Monthly Archives: October 2008

Another quiet day; good weather though quite cool. Cynthia Chalmers arrived around 3:30 pm and she and Karola went off to the reunion initial meeting at 5:30 pm. Justine and Hilary returned with Karola and Cynthia for dinner at 8:00 pm.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 3°C—22°C; no rain [82.0]

Still nurturing colds and Karola in a frenzy of house cleaning preparing for her Haylock relations and Cynthia Chalmers tomorrow – they’re all attending a school reunion over the weekend.

Cold, calm but bright weather. Karola’s GST calculated and sent off, only a couple of days late.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 2°C—17°C; no rain [82.4]

Horray – suddenly the vicious colds are downgraded to ordinary; what a relief. Slept and read most of the day; Karola did a brief shop thinking it was Thursday so now she has a whole extra day before her socially active weekend (which starts on Friday). I checked the sheep; all alive and romping.

Enid and Laurie came before I got up this morning and did a couple of hours “releasing” of our young manuka trees; delighted to see that most of them – almost all – are actually flourishing under the thick grass canopy and now they get to see the sun. As Laurie was driving from the house up to the planting area he says he saw a short but thick and heavy branch fall out of the big oak. It’s only about 3 meters long and had no foliage so no loss to the tree but it came to rest inches from a small metre-high palm tree that Karola has advertised for sale; a woman is coming over to view it tomorrow.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 5°C—25°C; no rain [82.8]

Karola and I have miserable heavy colds; Karola as always just keeps on stoically.

Kirsty and Bruce left mid morning – they were a welcome distraction from the colds.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—24°C; no rain [83.3]

Karola and I now both have stinking colds kindly donated by the granddaughters.

Topped the goose enclosure with help from Chris; topped the nettles in the Middle paddock as well and fond a dead lamb from yesteday I think in the Middle paddock. Not sure who was the mother but it was a stillborn big ram lamb.

Bridget and Chris and Natalie and Alex set off back for Wellington just before lunch.

One of the #700s got her head stuck through the netting of the Middle paddock fence and I had to cut a wire to get her out; she seemed none the worse for the experience.

Bruce and Kirsty arrived around 4:00 pm. They cooked us dinner too.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 5°C—21°C; no rain [82.4]

Sunday with intermittent heavy showers and not much sun; later becoming distinctly cold as the wind swings from the south.

Chris took Alex and Natalie on another drive, steering the Landrover round the boundaries which they enjoyed.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 1°C—14°C; 1.0 mm rain [83.2]

Rain overnight and heavy showers late afternoon.

Sharp shock earthquake just before 7:00 am this morning, only 4.9 richter but enough to get me out of bed and eying the door frame, as did Bridget clutching Alex – and Bicka bounded up the stairs to see what was happening.

Bridget et all planted the trees in all the holes I’d dug; ideal that it rained soon afterwards.

Did a little mowing with the tractor until the showers struck.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 9°C—21°C; 3.5 mm rain [82.4]

Leisurely day, very warm by lunchtime. We picked up Chris from Napier airport at 5:30 pm and all had dinner at the Westshore Fish Restaurant. Then, after Bridget showed me how to solve a killer sudoku, we all went to bed.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—24°C; 7.0 mm rain [?]

First I took down the temporary electric fencing round the lawn after pushng the ewes and lambs into the Front paddock after closing the gates into the orchard drive and by the Lime tree.

Then I went to the garage and got another 20 litres of diesel and went on to Central Metals to get a price for metal bars to straighten two of the elm rails at the front gate. After paying for boring the bolt holes it’d be over $80.

Dug another ten holes for native trees.

Went shopping including buying an old sash clamp for $25 at White Traders which, after some mucking about with a drill and hacksaw, became a low-cost way of providing a metal rail-straightening plate with bolt holes. Unfortunately the wide top rail just bends the metal plate so I used the metal plate for the 2nd smaller rail and will have to swap the top rail for the bottom one somehow.

As Karola thought, Garden Groom (Mike Croucher) turned up after lunch, having judged it was time to mow our lawns again, and mowed the lawns ready for Bridget and, next week, for Hilary Haylock’s visit.

Early evening I saw a large hedgehog scuttle into the goose enclosure; the four small hedgepigs have gone from their exposed nest so I guess she has them in a new nest by now, hope it’s warm and dry.

Bridget and Natalie and Alex arrived around 5:30 pm; apparently it had rained hard for most of the way from Wellington.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—16°C; no rain [81.4]

The day started with the sheep, specifically #714 and its ram lamb #828. The hogget ewe was very daggy and had a lot of wool around her bum so while I held her (the ewe) Karola snipped off the huge squishy dags and washed her behind and udder. Then the little lamb had a good feed; I think he was actually feeding OK before this, but just to make sure.

Twenty more holed dug for the native trees. Also at Karola’s suggestion I reclaimed four leaky pipe hoses from along the orchard drive under the established Ngaios. Karola plans to use these to bring water to the many trees we planted along the west boundary just before we went to England. In addition we extended a leaky pipe to water the new Ngaios just planted; sadly in the recent slight ground frost almost half the 24 new Ngaios were seriously set back.

I put the three old and two new geese together in the goose enclosure and, apart from some loud shrieking and flapping and so on as they sorted out the new pecking order, they seem to be settling in. I do not know whether the goose at the end of the pecking order has moved up the list or not; I can’t tell them apart reliably.

When I moved the old outside loo last night from its place on the edge of the bamboo to somewhere less obvious (now that the bamboo has gone) I uncovered a nest of hedehogs, four little hedgepigs – I hope their mother comes back despite the fright of having her roof removed.

Laurie and Enid popped in to see how the farmlet was doing; the bamboo going made a big difference they said, much better with more light. Meanwhile Adam came over several times and used different cultivators, rollers, discs and rotavator to prepare the bamboo plot for grassing down. At one point his dad Alan came over to see how it was coming along and I took the opportunity to discuss our resubmission for Resource Consent for the well up in Karola’s orchard. The questions are difficult; neither we nor Alan our orchardist know how many litres the irrigation pump can pump nor how much water will be needed to irrigate the apples and peaches.

Mid afternoon I went to Harris Machinery and got the bits to turn our blue plastic 44 gallon drum into a big watering can.

Bridget rang and confirmed that she’s coming up with her girls tomorrow for the weekend – Labour holiday weekend – hip, hip, horray.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 12°C—24°C; 1.1 mm rain [81.5]

Tree planting in the morning; 20 planted.

Don, a 60+ widower/divorcee ex-farmer who lives a few doors down the road on the other side, stopped and chatted as we were planting 3 replacement Five Fingers. He wanted a couple of our ample supply of seasoned apple wood logs to use to smoke some trout he’d caught recently up at Lake Taupo. In return he gave us a side of smoked trout that we had for dinner tonight; nice meal.

This morning I surprised the stoat (or weasel) again running across the ex-bamboo area. I couldn’t see its tail so unable to say if it was “stoatally different” not being “weaselly distinguished”. It got up on its back legs to get a better view of Bicka and me, showing off its snowy white tum. About a minute later Bicka rushed off in pursuit – at least a minute too late. If the weasel gets rabbits that’ll please us, we’re being overrun. If it kills my bantams I will be cross.

Little gizmo came in the mail today, I ordered it yesterday afternoon online. It is a little card that fits completely inside a slot on my MacBook Pro – an Express/34 card which takes all manner of camera cards and sticks so you can get your photos onto the Mac. I’d broken the little separate box I’d been using for this, hence the new accessory and instead of needing to carry around the little reader box and a cable it now all fits flush within the MacBook Pro case.

Adam Ladbrooke came on his tractor mid morning and has cultivated the ex-bamboo area: harrows and leveller followed by ploughing followed by discing and it’s coming up a fine tilthe. Adam says he’ll need to rotavate it a bit before it’s ready for putting down to grass – then we’ll either have to do a rain dance or water it.

Karola and I went into town for:

• lunch at the NewWorld Cafe,
• some food shopping,
• dropping off 2 secateurs, 2 pruning saws and 2 loppers for resharpening at the Saw Doctors, and
• picking up some irrigation pipe bits and bobs from Harris Machinery and attempting to get them to send someone to unscrew our water filter holders – they’re a bit awkwardly placed under a trapdoor in the homestead side verandah and I just can’t unscrew them. I also looked at various hand pumps with a view to takng a 44 gallon plastic drum round on the back of the tractor and watering some of our newly planted trees. Nothing suitable except a $400 pump which would handle dangerous chemicals as well as water and deisel – overkill for what I had in mind.
• Mitre-10 for more pump options: using an electric water blaster as a watering hose that would pump from a barrel ($124), or a garden pump such as one would use to empty a swimming pool ($260). Again, not what I had in mind

On the way home Karola had two possible solutions to my watering problem: buy another knapsack 20l sprayer (like the one we have but without the Roundup) and take the spray tip off the wand, or, fit a tap to one of the two bungs in the top of the plastic 44 gallon drum and tip it on its side and let gravity do the rest. The latter is my preferred approach.

Lambs:

• ewe #714 had a ram lamb #828 R

In the evening we went to the Gregory’s at their Mahora Stud orchard in Pakowai Rd and caught and bagged two of their white(ish) geese. I wanted a couple more to see if that would stop two of our current three geese persecuting the third one. They had about a dozen geese and two rather nice goslings. After much chasing round, including using their fox terrier to outrun them, we did get the two that I wanted but in the process the terrier (who did exactly what was wanted last time) caught up with a gosling and, zap, the gosling was no more. We took the two newcomers home in old stockfood plastic sacks and, remembering last time, cut the pinion feathers of one wing on each bird. I shooed our three resident geese into the Middle paddock so that the newcomers could have the geese enclosure to themselves while they got acclimatised – to themselves except for: Nelson, the wether #630, several pukekos, several rabbits, and some bantams, (and possibly a weasel).

Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—20°C; no rain [81.9]

Ewe #294 was euthanased by a vet at 3:00 pm and buried by 4:00 pm. Karola called in the vet as the ewe was unable to even sit up and had been sinking slowly for a couple of weeks. The vet also took a look at #629’s ewe lamb #811E wth the bad eye. It now becomes plain that we have an hereditary problem here – #629 aka ‘piccalilli’ is sibling of ‘piccolo’, the wether adopted by Crystal Ladbrooke and a tubby monster grazing on their lawn as we speak, and of triplet ‘piccadilly’, the wether aka #630 who cohabits with Nelson for company. ‘Piccolo’ had in-growing eyelash problem that came right eventually, with vet help. We culled ‘piccolo’s mum but let ‘piccalilli’ breed. She’s a fine looking ewe but she’ll have to go.

John Pollack and his huge front-end loader finished scraping up the worst of the bamboo mat of stumps and roots. Adam Ladbrooke will probably come over later this week to level and grass the area. We’l get lots of re-growth I’m sure but constant grazing and mowing will keep it in check. John also smoothed out the new metal on the orchard drive and rolled it with his huge machine’s huge tyres.

Karola and I went to Titoke Nursery and picked up the extra lot of trees; we were given four extra shrubs as a bonus.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 9°C—23°C; no rain [81.9]

We tagged and docked the remaining lambs; no new arrivals since 15th. Ewe lamb #811 still has a bad eye and we now recall there’s a problem with eyes stretching back to her great grandmother.

Ewe #294 is not lying down but cannot stand up so I suspect she’s come to the end of her dash; Karola gives her water and she’s fairly alert but light as a feather and weak. I have dug a hole in anticipation; according to Karola’s logic that should keep her alive for weeks.

We surveyed most of the planting areas for places needing additional plants or replacements and now have a list of additional native trees to get from Titoke Nursery.

• 7 x Titoke, the larger size 6.5PB (making it a dozen in all)
• 12 x flax replacing mostly Karamus eaten by rabbits and hares or frosted
• 3 x fivefinger replacements
• 5 x wineberry infilling some big gaps
• 3 x puriri adding some big tree contrast to low-rise shrubbery
• 10 x hebe, creating some low-rise contrast, like the kaka beak
• 5 x Griselinia to go next to the orchard drive road gate

Hawkes Bay Weather: 2°C—14°C; no rain [83.4]

We went to Titoke Nursery on Riverbend Road in Napier and bought the trees ordered yesterday (and 4 extra Ngaios).
Karola went off to lunch and a meeting of the Federation of Graduate Women (HB). I planted 24 Ngaios

A lamb had got caught inside Karola’s lemon tree enclosure, it ran round and round but eventually I caught it and reunited it with its mother.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—20°C; 0.7 mm rain [83.4]

Rain stopped play today except that several more truckloads of metal were laid on the orchard drive.

Bruce Utting brought Karola’s trailer back and we then met up with Karola, who had gone shopping for the morning, at the Hastings Opera House cafe for lunch.

Later I rang Titoke Nursery and ordered some more native trees:

• 20 x Ngaio PB3 replacing frost losses from 2 years ago along North paddock part of the orchard drive
• 5 x Titoke PB6.5 to replace those killed by frost
• 5 x Rimu PB3 to replace those eaten by rabbits in the winter
• 5 x Kaka Beak to replace odd deaths around the boundary plantings

Kaz called and he has talked to the Texel breeder who says we’d be hard pressed to find any decent hogget or other Texel ewes for sale in the North Island this year but who can sell us ten 2-yr-old (4-tooth) breeding ewes from a small number he wants to shed because they didn’t have a lamb – leastways not one that survived to docking. Kaz assures me that otherwise, apart from their lambing record, they’ll be a fine run of sheep so I hope we’ll go over to Manawatu and collect them next week.

We saw a weasel chased across the lawn by a magpie; it ran off into the ex-bamboo area.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 5°C—_19°C; 16.9 mm rain [83.0]

Lambs:

• ewe #719’s weak twin lamb which died overnight has been buried; I caught $719 and gave the surviving lamb a drink
• I have counted 26 lambs alive as of midday today
• Lamb #810E which seemed to have a bad eye looks much better today
• ewe #294 is still very weak and probably not long for this world but her twin Romney lambs are active and getting bigger
• ewe #616 is now feeding her twin lambs properly

Called Elms at 8:15 am and John Pollock and his boss came at 8:30 am. Estimated the orchard drive renovation at under $2000 so I asked them to go ahead. Within the hour John was back with his enormous digger; by this evening most of the new gravel / shingle / metal had been laid and leveled. John was also here to do the bamboo cleanup and he got through about half the bamboo stumps and roots. This is a slow job but he is doing it well and not getting too near the major trees. Another day should complete it, they think.

In the morning Karola and I tidied up around the bamboo area a bit more including taking out five old fence posts and moving some wire netting bundles.

Bruce Utting came and borrowed Karola’s trailer which he plans to return tomorrow. He used it today to bring an old desk belonging to his late father (funeral on Saturday) and put it in our store room in the garage until he can get up here again from Wellington with a trailer.

Rosalie, president of the local Federation of Graduate Women, came this morning to talk to Karola about Karola’s hosting of their Christmas meeting; most of the members are very old and so wheelchair access is a priority.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—22°C; 4.1 mm rain [83.3]

We finished cutting down the bamboo, mulched most of it and used the best, straightest poles in Karola’s sheep windbreak along the Casurinas; a few dozen garden stakes remain to be defronded but otherwise we’re ready for the big machine to come and deal with the stumps and roots.

Mark took home a white bantam hen and her three chicks; we also lent him the chicken ark which I took round on the trailer early afternoon.

Lambs:

• ewe #719 has had twins; a ram lamb #827 and an undersized, weak ewe lamb which died overnight

Karola went out with Jenny Hendery to a dinner and talk with the Zonta people. Noel and I had a meal together at the West Shore Fish Restaurant and then a quiet evening in till the ladies returned around 10:30pm.

Zonta International is a global organisation of business and professionals who work together to advance the status of women through service and advocacy. Formed in 1919, Zonta International is active in 68 countries of the world.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—22°C; no rain [83.2]

A heavy morning of mulching but another hour to go.

Ewe #616 was seen today with both lambs drinking which is good news.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—20°C; no rain [82.7]

Another Monday morning mulching. We’re getting close to finishing although late morning we took some time off to prune the now discovered Rhododendron and Camelia trees into a more compact, pleasing shape with no poisonous rhododendron branches near ground level where sheep might sample them. The offcuts were cut into firewood or mulched.

Bantams:

• one white bantam with one black chick
• the other white bantam with two black chicks and two yellow chicks
• chick food bought from Farmlands and food and water dispensers made out of old ice cream plastic containers

Lambs:

• Karola fed the twins of #616 again with some milk saved from #405 last week. It has been frozen between times
• Ewe lamb #81o belonging to ewe $629 has a bad eye but is still frolicking with the others, reprieved from an early demise basically because I cannot catch it; we’ll see if it mends by itself

Rang Bob Masters and confirmed Richard Rolls is no longer making hay so Bob will come and have a look at our North paddock in the next few days with view to haymaking next month. Rang Kaz about him fixing up a meeting next week with a Texel sheep breeder and to see whether he has any Texel ewe hoggets he’d sell me.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 4°C—18°C; no rain [82.1]

Poor old #294 was lying down very much in the ‘dead’ position this morning; Karola noticed her out of the window first thing. However she then kicked quite vigorously so I was dispatched to get her upright and feed her some Ketol. Having done that she seemed quite happy to wander off and eat so maybe she’ll survivie for a bit longer, she is terribly light and her twins have had very little milk I suspect.

Otherwise a quiet day; cloudy in parts and mild. Karola went to a concert in the afternoon then came home and did more clearing around the bamboo area. Some of the lambs careered around in a large group as dusk fell, leaping and frolicking.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 5°C—18°C; no rain [82.5]

Dale of MowTec dropped off the sharpened mulcher blades around 8:30 am. I cut my right hand palm – superficial I think but much dripping blood – carrying the sharpened blades and so this enabled me to ask Mark to reassemble the mulcher and continue mulching while I pottered round trimming bamboo for garden stakes. Come morning tea time Mark had done an hour of mulching and it looked as if we’d need most of Monday to finish mulching the already cut bamboo, but I got back into action after morning tea and we finished the substantial pile just after 1:00 pm. Whew!

Graham and Tracey dropped by and joined us for lunch. They told us that the black hen and her 6 chicks we gave to Matt and Karen over the road at Karamu Stables just before we went to the UK in July are all flourishing.

Later Graham and I cornered #616 and attempted to get ther twins to feed again but they didn’t seem that interested and she didn’t seem to have much milk. We saw the twins later appearing to drink for themselves so maybe they’ll be OK.

Two bantam hens have hatched chicks in the Mandarin Chook House so I put some water and some brown bread in the house hoping they’ll quickly learn to go down the ramp to the outside world.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—22°C; no rain [82.5]

More mulching. First extracted a load of big, long stems and cut off the fronds before adding them to Karola’s bamboo sheep sheltering fence along a bit of the Scott’s (southern) boundary. Then mulched up previously cut bamboo – still have a couple of hours of that to do before beginning on the last tranche of standing bamboo, about 8 metres by 5 metres.

Dale of Mowtec has promised to sharpen the mulcher blades this evening and bring them round by 8:30 am for tomorrow’s mulch. Karola took round the heavy flywheel holding the blades because again I could not get the screws out of the blades but just wrecked the screw heads.

Karola and I cornered #616 and her twins born yesterday, put them in the yards and turned the poor ewe upside down and let the twins drink. They are both small and looked very miserable first thing this morning; after three of these forced but natural feedings and some pipette-fulls of milked milk they look a lot better and are getting the hang of it. #616 tends not to stand still and let them drink; she’s probably got mastitis as her udder is too warm so we’ve given her some nice Ketol as well.

Lambs:

• ewe #402 had a ram lamb #826, mother and son both well

Hawkes Bay Weather: 3°C—17°C; no rain [82.8]

More mulching. We also loaded the trailer with the long large clean bamboo poles for Karola’s wall. The main thing though is that we finished the main clump including many tall 13 metre stems. John Pollock (Elms – the big loader) came late afternoon and we discussed what needed doing in getting out the bamboo stumps and roots.

Karola continued building her sheep shelter bamboo wall along part of the casurina shelter belt.

Lambs:

• ewe #616 had twins; ewe lamb #824 and ram lamb #825
• We tagged and docked #821 to #823 and merged them in with the other ewes and lambs

Hawkes Bay Weather: 4°C—17°C; no rain [82.4]

At 12:45 am this morning I got up and went looking for a lost lamb; one of our ewes had been baaing loudly for about half an hour. I scoured the fence lines, hillocks and holes but to no avail; it was #604 making the racket and when I finally gave up I saw a lamb amble over to #604 who, while not seeming that impressed, did shut up. I caught the lamb and checked, yes, it was her lamb.

More mulching in the morning; Karola then spent the afternoon, helped by Mark, to move dozens of the largest, straightest bamboo trunks and enhance a bamboo sheep shelter wall she’s created along the casurina shelter belt on part of the southern (Scott’s) boundary.

Ronnie Chalmers (lawyer) and her partner Branko Coebergh (clinical psychologist) dropped in; after lunch they’re moving down to Wellington and are staying at Pitoitoi until their rented apartment becomes available in a couple of weeks.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 8°C—21°C; no rain [82.8]

Mulching in the morning – we’re now attacking the thickest, tallest part and going is slow.

Lambs:

• ewe #404 had twins, ewe #822 E and ram lamb #823R

Hawkes Bay Weather: 12°C—23°C; 2.6 mm rain [82.4]

Raining so mulching with Mark in the morning was postponed.

Went with Karola into town – she had a routine blood test while I ordered some more sheep tags and an expensive but effective hard hat with ear muffs and visor. The one I bought from Mitre-10 at half the price didn’t keep out the noise of a mulcher at 540 rpm. I attempted to return the Mitre-10 helmet set but as there was nothing actually broken they were reluctant. Anyway, Karola says it fits her and is OK should she need a hard hat etc so we’re keeping it as a spare.

Breakfast eggs and toast at the cafe in New World, then stocking up on food.

Also went to bike shop where we bought our two bicycles and asked for bells for the handlebars as in London we’d found bells on bicycles essential where pedestrians shared a walkway with cyclists. “The Hub”, the bike shop in Stortford Lodge, gave me a couple of bells, no charge.

Rang the KiwiSaver people at National Bank Funds Management – apparently we don’t need to contribute more to our KiwiSaver funds till next June. Also rang ArmourGuard and changed the procedure to be followed if one of our intruder alarms goes off:

1. Ring the homestead
2. Ring my mobile
3. Rng Karola’s mobile
4. Ring Bridget in Wellington
5. Ring Bridget’s mobile
6. give up – do not send a patrol

I called Elms in Hastings and John Pollock is still there and still drives his enormous loader machine so he’ll be asked to drop in and see what fun we have in store for him. I want him to renovate / widen the metalled surface of the orchard drive and also scoop up most of the bamboo stumps and roots into a pile where they can be burned.

Dale of MowTec brought back the mulcher flywheel with the critical chipper blades reversed – they are intelligently created with sharp edges on both sides and are reversible. He’d drilled out the screws that I couldn’t budge and charged me only for six new screws and an hour of his time. Late afternoon I spent a couple of hours reassembling the mulcher, testing it, and then cutting more bamboo ready to be mulched tomorrow – as long as it doesn’t rain.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—21°C; 0.9 mm rain [84.1]

Spring cleaning – well in my case that meant the annual shining of the shoes. I have discarded 5 pairs of almost unused shoes and kept 9 (including gumboots and work boots etc). Karola will get them to a good home, examples of my folly in hoping a shoe that is too tight when bought will somehow expand later and become comfortable – all discarded shoes are too narrow.

Sheep:

• ewe #406 had ram lamb #821R
• Nelson and the wether #630 have been banished to the goose enclosure
• The 10 ewe hoggets and #291 are in the Island paddock. I dagged 3 but then was soaked in a short downpour. There are 4 ewe hoggets and #291 still to dag
• I put #403 in with the ewes and lambs. #291 will join them once she’s been dagged. These two ewes have had stillborn lambs.
• That leaves 5 of the older ewes still to lamb and today’s mother #406 in the Middle paddock

Karola has finished reorganising and recording the books in the dining room. The free standing wooden book shelf that fell over in the earthquake is now fastened securely to the wall.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—25°C; 4.2 mm rain [83.0]

Today Mark and I (mainly Mark) cut bamboo and stacked it for mulching next week. At last it looks as if we will finish in a few days. Karola and I took down the old fence along the west side of the bamboo which used to separate it from the Middle paddock.

Dale of MowTec came and collected the Bio 190 mulcher flywheel with the stuck-on blades and expects to have them back sharpened on Monday.

Karola and I tagged and docked the lambs needing it – we’re now right up to date. Not sure if we’ll vaccinate all the lambs; so far we’ve only vacinated up to #807.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—24°C; no rain [83.1]

Mulching again. Mark found a possum in a big heap of bamboo we were mulching and he dispatched it and plucked it. Apparently 20 – 30 possums can give you a kilo of possum fur which is worth around $105.

Lambs:

• ewe #206 had twins but one, a large ewe lamb, was stillborn. The other ewe lamb will be numbered #819E
• ewe #408 had a ram lamb #820R

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—22°C; no rain [82.7]

Ram lamb #817 died overnight – ewe #405 is mighty upset but still has ewe lamb #818 to look after. Karola wondered if, despite a huge udder and great quantities of milk, #405’s lambs might not be drinking so she milked #405 and bottle fed a little of it to #818. Karola also got me to inject #405 with 10mm calcium, a cure for milk fever. Not a very good day for #405.

No other lamb changes today. The morning spent mulching and in the afternoon Dale of Mowtec came over – twice. The first time he said he’d left some tools at home and couldn’t open the mulcher – he couldn’t find us, we were out in the paddocks, so just went home. We then agreed that I would open the mulcher and then he’ld come back. He did and bent his high-grade steel allen key on the screws holding the chipper blades. No joy, we’ll have to struggle on with very blunt blades for now while Dale talks with the Auckland agent and prepares to drill out the screws and replace them with new ones. I couldn’t unscrew the blade screws nor undo the bolts holding the mulching chamber in place – I’m hoping we’re not the only ones with this problem and that the Auckland folk have an answer.

Brien Mahoney (Guardian Trust) came over at 4:00 pm as planned. He was somewhat apologetic for the mismanagement of the mortgage fund that Karola’s invested in, but essentially GT blames their clients for all wanting their money out at the same time, when their 6-month investment matured.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 3°C—18°C; no rain [82.5]

More mulching – the mulcher is getting very blunt and so we contacted Dale of Mowtec in Taradale (1027 Links Rd 06-845-4977) and he is going to come out and sharpen the chipper blades tomorrow. My attempt to take the blades off and get them to him today were foiled by the cheap set of Allen keys I got from Mitre-10. The blades are fastened with bolts with a recessed 6 mm hole for an allen key. My key, obviously made of soft steel, now is twisted like a corkscrew.

We also docked and tagged lambs – all lambs are tagged and all but three have been docked as well.

Lambs:

• ewe #604 had ram lamb #816R
• ewe #405 – the alleged ewe who had stillborn twins while we were overseas – had twins #817R and #818E

Romney #291 is now the suspected ewe which had the stillborn twins early in September.

Electric fencing erected to include most of the west lawn in the West paddock while leaving us room to work on the bamboo mulching from the west (paddock) side.

Karola has been enjoying a little bonfire in a drum just outside the big oak’s dripline.

We completed Karola’s Dept Statistics farming survey tonight.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—18°C; no rain [83.4]