Monthly Archives: May 2007

Goose Charity has died and been consigned to the dustbin. Maybe s/he was just very old – but was shivering and not eating yesterday.

“WinTV PVM USB2” TV tuner box for the PS3 arrived today, I ordered it yesterday late morning.

Ewe #407 is still exhibiting same symptoms, doesn’t run away, does eat sheep nuts, hangs round the big shed, and I think she’s (hopefully temporarily) blind. Can’t see anything wrong with her eyes, not like when we got the outbreak of “pink eye”, but she doesn’t respond when I wave near her head on either side.

I completed my objective in sawing up half the apple tree trunks – about 250 I think. At lunchtime I took the chainsaw, well, Gill and Ben’s chainsaw, into Hastings and got a new chain and sprocket. Also the old chain is to be resharpened and it’ll be ready on Saturday.

Painted primer on two more gates.

Kaz and Yvonne turned up as expected around 5:00pm and we all enjoyed Karola’s beef caserole and apple crumble.

Hawkes Bay Weather:-2°C—19°C; 0.1mm rain (but not here) [79.3]

I spent the morning online looking at TV tuners for the Playstation 3. Bridget is quite interested in using the PS3 as a DVD player, games console and TV for the children’s room. Natalie has some excellent children’s DVDs already.

Lots more log chainsawing and painted primer on a gate. The sawn logs, all roughly a metre long, have been stacked in a square facing the sun, with one side left half open; perhaps it’ll be useful at lambing time.

I have 5 gates to paint before Sunday and a little more chainsawing. Gerald, our elderly houseminder, was painting gates for us but took best part of a day per gate and then got miffed cos the pocket money I gave him wasn’t enough – but we’ve smoothed that over now and he’s coming to house-sit at the weekend, but I want to get the gates painted ando out of the way before he comes. It took me about half an hour to do one coat on one gate this evening.

Karola swept up loads and loads more leaves for her leaf compost heap.

Hawkes Bay Weather:0°C—19°C; 0.1mm rain (but not here) [79.6]

More chainsawing – almost finished the pile from this year’s apple extractions. Karola continues sweeping leaves – she’s made herself a new large leaf compost heap.

Late afternoon we went to view the Cloverdale Boarding Kennels at 1148 Matapiro Rd, Okawa. They were much as I should have expected but Bicka is unlikely to find spending most of the day in a 2m x 4m stall surrounded by large, strange dogs in similar stalls very pleasant. We’re trying something different, a chance meeting with some dog owners we met weeks ago at Touchwood Books. We’re going to leave Bicka with them and their 2 fox terriers (said to be fairly unaggressive – that’ll be a 1st for fox terriers) on Saturday afternoon and pick her up again on Wednesday. That’ll give Graham Harvey and Tracy Craig (06-874-2977) and Bicka a chance to see how they get on and whether Bicka could stay with them for the 5 weeks of our UK trip.

Hawkes Bay Weather:1°C—18°C; 0.1mm rain (but not right here) [80.5]

As Gill & Ben want to borrow their chainsaw back briefly we decided to cut a few of the apple “telegraph poles” into metre lengths and add to our pile behind the Casurinas along the Scott’s boundary. We did 3 trailer loads, the metre lengths are almost too heavy when it’s the metre nearest the roots.

Karola did sterling effort hand-mowing the geese enclosure.

I fed bale of hay to the ram lambs again today; they pick at it but really are not starving, just eating the sweeter grass down to the ground which makes some parts of the paddock look very bare.

Ewe #407 seemed a bit better today; up on her feet and even nibbled some sheep nuts; here’s hoping – especially as I picked up her replacement tag today from Farmlands – I’ve got tags for the ewe lambs as well, big/medium ones which go in the opposite ear to the little button tag and are readable from several metres away.

Fixed, for now, a leaking alkathene join up by the big shed. I thought I’d fixed it before though.

Booked the Duxton for Sunday/Monday nights in Wellington.

Hawkes Bay Weather:-2°C—15°C; no rain [80.5]

Cold start but a fairly warm day. At last Karola and I got the rails up at the new road entrance despite many mis-cuts and mis-measurings by both of us, repeatedly – many a “senior moment” today. Bright spot in the day was that we managed to squeeze the last 5 rails out of offcuts from the previous planks, very satisfying, only just long enough, to within an inch. Still plenty for me to do to complete the nailing and try to squeeze out some of the warps using big G clamps, and adding reinforcer 1/2 round stabilizers between each span. There are 3 spans of about 2.5m on each side; 5 rails per span (3 x 6″ separated by 2 x 3″ with 4″ gaps between rails). There’ll be 2 1/2 round posts per span, not dug into the ground because that’d disturb the Rangiora growing close by, but adding rigidity to minimise further warping. I do think that it looks much better – the F-T-F-T-F pattern – as well as fitting in with the same pattern at the two gateways on the orchard drive and the gateway on the orchard/homestead boundary by the peaches next to the Casurinas and the Scotts boundary

Did a quick tour of the sheep, all present though #407 is looking way too quiet – just sitting around and doesn’t bother to move when you go up to her and scratch her head, not a good sign. I suspect she’s eaten something poisonous and may, or may not, be recovering by taking it quietly for a few days. I hope so.

Hawkes Bay Weather:7°C—22°C; no rain [80.0]

Another cold night but warmed up in the sun during the day. More railings erected today, over halfway on the driveway entrance rails. Karola went out for a lunch with some elderly companions, her group of Graduate Women.

My new 21″ flat panel Samsung digital display arrived today – it was ordered from Ascent in Wellington online yesterday lunchtime, quick service. It cures all the problems I was having with using my (shared) Playstation 3 as both a games console and a PC.

Hawkes Bay Weather:-1°C—19°C; no rain [79.7]

Burrr it was cold last night. Karola entertained Cynthia Chalmers and her granddaughter Matilda in the morning, I did a bit of e-mail etc. In the afternoon we carried on with the new railings for the road entrance, it’s surprising how long it takes to cut and measure and nail up a few planks.

Adam subsoiled and ploughed the now treeless area where a block of Royal Galas had been last week; it’ll be ready to plant with new peach trees as soon as the weather breaks.

Booked flights to and from Auckland for our UK trip in July/August – we leave on 18th July and get back on 24th August. Bicka will likely be in kennels for the duration.

Hawkes Bay Weather:0°C—20°C; no rain [80.1]

Quick trip to town and then mooching around including some more work on the new road entrance railings. Karola went out for the afternoon.

“Green Machine” came and pulled out the stumps of the 200 or so Royal Gala and 60 Braeburn apple trees cut down this week. Adam Ladbrooke pushed all the debris into our wilderness paddock and expects that it can all be burned anytime there’s a favorable wind – the heat from the large pile of dry poplar logs will incinerate the apple trees without waiting for them to dry out.

Hawkes Bay Weather:1°C—21°C; no rain [79.7]

Cloudy day, looked like rain, but no rain came. This morning I turned all the tree planting irrigation on; orchards have been irrigating every few days, especially for young trees, for weeks now. Five months without significant rain I believe.

A day of creating mulch; Karola did most of it and we completed all the Casurina trimmings and one of Karola’s piles of dead branches just in time to get cleaned up and take back the chipper/mulcher by 5:30pm on the dot. Ben, the 68-year-old mechanic at Green Meadows Hire, chatted about Landrovers – he has a Discovery, like ours but turbo diesel, and hankers after the original V1 Landrovers imported into New Zealand around 1952/3. Karola’s dad was one of the first people to import a Landrover, a V1. Turns out that Ben knows Cynthia Chalmers and her neighbouring brother-in-law David and had fixed Landrovers belonging to both of them. Small world, especially in Hawkes Bay it seems.

Karola also used her mulching hand mower to tidy up behind the geese enclosure, near the ailing Ginkgo tree.

After returning the chipper/mulcher we went to a Thai restaurant just outside Napier for dinner.

Hawkes Bay Weather:6°C—20°C; no rain [79.9]

Busy morning – with a brilliant blue sky and cold sunlight filtering through the mostly bare deciduous trees. Bicka got vaccination shot and kennel-cough medicine at Vet Services in Hastings; I bought Karola an extravagant birthday gift – a $200 very stylish bread bin to put my Vogel bread in :-). Also ordered numbered ear tags for #407 who lost hers a couple of years ago and for the ewe lambs. Sadly #627 died last night; our ministrations were too late or inappropriate, we’ll never know, and I buried her under the oaks this afternoon. So #627 doesn’t need a tag.

We put in our order for native trees but there’s some more discussion needed because some of our categories have been bought out lock stock and barrel already by early shoppers.

We hired the green shredder/chipper from Green Meadows for 2 days. $190.00. In the afternoon Karola and I mulched away; we probably have only one more morning’s worth of mulching to finish the Casurina trimmings.

This evening we went to Century Cinema in Napier and saw Woody Allen’s “Scoop”. Some good jokes but a bit too slight for my liking. Would make a good TV viewing but not really worth an outing to Napier.

Hawkes Bay Weather:7°C—20°C; no rain [80.6]

This morning I assembled the sawbench purchased a few months ago, having observed that the railings at the new drive road entrance will need sawing planks with a neat 30 degree bevel 60 times, so some technology help could speed things up.

In the afternoon we drenched the Romney ewes and the ewe lambs and Karola had bought some plain coloured tags so we put those in the ears of the Romneys until we get round to putting in properly numbered tags. One of the ewe lambs is looking a bit under the weather so we gave her a dose of the pick-me-up Ketol; one of the Romney ewes is very thin and has got some scratch marks on her flanks and one on her head and one on her rump – maybe she was attacked. Anyway we gave her a dose of Ketol too. Maybe she’s been rubbng herself hard on a fence or maybe she’s been attacked by birds – hard to say.

We switched the rams and ewes, giving the ewes the run of the orchard for a few days and putting the ram lambs on short rations back in the Middle paddock – they’ve had a couple of days of long grass and clover so it seems fair to let the ewes have a bit of a feast.

Alan Ladbrooke has changed his plan for replacng the oldest remaining block of Royal Gala apple trees with peaches; instead of pulling up the old trees in situ and burning them there he has gone back to Plan A and is cutting them up as he did last year and will burn the branches and roots on our poplar bonfire in the wilderness paddock.

Hawkes Bay Weather:3°C—20°C; no rain [80.2]

Very grey day. Latches put on the newly erected gates and railings from the gate to the Scott’s boundary almost completed. I have begun changing over the railings at the new road entrance to the more pleasing fat/thin/fat/thin/fat design.

Hawkes Bay Weather:6°C—20°C; no rain [80.8]

I picked up mulcher/shredder at 8:30am and Karola was mulching away at 9:00am. With a little help late afternoon from Mike Croucher, our grass-mowing man, she finished the main stretch of Casurina trimmings, about 2/3 of the full windbreak. We took the machine back on the dot of 5:00pm.

I took binloads of mulched trimmings to the tree planting area; Karola did 8 bins-worth yesterday and another 9 today and, using the better machine today, the mulch was finer and there was more in each bin-load. I also heaped up trimmings using the Fergie blade so that there are now just two quite big piles of windbreak trimmings left to mulch.

Meanwhile I dug the 1.3m deep hole for the latchpost for the boundary gate and put in the post. This post will eventually be the end strainer for a long fence alongside the windbreak, hence the size and depth of the brute. The last 300mm of the hole consisted of sand over pumice which made digging easier; near the top it was very hard, dry clay.

Hawkes Bay Weather:2°C—17°C; no rain [80.5]

I went out to timber merchants and bought some railing planks so that I could finish the railings between the gate and the Scott’s boundary; as it’s such a palaver for them to start up the ripping saw to cut planks in half I also got enough planks to redo the railings at the new drive entrance, the entrance at 121 Ormond Rd opening onto the new drive we had constructed in 2001 alongside the goose enclosure and up to the back door. The reason for the ripping is that I have experimented with railings and found a pleasing design, 5 rails where 3 of them are 150mm (6 inches) wide interspersed with 2 rails 75mm (3 inches) wide. I found that four rails, while certainly animal proof, aren’t as pleasing as an odd number of rails but if I used 5 full width rails it looked too heavy, too solid. Unfortunately the timber merchants do rails 150mm wide and 40mm thick but don’t prepare 75mm by 40mm ones, hence I have to get some of the full-width ones sawn in half lengthwise. The reason for redoing the new drive railings is that I don’t like the rails I used the first time.

In the afternoon Karola and I went and looked at a slightly better chipper/mulcher for hire over near Taradale; we’ll try it for a day tomorrow. We also visited 3 nurseries and one of them, Titoki Nursery in Riverbend Road, has really healthy trees, thousands of them, and everything we want in stock.

• 100 x Manuka (Leptospermum scoparium)
• 35 x Lemonwood (Pittosporum eugenioides)
• 35 x Karamu (Coprosma robusta)
• 35 x Ngaio (Myoporum laetum)
• 25 x Broadleaf (Griselinia littoralis)
• 25 x Flax (Phormium tenax)
• 25 x Karo (Pittosporum crassifolium)
• 25 x Kohuhu (Pittosporum tenuifolium)
• 25 x Rangiora (Brachyglottis repanda)
• 25 x Titoki (Alectryon excelsus)
• 10 x Wineberry (Aristotelia serrata)
• 5 x Cabbage Tree (Cordyline australis)
• 30 x Holly [not native] (Ilix aquifolium)

Hawkes Bay Weather:2°C—21°C; no rain [80.2]

A relaxed start to the day but finally we began the mulching of the Casurina windbreak trimmings. Well in practice that meant Karola spent all day doing the actual mulching with the noisy machine and I carted the 8 apple boxes of mulch (not bushell boxes but 1200mm x 1000mm x 600mm high boxes) into the fenced area earmarked for tree planting. It took Karola about 40 minutes to fill the box then I carted it off on the back of the Fergie using the miniforks to tip it over as a full box was too heavy for me to up-end. Meanwhile I hung 3 gates on the boundary nearest the peaches and the Scott’s (southern neighbour). One gate is between the orchard and the homestead blocks, right next to the Casurina windbreak. The other 2 are netting gates sealing off the end of the tree planting area. That only leaves some 3m of railings to do from the gatepost to the fence through the windbreak, and gate latches. Karola took the mulcher back at 4:30pm and says she may hire it again on Saturday; today she mulched perhaps a third of the trimmed branches and fronds.

The ram lambs had all come back home from the orchard this morning and it wasn’t until Bicka challenged them after lunch that they took her on and chased her through the gate and into the orchard, Bicka scampering off into the trees pretending it was nothing to do with her. This evening there was a gradual ram lamb drift back to the Middle paddock.

Hawkes Bay Weather:3°C—20°C; no rain [81.0]

Extra 100 metal electric fence clips arrived by courier after breakfast; we ordered them from Harry yesterday afternoon – very prompt.

At last, I guess a year after I bought the mains energiser and earthing stakes and so on, I have an electric fence working off the mains. It was surprisingly easy to install too, except for the 8m trench from the pump shed (housing the mains energiser and providing it with its attachment to “the mains”) to the nearest piece of the new electric fence round the peaches and young apple trees. The fence itself uses 4 strands of 1.6mm (very lightweight) high-tensile wire not usually available in shops – ours was direct from Harry, Karola’s brother who imports it himself. A top fifth wire is actually polywire tape – a plastic tape interwoven with metal conducting threads – which has the objective of maaking the fence visible and stopping any jumpers from bothering to attemt to jump the fence. Wow it packs a wallop, measured at over 5 times the power of the little portable battery energisers.

The energiser box is shoe-box sized and is attached to the wall near a power plug. Two special insulated wires are connected to the energiser. The first one goes down and under the wall to the outside where it is attached rather firmly to three 1.2m long aluminium stakes driven over 1m into the ground and 2-3 metres apart. This is the system “earth”. The other wire goes up the wall and a short way down the outside where it connects to an all-weather on/off switch. Frome there it goes down to the ground and is carried inside an 8m length of old alkathene pipe across to the fence. The alkathene is buried some 300mm (1′) underground to protect it from wheeled traffic or accidental tripping.

With the energiser working and one of Karola’s totara trees protected against sheep, Karola let the ram lambs in. After an initial surge into fresh pasture and gobbling up of grass – they had been on short rations in the geese enclosure for the last 48 hours – the ram lambs drifted back home as if preferring the familiarity of the Middle paddock once they’d taken the edge off their hunger. Karola also cleaned out the old concrete animal trough next to the pumpshed so that the ram lambs can have fresh water while in the orchard.

AT 4:30pm we went into Hastings and hired a wood chipper; Karola hopes to mulch most of the Casurina trimmings tomorrow to provide mulch for the impending native tree planting binge.

Hawkes Bay Weather:16°C—21°C; no rain [80.5]

It’s taking longer than expected to finish off ram lamb proofing the orchard. Karola and I spent several hours continuing construction of a superior electric fence round the peaches etc, must have walked several kilometres in laying out five wires and clippinng them onto the 66 plastic posts. Perhaps tomorrow the ram lambs can be let in.

Hawkes Bay Weather:10°C—17°C; no rain [?]

Monday morning and it’s Karola’s 61st. She spent most of the day working with me on projects instead of doing her own most urgent jobs and then cooked me a delicious meal; there should be more birthdays for Karola.

Brimar Trimmers called at 7:30am and did the windbreak hedge trimming this morning; they’ll return later in the year with a boom-mounted circular saw to cut about a metre off the top of the windbreak, back to about 4m high, but today was a “short back and sides” with what looks like a pair of large rotary lawn mowers mounted on a boom and wielded sideways against the hedge.

I went and bought a new concrete lid for the septic tank. $30 from Hynds in Omahu Rd. Fitted it and added a few lumps of broken concrete post to dissuade others from driving on it.

We began putting up a superior electric fence round the peaches and youngest apple trees. The ram lambs have become increasingly contemptuous of electric fence so this should give them a surprise. It is a 5-wire wire fence, not a 3-wire polywire fence. Polywire is a plastic string with metal wires woven in so it doesn’t conduct as much or as well as bare metal wires. Three wires leaves enticing spaces to jump through; five wires means it looks like an impenetrable fence. When I get the mains energiser hooked up in the orchard pump shed this fence will deliver a wallop maybe 10 times more powerful than the wimpy little battery-operated energisers used to date.

Just in time we remembered that this was the day for Nelson to meet his mates. One of the Romney ewes had been limping a few days ago, though we couldn’t spot her today, so I checked the feet of all nine remaining Romneys before uniting Nelson and his harem in the Front paddock. Most of the ewes are really in good condition but a couple of the Romneys are very skinny indeed which may mean heavy parasite loads or that they only eat best quality grass and don’t do well on fallen leaves, weeds, and acorns. Hmmm.

Just in case the recent Romney ewe death was due to Ngaio poisoning, Karola put shade netting up along the few metres of fence in the Front paddock through which Ngaio could be nibbled. Karola suspects that the Romney ewes aren’t being accepted by our lot.

Hawkes Bay Weather:5°C—18°C; 0.1mm rain [81.0]

Finished off the railings by the new orchard drive gate. Began putting electric fence around the two new peach tree blocks and the young apple trees planted two years ago. Georgeous morning weather.

The concrete manhole cover on the orchard septic tank was upside down and Karola wondered if it’d been driven over – the tank is of course buried in the ground and I have had trouble in the past with the cover rotating and narrowly avoiding putting a wheel into the tank. Anyway I tried to make the lid fit and was rewarded by it falling through the manhole and splashing me with neat sewage. Karola, to her credit, didn’t laugh too much and in a sympathetic sort of way. Two long showers and much application of disinfectant soap and corrosive mouthwash later my sense of humour gradually reemerged. I went out and finished scraping up the poplar debris in the wilderness paddock, pushing it onto the edge of the bonfire-to-be. Then I changed the blade for the usual tractor mini-forks – changing the tractor blade is qute a performance which is why I finished the scraping job before attaching the forks. Then, in the dark, I followed Karola’s suggestion and took a pallet carrying a 44 gallon plastic drum full of water – the mini-forks are needed to lift it – up to the big shed and put it over the open manhole. Mood improved after a beef caserole dinner and better-than-average TV NZ play, “Perfect Day” – a UK production with several familiar faces and somewhat derivative of “Three Weddings and a Funeral” and Altman’s film, “A Wedding”.

Hawkes Bay Weather:1°C—20°C; no rain [81.0]

We went round the boundary of the orchard again today and this time we mended broken wires and missing staples and battens on about half of it, intending that the ram lambs stay in the orchard when we introduce them on Monday. We also were very pleased to hang the new gate across the orchard drive and see it swing true and free.

A chinese gentlement, Tang Hui, on exchange from the city of Guilin in Guangxi Autonomous Region (“twinned” with Hastings) happens to be a botany professor and expert on ginkgo trees so he came out with a colleague from the Hastings Parks & Reserves dept and looked at our ailing Ginkgo. Suspected mealey bug infestation or other root rot problem. The key thing is to get the tree to produce new roots. That should begin to reverse the decline we’ve seen, the leaf dieback over the last 3-4 years. Karola baked scones and gave them afternoon tea. The link had been suggested by Mark Hodder (A W Hodder, next to Captain Salty) who came with the Forestry party to see the trees here a week or so ago. Tang Hui is from the Guangxi Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, th@gxib.cn.

Hawkes Bay Weather:-1°C—16°C; no rain [81.1]

This morning went into Hastings. Called in at Stortford Machinery – they don’t sell mulcher/chipper machines but one of the Smiths said that they’d recommend a BIO brand – which happens to be the brand imported by an Auckland firm that’s going to bring one down for a demonstration in a week or so. The BIO 150 PTO version hitches to the back of a tractor and doesn’t need a separate engine, and that’s what we want. The BIO 150 will mulch shrebs and weeds and chip branches up to 5″ thick – or so says the brochure.

Karola discovered that one of the Romney ewes had died; it must have died about 48 hours ago and I suspect poisoning, that particular sheep had been acting strangely for some time and while in the Front paddock it could have eaten some Ngaio. There’s a small length of fence which we intend to cover with shade netting but it does at present allow a foolhardy sheep to nibble, and Ngaio is poisonous to stock. I dug a hole and buried it; Karola gave moral support nearby.

Together we finished putting in the new big gatepost. Next we’ll hang the heavy gate. We have two more days before Nelson gets put to work and the rest of the rams go into the orchard. Before then we have to finish this new gateway, replace a few missing battens in the orchard boundary fence and erect an electric fence round the 2 blocks of new peach trees.

After lunch we drenched all the rams, in preparation for their orchard binge. We also weighed about half of them and based on that the woolly jumpers are between 25kg and 35kg with most around 30kg. Karola rang Paul (see 8th August 2006) and he’ll come and take a look at them in about a month’s time to see when would be best time for them to go to the works. We weighed them the usual way, on bathroom scales bought second-hand for the purpose. I get weighed, boots and all, and then I hold a lamb and weigh myself again. I could barely lift and hold the larger 35kg lambs.

Hawkes Bay Weather:5°C—22°C; no rain [81.5]

Cold, cold day – much warmer outside than in, which is not unusual here. Karola moved many plants from an old flower bed around the drive at the front of the Homestead to a new home under the Chinese hawthorne tree. I, using the Fergie, gathered and piled up more of the poplar waste then pulled out 4 posts Karola wanted moved and finally tried clearing up more of the poplar waste using the Fergie’s blade, with fair success. I also completed the gatepost hole, all 1.3m of it. Fed Nelson sheep nuts – he and the ram lambs are shut in the Island paddock for a couple of days to eat it down and tidy it up.

Hawkes Bay Weather:5°C—19°C; no rain [81.7]

Gave ewes and rams each a bale of last year’s hay. Went to GoldPine and bought a big 2.4m 200m thick, straight, heavy gatepost. Later, we had our annual anti-flu jabs this morning, then a fair bit of aimless driving around Napier/Hastings. In the afternoon I began digging the hole for the new gatepost on the orchard drive; later Karola and I continued picking up sticks – poplar shards in the wasteland paddock. As disk fell I moved 7 old apple boxes from the wasteland paddock into the orchard; Adam Ladbrooke had been using them for taking soil to fill orchard potholes many weeks ago.

Hawkes Bay Weather:2°C—18°C; no rain [81.2]

We spent most of the morning with the accountant – we seem to have given him most of the information he needs to finally do the 2005/2006 returns for Karola. He also largely dissuaded us from various strategems to do with renovating the cottage and including that in Karola’s business.

In the afternoon we spent a few hours picking up the poplar tree rubbish left behind when the trunks were carted off to PanPac for fuel. Which reminds me, they still haven’t sent us a cheque but on the other hand neither have they sent us a bill – it wasn’t crystal clear whether the cost of transporting the trunks was going to exceed the price we would get per ton (or tonne, even). Karola used the landrover and trailer; I moved larger stuff with the Fergie, and in only a couple of hours we’ve put most of the rubbish on the bonfire-to-be. I hope we can have a big burn-up at the end of May when Mary comes up again to visit.

I rang Sue Cowrie (Cognito Ltd, in Hamilton) yesterday afternoon and this morning my copy of MoneyWorks Gold arrived along with some substantial discounts she’d found for me. That was quick and efficient.

Hawkes Bay Weather:6°C—18°C; no rain [82.0]

Quite hot day but overcast. Spent day preparing for tomorrow’s visit to the accountant. Trish & Mo came for lunch with their large floppy golden Labrador, he’s called “cashew”, and her sister’s 1st born. Sister Chrissie is expecting to have another baby today we were told. They offered to help if they could with the sheep while we’re in UK in July/August.

I contacted a business in Auckland that sells mulchers to see what options they have for branch chipper/mulchers driven off the tractor PTO. Also called Brimar Hedge Trimmers and asked them to cut the Casurina windbreak when they next come near Oak Avenue with their equipment. And I left a message for Willie Agnew, contractor, to see if he can come and subsoil-rip the wasteland – the bits of it that aren’t under the large pile of poplar branches waiting to burn. The idea is to break up the hard pan that develops along the tractor tracks between rows of fruit trees before I put up any more fencing or create more tree-planting in the wasteland paddock. I doubt we’ll regrass till next autumn, just keep it as a wasteland until then. Also ordered the ‘gold’ version of MoneyWorks, a program for helping with small business accounts and tax which has a worldwide user-base (mainly in Canada) but is made in New Zealand – Hamilton I think. The free demonstration version I’ve been using is threatening to stop working because its expiry time is approaching, it keeps telling me.

The demo copy of MoneyWorks finally did stop working around midnight; thankfully I’d taken precautions of printing out the best-so-far results before that happened, and it’s those which we’ll take with us to the accountant tomorrow.

Hawkes Bay Weather:11°C—23°C; no rain [82.2]

The main 2007 tree planting area is marked out – room for about 250 native trees.

Hawkes Bay Weather:6°C—23°C; no rain [81.8]

Beautiful autumn afternoon – deep blue clear sky, very light breeze, cool, bright sunshine. Karola and I spent much of the day putting the netting on the new inner fence along the boundary adjoining the peach trees.

Netting is usually quite hard to get looking neat and tight but our method seems to work well. Based on a suggestion from Karola’s brother Kaz, aka Noel, we firmly anchor one end of the netting round a fence post at one end. Then we fasten a pair of boards across the other end of the roll, or at any point just beyond a corner where we want to strain up the length before the corner. We sandwich the netting between two metre-long 100mm x 20mm boards, ensuring we enclose a vertical wire and the wire knots between the boards. Several bolts squeeze the boards together and they snuggle up to the vertical wire so that they take a lot of the strain. An 8-metre length of #8 wire is folded in half and one end is looped round the top of the pair of boards, the other end goes round the bottom. Using the Fergie tractor as anchor, we line up the drawbar in line with the direction of the fence and far enough away that the middle of the #8 wire loop can go round the drawbar. Using a wire strainer on each leg of the #8 wire loop it’s easy to gradually strain up the netting, ensuring it doesn’t snag on staples or other obstacles, until the fence has a really neat and tight appearance. A quick burst of stapling to the end and intermediate posts and the netting is erected.

Hawkes Bay Weather:_5°C—20°C; n0.1mm rain [82.4]

Apart from feeding the animals it was just too damp to do much outside.

Hawkes Bay Weather:4°C—16°C; no rain [82.2]

Sunny start that soon degenerated into a cold, cloudy but dry day. Meeting with our orchardist, Alan Ladbrooke. We can let the sheep into the orchard any time now as long as we protect the young peaches from their depredations. The bill for the next lot of new peaches hasn’t arrived yet – that’s why we haven’t seen it. Alan expects to uproot the next block of old Royal Galas this month; he also wants to take out an odd, offset row of Braeburns that are not only a nuisance but don’t fruit well either.

Rest of the day spent mainly indoors but I did start putting the netting up – these 3 rolls are very light gauge wire and easier to handle but time will tell whether it’s strong enough and whether it keeps its shape.

Ram lambs (and Nelson) were let into the Triangle paddock for the day. They declined to return to the wasteland in the evening – the close proximity of the ewes was the issue, they’re next door in the Middle paddock still.

Hawkes Bay Weather:10°C—16°C; 0.1mm rain [82.6]

Straightened the last couple of posts and strained up the 4 wires ready to put the netting on later this week. Karola again fed hay – a bale each to the ewes and rams. I continue to give Nelson a couple of cupsfull of sheep nuts every day to get him into condition for 13th May. Cat and Bicka we treated for fleas last week though there’s no evidence they were infested, Bicka scratches just to keep her coat groomed anyway. We have mice around the house. Today was 3rd day of large numbers of cluster flies on the sunny sides of the house – millions of them. Not as bad as worst year but still a lot of flies. I think there’s a big hatch of these flies in autumn when there’s a bit of dampness followed by hot sunny days.

Hawkes Bay Weather:6°C—22°C; no rain [82.4]

Where did the day go. e-mails to all and sundry; a trip to the garage to swap radios in the Landrover – my one got a fault and had to be sent back to manufacturer to be fixed. Then in the afternoon Karola invited over our old property management man, long since retired at 83, Barry and Margaret Long came for afternoon tea and a look round the property – some of it changed beyond recognition but also much still the same.

Hawkes Bay Weather:6°C—24°C; 0.1mm rain [82.1]