Monthly Archives: April 2008

To Wellington

A rush in the morning to take down the kilometre of electric fence (well, 3 wires and 300 metres each) and put up a stretch in an L-shape round the best part of the Middle paddock. This is so that the main flock can have some grass and some tree shelter while we’re away without the risks of being loose behind electric fence in the orchard.

It turned out that Adam wanted to mow between the orchard rows today too, before the weather broke, so that fitted in nicely.

Got all outside essentials done by 11:00am and Karola and I had meeting with Heather Hawkes, our Guardian Trust financial advisor, just after 11:00am. We were on our way before 2:00pm – horrid weather on the way down, blustery and squalls of heavy rain.

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

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The Hard Yards

Posts in and so the main structures of the improved temporary sheep yards are finished. Still need a set of rails across a 2m gap and a netting gate to be hung and two little drafting gates to be constructed and fitted – but in a pinch it could be used now. Rain really set in in the afternoon so, just in time.

Down to 7 chickens of the original ten now.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—20°C; 20.6mm rain [79.0]

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Yard at a Time

More progress on the sheep yards. And while at lunch the ewes took a closer look at my sheep yard work and noticed a narrow gap cluttered with tools but opening onto the Triangle paddock – so most of them squeezed through the gap and cavorted in the long fresh grass for half an hour, till we noticed and put them back.

The eight little chickens went into the Mandarin Chook House of their own accord this evening; I hope they remember to do it again tomorrow.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—25°C; 1.7mm rain [78.8]

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Winding and Unwinding for Miles and Miles

Entire morning taken up with moving electric fencing. We now have a long strip between rows of trees and an alleyway back to the Island paddock on the mains electric energiser with lots of oomph. The grass is long but not of high quality and the sheep pick at the choice weeds but aren’t making much progress on the grass – but at least they’re not hungry. The idea is that we can move the sheep onto a new inter-tree-row strip every few days. However this’ll be interrupted by our trip to Wellington mid week.

A bit more progress on the temporary sheep yards. Romney ewes and Nelson and mates got out of the North paddock this morning, we just caught them as they headed down the drive for the Avenue. Karola biked down the road and was only just in time to stop them heading off for Hastings. A hasp in a temporary post at one of the gateways had fallen out.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 9°C—20°C; no rain [78.8]

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Batten Surprise – A Flexible Friend

The new temporary sheep yards not only have two and eventually three more swinging gates but they have a rather swish curved fence where one of these new gates swings round sweeping the sheep in front of it. It isn’t actually erected yet but it’s started well. I took 88 old wooden battens and some #8 wire and about 300 staples and turned them into a flexible but quite solid wall of battens. Karola is fairly sceptical but less so now it is standing in place, just waiting for the posts behind it to be installed.

Eight little chickens were huddled in the middle of the back lawn near the geese enclosure, without their mother, so Karola, Bicka, and I scooped them up in the dark and popped them into the Mandarin Chook House for the night.

I zapped the big wasps nest with deadly powder – no stings, I was mighty quick. We’ll see what if any effect it has had tomorrow.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—19°C; 0.2mm rain [79.1]

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Getting Acclimatised

Grey day and quite cold. Mainly mooching about – gave the ewes some more orchard byway to graze and checked #623’s limping foot – no sign of heat or disease so maybe she bumped it. Oh and there’s only 8 chicks today – another one has become somebody’s snack I suppose. “Red in tooth and claw” round here.

Karola sprayed the inside of Bicka’s old pen – now repurposed (ugh) as her vegetable garden safe from dog, chickens, and sheep.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—19°C; 0.3mm rain [78.9]

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Karola Has Landed

Karola rang from Auckland at 7:00 am and Bicka and I picked her up just after 9:00 am at Napier/Hastings airport. Relaxed morning; long lunch in the sun on the balcony; Karola in good spirits despite the long trek home. In the afternoon I did a bit more on the revamped temporary sheep yards – one post with gate attached. Karola washed Bicka and meandered round the homestead admiring the changes and pleased with the greening up of everything compared to when she left.

#404 looking much better today; #623 still limping.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—19°C; no rain [78.9]

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Posted, Not Postponed

Productive day with the tractor and its post-hole digger also doubling as an auger for tree planting. I added posts and finished the fence/netting at the northern end of the Island paddock. I also deconstructed the temporary sheep yards in preparation for slightly less dilapidated and easier to work yards in the same place.

#404 has been mooching about recently and I found she had a huge boil/abscess on her ear. That may not be all that’s wrong but anyway I lanced it (yuk, yuk, yuk) and got a huge amount of poison etc out. It was about 30mm in diameter and almost round, and looked like she’d had it for a while steadily getting worse. I gave her lots of pick-me-up Ketol and we’ll see what happens. #623 is limping, but then a couple of the ewes have been seen limping of a day or so then they get over it.

Mike Croucher called but this time to say he couldn’t mow the lawns – has a bad leg. Bruce Richardson rang threatening to come and do the crutching tomorrow – it was booked for early May so someone got their wires twisted, and at present we have no yards at all.

There’s a bantam hen brooding in between the roots of the big oak. Counting her I think we’ve still got 13 adult bantams and 9 chicks.

Karola is due tomorrow 9:00 am Hastings/Napier airport.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—22°C; no rain [79.0]

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Karola Begins Her Return To New Zealand

Jump started the tractor from the Landrover and then spent the morning on the orchard drive – laying out concrete posts and uprooting a few more that were badly out of line.

Set the tractor battery to be charged up in the afternoon, using our own battery charger. Bicka and I got more diesel in anticipation of tomorrow. Later I took Bicka for run round the orchard.

Karola will be on her way back by now.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—21°C; no rain [78.4]

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Pieces of Eight

Beautuful sunny winter’s day. I let the main flock into the electric-fenced-off piece of the orchard by day.

Solved the problem that wasn’t. The big wooden strainer post holding up a heavy gate on the orchard drive was, I thought, supposed to be positioned right next to the boundary, next to, not across it. I have a favorite cartoon by Murray Ball where primitive man confronts a large stone plinth in the desert, nothing else to impede his path for miles around. He stands there puzzled as to how to proceed. Meanwhile the dog, who just ducked round the side, puts his head back round the edge of the plinth and says “Problem, what problem”. Mea culpa.

So today I drilled 8 holes through the wooden strainer and there will be no problem. Glad I didn’t rush to dig the strainer out and reposition it.

I also improved the terrible temporary sheep yards, hanging a couple of gates used as hurdles so that we can move them more easily to push the sheep up tight, the better to drench them.

I clipped Bicka’s dewclaws on her front feet – they, unlike the rest of her claws, are sharp, Don’t seem to be dewclaws on the back legs. Bick wriggled a bit but wasn’t too unhappy; afterwards I took her for a bike ride round the orchard and she does like that very much.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 3°C—18°C; no rain [79.3]

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Sheep Snack On Peach Periphery

Nondescript day and cold. Put electric fence up along the edge of the peaches nearest our boundary and the sheep are thrilled to get at the long grass and weeds growing luxuriantly in the headland and along the tractor path between the fence and the first row of peach trees.

There are only nine of the original 10 chickens now; there may be a hen or two missing as well but they are a little erratic so it’s hard to tell, they don’t all tunr put to be fed every day.

These winter nights are cold but it is quite amazing what an improvement is made by wearing socks in bed – NorseWear New Zealand woollen socks from Norsewood of course.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—15°C; no rain [78.6]

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Southerly Blast of Winter

Another beautiful day to begin with. Cloudy by lunchtime and then a very rapid descent into southerly gale-force wind and driving rain – all over in under an hour but the cold temperatures remain. Tonight is cold but clear.

Another mushroom meal; I happened upon another cluster of fungi as I was pottering about just before the 2:30pm southerly blast. Just a couple of hours tidying up around the Island paddock in anticipation of Karola returning next week and mindful of my reputation as the one who precipitously and erratically does things, leaving something of a mess to be cleaned up afterwards.

A lamb from the Romney and Nelson flock somehow got out. It didn’t stray far but I just cannot find a place where it could have squeezed out; my conclusion, not very confidently, is that it jumped out. Time will tell.

Gill has finished translating some English messages I’m using in a website program into French. This isn’t easy, there’s the difference in style – in what makes for a terse, clear, and friendly message – and as our discussions indicated clearly, I could have worded the English versions rather better.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 3°C—17°C; 0.9mm rain [78.8]

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Postal Uprising

A solid 64mm of rain showing in Mary’s rain gauge today, and that’s two cat-bowls-full on the back step in 2 days too.

The wasps nest in the geese enclosure is very active today, the rain doesn’t seem to have slowed them down.

A beautiful cool, sunny blue-sky day with strong south-westerly winds. I pulled out 20 posts with the tractor, tidying up after my fence demolition along the western side of the Island paddock. The amalgamation of the Island with the sliver between it and the peaches beyond the western boundary is a big improvement; it will now officially be the Island paddock.

More mushrooms in the Triangle and Middle paddocks so supper was mushrooms on toast.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—22°C; no rain [79.2]

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Gill reports from Wellington:
Quite cool & wet here today.

Recent wildlife experiences:
(i)  rat in drawer
(ii)  6 hours worth of ants to clear from kitchen (luckily haven't 
       seen any more and insecticide dumped in hopefully appropriate places....)
(iii)  this a.m. Ben went to get newspaper only to have large buff coloured 
      rabbit dash down the stairs at him and crash into his legs- poor thing 
      total panic (the rabbit , that is  :-) ). Discovered neighbours had lost their 
      rabbit, however too fast to catch.

Ho hum and I thought the suburbs were boring....
All I could say in response was:
Ho hum, and it's so dull here in comparison. I was starting to cook my 
locally harvested mushrooms (out in the Triangle paddock) with a nice knob
 of butter in the smaller skillet - just warming up the skillet wen I noticed a 
small nodule of something blackish that I didn't think I put there. To my surprise, 
and to its chagrin I'm sure, it was a snail, a live snail. Now how did that get inside 
and crawl up the wall and take root in a skillet hanging on the wall that was washed 
clean only 2 days ago. Hmmm.

Kaz rang and chatted about his very new purchase of an extra hectare or so next door to Ngaio Glenn. Apparently his son Francis and partner Michelle are splitting up.

Alan Ladbrook came to see me and we chatted about the season and the orchard – no good news but no unexpected bad news. He’s not selling his house now, the market for houses is on hold while people wait to see how low prices will go. Instead he’s going to try and sell his own orchard. He anticipates still carrying on orcharding as he does now, perhaps leasing back his orchard from the buyer. We discussed grazing Karola’s orchard and will use electric fence to keep the sheep out of the peaches.

I did a bit of netting fence to seal off the northern end of the new Island paddock and moved the main flock from ther geese enclosure into the Island. Already the grass is responding to the rain.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 9°C—19°C; no rain [79.6]

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Nicely Drizzled With ….. Drizzle

Rained on and off all day, mainly just drizzled. Late afternoon Bicka and I went out and moved a gate, the one up near the big shed that went from the Triangle paddock into the sliver of paddock beyond the Island paddock. The sliver and the Island having been amalgamated I’ve moved the bit of fence and the gate back towards the Scotts boundary; the gate now swings freely off a post of the planting area that goes along the western boundary, alongside the peaches. It poured with rain just as I was finishing, not enough to stop the filling and ramming of the slam post, but enough to soak me – I put Bicka in the Landrover to minimise the wet-dog syndrome.

Most of the sheep are still in the geese enclosure eating the grass and most of the weeds down once more before winter. Rabbits on the lawn, rabbits in the bamboo, rabbits in the planting areas. Pukekos likewise.

I’ve asked Gill to do a bit of translation from English to French for me, for the (human readable) messages in a program I’m enjoying writing. I’ve also asked Bridget if she’d lke to try Maori (the “wiki” software that I’m helping Geoff Robinson set up for his web site in UK supports Maori) but I think that may be a “Bridge too far” (ho ho).

Hawkes Bay Weather: 16°C—19°C; 8.8mm rain [79.3]

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Autumn Rains

Real rain at last – surface flooding outside and rained pretty much all day. Bicka and I stayed in the dry, not entirely to Bicka’s liking.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—18°C; 21.1mm rain [79.0]

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Fly By Wire

Spent the morning fussing about with the top wire for the reconstructed orchard drive boundary fence. The slightly bad news is that about 5 more posts need redigging as they are far too tall. My grading of the fence line a few days ago made the path for the fence almost level and thus these posts, following the contours of the neighbours ground rather than the surface of the drive, go somewhat up hill in a couple of places. Slightly worse news is that the huge post and heavy gate installed by me and Karola a couple of years ago is not in a good place. At the time we put the post a short distance back from the line of the then fence; today’s taut 215 metre top wire in fact sails over the top of this big post, across the middle of the post. So, I will probably pull it out and take this opportunity to redesign that top north corner where the homestead meets Karola’s orchard. This is also tied up with the 340 or so Royal Gala apple trees that were pulled out; it gives us a chance to fence that piece of the boundary and plant more native trees on the northern end of the western boundary. Light rain stopped play early afternoon.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—20°C; 7.8mm rain [?]

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Wire Puller

Got all wrapped up in making Bridget an online birthday card out of scanned old photographs. Spent several happy hours relearning how to get OmniGraffle to cooperate and then getting the card up on our website and – this was almost half the effort, of course – getting it to show up in the middle of the screen regardless of whose computer you were viewing it on.

Finally got round to today’s outside task – lugged about 700m of #8 wire from the Island paddock across to the orchard drive, a few strands at a time.

Also took Bicka round the orchard; I was riding the bicycle that Karola bought me. I dropped a glove on the way round so to Bicka’s delight we went round twice.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—19°C; no rain [79.5]

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Wire of Last Resort

Talked to Kaz this evening; apparently he’s bought an extra hectare of paddock adjoining his new house, “Ngaio Glen” in Fielding – well on the road from Fielding to Bulls actually, near Mt Biggs. His daughter Amy has been sending cellphone text messages on the phone she bought for him and signing them as if they came from Kaz – there’s no real danger of him actually using the phone so it’s all a bit pointless really.

Changed the gate at the southern end of the Island paddock so that it provides access between the middle and Island paddocks, facing east-west rather than north-south.

Deconstructed the wires and battens of 100m of fence along the western side of the Island paddock, needing the wire, almost a kilometre of it, for the reconstruction of the boundary fence along the orchard drive. Well I prefer not to buy even more wire and netting; we seem to have huge amounts around the place, and posts of all kinds, so with the economic squeeze it makes sense to start using and reusing all that fencing stuff I’ve been buying for the last 2-3 years.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—19°C; no rain [79.5]

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Brilliant Clear Sunny Cold Day

Noticed a large wasps nest on the outside of the trunk of a redwood in the geese enclosure; it’s maybe 200mm across and 100mm high, a light grey hummock stuck on the trunk. I think I’ll wait for Karola to return before tacklng it.

Took down the southern end of the Island paddock fence as part of amalgamating the Island and the sliver of paddock to the west of it, up to the boundary and the peach trees.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—21°C; no rain [80.0]

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Tractor Makes The Grade

Fixed a leaking join in water trough pipe to the North paddock. Just as I finished that Laurie McDermott arrived with gifts – silver beet from his garden and jam and pickles from Enid. I gave them a dozen bantam eggs, having something of a surplus at present.

Spent many hours on the tractor moving the earth, weeds, and gravel I’d got left over after the grading of the boundary fence line. That included a bit more grading and initial attempts to compact and flatten out the line of the next fence, the piece of boundary until recently taken up with a row of Royal Gala apple trees.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 3°C—20°C; no rain [80.3]

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Nelson – Party Animal

It ended up a very clear blue-sky day and an amazing twinkling mass of stars at night, but cold. Bicka and I did some more pushing around of mud on the orchard drive while I pondered the best way to provide a gate into the North paddock from the orchard.

There was another small earthquake at 2:00am last night.

This morning I put Bicka’s basket and rug on the verandah in the sun to air. Later I surprised the cat luxuriantly stretched out in the basket as if it was an experience she’d cherished for years. Later in the mornng I found one of the 2-yr old ewes with its head stuck in the netting between the Middle paddock and goose enclosure. She was looking might hungry but not particularly perturbed and was easily extracted. As I returned from that I met a rather surprised Nelson who had smelt something enticing in the Middle paddock so had pushed a loosely-fastened gate open from the North paddock and was ‘looking for love’. He had the decency to look a little sheepish when I chased him back to his small Romney harem.

Mike Croucher came and mowed the lawns this afternoon, a great improvement.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 2°C—19°C; 0.2mm rain [80.4]

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Wintery Day

Overcast and cold and rapidly drying out after a couple of inches of rain yesterday. I pottered about for a few hours in my continued attempts to flatten the path of the boundary fence – making a fair amont of mud in the process.

The house is cleaner than when Gill and Mary arrived, despite Gill being driven from the “bee room” by a late autumn influx of cluster flies.

I saw the little hedgepig that Gill and I rescued from the bottom of a fence post hole a couple of days ago, rummaging around in the Front paddock as dusk fell – dusk is falling much earlier now it almost feels like winter.

There was a small earthquake earlier this evening.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—16°C; no rain [?]

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Gill and Mary Leave For Wellington

After a most enjoyable (for us all, including Bicka) stay, Gill and Mary went on the lunchtime flight back to Wellington. Gentle rain began last night and has continued all day; another week of this and the ground will recover from the months of dry weather.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—15°C; 10.1mm rain [79.7]

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Sunday Start of Standard Time

Sunday and the clocks have “fallen back”. We started on the clearing of the fence line along the northern boundary, I using the Fergie and its blade, Gill and Mary pulling up or cutting the small trees of Fat Hen. All in all a fairly quiet day, warm in parts too. No sign of rain.

The cat got caught inside last night, rewarding us with a small puddle upstairs. A packet of the delicious and healthy Nairn Stem Ginger biscuits left, opened, in its celophane overnight on my desk also included a large cockroach when I picked it up this morning. I found a dead mouse in a trap Karola set alongside the fridge last month. The rich tapestry of life at Karamu moves on.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—22°C; 1.8mm rain [80.1]

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Sheep Moved; Trees Trimmed (Severely)

Photos of the new fence were taken. Gill and I moved the sheep – ewes and lambs into the Middle paddock and Nelson and the Romneys into the North paddock. We disassembled the electric fence across the lawn.

Gill and Mary took the newspapers and bottles to the recycling depot at the local refuse Transfer Station.

In the afternoon Mary and I coupled up some alkathene to link a trough in the North paddock with the nearest tap some 50 metres away. All three of us cut down a couple of trees on the periphery of the big oak; watched by Mary I chainsawed the logs into firewood. One tree was perhaps a strawberry tree, judging by the fruit, but more likely a self-sown Dogwood as Karola wanted it cut down. The other is a Lemonwood which has fared badly in gales over the last couple of years. There is one healthy branch about 2 metres above the ground then the tree forks and all above is lifeless, so, as Karola requested, it was cut off just above the fork. I wielded a pruning saw from the bucket of the Fergie; Gill raised and lowered the bucket, and we both pulled on rope to avoid the resulting severed logs crashing onto the tractor.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—23°C; no rain [79.9]

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New Totara Batten Fence Completed

After a leisurely breakfast Gill, Mary and I finished battening the remaining three spans and the fence is finished.

Meanwhile the “green machine” which pulled out the 340 Royal Gala apple trees yesterday returned and put them in two very large tall piles to dry and in a few months burn.

Gill and Mary took the afternoon off to visit Havelock North. I mucked about a bit with grading the old fenceline a bit more.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—24°C; no rain [80.4]

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11 Of 14 Spans Battened Up Today

Good progress today on the family project – battening-up the 60 odd metres of fence (14 spans between posts). I was planning on doing 2 spans each morning and afternoon over 3.5 days but instead even though we didn’t do any yesterday afternoon, we completed a splendid 11 spans today; so there’s just 3 left to do. I note that sister Gill has a penchant for organising people.

The promised rain forecast for the weekend seems to be evaporating, so to speak.

As discussed with our orchardist Alan Ladbrooke last night, 340 old Royal Gala apple trees were uprooted today.

Karola will be staying a bit longer in UK with Anna and the grandsons; I got her return ticket date moved to 22nd April.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 4°C—19°C; no rain [79.8]

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A Briosche of Brackenburys

Shopping in the morning; Bicka got some more eye drops from the vets; we got sacks of the last of last season’s wheat and maize for the poultry. Mary and Gill arrived after lunch. A quiet afternoon and evening was had by all. Karola rang and expects to stay in UK now till 22nd April due to shortage of suitable nannies in Ealing for Anna.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 4°C—19°C; no rain [79.9]

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Tractoritus

Uprooted a number of broken concrete posts along the orchard driveway. Stockpiled the 15 replacement concrete posts needed for that boundary fence. The piece I’ll be reconstructing shortly is 240m long and comprises 48 posts plus a gigantic concrete strainer at either end. As said before I’ve laid out 8 wires for about half of this fence and need to find another 8 x 130m pieces.

I then switched from the min-forks to the grader blade attachment and smoothed out the ground where the old diagonal fence deconstructed a few days ago used to run. There’s still a change in levels where the fence used to run but it’ll be gradual enough to mow now.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 9°C—26°C; no rain [78.8]

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