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Monthly Archives: December 2008
Wellington – Christmas 2008 – Day 11
In the morning we went round to Mahina Bay to see Charles Bagnall and his new partner Radha; Radha is a singer, song writer, composer and half owner of UCA music, a business that makes music CDs for children. Radha composes and produces and sometimes sings as well, sometimes with the “kiwi kids” band. Charles is very happy. Radha seems to be a very nice person; like Krsty and Bruce, Charles and Radha met via an online people=meeting agency.
We discussed the work at Karamu with Charles, we may not be able to entice hm up to mastermind the whole thing but I think he and Radha will come up for a weekend so he can assess the state of the cottage for us.
Karola and I went in to Khandallah in the afternoon to babysit while she and Chris went out shopping together.
In the evening we went to St John and Diana’s place on Moonshine road, miles from anywhere. Very pleasant New Year’s eve; we were joined by Susi and Vaughan White who have a lavender farm in Te Horo. Kirsty and Bruce ‘farm-sit’ for them occasionally. St John and Diana Wakefield have lived there for over 30 years; at first there were only six families on Moonshine road, now there are 80. Peacocks, piglets, chooks, sheep, cattle all coexist on their smallholding. We saw the new year in and got back to Pitoitoi around 1:00 am.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—27°C; no rain [?]
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Wellington – Christmas 2008 – Day 10
Gill and Ben dropped by for morning tea; then we went into town leaving Bicka to have a peaceful afternoon at home. We met Bridget and the granddaughters at a paint shop where Bridget bought gallons and gallons of paint – she intends to repaint the playroom/sitting room at her place in Khandallah this week. Bridget and I then went off searching for a birthday present for Anna’s 40th next month – a solid solid-silver bangle with a flax motif. Back home and in the evening Geoff and Felicity came round for dinner.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 12°C—26°C; 5.6 mm rain [?]
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Wellington – Christmas 2008 – Day 9
Karola had a swim on the beach (cold); she then went out shopping and visiting art galleries in Lower Hutt with Anne-Marie More. I had a restful day computing.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 18°C—22°C; 2.8 mm rain [?]
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Wellington – Christmas 2008 – Day 8
Karola invited Mary out for lunch – I picked her up from Karori and Karola took her back late afternoon; it was a gorgeous day and we ate too much, again.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—24°C; no rain [?]
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Wellington – Christmas 2008 – Day 7
Bridget and family came out to Days Bay for lunch on the beach – fish & chips from Eastbourne’s Pirana F&C shop. Bridget came by car; Chris brought Natalie and Alex on the cross-harbour ferry; Chris’ mother Anne-Marie More came by car from her home in Silverstream.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 12°C—24°C; no rain [?]
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Wellington – Christmas 2008 – Day 6
A very quiet day out at Days Bay.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—21°C; no rain [?]
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Wellington – Christmas Day 2008 – Day 5
The rain has stopped, there’s spells of sunshine, and gentle cool breezes.
Christmas lunch at Bridget’s with Anne-Marie More, Bridget, Chris, Natalie, Alex, Karola and me.
Ferried Mary home to Karori from Rashbrooke’s place in York Bay, stopping on the way in Khandallah for a very pleasant afternoon tea with Bridget and family, including Anna-Marie. Mary saw the video of the children’s home concert – Bridget, Natalie and Alex singing songs – that we’d seen earlier.
Evening meal with Felicity & Geoff Rashbrooke, Gill Brackenbury and Ben Bell, Gwen Rashbrooke and Chris Thompson.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 12°C—24°C; no rain [?]
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Wellington – Christmas 2008 – Day 4
Gentle rain all day and night. Log fire in the evening; shopping in the morning. Highlight of the day was trying to get a beer can out of a special beer can sleeve intended to keep it cool on hot hot days on the beach. It would not come out of its sleeve and eventually I decided to push from the bottom with a knife handle, forgetting how flimsy these cans are these days. Beer everywhere.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 15°C—21°C; 5.6 mm rain [?]
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Wellington – Christmas 2008 – Day 3
We spent most of the day at Bridget’s in Khandallah.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—20°C; 16.9 mm rain [?]
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Wellington – Christmas 2008 – Day 2
Karola went into Wellington and accompanied Bridget and family to the Te Papa museum – they travelled in by train and back by taxi. The museum puts on plenty of exhibits designed to educate and entertain children; a good time was had by all. Ian stayed out at Days Bay, quietly computing while Bicka sniffed and slept.
In the evening we went to Kirsty’s for dinner with Kirsty, Bruce, Peter and Navina Clemerson, and Diana and St John Wakefield.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 7°C—20°C; no rain [?]
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Wellington – Christmas 2008 – Day 1
Sunday party for Cecilia Johnson who, aged 65+, is going on Voluntary Service Abroad (VSA) to Tanzania. The party was hosted by Frank and Marina Wilson; Frank is Karola’s cousin and they have a grand house inherited from Frank’s father, Karola’s uncle Ormond Wilson, just off Kelburn Parade. Relations a plenty were there to celebrate Cecilia’s next adventure. Entree’s of crumbed shrimp and whitebait fritters were followed by a choice of meats including the unusual and expensive marbled Wagyu beef. James and Barbie Wilson from Marlborough Sounds; Muff aka Alice and Jonathan Milne from Titahi Bay; Aden and Arty Kebbell from Te Horo; Philida and Johnny Russell from Napier and many more – quite a gathering of the Wilson clan.
After the party Cecilia and Miranda dropped round to Bridget’s place and we continued trying to install Microsoft WORD on Cecilia’s new little laptop. A vital piece of information was left behind at Pukera Bay so Cecilia and Miranda went home and phoned it through – at which point everything worked just fine. Miranda arranged to pick up the laptop from Bridget’s the next day.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 9°C—20°C; no rain [?]
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To Wellington For Christmas
Karola loaded the car with everything she wanted to take down for Christmas; the car being almost full we then had to squeeze in our clothes and boots and Bicka – Bicka had a rather precarious and squashed perch on top of things.
Karola struck again, trapped the second possum in two weeks out by the garage using an elderly apple for bait. This time a large female with an almost full-grown joey. More on that below.
Laurie and Enid came round with their grandchildren and we went over the foods and watering arrangements, and the irrigation in progress. Ewes and lambs were let into the Front paddock and the One Acre; the ewes without lambs in the Middle paddock were given the Island paddock as well. The ram lamb #806 and The Wether #630 stayed in the goose enclosure.
One of Enid’s grandsons spotted the Joey and suddenly it was finding some spare lambs milk powder and a plastic pippette used with the lambs and they were taking the joey away as a pet – just as I and Enid and 100s other kids did in NZ when they were young and living in the countryside.
We left for Wellington mid afternoon and called in at Cecilia Johnson’s in Pukera Bay to see if I could help daughter Miranda move a copy of Microsoft Word from Cecilia’s old desktop computer to her new small Acer laptop. Cecilia is soon to go on VSA to Tanzania and she intends to use the little laptop for the year that she’s there. It proved more complicated than I thought to move Microsoft Word from the old machine; further attempts were postponed until the next day when we’d be meeting at a lunch of Cecilia’s relations hosted by Frank and Marina Wilson in Wellington. On to Pitoitoi and bed.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—27°C; no rain [81.7]
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Christmas Preparations
Indoors work all day, preparing for Christmas and tomorrow’s trip down to Wellington.
Dale of MowTec has taken away the topper to sell it for us.
Mark Hendery and son Wolfgang came over and picked up the bantam hen with three chicks to add to the three he already has; we’re hoping some of them will turn out to be laying hens.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 15°C—28°C; no rain [82.3]
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Having a Butchers
After breakfast we showed Kaz and Yvonne round the farmlet, including the absence of bamboo and the new grass waving in its stead. They left for home mid morning.
Shopping in the morning for me. Karola suggested I try a new (to us) butcher, Dynamic Meats and so far it looks quite good. A big ham for Christmas; a big leg of lamb and not the fore-quarter that New World keeps pretending is a ‘leg’, and half a dozen pork sausages. Also some fresh locally grown tomatoes from the Tomato Shop in Lindhurst Rd along with yellow “butter beans” and freshly dug carrots. And a sack of wheat for the chooks, coffee and newspapers for Karola from Stortford Lodge BP station, and couple of punnets of finest Hawkes Bay cherries from Evenden road. Bicka and I enjoyed ourselves although it was so hot in the car that I left the air conditioning on so she didn’t broil.
Jenny and Noel Hendery came round for dinner to share the roast leg of lamb. Mmmm.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—26°C; no rain [81.2]
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Sheepless in Seattle
Karola and I decided to work with the ewes and lambs today: some dagging, footwork, drenching, pick-me-up and weaning.
Lamb #818 was the most daggy; washed, de-dagged, and drenched. #815 wasn’t quite so bad. #807, #811, and #820 were dagged but really weren’t bad.
Ewes #604, #406, #401 were all banished to join the other ewes without lambs. They had fair sized lambs and were very well fed themselves.
Ewe #218 was drenched, given a pick-me-up of Ketol, and had her hooves trimmed. Ewes #206 and younger ewe #405 had their hooves trimmed.
Ewe hoggets #704, #714, #717, #719 all had pick-me-up Ketol.
This took all morning. Just before lunch Garden Groom turned up to mow the lawns and I spent the next hour or so deconstructing the electric fence on the lawn and reinstalling it along the edge of the lawn and the Totara paddock.
Later, after a lunch at 3:0 pm, I got round to sweeping out the garage. Just before I finished that Kaz and Yvonne arrived on their way from Gisborne to Feilding. We went to Napier’s Westshore Fish Restaurant for dinner.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 12°C—23°C; no rain [81.8]
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Stairway to Heaven
Slow start to a sunny. hot day. Karola is engaged on a major project to change the stair carpet in the homestead, replacing the worn one with the red carpet previously on the floor of the upstairs passageways. Today the red carpet is on the stairs, though missing a few fasteners, and it looks quite regal. Among Karola’s reasons for using the red carpet this way is that it is the devil to keep clean and now she only has to clean half as much, the other half being on the risers of the stairs and therefore cleaned by gravity.
I mowed the goose enclosure and the sides of the new drive. Then I took the powered topper (that we couldn’t start) down to the garage and was turned away – it’s not a proper engine, take it to a mower shop. Hmmm, though they’re right, it’s a Briggs and Stratton Intek 17.5 horsepower OHV engine with one dinky little spark plug that none of my tools fit. I called Dale of MowTec and he’ll drop round tomorrow and take a look.
Karola did for the thistles in the Middle paddock yesterday; I got another half bag from the goose enclosure, the Island paddock, and along the drives.
To keep me occupied Karola suggested I mend the broken concrete post in the Scott’s boundary fence, broken we suspect by a tractor doing spraying in the Scott’s orchard. So I did – found an old concrete post, replaced the post, mended the two broken strands of barbed wire and made good. All done by dinner time.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—30°C; no rain [81.5]
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Cloudy, Warm, No Rain
Cloudy warm day and no rain. After a very late night, computing till nearly 3:00 am, it’s been a slow day.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 18°C—25°C; 0.1 mm rain [81.1]
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One Possum Less
To our joint surprise, the apple bait being one of our own apples from last year and the trap having been set for several days untouched, finally Karola caught a big male possum.
As if not to be outdone the cat caught a small adult rabbit today and proudly showed it off. It disappeared shortly afterwards and I do wonder if she has a cache of them under the cottage – would account for some of the smells. The rabbit in question was sitting on our front lawn not 15 metres from the verandah this morning.
Karola has been working exceptionally hard at clearing iris and weeds from near her yew and NZ holly trees; she’d done a couple of hours at it before breakfast.
I did some moving of electric fence to give the ewes and lambs a bit more of the main lawn. Also spent an hour raking hay left over by the haymaking and my subsequent topping. And Karola and I banged in 20 “standards” round her tree guards in the Front paddock. They come loose because the sheep like to rub against them and the firmer they are put in the harder the sheep rub.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—20°C; no rain [81.2]
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Odd Job Day
Put hay in the Mandarin Chook House, hay collected by Karola from stuff the baler missed.
As suggested by Karola I changed some of the sheep troughs round. Troughs in the Middle paddock and Island paddock are now semi-permanent, being attached to the irrigation control valves rather than taps. The one in the Front paddock was always thus. A trough in the goose enclosure has been attached to the secret tap that comes directly from the well, bypassing the pump and relying on nature artesian water pressure. It fills up under the artesian pressure so that was a very good idea.
Put a white tape along the boundary between the 2008 native tree planting and the sweet corn to avoid any mishaps with tractors and our line of manuka trees. Also, at Karola’s request, put electric fence round most of the lawn by the old plum tree and let #630 (wether) and #806 (ram lamb) out for a feed. They were joined of course by the geese.
Spent hour or so completing the chopping of thistles in the Front paddock. Also chopped xxxx, a woody weed that appears where the soil is bare and dry. Later tried to start the motorised topper but, even with jumper leads from the Landrover the engine turned over but wouldn’t fire. Resorted to the orchard mower and mowed the Front paddock and then the One Acre paddock. The One Acre paddock was very raggedy after the hay; the Front paddock was a sea of waving seed heads. Now if only it would rain a bit these paddocks would turn bright green with new grass growth.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—17°C; no rain [81.7]
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Thistle Down
Some maintenance on the leaky pipe in the morning plus digging out thistles from the tree planting area alongside the now burgeoning sweet corn.
More thistles, this time in the Front paddock, in the afternoon. I wore the new work boots for the first time today; Karola insisted I coat them with some leather preparation before getting them wet and muddy. Oh, and I saw another stoat running across the Orchard drive; hope it sticks to baby rabbits for meals.
Mary’s rain gauge shows another 10 mm in the last couple of days.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—24°C; 8.8 mm rain [82.2]
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New Grass Blues
Another nice Hawkes Bay summer day albeit quite early in the season. I see Hastings had top temperature again today according to TV1 weather.
After a long evening and night working on the 2008 Christmas e-mail, I gave up at 1:30 am, it was a slow start this morning. The Christmas e-mail began with me selecting 160 or so photos taken this year and then winnowing them to 80. Karola said there should be only 12 and then reduced that number to 16. I dropped one and added back 2. After cropping and framing and resizing the images we’re ready to put them into pages – but that’s for later tonight.
I moved the electric fence to include about 1/4 of the lawn and the new grass that was previously the bamboo grove. The sheep loved the young grass and the luxuriant juicy fat hen growing amongst it. Unfortunately the grass is still too young in patches and it’s being pulled out by hungry, determined ewes so I’ve fenced off the new grass while there’s still some if it left in the ground. It is dry here, very dry – and even worse out in the hills, I’m told.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 15°C—26°C; no rain [82.4]
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#404 Dead and Buried
Poor old ewe #404 made it through the night but was still lying on her side and unable to get up. Karola called the vet and she (Bea Brosz) put #404 to sleep; I buried her before lunch. That reminds me, Vet Services (Hawkes Bay), Hastings branch. Bicka has been attended by Roger McKinley and Stuart Badger; Bea Brosz is a new face to us. Phone 06-876-7001.
Meanwhile we’d rounded up the sheep, written the numbers on the tags of the now identified #1 – #7 lambs, and dusted the bottoms of 4 lambs with anti-flystrike powder. Karola also washed and de-dagged two lambs. Karola’s de-dagging of little Romney orphan lamb #802 had excellent results – clean and dry and no sign of maggots today. We also penned the ewes without lambs and tagged the remaining #700s – with their big tags that we can see from several metres away, and we wrestled wether #630 away from his friends in that group and back with the Ram Lamb #806 in the goose enclosure.
In the afternoon we went and collected Karola’s two new pairs of spectacles costing over $1000. Losing them is getting to be expensive.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 15°C—24°C; no rain [82.3]
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The One Acre
Light rain that evaporates in the dry breaks between showers. The sheep are a little damp so more sheep work put off till tomorrow. Instead I put stuff on the garage shelves – from the floor and many boxes and the workbench surfaces.
Made a rough measure of the Top paddock where the hay was and of the area in the orchard next to the Top paddock planted in sweet corn and, I believe, pumpkins. Each bit of land is approximately 1.2 acres in size, so about an acre of usable land. The Top paddock is to be renamed “The One Acre”.
Poor old infirm ewe #404 – who had a badly infected ear some months ago and has never come right – is finally giving up the ghost; I think she’ll die in the night. Her lambs have already forsaken her and chummed up with #218’s triplets, becoming a gang of five.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 16°C—23°C; 2.2 mm rain [82.3]
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A Day of Sheep Work
Tessa and Peter left for home at 7:00 am.
Today was sheep and more sheep. We rounded the ewes and lambs up and:
- Listed all the lambs with ear tags
- Put blank button tags in all the lambs with missing tags except for a couple we could safely deduce
- Put big tags in all the #700 ewes with lambs
- Drenched the orphan Romney lambs and a couple of others showing signs of scouring
- Karola tried to clean up the two Romney orphan lambs – very daggy – and had a tragedy in that she accidentally cut off one teat from the little ewe; she was in tears, had only been trying to help and the little lamb had the beginnings of fly strike – a few maggots and lots of eggs, and the dags were very matted. As Karola said, the old ewe asked her to look after the twins just before she died, and this is what happens. Very sad. Hopefully the little Romney ewe will be able to feed one lamb when the time comes.
- Flystrike poison sprayed on a handful of the lambs although there was only sign of a strike on the one little orphan ewe lamb.
- Vigest and Ketol via plastic pippette for the orphan lambs and #218 and #404
- Ewes #218 and her triplets, and #404 and her twins were let into the Front paddock by themselves for a bit of good tucker ahead of the rest
- Ewes #219, #613, #623, #629 were put into the Middle paddock with the ewes without lambs and #203 – leaving their lambs behind. These lambs are the earliest and biggest so it is time to wean them and give their mothers a break.
- Wether #630 is temporarily also in the Middle paddock but will be reunited with the ram lamb #806 later in the goose enclosure.
- The seven lambs with blank button tags were inscribed with a big green number on each flank and on the back, from 1 to 7 using a spray can. Later, out in the field, I spied who was associating with whom and managed to correlate them with their mums. Later we’ll write the #800 numbers on the blank tags.
All leaky pipes are flowing; no major leaks or blockages as of this evening.
My old John Bull steel-toecapped working boots have long ago become unwaterproof with the front sole of one flapping a bit in the wind so today I bought a new pair of Mongrel safety boots and will gradually wear them, or my feet, in. Got them at Workwear shop on Omahu road, run by Jackson Smith’s father (exclusive brethren), we had a nice chat, apparently they used to own Kelson’s orchard on Oak Avenue 27 years ago. Jackson is expected to take over the shop from his father when he leaves school.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 14°C—23°C; 3.6 mm rain [81.7]
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Garage Shelving Completed
It rained in the night, to my surprise, only 1/4 inch though and it soon evaporated leaving no trace.
Peter and Tessa went off to the Go-Kart track on route 50; Tessa returned and she and Karola went off again shopping in expensive shops in Napier, then returned only to go out again to watch Peter in his last couple of races. After dinner we went to Quantum of Solace, a film starring a James Bond – very violent though not terribly bloodthirsty derring-do with only half a joke and low key “romance”. The special effects were, well, special and it was a reasonable successor to Cassino Royale.
I have finished painting the 20 shelves and assembling the three racks of shelves in the garage. The shelves are about 850 mm x 450 mm and 10 mm thick made of ghastly particle board now painstakingly painted to match the rest of the inside of the garage.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—22°C; no rain [82.2]
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Hay Up
Sadly I’ve managed to kill four chicks by misreading the chook water container – one of those upside down cones which keep a shallow tray at the base full of water. I’d mistaken the green ring of old algae for the water level and they ran out. All four chicks jumped into the geese water dish and drowned. They were chicks belonging to two brown hens; another brown hen with three chicks still has them running about this evening.
In the morning I went shopping because I needed some pieces of timber and some paint from Mitre-10. On the trip I picked up some ripe and very good tomatoes from a stall in Lyndhurst road and some cherries from a stall in Evenden road. This is the place to be for fresh fruit and vegetables for the next few months. Bicka came with me which meant keeping a watch for any tiny bit of shade in the shopping car parks
Karola went to a lecture about some obscure New Zealand artist in Napier in the afternoon.
Neil X (McKay?) came and raked the hay after lunch; Bob Masters came shortly afterwards and baled 64 bales of hay. The hay is now all safely in the big shed tucked in behind various tractors etc in a stack of about 16 bales per layer. Bob thinks there were 71 bales because his string broke and he had to rebale (I deduce) 7 bales.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 17°C—23°C; 6.9 mm rain [82.3]
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No Bales Today
I spent most of the day painting the 20 shelves of the three kitset “Gorilla” shelving frames bough this week. Karola spent the day in garden pursuits, watering and weeding. Bob Masters, the hay man, did not turn up to turn the hay nor to bale it. Fingers crossed that there’s not even light rain for the next 24 hours – or however long it takes for him to come and finishe what his subcontractor Roger has started.
Heard from Gill and Mary that the South Island trip to see the white herons was a resounding success in superb weather.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—26°C; no rain [81.7]
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Hay Turned
Finished the leaky pipe installation after quick visit to Harris Pumps and Filters for parts. Spent the afternoon assembling some shelving for the garage including painting the shelves – another day should see it done.
Roger came and turned the hay; it only took him about 15 minutes.
In the evening Fergus Cornes dropped in to see if we’d mind him shooting some of our rabbits. As 10 rabbits eat enough grass for a well fed ewe we somewhat reluctantly have to say yes.
Later as I toiled at my computer I felt a tickling sensation on one wrist – it was a cockroach, the Gisborne kind with a white skirt. It was sent to inspect the spetic tank. Moments later I felt something on my leg – another cockroach, I mean this is beyond a joke. I obviously smell nice to cockroaches, maybe its the mess of blisters on my back after overdosing on New Zealand sun a few days ago. I’ve had skin peeling due to sunburn many times but never this mass of small blisters, quite worrying and very itchy. It was a bit stupid to spend an hour in the sun mid-morning chopping thistles but I wanted a bit of brown and lost track of time. Hmmm.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 16°C—31°C; no rain [83.0]
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One Man Came To Mow
Hay mown just after lunch; very quick. Roger Curtis, the mower, said everyone making hay has been hit by the same problem: the spring was too dry so the grass was thin and had no “bottom”, and the weather is suddenly so hot that the grass has shot to seed and is going brown and stalky even before it’s cut.
Karola did more irrigation pipe layout and also some weeding, feeding the weeds to the ewes and lambs; the ewes love it.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 11°C—28°C; no rain [83.0]
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Sunny Day But No Hay
It rained gently for some time in the night but today started bright and warm, turning to hot for the middle of the day. I called the subcontractor in the morning and he said maybe late afternoon but more likely Wednesday morning. So we continue to wait, chopping another couple of bags of thistles as we wait.
Karola laid out her half kilometer of leaky pipe in between the trees we planted last autumn, alongside the sweet corn.
Mad dogs and Englishmen, that doesn’t include Bicka who sticks inside in the cool as soon as the temperature soared. She likes the verandha in the warm early morning sun and then the relative cool of the house once it gets really hot, coming to life with a bounce again at her tea time, 6:00 pm and being wildly energetic as dusk falls. For much of the morning she most enjoys fossicking around in the grass within sight of her master and mistress working outside somewhere.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 13°C—28°C; no rain [82.8]
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Thistle Do
A touch of sunburn – right on the edge of being stupid to be out so long – a couple of hours – yesterday. Today it was overcast and cooler. Inside on computer most of the day workng on something charmingly called “drupal” – no accounting for taste.
A few more thistles chopped in anticipation of hay mowing tomorrow. In the evening Bob Masters called and said his subcontractor would be round on Tuesday as he himself was just rushed off his feet. Subcontractor is Roger Curtis o27-577-9017 or 877-7335.
Hawkes Bay Weather: 15°C—22°C; 0.8 mm rain [82.8]
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