Monthly Archives: April 2007

Dull day; GST calculations and then late afternoon I straightened 5 posts on the western inner fenceline next to the peaches, only 2 more to straighten but strengthening drizzle stopped play. Mary’s rain gauge shows 13mm of rain here in April.

Hawkes Bay Weather:10°C—18°C; no rain [82.3]

Around noon the Ewan McGregor’s group of perhaps 50 people on a day trip looking at Hastings memorable trees dropped in as planned. Karola gave them a ten minute speech on the history of the trees at Karamu, a very good speech. Later we went with the group and looked around Stonycroft, another old house with an acre or two of gardens about a kilometre away. Stonycroft has been donated to the Hastings council and they have begun refurbishment. The outside is almost finished but the inside is still quite a mess. Sadly there has been too zealous attention to original colours and patterns and the exterior walls are painted too vivid a yellow and the concave iron verandah roof has large yellow and green stripes intending to mimic the original striped canvas awning. A faded oxblood red or dark green roof and trimmings against an off-white or cream wall would be much more to my taste. Also, Stonycroft is smaller than Karamu and the upstairs rooms have parts of the ceiling sloping to accomodate the gables. All in all it looks like something from a set for The Prisoner or Dr Who. Karamu Homestead’s consistent proportions and lack of fiddly bits and well chosen (by Karola) colour scheme are much more pleasing.

Alastair and Wendy Thompson dropped by; they’re up in Hawkes Bay for the weekend from Wellington where Wendy is a lawyer working for Inland Revenue and Alastair is the boss of www.scoop.co.nz. We enticed them to stay for a big roast dinner and relaxing evening watching the final episode of the final episode of Prime Suspect. Nice touch when Jane Tennyson (aka Helen Mirren) says “and don’t call me Marm, I’m not the Queen!”.

Hawkes Bay Weather:6°C—16°C; 0.1mm rain [82.1]

Steady drizzle at night and intermittent drizzle during the day so no outside work today. Karola was out and about with her “Graduate Women” meetings and meals.

BC – Bantam census. 18 bantams turned up for breakfast today. I think that means we’ve mislaid 3; one to the hawk yesterday and a brother and sister pair that decided to set up camp elsewhere – last seen for several days near the front gate and not taking part in any foul flock activities.

Hawkes Bay Weather:10°C—15°C; 0.3mm rain [82.2]

Extracted a long and old length of alkathene from the bamboo – it used to stretch from a well near the Homestead down to the Casurina windbreak on the south (Scott’s) boundary when Karola’s mum planted it back in 1970s. Used it to run a pipe from one of the new irrigation taps (new as in ‘this century’) into the weed paddock – and now the rams can stay in there, they have a working water trough.

Picked up three 50m rolls of docking netting from Farmlands – the fencing continues – and began straightening the crooked posts along the inner fenceline from the big shed to the Scott’s boundary – about a dozen posts went in at strange angles.

Meanwhile Karola has begun marking out where the trees will go in the planting strip along that boundary. She is putting weed killer on each spot and we expect to mulch each new tree just in a small area around the tree, not blanket the planting strip as we did along the orchard road planting area. Karola is planning on four rows of trees a metre apart, one tree every 3 metres. This western boundary planting area is 5 metres wide and over 150 metres long.

Karola says she saw a hawk get one of the bantams; it’s unusual for the hawks to come in quite so close to the Homestead. I’ll have to do a census and see how many bantams come to breakfast tomorrow.

Hawkes Bay Weather:8°C—20°C; 0.6mm rain [82.3]

Cold start but a sunny day; no work outside apart from the moving of sheep – tonight we rotated the ewes into the Front paddock and the rams into the Middle paddock – they seem to like a change even if the grass really isn’t very different. Had brunch at the Bay Espresso cafe, a new cafe in Omahu Rd. It’s clean and airy with fresh good food. Finally I got to speak to the drench-gun guru, John, at Farmlands and he demonstrated how to reassemble it with fresh washers. The drench gun is now good as new. We also bought 15Kg of Nutrience dogfood for Bicka (not to be eaten all at once, you understand) and 3Kg of cat food that was on a promotional special. My order of 150m of docking netting hasn’t arrived yet. Gerald came and did a final coat on two gates and then walked back home. He finished earlier than usual so by the time we went to look for him he had been gone for an hour. There was a small but sharp earthquake around 2:40am this morning; it woke us all up briefly.

Hawkes Bay Weather:3°C—22°C; no rain [82.2]

Sheep movements repeated those of yesterday. In addition Karola and I put up the long gate on the boundary near the big shed between the new peaches and the remains of the Top paddock. To our delight the gate swung true and level on the first attempt.

We showered Bicka again today – Bicka got very grubby indeed in her excitement over digging up rabbit burrows; no doubt she’ll be muddy again quite soon.

Hawkes Bay Weather:3°C—21°C; no rain [82.1]

Quiet day; rams in the wilderness paddock; ewes in the Triangle – rams returned to Front paddock and ewes to Middle paddock at dusk. Gerald finished paintint the gate and seems intent on painting another one. One goose flew out of the geese enclosure but wasn’t smart enough to fly back in, so I caught it and returned it to the enclosure after dark.

One bath tap washer replaced upstairs; the tap body was exceedingly hard to unscrew even using my very large Crescent spanner it wouldn’t budge – but it did finally move after applications of WD40 and using my big pipe wrench – I thought the tap was going to tear off the end of the pipe though.

Four small light bulbs replaced – I wonder what we do with these fittings designed for small tulip-shaped bulbs when we switch to eco-friendly flourescents.

Hawkes Bay Weather:2°C—22°C; 0.1mm rain [81.8]

Karola and I continued most of the day putting the netting up along the Royal Gala fenceline; as dusk fell we completed the 170m or so from the big shed across to the orchard drive. The wilderness area is now physically fenced and we can put the electric-fence-defying ram lambs in there with safety.

Gerald came, as expected, around 7:00am and started painting yet another gate – we have six more to do one way or another but it isn’t clear whether Gerald is bored with gate painting by now.

At 8:00am, as expected, Hawkes Bay Tree Surgeons arrived with large mulcher and 2 surgeons – they swung around on ropes with saws and chainsaws and cut down a lot of rotten branches high up in several oak trees threatening to fall on the garage or onto Oak Avenue itself. They spent the whole day here, leaving us with a few logs and a good pile of mulch.

Our high point of the day, well actually Bicka’s high point, was when she climbed the 3 metre high pile of poplar branches – a future bonfire – threading her way though tunnels until she emerged very pleased with herself on top – I scurried off for a camera but of course, modest dog that she is, she’d jumped down before I got back.

Hawkes Bay Weather:2°C—18°C; no rain [82.0]

Karola and I put the netting on 100m of the new fence – that is, the posts and guide wires being in place we unrolled, strained-up and stapled the netting to the posts. The 2nd roll was fastened to the end of the 1st roll using 2.3mm crimps; the straining-up uses a pair of boards and six bolts. The netting is clamped firmly between the boards and then a wire run from top and bottom of the clamped boards to a towbar on either the Landrover or the tractor; wire strainers are then used to tension up these wires and hence the clamped board and so the entire netting fence.

This morning I gave Bicka a shower; she likes being clean even if it only lasts a few hours. This afternoon Bicka found a nest of 4 young rabbits and, rather to my surprise, ate them. Red in tooth and claw, this Beagle owning.

Hawkes Bay Weather:3°C—19°C; no rain [81.9]

In the morning we went into town. Went to Farmlands to pick up replacement washers for my drench gun – but the expert wasn’t there and we couldn’t figure out how to fit the new washers so I need to return on Monday. Then on to one of the Hawkes Bay Woodturners who makes letter holders, but these turned out not to be the right sort. Fairly unproductive though not unpleasant morning.

In the afternoon more fencing.

First thing I moved the rams into the wasteland and weeds where the poplar trunks were, returning them to the Front paddock in the evening as the ram lambs are still woolly and have little regard for the electric fence. Left the ewes in the geese enclosure for a final night.

Hawkes Bay Weather:6°C—21°C; no rain [82.2]

Cold night again. Claire left from work (Hastings Hospital) after lunch and texted us that she’d arrived home safely in Auckland around 7:00pm tonight. Her mum Jane arrives back from a couple of weeks in Paris on Saturday night.

A bit more fencing today, and I put the ewes into the geese enclosure until tomorrow to clean it up a little – there were loud sounds of crunching acorns when first the ewes went into the enclosure.

Karola had another session of cosmetic dentistry this afternoon (another couple to go – all this for one new tooth) and this evening Karola and I went to “The History Boys”, an Alan Bennett film, very adroit.

Hawkes Bay Weather:1°C—19°C; 0.1mm rain [82.7]

Took the wool clip into Napier today. Shearing yesterday cost $186 but with current very depressed wool prices, exacerbated by a very strong NZ dollar and a weak USA dollar, we got $118 for the wool.

Gabrielle and Merv Harper came round this afternoon for some greenery for a wedding; Merv is Anne Velvin’s older brother, a retired farmer and knowedgeable amateur historian.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 1°C—17°C; no rain [82.8]

Cold blustery day, overcast and threatening rain.

Bruce Richardson arrived after lunch and the sheep were shorn. That is: 4 old ewes, Nelson the ram, 9 young ewes, the 10 new Romney ewes, 7 ewe lambs and 2 wether lambs were shorn; 22 ram lambs were crutched. The ram lambs will be shorn in August about a week before their appointment with destiny (aka Progressive Meats); the ewes will be shorn again in December.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 4°C—16°C; no rain [82.9]

At last, a nice day and some outdoor activity. I used the Fergie to pull up 6 of the posts that were a little low in the ground and then completed stringing the 4 #8 wires along the (to be) netting fence along the boundary with the Royal Galas.

After just a few days feeding of sheep nuts Nelson is very keen and not at all shy at eating out of the bucket while being patted or having his ears pulled (gently). We mustn’t get him too disrespectful otherwise he’ll be trouble.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—22°C; no rain [83.0]

Pottered about. Checked sheep and geese and cat and most of the bantams were present and correct.

In the afternoon Roy Natusche and his daughter Anna came round – he is over 80 and has had several moderate strokes but remains a very cheerful and alert person. More discussions about his comrades and others from the days of the Second World War, including one Smedley Ridge (well that’s what it sounds like, anyway).

Hawkes Bay Weather: 9°C—19°C; 0.7mm rain [83.5]

A second free full breakfast at the Duxton. Lunch with Bridget, Chris, Natalie and Alex(andra) at Taste in Khandallah, then set off for Hastings. Stopped for afternoon tea at Cecilia’s in Pukerua Bay as I’d remembered I had some Microsoft product codes stored on my laptop. Lucian was home with his mother – it was his birthday – and we had more of Cecilia’s excellent chocolate cake. As I dug further into the computer problem I found that mysteriously a different version of Microsoft Office had been partly installed on top of the working version provided by Miranda (now in Chicago). I deleted that and showed Cecilia how to find and answer questions when the system stupidly hid them under another window, and, well, it was working when we left – and no news is usually good news.

Had dinner at a fairly new restaurant on the road from Shannon to the Manawatu Gorge, close to the Japanese University campus in Palmerston North.

Home around 8:30pm; Bicka at last back on her own turf but a bit under the weather from all that confinement for hours in the back of the car.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 12°C—23°C; 3.5mm rain [?]

Well he was actually 60 last month but they took the opportunity when one of his sons was back from Cambodia for a few days to have a delayed birthdya party. It was mostly a family affair with a few close friends as well, so we were homoured to be invited. An enjoyable party with all age groups represented and lots of food.

In the morning Bicka had a stroll round the quay area; it’s really very well done with walkways and grassy areas and a few trees.

Bicka had a run round in a grassy area in Tawa, down the road a bit from Murray’s place, and then had another night in the back of the car in the hotel multistory car park.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—21°C; no rain [?]

Took a brief look at my Playstation 3 – a shared purchase between Bridget’s Chris and me – very expensive for a games console at $1400 NZ dollars but it has an IBM supercomputer chip inside it that I want tinker with. Allegedly the PS3 can perform over 200,000,000,000 instructions every second, which is quite fast.

Took Bicka for her standard Khandallah walk; up Woodcote Road to the swimming pool, cafe and bush walks – there’s some lawns and seats in the bush whihc are ideal for a Beagle. It was raining so I took shelter at the cafe and was enticed into breakfast; Bicka had eggy-bread.

I spent much of the rest of the day driving around with Mary – we bought a new phone for her with BIG buttons, we took Bicka for a walk again at Days Bay – saw Penny and Lulu again as they were out walking in Williams Park at Days Bay. I got a little adapter for the PS3 that allowed me to use a computer monitor as its screen; as supplied it only uses TV sets. Had the PS3 set up and running Linux before bed time.

Karola, Bicka and I went off to spend the night in the Duxton Hotel, almost on the quayside in Wellington – Bicka had to spend the night in the back of the car in the hotel car park.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—19°C; 2.1mm rain [?]

Claire is house sitting. We (Karola, Gill Doyle, Bicka Brackenbury and me) got off in good time; Cecilia’s for lunch in Pukerua Bay at 1:00pm.

After lunch I had a go at fixing the “freezing” problem with Cecilia’s computer. It “froze” because a ‘modal dialog’ was asking her a question but this was hidden under an image she’d opened attached to an e-mail. Menacingly the hidden question was in fact demanding that she enter a Microsoft Office product code – the code known to daughter Melinda who happened to be in Chicago. So, no joy that afternoon.

We dropped Karola and Bicka off at Bridget’s in Khandallah and went on to the Rashbrooke’s for dinner – we’d been asked to arrive at 4:00pm and to my surprise we were there, on the dot.

I took Bicka for a constitutional on the nearby Days Bay beach – her familiar Wellington haunt. As I was in Days Bay I arranged to pick up my Pitoitoi computer monitor, keyboard, and mouse to see if I could get them to work with the new Playstation 3. Penny was walking with her young child LuLu in the park across the road from the beach when I got to Days Bay so we arranged to meet up at the Pitoitoi house after I’d given Bicka her run. Having delivered Gill Doyle and had a nice meal and robust conversations I returned to Bridget’s for the night.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—17°C; 1.8mm rain [?]

Lovely day, again. Lunch at Pernel’s Fruit World – Terakihi – delicious. Then a trip out to Waimaramara beach – a walk with Bicka along miles of golden sand; almost deserted.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 9°C—25°C; no rain [81.9]

Shopping in the morning and a bit of extra ha-ha fence strengthening in the afternoon. Gill, Karola and I swapped the two flocks – ewes in the Middle paddock plus geese enclosure plus Island paddock; rams in the Front paddock with the ha-ha.

We had Peter and Elizabeth Ormond round for a meal this evening.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—25°C; no rain [82.4]

Pottering about day; did a little more on the Ha-Ha fence, it needs to be really sheep proof before we leave for Wellington on Thursday. Another Poirot on the TV in the evening. We’re feeding the rams sheep nuts as Karola wants Nelson to be tamer – he eats out of your hand in a shy way, but I’m always a tad nervous that he’s going to eat the hand that feeds him because he comes at it from the side so even with your hand held flat it seems like it’s going to get nibbled.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—22°C; no rain [82.5]

Karola, Gill Doyle and I went to the Ormond Chapel in Napier for a 9:00am service and then went up to the lookout on the bluff; lovely clear day with hardly a puff of wind which would account for the mass of small yachts milling about at a race starting point out in the bay. We picked up Claire and went to Clear View for lunch. Poirot on the TV in the evening – very relaxed day.

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

Pruned the feet of the remaining #400-series ewes. A couple of lambs are still climbing the ha-ha but I expect a bit more attention to fastening the wires to the standards will eliminate that. Took Gill Doyle to town for some sheep nuts and then on a tour including feeding Nelson and chums on some of those sheep nuts.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—21°C; no rain [81.7]

Claire helped me bang in 19 standards reinforcing the 7-wire fence along the bottom of the ha-ha. We then mustered the 23 ewes and 7 ewe lambs and 1 wether lamb for a pre-winter pedicure. I got through all of them except for 6 of the #400 ewes before it became too dark. No cases of footrot or scald though you could see where it’d been.

Picked up Karola and Gill Doyle from Napier airport at 7:45pm and Claire made us a nice homecoming meal.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—21°C; no rain [81.5]

Karola flew to Wellington at lunchtime to meet Gill Doyle here on holiday from London – they’re sleeping at the Duxton Hotel tonight as Bridget’s friend Penny is still occupying Pitoitoi. They fly back here tomorrow evening. 700gm of fresh raspberries await their return.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—18°C; no rain [82.4]

As valued clients we have been invited for an afternoon of celebration of 40 years of sheep stud breeding and scientific recording at the Hildreth’s new sheep yards way up the Napier-Taihape road. You will understand the irony in this when all we’ve bought is Nelson, an elderly if huge ram with no ear tag (it’d fallen out) and hence no provable provenance and hence not saleable to a normal commercial farmer, he cost us $250 whereas average Hildreth rams go for $1000 or more. Our 10 Romney ewes from Johnny and Phileda Russell’s son Sam are also of Hildreth origin though we hope not too closely related.

Scientific breeding sheep programmes began in New Zealand in the late 1950s – the Bendalls in Eketahuna were founding members; I used to stay with them during school holidays and listened to their then revolutionary plans for increasing sheep production. It wasn’t a new idea to me even then as grandfather Amsden was a pioneer in England of scientific animal breeding. In his case the animals were White Leghorn poultry, selecting for and progeny testing for superior egg prduction; this was well before I went on farm stays in the school holidays.

So we drove up there at lunchtime. There were flocks of very healthy looking Romneys around the woolshed and new undercover yards, and 200 or so of Hawkes Bay’s sheep farmers chatting and milling about. Around 2:30pm the speeches began; from David Hildreth junior (who sold us Nelson), from the Hildreth’s tame research geneticist, and from a couple of successful sheepfarming clients.

Lawrence Yule, the mayor of Hastings district, introduced the speakers and also gave a short speech of his own; I thought it the best speech of the afternoon. He talked about the shortage of skilled labour for sheep farming, the characteristics of the workforce (“generation Y” or as Karola calls them, the “me generation”) and the real difficulty farmers will have in getting and retaining good farm workers if they don’t recognise this. The average age of New Zealand sheep farmers is 57 and it is increasing. He repeated something we’d heard on the radio last Saturday, that sheep meat accounted for just 4% of the worldwide consumption of animal protein. Aside: The radio programme had gone on to say that in order the most popular farmed meats were: pork (40%), chicken (30%), beef (25%), and a long way down, sheep (4%). Lawrence said that in the years ahead the major animal protein contest will be between factory chicken and factory fish; New Zealand’s sheep meet would always be very much a niche market. He observed a big discrepancy between the overseas market price of New Zealand sheep meat and the declining price to New Zealand farmers who this year have been getting around $3 a kilo; apparently unless prices to farmers rise to about $4 a kilo there’ll not be a living in sheep farming and one could expect many people getting out of sheep farming.

After afternoon tea we heard from Chris Liddell, chief financial officer of Microsoft – who happened to be on a fleeting vacation in New Zealand and is a family friend of the Hildreth’s and was born and bred in Hawkes Bay. In Chris Liddell’s Q&A at the end of his talk Karola asked a very good question about how Americans see New Zealand – Chris Liddell’s view was that they are aware and very positive about New Zealand – perhaps because of the “Lord of the Rings” film and the large number of Americans, especially West Coast USA, who come here for holidays. Chris also said he thought the branding of New Zealand products – meat included – was very weak. Karola’s question sparked several follow-up questions from the audience.

Chris Liddell said he thought that New Zealand could be, and would be, the “best little country in the world” but for its woeful economic record. In answer to a question he also said he had a lot of time for John Keys, the recently appointed leader of the opposition in NZ.

One feature of the presentations and the conversations was that there were constant references to farming partnerships – none of the men farmed by themselves, their wives were repeatedly mentioned as active in running the farms – a big change since the 1960s.

Peter Arthur and Diane were sitting behind us (on hay bales) at the Hildreth celebration so Karola made an appointment to see Diane after the event. They own and run Touchwood Books, the largest and most successful garden books online retail bookshop in New Zealand. They’re also on the Napier-Taihape road so we dropped in on the way home for an hour.

As we drove home the promised southerly change came and it poured with rain; it’s still raining a little now and hopefully will continue all night.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—24°C; 9.4mm rain [81.8]

Began putting up a wire and batten fence along the foot of the ha-ha to protect it and stop mountain climbing ewes until I get round to facing it with the 450 2.4m old vineyard posts I have bought from the O’Kanes. Meanwhile Nelson is still not too lively although is happier now that #401 aka Emma (Hamilton) is by his side; the rest of the ewes are in the Triangle with 4 bolshie ewe lambs careering through the electric fence and onto the lawn every now and then.

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

Claire has flu bug, bedridden since yesterday.

Ewes have decided that they like being on the lawn so are climbing up the ha-ha despite electric fence. I repositioned the fence along the top of the ha-ha but it made no difference. 4 ewe lambs and #401 all appeared on the lawn again shortly after I’d done that. Tomorrow I’ll find the couple of low points that they’re getting out and make a more substantial barrier I guess.

Subaru went in for a service tonight, it’ll be done tomorrow.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—21°C; 1.5mm rain [81.8]

Sunday Off – spent a lot of time moving the upstairs TV and DVD/VHS player downstairs and the downstairs TV and VCR upstairs – took 10 minutes to move and hours trying to make it all work again. Ended up with 4 spare cables but it all seems to be working OK now. The Sky satellite TV decoder can be viewed on any of our 4 linked TVs, though it has to be the same program on each. And, since this evening, one can play a video tape or DVD or CD on the machine downstairs and view/hear it on any of the aforesaid 4 TVs. The little wireless remote remote control lets me change channels on the Sky decoder downstairs from the comfort of my chair upstairs. Unlike Wallace & Grommit I cannot yet insert a DVD remotely.

Kaz and Yvonne stayed for the night and a languid morning, leaving for the other coast after lunch.

18mm rain in March, according to Mary’s rain gauge.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 12°C—27°C; no rain [81.9]