200mm x 70mm long pin
• 8 x screw-in gudgeon 20mm x 150mm x 50mm short pin
• 100 x battens 50mm x 50mm x 1100mm
• 5 x 2.4m #2 strainer posts and 2.4m round post stays
• 16 x half-round posts 1.8m #1
• 5kg each of: post staples, batten staples, 4-inch galv. nails, 5-inch galv nails

Late morning Phil and Pete from Pan Pac came and looked at the poplars – they’ll now go ahead and schedule the removal using self-loading timber trucks; Phil expects this to occur in the next few days; I must be on hand with chainsaw just in case there’s something needs trimming as they load.

Karola arrived around 7:00pm. I started stapling battens onto the fence for 30 mins and then dusk fell.

Two bales of hay for the sheep. Continuing routine of feeding the hen and 5 remaining chicks with formula chick feed morning and evening, shutting them in at night but letting them roam during the day. Another pair of bantams are broody, sitting on eggs together in the green shed.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—30°C; 1.6mm rain [79.7]

Karola and Bicka are in Bulls, stayed overnight with Harry & Chloe at Burleigh. She’s on her way to Wellington to Bridget’s to do a spot of babysitting, calling in on the way to see Jane Heslop down in Palmerston North visiting her mother Marjory. Jane is Campbell Ewing’s “life partner”.

I let the sheep out into the Triangle and, after a hungry night back in the Middle paddock, a few lambs and Nelson were through the electric fence and on the lawn. I returned them all to the Middle paddock; they’ll have to be drafted so that the well trained ewes can have the Triangle and the rowdy ram lambs will have to stay behind strong physical fences. Given the lack of grass in the Middle paddock it becomes more important to finish the boundary fence between that paddock and the new peaches in the orchard so that the Middle paddock can reclaim the acre or so (that used to be part of the Top paddock) currently out of bounds. I gave the sheep 2 bales of 2005 hay; it actually smelled quite sweet, and they enjoyed it.

The rest of the morning was spent marking up the 5 strainer posts – now we have the holes dug – and attaching the footers with #8 wire and a lot of large staples. In the afternoon I completed attaching the 7 wires to the 120m or so of new fence from the Scott’s boundary (south) to the gateway with the orchard. As darkness fell I redug and straghtened 3 running posts – it’s still a lot quicker to use the post rammer even if 1 in 5 or so need a bit of adjustment afterwards.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 17°C—30°C; 1.9mm rain [80.5]

A very productive day, helped by the overcast and slightly cooler weather. Karola went off to Bulls and Wellington with Bicka. Campbell and I dug strainer post holes for 5 new strainers, and we cut the slots for their footing blocks as well. We finished at 9:00pm and then had a hearty mince meal cooked all afternoon by Campbell. The chainsaw borrowed from Gill and Ben works very well; light, sharp, powerful. My chainsaw is lighter, blunter, and not so powerful – I have uses for both of them.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 17°C—24°C; 1.7mm rain [80.1]

Turned the irrigation off. Found a dead brown bantam hen in the green shed; no idea why she died.

Our old sheep (ie not the 10 new ewes) have been let into the Triangle paddock – they were delighted with the change of scene and the green grass.

Campbell and I had a productive day, first clearing the outer edge of the orchard drive of poplar trash, later by chainsawing the poplars into sections of trunk between 3.5m and 8m long as per the instructions from Phil at PanPac.

Left a message for Henry O’Kane re the old grapevine posts I might be able to use to face the ha-ha. The north-eastern face of the ha-ha is 81m long; the corner angle is 26m long, and the future westerly face will be 50m long. So, to do just the current 2 faces would take about 300 2.4m reused vineyard posts (stacked 7 high); to do the whole planned ha-ha would take about 450 posts.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—21°C; 7.8mm rain [79.8]

Banged in 27 posts. Weather alternating hot/sunny and warm/drizzle. Campbell Ewing arrived around 8:30pm; he’ll help me here for the next couple of days.

Talked to my ISP, Airnet today – Telecom NZ are offering a better (on paper) service for half the monthly fee. Telecom’s GoLarge plan is $50 a month with 1-2Mbps speeds and essentially unlimited data transmission. However upload is 128K bps (well it is ADSL). But Telecom won’t guarantee:

• any speed above 256K bps – you have to try it and see whether your circumstances permit the 1-2M bps rates – and you have to sign up for 12 months service to try it.
• any traffic at all if the network gets congested – Telecom point out that the same network is shared by multiple ISP companies and so they have no control over congestion caused by customers of other ISPs.

Airnet’s response is that they only have business plans, no residential plans; I am paying $73/month for a low-cost business plan. I could get an Airnet plan matching the speeds and capacities of the Telecom’s GoLarge plan but it’d cost $90/month. This needs further investigation.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 17°C—30°C; 0.9 mm rain [79.1]

Karola reinforced her Totara tree guards, fearing the onslaught of the bolshy ram lambs if and when we let them into the Triangle. Good news is that lamb #607 did not escape today. Late afternoon our 10 new Romney ewes from Sam Russell arrived in a ute – actually they were from Sam’s other farm, 20 mins up the road from Tainui Station, and John Hallgarth, Sam’s manager of that farm, brought them in for us. The newbies have the Front paddock to themselves while they get acclimatised. We’ve had long discussions about how to partition up the sheep to keep rams away from ewes (until May anyway), and to integrate the new sheep gradually, and to keep tighter control over the bolshy ram lambs.

In the morning I laid a wire from end to end across the 150m section of boundary fence next to the Royal Galas and marked out where the posts will go – that’s another 28 posts to ram.

Later I went into Hastings and picked up the 4.88m long Hurricane gate I’d ordered from Tumu for the gateway west of the homestead into the orchard. Also started putting wires on the 120m stretch of new boundary fence from the Scott’s to the big shed.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 17°C—26°C; no rain [79.5]

Finished digging strainer post hole then Karola and I banged in a further 17 posts. Late afternoon, when the sun was a little less intense, I completed the exhuming of the wrongly positioned strainer and then Karola and I put up some electric fence in anticipation of receiving 10 romney ewes tomorrow. Then we went and caught errant ram lamb #607 who again had got into the next door Scott’s orchard. He’s getting wilier, running rings round us. Eventually he tired. We’ve put netting round the woodpile under the casurina windbreak to see if that stops his exploits.

As requested, Kaz faxed over some suggestions for the sheep yard design.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 15°C—32°C; no rain [80.5]

Hot summer day. The sitting room here is somewhat cold in winter and only on days like today does it come into its own – so I spent the high noon part of the day reading in the cool, calm sitting room. I’m up to chapter 3 of “Mastering Regular Expressions” which is most enjoyable, but only to a certain sort of person.

Stortford Machinery sent out a “hoses truck” immediately upon getting my report of the ruptured hydraulic pipe on the post rammer – it was fixed by 9:30am.

A lamb repeated yesterday’s escapade by jumping off the pile of apple logs behind the casurina windbreak into the neighbouring Scott’s orchard. Karola and I chased him round for 30 minutes or so and I again finally got close enough to grab a hind leg. We restacked some of the wood to make it a less obvious stairway to heaven and there’s been no repeat so far today – also put a couple of battens on the fence where there seemed to be some missing.

I called and Phil of PanPac is going to come and look at the poplars later this week with view to carting them away for cash.

Went to Tumu builders merchants and got half a dozen 2.4m 180mm thick strainer posts and a couple of spray cans of flourescent (but eco-friendly?) ground marker paint. Also reordered the gate I ordered 10 days ago – as I suspected, ordering things via the weekend staff on a Saturday isn’t totally reliable.

I have planned the sheep yards and associated driveway and, heeding Karola’s comments, I now have to reposition one of the big strainer posts by about 6 metres, [sigh]. I got the hole half-dug this evening and began the excavation of the post to be moved.

At 5:00pm I turned on all the tree irrigation taps.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 17°C—33°C; no rain [81.1]

The Bowens left for the market before 7:00am, without a sound.

Gill and Ben gave us a superb dark green wrought iron cockerel weather vane recently; today we installed it on the end gable of the garage, it looks splendid. We also put up the 3 wooden slatted blinds Gill gave us in the store room in the garage; they fit exactly and improve the looks from inside and out.

Several tuis have been around today; they have adopted a rather annoying metallic craking sound to end their songs with and I was puzzled as to what bird was making the new sound until at dusk I watched a tui sitting in the plum tree outside the back door warbling away, including the harsh metallic crake.

Alan Ladbrooke kindly brought over his forklift tractor and helped me disentangle the broken post rammer from the post it was ramming when it broke. He told me that the council trucks spraying and sweeping the road yesterday were trying to get rid of about 1000 litres of elderly blood being transported from Progressive Meats to somewhere in Napier. It was an accidental spill from a truck that covered most of the road from the Scotts to the south along to the Ladbrooks 3 doors up to the north. Never a dull moment in Oak Avenue.

Hen still has 5 chicks today – the 2 that looked like they were on way out are now running round full of energy again.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 15°C—29°C; no rain [80.7]

On this quiet Saturday Karola went shopping and I pondered plans for sheep yards. It’s not that I want to interrupt the fencing for yard building, but putting the fences at places which won’t hinder the yard building later is what I have in mind. At last I have a firm proposal – this plan puts the yards near the current makeshift affair, inside the Island paddock and with shade from trees as well as sheep ‘flow’ from dark to light and away from the sun, as recommended by sheep psychologists everywhere. Biggest concern has been how to allow trucks, including Mobile Shearing, to connect their chute (USA lingo) or race to the yards.

I reinstalled 3 of the posts we rammed yesterday; the 3 most crooked. Also did online configuration of a Dell desktop computer for Anna and her sons, again.

A few weeks ago Karola bumped into Mark and Katie Bowen at the Hastings Farmers Market – selling their own Macadamia nut products. Mark is son of Richard and Annette Bowen; Annette is sister of Juliette Bowen who rented Karamu for several months back in the 1980s. They are all Mahia Ormond relations. Anyway, Karola invited them to stay here on one of their weekly trips to the Hastings market and they came today with their children: L, Melanie, and Angela.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—26°C; no rain [80.1]

Chris O’Kane and his dad Henry continued cleaning up the poplars – they’ve laid out the big trunks so that I can cut off the side branches and put all the rotten bits and broken branches in a large, tall heap for eventual burning. Surprising how the giant digger with its timber claw can pick up quite small bits of wood. Adam Ladbrooke came with his tractor and mulched up the twigs and small branches left behind, so, finally, the poplars are moved. I can go ahead with rebuilding the boundary fence with the Vernons and extending the orchard drive fence and planting areas.

Meanwhile Karola and I spent all day putting in fence posts. My target was 50 posts; in the end we did 33. Partway through banging in the 34th post a hydraulic pipe burst spraying my face with tractor transmission oil – I’ll have to wait until next week to get it fixed, today being Friday and this happening at 8:00pm, about an hour before dark.

For unknown reasons, and I conjecture it’s lack of water and the wrong food, 3 of the 8 latest bantam chicks have died and 2 more are showing the same lethargy symptoms I saw in the dead ones the night before they died, so I’ve put the family in the coop and fed them chicken meal and fresh water – I’d given them water and chicken meal sisnce hatching but the hen seemed to trek off into the garden and not take advantage of it – maybe that contributed.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—25°C; no rain [80.8]

More fencing for me; more Titoki releasing for Karola.

Meanwhile Chris O’Kane and his dad Henry did turn up and got stuck into moving the poplars with their huge Daewoo digger. In 5 hours they moved all the main trunks and they only have cleaning up to do tomorrow. Of course we have a paddock – the bonfire paddock – 1/3 full of rows of large poplar trunks awaiting our disposal. We may cut off the side branches and then see if PanPac will take them for furnace fuel – now the trunks are out in the open it’d be possible to load them with a self-loading logging truck.

I also spoke again today to Sam Russell re Karola wanting 10 Romney ewes to complement our flock – Sam plans to draft some out for us tomorrow.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—21°C; 0.1mm rain [80.5]

Final strainer post hole dug before embarking on ramming the intermediate posts; this strainer and the one I dug the hole for yesterday are now rammed in ready for use.

This morning I turned off the leaky/weepy pipe tree irrigation. Also climbed into an oak tree next to the garage and removed some small branches obscuring the Internet wireless transceiver.

No sign of the O’Kane brothers coming to move the felled poplar. I did try to exterminate a wild bee’s hive in the poplars – apparently the bees get annoyed if you disturb them with heavy machinery and they take it out on the drivers, so best to get rid of them before the O’Kanes turn up.

Karola and I penned up the sheep; I held and she snipped the dags off two dirty-bottommed ram lambs; I then attended the bad feet of #204 and #209; front left foot in both cases – #209 had maggots as well, ugh.

Karola has now “released” half the 28 Titoki trees along the new drive.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—23°C; no rain [80.7]

Another nice hot day; dozed and read until evening. Dug another strainer post hole.

After discussions with Karola about gate placement and the like I’ve modified my plan for the current fences and as a consequence I’ll have less to do later but need to put in a couple more strainer posts now. There’s tension between doing the easiest thing, doing what seems best longer term, and a compromise by doing the best one can without inconveniencing the orchard operations too much.

More cheep-cheep noises in the green shed; 8 more chicks have emerged and I didn’t even know that hen was sitting. That makes 15 more bantams this season so far.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 16°C—26°C; no rain [80.5]

5 strainer posts rammed in and some guide wires attached, with Karola’s help. Karola also “released” 7 Titoki trees along the new driveway, a big improvement.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—27°C; no rain [81.8]

Rained quite heavily just after 6:00am and drizzled on and off for next 4 hours, then the sunshine began and the day turned into a scorcher. By mid morning the ground was dry again but it was too hot to contemplate working on the fence so I did filing inside instead.

We went to the 6:00pm showing at the Napier Century Cinema of “Queen” – quite enjoyable but not unmissable, some nice moments. Jenny and Noel Hendery went with us then came back to Karola’s chicken roast dinner – on the hottest day/evening this summer, ironically.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—32°C; no rain [81.1]

Nice weather but a day of fencing spoiled comprehensively by a late afternoon car crash in the Avenue – 50m west of our new entrance. A young male sole occupant of a red saloon died when his car hammered into one of the oaks at speed, bursting into flames. We were out on the homestead – orchard boundary and I was chainsawing when Karola stopped me and said she’d heard an enormous crash. We went to investigate and could see the flames and wreckage from our gateway; two cars and some people were already there but didn’t seem to be able to get close; I called 112 just in case. The 112 call was answered after about 4 rings but the fire/ambulance/police dispatcher couldn’t raise the ambulance or fire people for about 3 minutes, which felt like a very long time. Just as I got through a fire engine arrived and they put the fire out in seconds – despite flames 2-4 metres in the air. Police are still on the scene and the road is closed for the night. About as unlike a James Bond movie as you can get, makes you feel quite sick; after the initial flap about what, if anything, you can do to get any survivor out, you worry – could it be someone in a family we know – were any of our geese/sheep/dog out on the road – how many people, any other vehicles involved, and so on.

Just as when we left New Zealand in 1974, deaths in cars figure on the news a couple of times most weeks, more on public holidays and long weekends; since we’ve been back in New Zealand Tony Fletcher’s sister was killed on the way from Wellington to Hastings and Rob Haylock was killed over near Wanganui – in neither case did their car cause the accident. I try hard to travel between Monday and Thursday since hearing (from a meeting I was in in 2001 with the Assistant Commissioner of NZ Police) that these are the statistically safer times.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 19°C—25°C; 2.6mm rain [81.1]

Finished digging the strainer post hole I started yesterday, and in the evening I dug the last of the 8 holes for strainer post needed before I hire the fence post rammer.

Two strainers – the ones at either side of the Front paddock – are already installed; that leaves 6 to install. The strainer holes are ready, the strainer posts have been laid out and marked showing where the wires are to go. The next job is to attach a wooden cross-piece or “foot” and then put them in the ground. After a pair of wires are attached and strained up, the bottom wire and the 2nd-from-top wire, then the positions of the intermediate “running” posts can be decided and marked on the ground. Only then will post ramming begin.

In the afternoon I went to Mike Smith at Stortford Machinery and hired their post rammer again. I took with me and lent Mike Smith the Massey Ferguson book that Gill gave me for my birthday. He then showed me the tractor just like mine that he’s refurbishng and repainting in Ferguson grey – he’s quite keen on Massey Ferguson tractors.

Karola took me to a show at the newly refurbished Hastings Opera House where we watched and listened to a concert by the students of a Singing Summer School held in Hawkes Bay. The students want to become professional singers, mainly opera singers. The first hour was missable but it got better, ending with a final number including Dame Malvina Major.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 19°C—23°C; 1mm rain [80.7]

GST completed for another couple of months. Karola’s done the filing and apart from our 2005/2006 tax return we’re about up to date.

Karola and I put up a short temporary netting fence between the Island paddock and the Scott’s boundary. 4-5 lambs just ignore the electric fence and were off down the new drive this morning so something had to be done. Now all the sheep are in the Middle paddock – the hay paddock of last week – and they’re loving it.

A long story but late morning a forestry contractor came round and looked at the poplars – estimated that, even with the paper mill paying $20 a tonne, it’d cost us around $3500 to just get rid of the main trunks – leaving us with the “slash” to clean up. I was fairly cross, having been under the happy illusion that selling the wood to PanPac would help defray the cost of cutting the trees down in the first place.

So I rang the O’Kane’s, the firm which cut the trees down, and spoke to the father and asked for his help – upshot was that son Chris O’Kane came round mid afternoon and said he’d get the poplars moved out of the way next week. We agreed that just getting the poplars out of Alan’s way and near the bonfire would be fine; we can decide what to do with it all later, and they’ll be easier to handle out in the paddock.

Last night Karola and I took a bead along the back of the garage and out towards the orchard, using a torch beam to tell us when we were in line with the garage. Tonight I began a strainer hole where that line intersects with the new boundary between homestead and orchard; I’ve dug about half of it.

All irrigation of our Homestead trees turned on.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 19°C—26°C; 2.5mm rain [81.0]

Relaxed summer day; hot with a cooling breeze. Alan Ladbrooke came over after lunch and we talked about plans for the orchard this year and Karola and I agreed to see if we could get the felled poplars moved as Alan’s people – the Irish O’Kane brothers – have repeatedly said they’d come and do it, but nothing has happened.

GST tax due in at the end of the week; most of it done this evening.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—30°C; 0.9mm rain [81.0]

Rain expected and arrived early evening. Meanwhile Karola sprayed thistles in the Front paddock and I spent much of the day topping the hay paddocks to encourage rapid regrowth of palatable grass and clover. I also chopped thistles in the Island paddock and we moved the sheep into the Triangle.

Got 20l diesel and 12l standard petrol from the garage.

Went to a very amusing film called Little Miss Sunshine – not a great film, but certainly a funny one.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 17°C—25°C; 4.6mm rain [81.3]

Warm and muggy today; rain forcast for late today and tomorrow – though I think it unlikely. But that made the mid afternoon hay baling a bit more exciting as we needed to get the bales under cover smartly or it all might be spoiled. The baling was all done by 5:00pm and all bales were stacked safely in the big shed by 6:00pm; Karola and I were exhausted. The trailer takes 14 bales comfortably, 21 with a 3rd layer and more with a 4th layer but by then you’re heaving them up to almost head height. In the shed we laid tarpaulin on the lime floor and made a stack 6 bales high.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—25°C; no rain [81.6]

Overcast day, but still quite warm.

Karola saw some lambs on the lawn; a few have learned how to scale the ha-ha clay bank; it’ll not be so easy once I’ve faced the clay with posts made from ex-apple tree trunks, but I don’t expect to get round to that for a few more months.

Meanwhile I spent the day clearing a 1-2 metre wide swath of bamboo next to the big oak – now we have line of sight along the back of the garage and out to the Island paddock. This is all in aid of siting the gateway at the end of a future track running along a future fence parallel to the side of the homestead.

Lis and Patrick Cooney came for dinner; they’re off permanently back to Perth taking Lis’ aged parentswith them – the parents have been the reason Lis has spent so much time here over the last few years – now Lis and Patrick are selling the house on the beach at Harmoana and leaving on 22nd.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 12°C—21°C; no rain [81.2]

Another sunny day, hot in the sun but just right, with a gentle breeze, in the shade.

Jim Cornes came and collected his ram this morning. It’d jumped into the geese enclosure to be with the stray ewe lamb – well 2-tooth actually, a last-year’s lamb. The fence was buckled but still standing where the ram had struggled over. Turned out that the stray also belonged to Jim so he took it away too.

Karola and I weeded the 60 Yew trees along the roadside fence – in the shade and the ground is still moist enough that pulling up the weeds was easy, the deep mulching that Campbell and I gave them also helped.

I’ve completed the 1/2-dug srtrainer post hole; only 2 more to dig before I get on with putting the posts in and putting on guide wires – then I can hire th epost rammer and bang in the intermediate posts; that’ll be real progress.

Bob Masters came and turned the hay – took him about 15 minutes. He thinks there’ll be about 100 bales; he expectes to return to bale the hay on Monday.

I’ve cleared a swathe of bamboo along the edge of the grove nearest to the big oak; this is to allow me to line up the future drive and the gateway into the orchard with the back of the garage. About another hour should clear enough for the sightline.

Correction: one bantam hen sitting; couple more are just laying eggs and aren’t yet broody – I took their eggs.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 9°C—26°C; no rain [81.6]

Quiet day; more thistles (geese enclosure and part of Front paddock). Karola mowed and weeded and sprayed and watered the five-finger trees and other natives from the Australian section to the orchard road entrance.

Couple of bantams are nesting in the green shed.

Karola contacted Don Shaw who lives a couple of houses along Ormond Road towards the river and runs a few sheep. He drove over at lunchtime and looked; it’s not his stray ewe lamb.

After lunch Bicka spotted some strange sheep and a dog in the orchard; we investigated and it was Jim Cornes recapturing a couple of his sheep that had escaped from across the road. He caught one but the other, a goat-like brown Chatham Island ram with big curling horns, was too frisky and so Jim left him to be collected tomorrow. The stray ewe lamb we caught yesterday is not his.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—23°C; no rain [81.4]

Glorious day, all day. Haymaker Richard Rolls has handed over to Bob Masters an agricultural contractor who is based a lot closer to us – it was a bit silly having Richard drive his little tractor over from Havelock North, repeating the journey each time he changed implements. Bob and Richard came and had a look at 8:30am and Bob came with his Massey Ferguson 350 70hp tractor and had the hay all cut in about 15 minutes. He says he’ll be back on Saturday to turn the hay and probably be ready to bale it on Monday.

Spent a few hours getting more thistles out of the hay paddock, helped by Karola. We also shooed the Pukeko family into the neighbouring orchard to avoid haymaking accidents like last year.

Someone must have found a stray ewe lamb on the road – Karola saw them chasing it up the orchard drive. I caught it and we tied it up, gave it some water, it seems a bit thin but woolly. Tonight we put it in with the geese while we decide what to do about it.

Peter Offenberger, his wife Charlottte and son Tom dropped in for afternoon tea – they’re on their way back to Wellington from Tauranga.

I topped the geese enclosure and the Triangle paddocks.

Bob Masters, Rye Ltd, Agricultural Contractors, Hastings. Ph: 027-445-8319 after hrs: 06-878-3263
(R G Masters, 701 York St, Hastings)

Hawkes Bay Weather: 4°C—21°C; no rain [81.2]

Inspected the homestead and orchard – all pretty much as we left it 4 days ago. One of the 2 most recent bantam chicks has disappeared, so we’ve only 7 chicks left altogether. Karola exterminated thistles in the Triangle paddock; I cut a few out of the hay in the Middle paddock. I also investigated a Pukeko nest in the Middle paddock; Bicka had caused much consternation by running around in the long grass. I helped one Pukeko chick out of its shell and later reports said it was up and running about with its parents.

Most amusing sight of the day was a rabbit running flat out along the back of the big shed, passing within a few inches of Bicka racing in the opposite direction, obviously hot on the scent. A few minutes later Bicka got on the trail of another one which, closely followed by Bicka, raced towards the shed – rabbit skips under the gate and Bicka screeches to a halt, being a bit too big to fit under the gate.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 3°C—18°C; no rain [81.4]

Languid breakfast at Pitoitoi with Geoff & Felicity Rashbrooke and son Max, briefly on hols from London where he works as a data-gathering journalist for de Havilland. Then fleeting visit to Mary in Karori and late lunch with Bridget and family in Khandallah, setting off for Karamu mid afternoon. Afternoon tea with Cecilia Johnson in Pukera Bay, then dinner in a pub in Waipukurau. Surprising traffic congestion at Otaki – km after km of traffic crawling towards Wellington, but that evaporated after we turned off for Shannon and Manawatu Gorge just before Levin. We listened to a few more taped lectures on Western philosophy to while away the time – I finally had to admit that Karola was right and we’d actually heard the first 3 30-minute tapes on the return leg of our last Wellington trip, so actual progress was only 2 new lectures. I will keep dropping off to sleep (Karola was driving, NB).

44mm rain captured for December in Mary’s rain gauge out by the pump shed.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—16°C; no rain [?]

Wet but not so cold. More time with Bridget. She and I had a discussion about her website/application and the future use of AJAX technology to mimic the client/server applications she used to write for the bank (BNZ) when a programmer there a few years ago. That plus some libraries of Javascript could make all the difference to her revamp of her business web applications.

I rang Gerald at Karamu – all’s well and they’ve had a few heavy showers.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 9°C—18°C; 0.8mm rain [?]