Monthly Archives: February 2007

“Funeral” or rather a commemoration for the life of Dorothy Offenberger (Gill’s ex-step-mother-in-law) aged 83 I think. Amazing person.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—18°C; 0.5mm rain [?]

As we settled the sheep into their fenced pastures for the next few days we noticed that a lamb was missing; after some searching we concluded it was Piccolo, the lamb we’d lent to the Ladbrookes as a pet lamb. Unable to find it or get anyone on the phone, Karola went round and sure enough Piccolo was back at the Ladbrookes in his swish and well-stocked pen.

Filled the trailer with eucalypt firewood and thsi time we drove the Landrover down, pulling the trailer. Lunch in Waipawa at Abbott’s Tea Rooms, as usual – but we were really too late and they let us eat the leftovers as a favour. Drove down through the Wairarapa; traffic was light even when it got to be 5:00pm.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 15°C—27°C; no rain [81.0]

Farmlet maintenance plus one more stay post; Karola weeded the wild paddock for “thorn apple” and other weeds said to be poisonous to stock. Gerald continued his weeding of the tree planting area along the orchard drive. Old cull ewes got a bit of fresh grass up beyond the Island paddock; the rest of the ewes went back in the Triangle until tomorrow when we expect to go to Wellington for 3 days. Bit worrying that the ewe #217 with the big tummy bulge due, the vet said, to some muscles giving way when lambing, got herself cast last night – I got her on her feet this morning; she didn’t seem unhappy, just a bit thirsty so I guess she wasn’t actually cast for long.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—29°C; no rain [81.0]

Nice start to Sunday; lazy breakfast on the verandah in warm sun and gentle breeze. Rest of day spent on data entry into gnuCash, a free and fairly simple accounting program. The aim is to be able to produce the answers that the Inland Revenue require for Karola’s business, as stated on their form IR10. It is fairly boring typing in double-entry transactions for each line of each monthly statement for a whole year, even though gnuCash does learn quickly and is able to provide very handy shortcuts for repetitive stuff. That’s 12 statements for each credit card and bank account. Today I did one bank account.

For light relief I put in one more stay post; one more to do before I can start stringing wires across in front of the Royal Galas. Karola sewed and weeded.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 12°C—23°C; no rain [80.2]

Replaced the old stays on the posts either side of the northern Homestead entrance off the orchard drive. Experience is that reusing old orchard posts as stays is a false economy because they tend to shatter. Replacement involves cutting the wires, to take off the tension, removing a few battens and then just trimming a new stay to exactly the same length as the old one and refitting. The fence along the orchard drive from the road to the northern entrance is now back as it was, albeit with a replaced stay. The next stretch remains with wires cut as it will be extended to go right up to the beginning of the Royal Galas, across the rough paddock where the poplar trunks languish. Also installed the 2 stays on the big strainer on the corner of the orchard drive and the netting fence to go across in front of the Royal Galas – that strainer will also support a gate that closes off the orchard drive at the top end, eventually. The gate is ready, painted and is a twin of the one at the road end of the orchard drive.

Gerald did another morning’s weeding – I gave him a couple of apples (slightly blemished) and Karola took him home at lunchtime before going off visiting for the afternoon.

Harry rang late afternoon and we debated global warming and related issues for a long time, until my cellphone battery gave out.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—22°C; no rain [80.6]

Gill and Ben left for Wellington after breakfast. No logging trucks today. I put in 3 stay posts. Gerald worked on his weeding in the morning and I took him home at lunchtime. Karola and I put the ram lambs and Nelson back in the Middle paddock after shooing the ewes into the Front paddock to feast on the weeds Gerald has thrown over the fence. Karola had lunch with “Maggots” Maxwell and Liz Sommerville – old Woodford schoolmates.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 15°C—27°C; 2.8mm rain [?]

One adventurous ram lamb got out last night and when we tried to chase him back he got in with the ewes; using guile and maize I captured him and exiled him in the Middle paddock – he’ll be rejoined by his mates in a few days.

Took in the Landrover Discovery WX2288 in at 10:30am for 100,000km service and a warrent-of-fitness; all done, and given a thorough wash too, by 3:30pm. We gave it a car wash on the way in but it barely removed the cobwebs; the HB European Ltd wash was much more effective. Alsdo picked up a battery for Karola’s Landrover remote keyfob.

Late afternoon a large timber truck arrived and began loading the poplar trunks. However it turned out that the maximum length it could take on the truck or trailer is 6 metres and I’m sure we were told 3.5 to 8 metres. I spent a frantic hour or so chainsawing up the logs to fit the shorter specification. The truck took one load and didn’t come back, it was close to 5:00pm so I hope it’ll come and take the rest tomorrow, there’s supposed to be 3-4 truck loads.

Gill and Ben arrived late afternoon for the night, as planned, on their return from their working holiday in The Coromandel.

Piccolo the orphaned lamb returned to us today; fat and a bit unkempt, so he’ll fit right in.

The Dupree’s, people who’d stayed for a few months at the homestead during the 1990s, came with some visitors for a look at their old stamping ground, just as we were about to have dinner. They live on a spread up the Taihapi Road; we’ve passed it many times on the way up to Cynthia Chalmer’s place.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—26°C; no rain [80.3]

Quite a warm day; Gerald did finally finish his battle with a lot of couch grass at 12:30pm. Meanwhile the Landrover is in for a service and MOT and Karola and I went shopping. Despite strong desire to nod off, I continued wrestling with “gnuCash” – a free program for recording Karola’s farming expenses – the deadline for getting these into the Tax Man is early March, they are for 2005/2006 after all. There were 7 rabbits hopping about in the geese enclosure this morning, in amongst the ram lambs.

Dave from Baywide DIngo came and discussed earthworks with Karola – some smoothing and filling of holes about the place – work should begin next week.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—27°C; no rain [80.4]

The final 3 of 5 strainer post holes that Campbell and I dug have now been filled; positions carefully checked, posts inserted and earth rammed home.

Mike Croucher mowed the main lawns this afternoon; Karola mowed along the new drive and by her yew hedge.

Gerald came again today, the couch grass is proving tougher to get out than he expected so there’s another morning’s work to complete half of the lemonwood/karamu tree planting area.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—23°C; no rain [80.6]

Gerald came around 7:30am and I took him home around 12:00pm. He’s doing a thorough weeding job.

The big strainer post is finally fully rammed in. I did a couple of hours fencing today, mainly just chainsawing 8 stay posts into the right shape to fit into the strainers.

Native tree irrigation turned off today. I also moved the pile of 100 or so unused 1/4 round fence posts that were dumped some months ago off a Tumu delivery truck just slightly in the way of the orchard machinery manoevering round the big shed.

Someone, probably me, left the gate into the Middle paddock unlatched so the young ewes and ewe lambs went exploring out of the Triangle paddock, however it was a short-lived adventure. Sheep and chickens all have water; I add a couple of cloves of garlic to the chickens’ water, that allegedly helps minimise parasites.

Subaru battery went flat again – it goes flat quite quickly when one of us leaves the tailgate open. It also has a slow puncture. We recharged the battery enough to start in a couple of hours and Karola took the car in to tyre place in Omahu road and they took a nail out of the tyre – they’re self-healing tubeless. Apparently the car needs a pair of new back tyres soon.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—27°C; no rain [80.6]

Gill and Ben left mid-morning for the Coromandel Peninsula.

Before lunch, and after taking Gerald home from a few hours more weeding, Karola and I got the big strainer post aligned and firmed into its hole. Karola weeded and I had a quiet reading afternoon.

The Pink Eye disease seems to be spreading so we decided to separate the infected, or likely to be infected, ewes from the rest. In the late afternoon we took all the ewes and ewe lambs into the Island and drafted them into the culls and the keepers. The keepers are: the 10 new Romney ewes, the 7 ewe lambs and 1 wether lamb, the 9 young #4xx ewes, and 4 of the old #2xx ewes. One Romney ewe still had a bad foot as did 5 of the 7 old ewes due to be culled:

• #204 (front left),
• #209 (back right), front left had healed,
• #215 (back left), almost recovered,
• #216 (back right),
• #217 (front left), mild,

The other two ewes on the cull list are #211 and #212.

Ewes #209 and #215 have got Pink Eye in at least one eye; #216 is blind and #217 is almost blind.

We switched #216 for #218, so that #216 is now on the cull list and #218 is a keeper. Despite losing one of her twin lambs this year, #218 does look healthy and has (relatively) good feet so she’ll get another chance.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 9°C—24°C; no rain [80.9]

Had pleasant day with Gill and Ben here; Karola went to Waipukurau to see the penultimate NZ cinema showing of “My Friend Flicker”, film of the schoolchild book of 1950s. She came back with a table and bookcase.

Blind sheep #216 seems a bit more comfortable today, though still blind. Karola tells me that ewe #209 may be succumbing to the same thing, it is very contagious, our Vet books tell us.

Gerald was sighted in the distance so he must have done another mornings weeding.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—22°C; no rain [80.3]

Day of computer stuff, writing long e-mails and web log entries.

I did find one old ewe, #216, wandering round away from the rest. She is blind; we think it is “pink eye” which is incurable but seldom fatal disease common in sheep. If so then she’ll come right in a few days so we’re isolating her and ensuring she has easy grass and water; we also gave her a small dose of Keytol “perk-me-up”.

Rabbits running riot over the lawn; this morning one shot past just in front of me, possibly disturbed by Bicka.

We’ve put the male sheep flock into the small area behind the bamboo for a day or so to clean it out – they’ll then clean up the goose enclosure which has plenty of grass.

Gill and Ben arrived around 9:00pm from Wellington. Gerald did weeding from 8:00am – 10:00am in the orchard drive-side planting area – he’s now done almost 1/3; he’d done most of that before we got back from Wellington; it certainly looks a lot better, even if it is to standard not strictly necessary for the trees’ sakes.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—22°C; no rain [?]

First day back; just relaxing but I did complete the extraction of the large strainer from its hole, the one I started excavating before we left for Wellington. Tomorrow I hope to resite it about 400mm east and lined up with its fellow strainers along the boundary.

I am running out of time to do the farm accounts for tax year 2005/2006 (latest due is March 2007), and already it’s GST-time again. Also my little PHP program to measure the speed of various network connections seems to be working OK, I’ve done a number of 7-hour runs, sampling the speed to and from my web sites in New Jersey, USA every 20 minutes.

Apple picking began in our orchard last Monday. No sign of the PanPac trucks coming to pick up the poplar trunks yet – Phil said Thu/Fri this week. Gill and Ben come for the night tomorrow, on their way for some holiday further up the East coast.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—24°C; no rain [?]

Rammed in 23 posts in the morning; relaxed in the afternoon – apart from digging out one of the strainer posts that is about 400mm out of position. We’re going down to Wellington tomorrow; Gerald is house-sitting – so I’ll re-do the strainer post when I come back.

I took the post rammer back to Stortford Machinery but Mike Smith said to keep it, seeing as how I hadn’t finished and it would save taking it off and putting it back on the tractor later. If they need it in the meantime they’ll come with a crane on a truck and pick it up. So I drove the Fergie home again along Omahu road, across the expressway, and along Oak Avenue.

Hawkes Bay Weather: __°C—__°C; no rain [80.0]

Karola decided ewe #203 was twitching too much and maybe had flystrike. Not so, but as a precaution we spent the morning applying Magnum anti-fly/lice liquid to all the sheep. I also attended to the feet of:

• One of the Romney ewes, “guaranteed good feet” (yeah, right!) – limping a little on front left foot; on inspection it had been quite bad but pretty much cleared up by itself – just a small patch left. I pared the hoof and sprayed.
• #204 – I treated her front left foot for quite bad footrot
• #209 – still limping quite badly on front left foot so I re-treated that foot
• #212 – had suffered from bad footrot recently but today was walking normally so no treatment needed
• #215 – lost big tag, old red tag – her back left foot was almost healed, much better

In the process I noticed another ewe lamb still in with the rams. We put her with her mother. In the commotion a ram lamb got in with the ewes and so we had to redraft them; now there are 8 lambs in with the 10 new Romney ewes, the 11 original ewes and their 9 daughters of 2004. That’s 7 ewe lambs and one wether lamb.

After lunch I began what was to have been a day of ramming posts; by 8:00pm we’d put in 14 posts with another 22 to go and it started to rain. Postponed the 22 and retired fairly much exhausted for the night.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 16°C—23°C; 4.2mm rain [79.8]

Two strainers rammed in; much pacing up and down to try and align the strainers across 280 metres or so of fence; one major miscalculation is to forget when you’re aiming for the centre of a strainer (the end strainers) or passing along one side or the other (intermediate strainers where it meets another fence or turns a corner). Ho hum.

Karola has been bottling it up (plums, that is) and doing a heck of a lot of weeding. Bicka has been running and jumping most elegantly, ears flapping in the breeze.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—22°C; 0.1mm rain [79.5]

Cooler and drizzled on and off most of the day. So, inside work and computers today – I set up a new weblog (blog) today on our web space in the USA, it took about 30 minutes to set up and then over an hour to get some initial correspondence into it.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 16°C—21°C; 0.2mm rain [79.7]

Colder cloudy day. Karola and I picked many kilos of plums off the old, gnarled plum tree at the back by the green shed. Karola continued weeding the tree plantation area, feeding the weeds to grateful ewes. I sorted out some lengths of used #8 wire for the fence. Spent rest of the time on computer tasks.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—21°C; 5.6mm rain [78.9]

60 battens stapled, so that bit of fence is complete.

Took delivery of 2 more of Harry’s big water troughs a couple of days ago and put them into use today. One of them exhibited the same behavior that made me stop using one of the original 3 troughs – when filling it gets about 1/2 full the valve/float starts oscillating, sending a big shock wave back along the delivery pipe, and sometimes breaking the fittings attaching the trough to our 60psi water system. I cured it by attaching the new trough to one of the irrigation remote taps which each have a pressure-reducing valve, and I turned the pressure way down.

I see one of my new Romney ewes is limping and I’m not amused. We’ll have to get them in and take a look soon; I do hope it’s not footrot – may be a thorn or something.

Karola finished her painting of 3 gates – a primer and 2 top coats of Karaka green.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—26°C; no rain [79.2]

Karola had an industrious day painting farm gates. She has primed 3 gates and put the 1st of 2 topcoats (Karaka green, of course) on 2 of them.

Meanwhile, not nearly as disadvantaged by the bruised thigh as I’d expected, I carried on fencing. The 50m piece of boundary fence now only needs 60 battens stapled on and it’s finished. Today I finished choosing from our wealth of old #8 wires, putting up the last 3 (of 7) wires, straining them up and joining them using crimps. I also redug 2 running posts that were rammed in crookedly.

Watched another “Foyle’s War” tonight so we’re back in synch with the new series being broadcast on Monday evenings on UK-TV (Sky). I haven’t heard any more about the “free-to-air” digital broadcasts of the New Zealand terrestrial channels that was rumoured to start in late 2006 – apparently we’ll be able to share the current Sky dish and only need to buy a decoder to get TV1, TV2, TV3, Prime etc. The advantage being that we can choose to watch a programme from Sky and one of the public channels at the same time – something we can’t do at present without a second Sky subscription.

We discussed which of the ewe “old girls” should be culled this year. The current list is:

• #204 – quads in ’07 but lamb eyelash problem (inherited)
• #209 – bad temperament, built like a pig, and bad feet
• #211 – 3 stillborn in ’07 and stole a lamb
• #212 – triplets in ’07 but persistent bad feet
• #215 – quads again in ’07 but persistent bad feet
• #217 – in ’07 triplets but could only feed 1 and 1 fostered ewe lamb died
• #218 – one of her ’07 twins was stillborn

Rain gauge had 11mm in it for the month of January.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—27°C; no rain [79.5]