Monthly Archives: March 2007

Small Block Day at the Hastings Showgrounds. Kaz and Yvonne came over mid morning and we went there for lunch and a look around. Smaller crowd and didn’t feel like there were any more exhibits than last year. A feature this year was a number of informative talks – we went to one on solar heating, waste disposal, and how to get “off the grid” – electricity they meant – so using solar, water, wind, and generators.

Nelson has been looking peaky for a few days so Kaz and I got the rams into the yards and took a look – poor Nelson, nasty fly strike on his purse (as we farmers call it) – maggots in large numbers – aarrrggghh. Still, at least he’s not being eaten alive now and will be on the mend. No wonder he was down in the dumps. Hope he is in shape again when he rejoins his ladies in May.

I’ve put the ewes in the Front paddock which has started to come away after the rain, and we let the rams have a couple of hours in the Triangle paddock for a change, though it didn’t take long before a couple of ram lambs were running on the lawn and threatening to venture down the ha-ha and rejoin the ewes, so we then returned the rams to the Middle paddock.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—28°C; no rain [?]

Dull and muggy – more boring computer stuff.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 18°C—23°C; no rain [82.0]

Overcast with patches of drizzle; more computer stuff most of the day except for visit to Mat Carney (stockbroker at Esam-Cushing in Hastings) and to Havelock North for Karola to get some shoes for wearing in the UK in July.

This evening Karola, Claire and I had dinner at the Westshore Fish Cafe and then went to a French film in Napier, “Orchestra Chairs”, quietly enjoyable.

Where the rams can get in (to the geese enclosure) eventually the geese venture out. Be interesting to see if they return to their enclosure tomorrow morning for their maize.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 18°C—21°C; 0.9mm rain [81.8]

Raining at last – light rain fell most of the day.

Murray Robb visited from Wellington, up here with his 83 year old mother to attend a funeral in Napier. He is an old school friend and also has helpful advice on financial investments. We spoke of that in the morning and in the afternoon, after the funeral, he returned with his mother and Karola served lunch and we showed them round Karamu before they set off back to Wellington around 2:30pm.

Spoke to Bruce Richardson, Mobile Shearing. Our plan is to try and have only one proper shearing in December each year, just crutching the flock in April shortly before the lambs go into the orchard for the winter and Nelson is reunited with his many wives. Nelson is to be reunited on May 14th – this seems to give us lambing after the major frosts and when there’s plenty of food without having very young lambs around at Christmas with the fear of serious fly strike – we’d like to dock the lambs in November at the latest. Bruce will come and crutch our flock in the next week or so.

Nick Chrystall, our accountant, rang. He let us know that the new law on additional taxing of overseas “equity” investments begins on Monday. I thought we were in the clear but it ain’t so. In a nutshell, only a select set of Australian shares are exempt from the new law, and Karola’s managed fund investment is not exempt. The new law requires that she take note of the market value of her investment on April 1st every year and – regardless of the actual returns as income or capital gains – she is to declare 5% of that April 1st value as taxable income. I’ve done some sums and I think we’re much more vulnerable to the volatility of the New Zealand dollar than any effects of this new tax. The strong New Zealand dollar makes it hard for exporters and for people with pensions sourced overseas.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 17°C—19°C; 8.1mm rain [82.2]

Quiet day; lunch in Napier with Noel and Jenny Hendery who are shortly to go to a remote island in Fiji for a vicar-swap. No electricity, no shops, very primitive by Napier standards.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 15°C—23°C; 3.3mm rain [81.8]

We got the 7 cull ewes penned up and as promised the sheep truck arrived around 8:45am. As we were penning them up, while they cast reproachful glances at us, Karola remembered that we needed paperwork to accompany them so I dashed off upstairs and filled out the travel documents.

The truck driver rang on the front door, they hadn’t told him about coming in via the new driveway that I’ve numbered 121 Ormond Rd for the purpose. Incidentally, more by good luck than good management I found out recently that all dwellings on the left-hand side of the road must have odd-numbered “rapid response” numbers, even numbers for those on the right – left and right assuming you’re coming from the reference crossroads as an ambulance or fire engine or police car would.

I had stressed the use of the 121 entrance but forgot to ask for a sheep loading ramp – the gangway the sheep walk up to get into the truck. So the truck went off to deliver the animals it’d already picked up and he came back an hour or so later pulling a loading ramp. Young chap, polite and mildy amused at our antics.

Of course the sheep, sensibly, were not keen to get onto the truck; the largest and heaviest of them made a break for it and even my dive tackle couldn’t hold it. The other 6 were safely on the truck and this one ewe just wanted to go to her mates grazing in the next paddock. After a few futile attempts to get her into the pen we opened it up so she could see through to the rest of the Island paddock and we got her through. Then, after a few more attempts to drive the big old ewe back into the pen, the driver let one of the other ewes back into the pen and, after another couple of fumblings we had all 7 ewes loaded and on their way. All in all it took us about 90 minutes – with proper yards and management it’d have taken us 5 minutes.

Rest of the day I continued computer wrangling and in the afternoon Karola went shopping with Bicka. When they got back, and only disclosed the next morning, Bicka absconded with a package of spicy sausages and a leg of lamb – no doubt they’ll be cached somewhere in shallow earthy holes in the garden. There’s no point in being cross at this stage.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 9°C—25°C; no rain [82.2]

In the morning we took Claire to the Hastings Showgrounds, to the Farmers Market. After a couple of hours sampling and purchasing we went to the top of Te Mata Peak and watched the paravaners – including a granny of advanced years who rode tandem with an experienced flyer – beautiful day and clearer than usual so views across Hawkes bay were spectacular.

Moved sheep around and water troughs in the afternoon, ready for the old ewe culls to be picked up tomorrow morning around 8:30am.

Turned off the leaky pipe irrigation.

Claire cooked us a nice meal – potato gnocci meatballs and then an excellent lemony apple pudding with ice cream; delicious but fattening I’m sure.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 9°C—24°C; 0.1mm rain [81.8]

Useful morning typing in tax expense data and an even better afternoon. Karola and I put up a gate from the Middle paddock into the goose enclosure; it swung high and true first time. We then got Nelson and the rest of the ram lambs into the yards and:

• trimmed Nelson’s feet – he is limping on his front right leg but there are few signs of footrot so I’m not sure whether it’s something wrong with his foot or his leg joints. He was fairly docile – which is perhaps a bit worrying.
• Karola removed the dags from one particularly daggy lamb and a couple of others that were a bit untidy. We drenched them and sprayed them with anti-flystrike stuff. Claire watched and helped hold things.

Karola also put grass seed on the grass bridge, recently leveled by Baywide Dingo as part of the earth works they did for her at Karamu. Now we need some rain.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—22°C; 0.1mm rain [81.4]

Nice weather again, the threatened southerly never turned up. Inspected all the tree planting areas; looks like another two yew trees are dying and a couple of five-finger, but on the whole everything is flourishing.

Afternoon spent struggling with the Croucher Apple Mac and its wireless connection to ASDL broadband – finally it worked though not as simply and reliably as it should.

Started putting a gate from the Middle paddock directly into the goose enclosure as Karola requested; the rams rushed through to enjoy the extra acorns and some fresh grass after weeks eeking out a living on the hard dry ground of the Middle paddock.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 5°C—22°C; 0.1mm rain [81.3]

Soon after 7:00am the water in the Homestead stopped flowing. As it slowed down all the cold taps became hot water taps.

• The 3 x 5000 gallon rainwater tanks are still 80% full
• the water pump, which pumps water from the rainwater tanks up into a holding tank in the attic is running continuously

Conclusion: that the blockage was between the outlet of the pump and the holding tank. The suspects: two in-line filters for removing particulate matter from our drinking water. I loosened the filter jars and Karola then undid them and we stared at the revolting filters inside – slime-laden. It’s hardly surprising that no water is getting through. So, after breakfast, we went down to Harris Machinery and got two new filters, around $60 each. The shop assistant said it was usual to change the filters every 6 months or so, not every 2 – 3 years.

We continued on into Hastings stopping at Karola’s favourite kitchen hardware store, “Fears” and I bought a butter-spreading knife. We stopped at Hector Jones to discuss vacuum cleaners and their rubbish bags, and I bought a pair of safety glasses and a set of three little bradawls. We finally went to Woolworths aka Countdown and I bought too much of everything. It’s best if I stay at home while Karola shops.

We fitted the new filters and everything sprang back into life.

In the afternoon Mike Croucher returned and finished mowing the lawns. As he was leaving he asked if I knew anyone who could fix his Apple Mac computer which wouldn’t access the Internet any more. By 6:45pm I gave up, defeated for today at least. Everything seemed to be working except for the actual broadband link itself, and we may have the wrong password for it. Hope to find out tomorrow.

Irrigation turned on for all of the native tree plantings, and the yews and Australian Section.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 5°C—25°C; no rain [81.2]

Mostly inside myself, computer wrangling continues. Karola out in garden deconstructing an old set of railings round the Chinese Phatinea – a favorite tree of mine because of its gnarled and weathered appearance. I did dig up about 6 of the running posts along the Royal Gala netting fence-to-be, trying to correct the crazy angles that they assumed when rammed in.

Mike Croucher came and mowed most of the lawns before equipment breakage stopped play.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—23°C; 0.4mm rain [81.7]

The orchard 5-ton truck ground its way along the orchard drive 4 or 5 times today, heavily laden with large apple crates, off to the packhouse.

Cool with a light breeze and mainly sunny; delightful weather that is supposed to last until Thursday. Karola and I spent the morning talking to BNZ “private bank” agent, Tam McDonald about our financial plans for the future. He is not a young flibberty-gibbet but almost as old as us and talked quite a lot of sense, as best we can tell. With his advice, and that from my old school friend Murray Robb I hope we can make a plan and basically forget about it most of the time, get on with the other, more interesting things in life – though I suppose to Murray and Tam it must be at least a bit interesting otherwise they’d have horrible jobs.

Long breakfast and lunch breaks on the verandah; computer wrangling the rest of the time.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—25°C; 0.1mm rain [81.7]

Relaxing day, no work at all, except for mucking about on computer.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 5°C—25°C; no rain [81.3]

Clocks went back last night. Karola drove us back to Karamu; we set off around 9:00am and were back for lunch. Went via route 50 across the Takapau Plains this time; stormy weather on the west coast and a very swollen Manawatu river gushing through the gorge slowly petered out until by the time we go to Hastings it was just a few spots of rain and some boisterous winds.

Took Gerald home; to my surprise he’d painted another gate – even though he’d said he was only going to do two.

I switched the sheep around a bit after seeing to footrot in #215 front right foot, again. Ugh, maggots etc. The culls went into the weeds; the ewes and lambs went into the Triangle, and the rams stayed put.

Karola went off to the Horse of the Year show in the afternoon, saw Mary Wilson’s horse doing very well.

Claire Ewing arrived around 7:30pm; she’s staying with us for a few weeks while she does part of her medical ‘practical’ at the Hastings hospital.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—26°C; 0.5mm rain [?]

In the morning Mary, Gill, Ben, Karola and I went to the Karori Sanctuary – the first time Mary, Karola and I had been. An overcast day and the bird life was a little subdued, it being past the breeding seasons, but we did enjoy the bush growing without possums or deer and the tameness of the birds, including native bireds we’d never seen before. Met an interesting man who was tracking Giant NZ Weta tagged with tiny transmitters – apparently these large flightless insects traqvel kilometres for love, companionship, or perhaps just for a good chat (yeah, right).

In the afternoon Karola and I went out to Pukera Bay – we planned to stay with Cilla Johnson, Karola’s cousin, overnight. Bicka had a run on the beach and in the evening we attended Tim and Gwyneth’s party for Tim’s 60th celebration. A storm came up out of the north and high winds banged about all night.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 12°C—26°C; no rain [?]

Up at 6:00am; on the road just after 7:00am complete with Bicka and two boxes of apples. Traffic light; got through 5 audio tapes and onto the beginning of the last 12 lectures. Arrived at Bridget’s place in Khandallah by 11:00am. Went with Bridget to the Johnsonville mall and ordered the PS3 that Chris and I are going to share; PS3 is due for release on Friday March 23rd.

In the evening went to cinema in Petone with Kirsty and Bruce: “Notes On A Scandal”, excellent acting though not a topic to my taste. Dame Judi Dench was magnificently evil. Bicka had a run on the Petone foreshaore beforehand and we had a meal together at a Thai restaurant afterwards.

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

Gerald came, finished his painting of the 2nd (final) gate; he made his bed ready for tomorrow and drove home in the Landrover.

Picked a couple of boxes of apples for Wellington; checked the sheep had water after putting the cull ewes in the Island and the other ewes back in the Front paddock. Gave the rams a bale of (last year’s) hay.

Funnily enough, while we were shivering in an autumn cold snap it was very warm in Wellington today.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—21°C; no rain [80.3]

Gale force winds off and on all day. Bicka and I spent a few hours in the afternoon putting up netting along the orchard road end of the wild area. It started to rain a bit, large drops but not very convincing but by dinner time it was bucketing down. It only lasted an hour or so and now it’s back to overcast skys with high cloud though the temperature has dropped quite a bit.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 4°C—24°C; 7.9mm rain [80.9]

Heavy shower of rain in the night (16mm in Mary’s rain gauge) However, rest of the day was quite pleasant and no sign yet of forecast wintery blast from the Antarctic. Karola got off OK (15 mins delayed) on flight to Wellington. I plan to join her on Friday.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—27°C; no rain [80.3]

Stortford Machinery want their post rammer back so Karola and I banged in a bakers dozen more posts and I took it back. It’s quite fun tootling along on the Fergie along a busy Hastings road peppered with road works where huge sheep trucks and endless SUVs and light trucks sidle past.

Karola did a lot of raking and mowing out under the Canary Island pine and beyond the geese enclosure.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 16°C—26°C; 8.8mm rain [80.7]

Karola has been out in the sun raking and rolling behind the garage in anticipation of a bit of rain – it’s an area levelled by her earthmoving Baywide Dingo people.
We counted the sheep and all tallied OK; I refilled the water troughs. Grass levels are low but there’s still some nourishment.

As part of that darn tax calculation I need to have a clear record of “stock levels” on the 1st and last day of the tax year. Now I’ve got it I’m going to record the details here:

Where: #000=Rams, #100=new Romneys #200, #400, #500, #600 = year
                      #000s    #100s    #200s    #400s    #500s    #600s    Notes
1 Apr 05: .............. -        -       21       35        -        -     Start of 2005/2006 tax year
27 Apr 05: ............. -        -       21       33        -        -     2 lambs returned to Kaz
4 May 05: .............. -        -       20       33        -        -     1 ewe died
9 Aug 05: .............. -        -       20       32        -        -     1 lamb, injured eye, given to Luke
12 Sep 05: ............. -        -       20        9        -        -     23 two-tooths sold
7 Oct 05: .............. -        -       20        9       43        -     2005 crop of lambs
13 Jan 06: ............. -        -       19        9       43        -     1 ewe dies of black mastitis
29 Mar 06: ............. -        -       19        9       42        -     1 lamb died
31 Mar 06: ............. 1        -       19        9       42        -     End of 2005/2006 tax year
26 Apr 06: ............. 1        -       19        9       42        -     Nelson the stud Romney ram arrives
14 Jun 06: ............. 1        -       18        9       42        -     1 ewe died spspected Oleander poisoning 
8 Aug 06: .............. 1        -       18        9        0        -     all lambs sold 
21 Aug 06: ............. 1        -       11        9        -        -     7 cull ewes sold
8 Oct 06: .............. 1        -       11        9        -       1     First 2006 lamb
24 Oct 06: ............. 1        -       11        9        -       27     1 ewe lamb died
27 Nov 06: ............. 1        -       11        9        -       31     2006 crop of lambs
24 Jan 07: ............. 1       10       11        9        -       31     10 Romney ewes of mixed ages arrives              

Hawkes Bay Weather: 12°C—27°C; no rain [80.3]

Karola was in and out, clearing weeds outside and reorganising her rooms inside. Gerald finished one gate. The day just went.

Bicka is a clean dog, temporarily, after Karola gave her a good bath.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—27°C; no rain [81.3]

On computer all day except for a walk around the water troughs this morning and raking up some of the weeds Gerald pulled. Gerald put primer on one gate yesterday and 1st top coat on today.

Bridget’s Chris and I have agreed to share the cost of a new Sony Playstation 3 – I’ve not owned a game console before but the heart of this one is a gang of supercomputer chips designed and built by IBM, it’s also prgrammable so ithought I’d take a look. They go on sale in New Zealand at the end of the month I believe. Idea is to have it turn and turn about, 3 months at a time but if Natalie takes a shine to it I may never get my turn.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—24°C; no rain [80.8]

A day of dentists and barbers, female in both cases. Then more on the computer, including yet another marathon multi-hour debugging session with Campbell who is visiting and doing research at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles this week. The laptop I lent him is playing up; and I thought I’d left all the arcane rituals of Microsoft Windows behind with my move to the Mackintosh. [sigh].

Karola cleaned up the little daggy lamb we washed yesterday and then she helped me sqirt it with anti-blowfly stuff and give it a drench of worming mixture and also of the Keytol “pick-me-up”. We hope the little ewe lamb will be feeling better tomorrow.

Gerald began painting some galvanised gates for us; he has 4 and each needs an undercoat and at least one top coat. He’s primed one gate and is doing a good job.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 12°C—28°C; no rain [80.6]

Cull ewes given top 1/3 of the Triangle paddock; everyone else stayed put. Gerald finished his weeding of the tree planting area along the orchard drive.

In the evening Karola and I went to The Valet in Napier, a French film by the same director that gave us The Closet, Francis Veber – quite fun and nicely French.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—27°C; no rain [80.7]

I gave up trying to use “gnuCash” program to do Karola’s GST, already overdue by 6 days. Reverted to the old “pencil and paper” plus a bit of adding up in Excel and was done by lunchtime.

Outside I took 2 trailer loads of the weeds Gerald has dug out from among the young trees to Karola’s long “bund” compost heap – another couple to go, I’d say. Later in the afternoon I processed about 40 large bamboo poles that I’d felled many weeks ago – cut them into relatively straight and even-diameter sections and removed the springy fronds.

Cull ewes were allowed back in the Island paddock, having finished cleaning up the little section near the peaches and the big shed. Rest of ewes and ewe lambs allowed to roam between the Front paddock and the wild area in front of the Royal Galas. We caught and washed the rear end of a small, daggy ewe lamb and popped her in with the cull ewes to see if that’d revive her spirits.

Mike Croucher came and mowed the lawns, just a light trim this time.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—28°C; no rain [?]

Morning just slipped by, as so many do. We put the ewes into the wild area for the day so that Karola’s Dingo and Bobcat earth moving men can have unimpeded access to the remains of the heap of soil made when the ha-ha was excavated.

I took Gerald home at lunchtime; the return trip took 12 minutes, not “more than an hour” as others would have it. Of course I didn’t allow for losing: her keys, the way, and track of time.

Earth movers came at around 2:00pm, only an hour behind schedule, and left before 7:00pm having finished leveling the heap and spreading soil in various places where there were hollows. All in all, probably a success. The lambs will be upset; no more mountain to gambol on.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 12°C—29°C; no rain [80.8]

Spent the morning looking into the topic “Tragedy of the Commons” and its possible relevance to global warming; spent much of the afternoon setting up about 60 photographs on the web site, mainly of the outside life at Karamu. Did finally get outside for an hour or so working on the fence. Karola exhausted herself tidying drawers and cupboards. Gerald spent the morning weeding the Ngaios.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—26°C; no rain [80.6]

Quiet day after a very refreshing sleep; good to be back home again. Ewes and ewe lambs sent to graze the wilderness where the poplar trunks were; old cull ewes had a little green niche at the top of the Triangle paddock and the rams were allowed nto the Triangle for the day. Ram lambs immediately jumped through the electric fence and wandered arround the garden so we shut all the road gates and let them wander.

Gerald cut through the irrigation alkathene pipe on Friday morning and couldn’t find the tap to turn it off – well it is, accidentally, rather well hidden. So, sensibly, he turned all the irrigation full on to relieve the pressure at the breakage point. Today, with aid of a molegrip, a kettle full of boiling water, and a pipe join I repaired the leak, and anothe place where a leaky pipe had been damaged. As it’d been dry for several days I ensured all the irrigation taps were turned on – I expect to leave it running for 2 – 3 days.

With Karola’s help I doctored the old cull ewes’ feet – I saw that 4 of the 7 were limping although in fact they’re mostly getting better.

Gerald taken home by Karola at lunchtime on her way to town, shopping.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 16°C—24°C; 0.3mm rain [81.0]

Having spent a (most uncomfortable) night at Bridget’s place, Karola went off with Bridget and the two granddaughters to “Gymbaroo”, returning around 1:00pm. I spent the morning watching Bridget’s improving DVDs and catching up on magazine reading. We set off around 2:00pm, went via the Wairarapa, had dinner in Dannevirke as usual, and arrived home as darkness fell.

Animals all present and correct. Six more 30-minute philosophy lectures listened to (or snoozed through) as we travelled; Karola will be so pleased when this course is over.

We were pulling the trailer with about a tonne of gravel in it that Karola had rescued from our building works at Pitoitoi; the Landrover made no fuss but drank a lot of petrol.

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

Penny and baby Lulu came out ot Pitoitoi in the morning; she’s going to borrow the house for a few weeks while her place gets a kitchen/bathroom renovation. In the afternoon we loaded up and shut up Pitoitoi as we are to stay at Bridget’s place tonight – her husband Chris having flown to Christchurch on business for a couple of days.

As we are in Wellington we went to see our banker, Kimaron, in BNZ. We also chased around to find Mary a “dust buster”, a small rechargeable, persona vacuum cleaner. Previous one had broken and the replacement was absolutely gutless but we think we’ve found a good strong sucker this time.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 9°C—22°C; no rain [?]