Monthly Archives: February 2008

Karola and I hand delivered the tax info to our accountant in Hastings then prepared for the arrival late afternoon of Ben Bell and Gill Brackenbury and Ben’s twin brother Paul and his wife Jean on holiday here from Shropshire. A superb evening meal.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 15°C—27°C; no rain [79.8]

It is done, and t’were good it should be done, the tax preparation that is. Now I can look forward to seeing Ben & Gill & Paul & Jean tomorrow.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—25°C; no rain [80.1]

Well it’s going much more smoothly than in past years due to becoming significantly simpler; fewer irons in the fire so to speak. But then I spoiled it by noticing that

• the meat works deduct sales tax at source, so me paying it again was a silly oversight. I had no idea – it’s not mentioned in the IRD handbook — that sellers could do that
• I’d not remembered to claim for the 10% of the household expenses back in 2006; I only started doing it when advised by our accountant last March

It’s still less of a struggle than last year.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 15°C—24°C; no rain [?]

Karola’s two-monthly tax due on Thursday; our and her tax for 2006/2007 due with the accountant ASAP. So, no going outside except for a gentle pedal round the orchard.

Karola entertained Maori friend and diabetic Rowena for lunch and Maggie and Colin Nagle dropped in at the same time.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 12°C—25°C; no rain [79.9]

Bit of tidying up, nothing special, and languid continuation of GST and tax matters. Karola did lots of cleaning inside and out in preparation for the visit on Friday of my sister Gill, her husband Ben, his twin brother Paul and wife Jean.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—30°C; no rain [79.8]

Spent far too much time tracking down a couple of problems in some website software with my UK colleague, but somewhere between the GMT (UCT) time of 9:00pm and 4:00am both were cracked. It’s so much more fun when the programs you use are available in a form you can read too, so problem solving becomes more of a game than a sad, despondent, “try-it and weep”.

Bike rides round the orchard but not much else outside today. Oh, and moved a few haybales around including picking up the hay I gave out yesterday. The sheep are clearly getting enough from their brown stalky pasture and the gentle showers of acorns and see no merit in 2-year-old hay.

Karola’s GST accounts for Dec/Jan almost completed by midnight.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 16°C—25°C; no rain [80.1]

General outdoors housekeeping today; there’s a slight threat of rain and Karola did a lot of barleygrass mowing and weeding. She mows it with a catcher to avoid spreading the seeds still further; we have a serious barleygrass infestation and it’s harder to erradicate than thistles, being a grass. I moved an electric fence to let the ewes and lambs into 2/3 of the Triangle (avoiding Karola’s Belladonna clumps just beginning to flower near the Canary Island pine) and taking in the bamboo and the track down to the Rhododendron. The sheep went wild, briefly, it’s the most greenery in eating distance they’ve seen in months. And especially they liked the acorns, lots of acorns. Windy again today and no actual rain at all. The little ewe lamb that had a touch of flystrike, the one that Laurie McDermott said was still scratching a lot 2 days ago, was caught, examined, given an extra treatment of Magnum, and released. She is in fact much perkier than when we found her with 2 maggots and a big patch of what looked like sunburn but may have been lice. No sign of any unwanted livestock on her today.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 18°C—23°C; no rain [79.9]

Gale force winds in gusts, too windy for much outside although Karola and I did manage to bang in the 20 metal standard posts (waratah) for her next 5 deer-netting-based tree guards. I did a desultory hour of thistle cutting and too much computing.

Accountant rang today gently enquiring how I was getting on with the 2006/2007 accounts. Hmmm.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 18°C—23°C; no rain [80.4]

We entertained Edward in the morning; walk around the paddocks and lunch at Palmers on the outskirts of Napier. Quiet afternoon. Garden Groom came and groomed (the lawns).
We bicycled round the orchard again this evening, picked up a few more bottling peaches. Laurie called in with veges from their garden in the morning, Janet Scott ditto in the afternoon. Janet with the news that Alan Ladbrooke has put his house up for sale; orcharding downturn is having its effect. The Ladbrookes are moving next door into the house his parents have; Alan’s dad recently went into full-time care so the timing isn’t too bad; they’ll live with Alan’s elderly mother who needs company anyway. Two of the four children will at last fly the coop.

Laurie (McDermott) rang this evening to say that one of our lambs is still behaving as if it has flystrike so we agreed I’d take a look tomorrow and see if more treatment is needed.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—24°C; no rain [81.1]

A day of people dropping in. Mary Wilson, Cynthia Chalmers then a friend of a friend (Edward Stanton, deer farmer friend of Charles Carey and Briony who also does guided farm tours, 70,000 people through last year, he said) from England following the English ccricket team from game to game.

Broken router refunded and so I bought a large engineering vice for the green shed.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—22°C; 0.1mm rain [80.1]

Not much done outside today; just a morning taking nails and screws and odd bits of wood off the walls of the green shed. It is drying out after the washdown and smells a little less of dead rat according to Karola. We went out to the cinema this evening, a strange but not unpleasant film called “Juno”.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 9°C—20°C; no rain [80.1]

Just by ourselves today. Outside I just hosed down the concrete floor of the green shed; Karola did a much bigger cleanup job on the garage, sweeping up the inches of elm shavings and the pervasive dust. We both cycled round the orchard at the end of the afternoon with Bicka racing alongside.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—20°C; 0.1mm rain [80.6]

Cecilia Johnson here overnight; Tommy Ormond’s 90th in the afternoon; Ian and Margaret Hay-Campbell and Karola and I had dinner with Noel and Jenny Hendery in Napier. Bicka came too.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—27°C; no rain [80.4]

Finished taking the junk out of the green shed; took a load to the Transfer Station ($12) and then hosed down the interior after sweeping one or two layers of dust and hay out of the way. It is much less objectionable with the cobwebs gone and dust off the roof and beams and most of the walls.

Cecilia Johnson arrived late afternoon; we all go to Tommy Ormond’s tomorrow for lunch; it’s her 90th birthday.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 9°C—25°C; no rain [80.3]

Romney ewes (6) and their lambs (5) and Nelson and his fair wether friend and Ben all drenched and anti-flystrike applied liberally. Karola, as is her wont, made a lot of stuff with fruit today, the last of our own plums mainly.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 9°C—25°C; no rain [80.0]

Major cleaning out of the green shed is underway; lots of evidence of a large rat (or two) and fowl roosting and cobwebs and musty hay. Still, it’s a start.

Karola not only got her bicycle back tyre puncture fixed but also got a bike stand fitted. We chose, and she bought, and I rode down Oak Avenue on a bicycle that is my 2007 birthday present. Intended as a way to exercise Bicka because letting her chase vehicles isn’t a good idea, though she’s so used to it now it’ll be hard to stop her (Bicka, not Karola).

In the nick of time, I hope, Karola thought we should give the sheep another anti-flystrike and anti-lice pour-on spray of Magnum. So we rounded up the main flock of ewes and lambs and treated them all and gave the lambs all a drench for good measure. That should last them until May. The little ewe lamb that was a bit daggy and occasioned Karola’s command turned out to have bad lice infection and just the start of fly-strike – only half-a-dozen maggots so probably was “in the nick of time”. Romneys and Nelson will need to wait a day or so.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—26°C; no rain [81.0]

Warm day. Another night of computing (till 2:00am or so). Started cleanng out the gren shed in preparation for housing the self-powered pull-behind topper and the mulcher.

Fenced off the driveway down to the Rhododendron and let the ewes and lambs in to eat the acorns and clover.

Jane and John and John and Linda McDuff cane to dinner.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—25°C; no rain [80.4]

Warm and wet, especially as the day wore on.

In the aftermath of the railings project, took the huge old concrete strainer and its crumbling stay post up to the concrete post graveyard alongside the big shed. Returned with a 2/3 length elm post to put the post box on, the current totara post has split and anyway it’s too close to the box hedge which has a large area of dieback due, we think, to hot Postie exhaust.

Jane and John Johnson popped in for lunch along with Jane’s brother and his wife. All four are up holidaying in Hawkes Bay and intend to go on a world trip together in about six weeks time; to parts of Asia and France and the UK.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—24°C; 9.0mm rain [80.6]

Peaceful day, very warm, muggy, and cloudy in patches. Inside work today.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—32°C; no rain [80.3]

The Hughes’ left just before lunch and apart from checking the stock it was a quiet day.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 15°C—26°C; no rain [80.6]

I got up a little earlier and, before breakfast, finished the concrete collars round the two end posts and pulled out the wooden and concrete posts belonging to the old fence that used to stand on the roadward side of the new railings. The gate, post, and railings for the entrance to Karamu Homestead were complete by 11:00am.

Another leisurely breakfast followed this time by a visit to the Black Barn Farmer’s Market which closed just as we arrived. Took a brief tour round a room of sculptures at Black Barn and then decided to stay for a very good lunch.

Alan Ladbrooke dropped by with the cheque settling up last year’s orchard lease, much to our relief.

Roger and I spent another mainly fruitless evening trying to improve the speed of his Vista laptop.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—25°C; no rain [80.9]

Leisurely breakfast then, just like tourists, a morning where Karola and Anne had a swim and a soak in the heated swimming pools on the Napier Marine Parade just up from the main shopping area and Bicka took Roger and me for a km walk along the beach-top path, to the golden diving lady atop a pole, and back. A little light shopping on the way back and then I continued with the railings for a while. After dinner Roger and I spent many hours trying to degung his laptop, it runs Windows Vista Basic and in his case it walks rather than runs. We removed lots of programs and stopped many things starting up whenever you switched on. We made very little headway, no discernable improvement, I must say.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—23°C; no rain [80.3]

One end of railings completed; one more to do. Computing in the morning; Roger and Anne Hughes, our UK visitors and friends of old, arrived mod afternoon.

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

More railings work, only the two end runs to do now. Karola returned at lunchtme then it was off to a funeral and back later afternoon for more computing. Sent photos to Anna in Ealing; the HP printer lets us scan them and send them directly from the printer to Anna’s e-mail address in England. Quick and easy.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—20°C; no rain [79.9]

More overdosing on computing with my UK mate. Did finally get outside and complete the 4 remaining holes for the railings and put up 2 more panels, including concreting their feet. Karola returns from visiting Bridget and family in Wellington tomorrow at lunchtime.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—20°C; no rain [80.1]

After a marathon web site updating session ending successfully at 4:00am, a late start. In fact it continued until late afternoon when I finished the last 20 post mortise holes (without blowing up the router, though it was a close run thing). The computing restarted after dinner until midnight. Enough for one day.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—27°C; 9.5mm rain [80.0]

Karola got an invitation to Bridget’s to help look after the granddaughters for a couple of days; I took her to the 1:40pm flight. For the rest of the day I did more routing of elm posts; the remaining 6 posts, each with 10 rail mortises, are now half done; another day should see ‘closure’ if the 2nd Black & Decker router doesn’t blow up, which I think quite likely. Each post takes about an hour per side. In total 90 holes are needed for the railings, only 20 to go.

The alkathene from the top of the Triangle paddock across to a trough in the North paddock is leaking in at least 3 places, so for now I’ve turned it off. Bicka and I went round the orchard in Karola’s car looking for a dog that had been yapping up there for ages. No sign of a dog but a very weary Alan Ladbrooke who’d come over to spray his peaches.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 12°C—21°C; no rain [80.3]

Ah, much progress today, Karola and I worked on the railings all day. Result is that there’s a span up either side of the gate, the gate is swinging better than ever, it has a latch-back post, the holes for the remaining 4 posts have been started using the Fergie with its post-hole auger and 2 very heavy concrete posts wired atop it – made it go into the soil like a needle into bread. Also did a hole for relocation of the letter box desired by Karola. Karola has dismantled one side of the old entrance tangle of netting and rails and we pulled out both old gateposts, large pieces of old Australian hardwood telegraph poles I think.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—23°C; no rain [80.6]

Two nights ago I got an ache in my left ankle that woke me up; the ankle swole up as the day progressed but, thinking it was a recent knock that bruised the ankle I thought it would just linger a while and go away. By dinner time I couldn’t walk and was crawling or hopping around – and an 80kg hopper rocks the foundations so it wasn’t appreciated, least of all by Bicka. Last night I was still awake at 4:00am and prognosis by then was a sting or bite. Anti-histamine perhaps helped and I slept from around 4:00am till 10:30am. Still swollen and I was crawling only, which isn’t all that comfortable, especially outside. I accidentally went back to sleep around noon and awoke just after 5:00pm, and now, midnight, the swelling is going down and I’m hobbling but not crawling. Just glad we don’t have snakes or scorpions.

Meanwhile Karola tended the livestock and dug a hole to locate the leaking pipe under the plum tree.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—25°C; no rain [?]