Monthly Archives: July 2009

More fencing and gate adjustment.

Also began bringing the sheep back from the orchard. I gave them a thin strip of grass across the top of the Totara paddock and shut them out of the orchard. I also brought back one of the water troughs and wound up 500 metres of electric fence; several km more to do.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—17°C; no rain [80.4]

Despite the rain last evening it was a clear, sunny day with a hint of frost to begin.

Mark and I continued with the fencing until around 2:00 pm.

Alan Ladbrook stopped by and we discussed his plans for the orchard – he’s switched packing shed allegiance yet again and will be selling the Braeburn’s for export, not juicing this coming season. He’s about to do spraying and pruning in our orchard and so I need to remove the sheep and take down the electric fences over the weekend. I told Alan about needing the end bay of our big shed back, and that I would move his stuff from outside the end of the shed, allowing generous room for vehicles to go round the shed but not for storing heaps of apple crates and stuff.

After Mark left I fed the sheep another bale of hay.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 1°C—17°C; no rain [80.7]

Mark came at 9:00 am; it wasn’t actually raining then but it is too wet to work on the fence. Better luck tomorrow.

After Mark had gone I fenced off a strip of grass between the peaches and the boundary and added that to what the ewes could graze. They were enthusiastic.

In the evening I went to Noel and Jenny Hendery’s for dinner, inclusing Bicka and a guest, Leslie Riley.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 0°C—14°C; 0.8 mm rain [80.2]

Very cold night; Bicka wanted to be let out at 1:30 am which was a bit chilling too. Beautiful sunny day though.

Work on the north-west corner began well although several little frustrations crept in as the morning progressed. The tractor wouldn’t start, not even with 20 minutes of attempts to jump-start it with the Landrover. This implied we’d be digging out the posts we needed to reposition by hand, it’s a great help when one can just loosen them up and pull them out with the tractor forks.

Then I got the position of the big post Mark had spent an hour excavating out by four inches (100 mm), and so we had lunch – but not before I got Mark to hunt down and capture Piccolo who was limping a little on his front right leg. I took a look and it was footrot, but almost cleared up by itself so I let in a bit more air by paring down his hoof and gave it a spray and we let him go. He rather enjoyed it and the other two – Piglet and #630, came rushing over to hear about his adventure.

Oh, and I gave the ewes a bale of hay.

After lunch, for no apparent reason, the tractor started and Mark got the big strainer post back out of its hole, he’d only just begun to fill it in when I found the positioning error (my mistake), and he put it in exactly where it is meant to be. He had time to dig, but not fill in, another of these giant strainer post holes before he left at 2:45 pm, the posts are 2.4 metres long and over half of it ends up below ground level.

Lunch was a scrappy affair of toast with tuna/garlic/mayonnaise, lettuce, and tomato.

To my delight the rest of the day went much as planned, a trip to Stortford Lodge – papers for tax from Farmlands plus a couple of fence and irrigation bits and bobs; shirts from the laundry; Karola’s Outback wheel rim repaired and refitted. Then took completed 2009 tax return information to our accountant, beating last years submission by seven months, and New World for food stuff. Bicka slept all the while in the warm in the back.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 0°C—11°C; 1.9 mm rain [80.2]

Preparations for making a start on the boundary fence construction with Mark tomorrow; rain is forecast for the day after. This is the boundary fence from the north west corner down to the Big Shed and includes the gateway through the planting area in that corner.

Existing netting fence is detached and rolled back. Irrigation taps and leaky pipe all taken up. Netting gates that were across the corner have been taken down. Two lemon trees unhappily planted in what will become the gateway have been transplanted. A temporary netting fence cross the corner, well back from where we’ll be working, stops “piglet” and comrades from making a break for it. Drinking water for the three male sheep provided using garden hoses connected to the pump shed tap.

Inventory of gates, posts, battens, staples needed – all available except we’ll probably need more #8 (4.0 mm) wire.

Mary’s rain gauge has another 30 mm of rain since last measured on 14th July.

Hawkes Bay Weather: -3°C—12°C; 0.1 mm rain [80.1]

With the leaves long gone from the trees I could see copious snow on the Kawekas, snow to the south west on the Ruahines, and a bright snow-white tip of Ruapehu. A glorious morning, again, after the light mist had cleared. I quickly read last week’s Economist on the bed in the sun porch with Bicka.

Then I gave the sheep a bale of hay and looked round the orchard for stragglers – no corpses which is nice.

Gate hung, so the goose enclosure fence comprising a gate and railings is now complete.

Put little wire ties top and bottom of the netting fence protecting the mountain flax next to the Casurina windbreak.

In the evening I called:

• Bruce Richardson – he’s going to come and crutch all our sheep and vaccinate the ewes in a few days time
• Graeme Cameron – he’s going to come and tidy up some trees and branches, probably next week
• Muff Milne – her daughter Kate has not yet had her baby, it’s a little late but not seriously so, and I can now relay this news to Karola

Hawkes Bay Weather: 3°C—12°C; no rain [80.2]

Nice start to the day, sunny but cold. However I stayed inside, to Bicka’s disgust, and did our tax – well almost all of it – feeling very noble in doing it 8 months earlier than last year.

Late afternoon Bicka and I went outside and I re-assembled some of the railings up in the South West corner that appeared out of whack, then finished off the railings on the north east end of the goose enclosure. I still have a gate to hang for the goose enclosure.

Bicka and I enjoyed a quiet evening of TV together – she did a lot of snoring but at least she’s warm.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 0°C—12°C; 0.1 mm rain [80.2]

Mark arrived at 9:00 am and began by putting in two more half-round posts for the railings along the north-east side of the goose enclosure.

Meanwhile I replaced the handle of a shovel I broke during privet extraction before Karola left for the UK.

We then rounded up the sheep, expecting to need to treat a couple of limpers, a lamb and ewe #717. However we could not see any limping sheep at all today so just fed them a bale of hay and let them be.

We took 26 quarter round posts and a gate up to the north west corner hoping to begin on the boundary fence from that corner back to the big shed, betwen the One Acre paddock and the orchard paddock. However it started to rain and so we laid out the posts and went home for lunch. It was still raining after Mark had devoured his lamb chops, potatoes, cabbage, and carrot meal (same as I had last night, not coincidentally), so I just did a spot of chainsawing while Mark was around to pick up the pieces – cut the posts he’d put in level with the top rail and made the slot for a foot in the 2.4 metre long strainer post to go in at the north west corner. Mark took firewood from the goose enclosure, some for himself and some for his parents, Jenny and Noel Hendery, and then he went home.

I went into Hastings in the afternoon, bringing forward what I’d expected to do on Saturday or Monday. Post Office (for Karola), Laundry, Bank, and then Karamu High School. At Noel Henderey’s suggestion I’d rung the school and asked if they had any interest in back issues of New Scientist and Scientific American; they were particularly interested in the New Scientist so I boxed up the magazines and took them in – they made a pile well over a metre tall.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 0°C—15°C; 2.7 mm rain [80.6]

As arranged, Mark Hendery arrived at 9:00 am.

We spent the morning fetching three trailer loads (brimming) of gravel for the driveways. The first cubic metre of AP40 (round stones and silt mixture, for farm drives) went to improve the new gateway from the 121 drive into the Middle paddock. Repeated experiments did show that my trajectory through the gate would not stay on the tracks laid down by Baywide Dingo; the extra gravel has fixed that problem. The next two cubic metres of “top course” comprises centimetre sized stone chips and silt and it rolls into a hard surface, unlike the popular “pea gravel” which is small, round, silt-less, and just stays loose and shifting however much you try to consolidate it – it also tracks inside caught up in the treads of many sorts of shoes. The “top course” has been used to fill in low areas on the main drives, as shown on photographs taken during recent downpours. It’s also been added to the places where I did use pea gravel n the past.

Mark then helped with the improvements to the end of the goose enclosure nearest the house; he took out a gatepost and put in another one leaving a wider gateway. He added three intermediate half-round posts to the 1st set of 6-metre rails.

Meanwhile I took this opportunity to do some chainsawing – with Mark keeping an ear out for any shrieking in case things went wrong. I lopped the tops off a few posts in the fences we’ve put up in the last month.

Last night I cooked some fresh shark and spuds and vegetables,realising when they were cooked that I’d rather overdone the quantity. This proved to be to Mark’s benefit. Even though Karola, who had been making him lunches each day he came to help, is overseas, Mark got his lunch and I had to cook something else for my dinner.

My new Apple 24-inch computer display arrived today, along with the very elegant Apple Mac keyboard. The laptop that can use the display is not expected until early August.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 10°C—19°C; 0.5 mm rain [81.1]

Snow-capped Kawekas greet me in the morning; sunny cool, clear day most of the day.

Took Subaru in to “Dents” and they swapped the front-left wheel for the emergency spare (OK for short trips they said, but not for going to Wellington) while they file off the deep ridges I made by scraping the curb at Anne-Marie’s house in Upper Hutt and then repaint to match the original wheel colour.

Gave the sheep a bale of hay; rounded them up and noticed that a ewe lamb and ewe #717 were limping but the ones we treated earlier seem to be a lot better. Took the Landrover up to the big shed for this, to give Bicka a run.

Spent half an hour putting back the left-hand rear jump seat in the Landrover – you can’t get at the rear light assembly via its little service panel until you get the jump seat out of the way. I disassembled it to help the garage fit a replacement light assembly having smashed the previous one when a trailer came unhooked and lunged forward into the back of the Landrover.

Changed the two sets of rails that were annoying Karola because they were not level – rails up in the south-west corner by the gate into the orchard from the Island paddock – next to the Casurinas. That involved sawing through all the nails holding the rails onto the posts as they were skew-nailed and impossible to pull out without breaking the wood.

Went back to working on the railings at the north end of the goose enclosure; there’ll be a wider gate as well once it’s finished.

Karola rang again tonight; she is having a busy time with the two grandsons, their Polish nanny, and sundry rowdy friends.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 2°C—17°C; no rain [81.5]

Misty start to the day but burned off to glorious sunshine.

Spoke to Anna in Ealing; Karola has arrived safely and is now asleep. Anna says they’re going to France on 8th August, down to the same place we went last year, returning to Ealing on 22nd August.

Put up a 6 metre set of rails on the corner of the goose paddock nearest the garage; still needs the intermediate 3 posts but the rails are sawn and nailed – not nailed quite home in case on (Karola’s) mature reflection they are not right.

Then haircut and food shopping and discussed the curb-scraped front passenger wheel on Karola’s Outback. A new mag alloy wheel would cost around $600, A grind, polish, paint job at “Dents” in Omahu Rd, about half that.

Ordered another computer and a big screen to go with it. Problem was that the very well reviewed 24-inch computer screen from Apple only attaches to Macs manufactured after October 2008. So, I’ve ordered the smallest screen MacBook Pro with the most basic configuration – which happens to be the same as my current laptop bought in June 2007 as the top-of-the-line MacBook Pro. My Baldrician plan is to convince Karola that she’d like the small but beautiful new McBook Pro with its 13-inch screen and either: I’ll sell my current laptop and buy a 15-inch model with more speed and capacity, or, I’ll fail to sell my current laptop but someone will sell adapter cables in NZ to allow attachment of the Apple screen to my older MacBook Pro, or, I’ll find the new 13-inch MacBook Pro suits me very well when coupled with the big screen and separate keyboard and mouse that I just sit pretty and Karola has to wait another year or so before I raise the laptop question again.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 2°C—15°C; no rain [82.1]

Bills paid – mostly online these days and in theory I do them on Sundays but it often slips to Monday. Apart from the reduction in fees for real cheques, paying online allows me to set a payment date matching the “pay by this date or lose your prompt payment discount”, which I never really mastered with real cheques in envelopes.

Oh joy, the Apple Time Capsule has arrived – I could just stare at the packaging for hours, it’s so stylish. Now that the electrician has installed the power and cabling it jst needs the arrival of four short patch-panel ethernet cables to complete the bits and pieces. All the cables I have are metres long and the connections I need are just a foot or less apart.

I am thinking about getting one of the Apple new large displays – my eyes not being what they were – something about the size of Bridget’s iMac screen.

In the afternoon Bicka and I completed the mostly cosmetic trimmings on the netting fence round the L-shaped Griselinia planting area; trimmed and fastened one remainng end of the netting itself and put on wire ties to the top and bottom guide wires.

Karola will be landing in Heathrow in about 5 hours; right now she’ll be asleep on a flat-bed business class cubicle – at least I hope so.

I fed the sheep one bale of hay today; gave one “biscuit” to Piglet and friends who seemed to enjoy it too.

Hawkes Bay Weather: -1°C—14°C; 0.1 mm rain [82.1]

Quiet day as Karola prepares to leave for the UK. Bit of a wander outside in the morning just to take one last look at the sheep and ponder where various fences and the cottage might go. Most of the day inside however until we left for the airport at 5:40 pm. Karola rang from inside the lounge at Auckland airport to say all was well so far and in fact she’d got an upgrade using her airpoints (large NewWorld grocery bills) and would have a flat bed from Hong-Kong to Heathrow.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 5°C—16°C; no rain [81.6]

Lots of rain overnight; many puddles this morning. Karola is packing for her UK trip and I am doing filing.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 3°C—14°C; 3.3 mm rain [82.5]

John Burnard, our electrician, came this morning, only a week later than expected, and he made a good fist of adding two ethernet cables from the upstairs bedroom where the wired LAN from the garage terminates down to the large cupboard under the stairs. He added a pair of power points next to the ethernet sockets and now the wireless access point is happily blinking away, plugged into the LAN and power without cables draped across the floor. While he was here Karola got an additional pair of power points put in the kitchen and the junk room.

Karola gave the ewes a couple of hours grazing at the top of the Totara paddock and after that we penned them up and I looked at #613’s and #632’s feet – both are limping a little. I trimmed the relevant hoof but could find only small spots of old infection – sprayed these spots and will see if these two ewes limp more or less in the days to come.

The Apple Time Capsule arrived in Auckland from Sydney on 14th; went through customs but hasn’t moved since. I called Apple and they’ll give the courier a nudge.

Hawkes Bay Weather:7°C—13°C; 25.3 mm rain [82.6]

Paul from Arrow Autoelectrix and Alarms came this morning and replaced batteries in all the radio motion sensors and replaced the main alarm backup battery.

Baywide Dingo spent the afternoon finishing off the driveway work.

ewes #632 and #613 are limping a bit so need seeing to, but not today.

Big earthquake down south, felt in Wellington and Australia, but not here, by us. 7.8 is a pretty fierce shake.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 5°C—15°C; 0.2 mm rain [82.5]

Cold night but a mild and occasionally sunny day. Karola and I spent our morning digging out the self-sown privet trees in the garden around the drive circle outside the homestead front door. The 4 – 5 largest we plucked out with a chain and the tractor; the rest were easily dug up by hand.

A trip each to Hastings in the afternoon – me to get the Discovery broken rear right lights replaced and to get some more maize for the chooks and food for the cat, and a new shovel handle to replace the one that snapped while I was removing privets.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 5°C—17°C; no rain [82.7]

The day started with brilliant sunshine, a frost, and spellbinding panoramic views of snow-covered peaks. It turned into a downpour at dusk but by the time we had a 30 minute power cut around 9:00 pm the sky was a blaze of stars, not a cloud to be seen.

Mary’s rain gauge showed 160 mm of rain since 29th May so the good earth has been much replenished – it can stop now for a while.

Karola picked up fallen branches accumulating through the autumn; we then did some sheep work. I saw that Piccolo (#631) was limping a bit on his left front legand that ewe #632 was limping hard on her left front leg. I cut #632 out of the main mob and attended to her foot – there wasnt much to see but I pared the hoof and sprayed with anti-footrot stuff. She then was joined by the mature males: Piglet, Piccolo, and #630, and the two ewes that have been enjoying the Front paddock for a few days: #672 and #407. I attended to Piccolo’s foot – hard to get at the source of the infection but there was definitely a smell and a warmth, telltales of footrot. Hoof pared and sprayed. Then the three males were sent back to the One Acre paddock and the females rejoined the main mob in the orchard. Late afternoon Karola fed out a bale of hay to the main mob.

Around 2:00 pm the QA inspector working for Progressive Meats came and we filled out his questionaire and listened. Customer requirements from the USA mean that Prgressive Meats needs to assure itself that its lambs are raised in humane and low-stress conditions; we passed the test with only a couple of actions:

• We need a written and posted emergency plan
• This farm journal should include the brand of drench or other medication we give sheep plus, most importantly, the withholding period before the treated animals can be sent to the works.

The QA man lives in Hastings, he’s Phillip Ferrier, Livestock Coordinator of Firstlight Foods Ltd (06-878-2712, 027-273-3636) who does the QA for Progressive Meats – well actually trading as Lean Meats, part of the Atkins Ranch group.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 1°C—13°C; 0.4 mm rain [82.7]

An unpreposessing day; only venturing outside to feed the animals and to drop off a printer in Hastings to get its scanner fixed. So, a “rank” sort of winter’s day and mostly we did filing.

Hawkes Bay Weather: -2°C—9°C; 1.6 mm rain [82.4]

Cold, wet, grey. Inside all day.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—10°C; 8.8 mm rain [82.6]

Cloudy, overcast day pending rain as the big storms up north sweep south.

Main activity outside today was unrolling, erecting, straining-up, and stapling the 50 metre of netting alongside the Grisolinia “L” in the south-east corner. At last the Middle paddock is animal proof again.

Back to 12 bantams again today

Hawkes Bay Weather: 6°C—11°C; 2.7 mm rain [82.6]

Out and about with Karola most of the day.

• Landrover to garage – missing on some cylinders and broken tail light
• Subaru to different garage – grinding sound from disc brakes
• Haircut and more for Karola
• Pick up printer that was suffering frome stripes across the page; slightly improved, not cured
• A couple of alkathene pipe connectors
• Wool Shop in Napier for gifts for London grandchildren – nothing suitable
• Beatey & Forbes bookshop, Napier – reading matter for plane plus gift for Natalie
• The new New World in Taradale for food for lunch

The view from Karamu, principally the Kaweka’s and the tip of Ruapehu, was glorious this morning; the snow covered ranges were even more spectacular on the way in to Napier on the expressway; Ruahine, Ruapehu, Kawekas giving a panorama of snow-covered jagged crests brilliant in the sunshine.

After a leisurely lunch in the sun porch we went and picked up the Landrover, now operating on all eight cylinders.

Karola surveyed the sheep and concocted more plans for sheep movements whilst she is away. I am just hoping that not too many lambs arrive before she returns.

I then did a little light fencing before darkness fell.

I can only count 11 chickens today and a hawk seems to be grinning.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 2°C—11°C; no rain [82.8]

An excellent day today despite cold cloudy weather. I got up hoping to get started with Karola on the battening of the recreated fence along the new drive from the 121 entrance to the house – the one with the new fork and gate into the Middle paddock.

As it happened, just as darkness fell and a gentle rain began at 5:15 pm we finished putting the 88 totara battens on the 88 metres of 7-wire and post fence – more than 620 staples hammered home.

Baywide Dingo brought another two loads of unwanted topsoil to add to the depressions next to the ha-ha. They get to avoid dumping fees and we get holes filled in for free.

Hawkes Bay Weather: -1°C—11°C; 0.3 mm rain [82.7]

Cloudy day after quite heavy rain overnight so a day of working indoors.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 1°C—10°C; 0.1 mm rain [82.2]

Bit of excitement today; brilliant sunshine and absolutely glorious snow heavy on the Kaweka mountain range, centre view from our west-facing bedroom window.

Karola, unaided, set up electric fence round the big shed and put the ewes in there for several hours – grazing round the well and pump shed and the grass aprons leading to the shed.

Dave Gordon’s dad (Baywide Dingo) arrived at lunch time, went over what we wanted, and then came back late afternoon and dug out the new track through the gate into the Middle paddock and laid 4 truck loads of gravel before dark. Karola and I, meanwhile, cleared away the loose ends of wire and fence materials and I rolled up 100 metres of netting that used to be the roadside fence, now replaced with a 7-wire and post fence just needing its Totara battens to be complete.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 2°C—15°C; no rain [82.8]

Similar to yesterday – Karola gets up at 1:00 am and watches tennis live from Wimbledon till 5:30 am or thereabouts – the Men’s Final. Then a day of rainy periods.

I did get outside for an hour or so late afternoon – checked the sheep and did a little light fencing.

Hawkes Bay Weather: -1°C—10°C; 3.7 mm rain [82.8]

Rained on and off, and besides we had a broken night; Karola got up at 1:00 am to watch the Wimbledon womens’ final and I finished off the novel “Ultimatum”. So nothing much outside today. I have finally got the cell-phone Internet connection to work out in the garage – the signal; doesn’t penetrate to inside the house – and I got about 1/3 of the throughput that I get with my special direct connection – 1000 kilobytes download and 300 kilobytes upload compared with 2400 KB down and 1000 KB up.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 5°C—11°C; 3.4 mm rain [82.5]

Lunch at a tea shop in Napier, out at the marina, near the Thai restaurant. Murray & Gay Wilson celebrate his 83rd birthday with a dinner (last night) and a luncheon. Karola was the only relation there and apart from their mortgage broker I think all the others were from their local chirch in Taradale – nice old biddies. Ham was OK, b ut not a patch on Chloe’s ham at the viewing of the plaque last weekend.

We escaped to Jenny and Noel Henderey’s for afternoon tea – it’s very relaxing to see and talk to them.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 3°C—13°C; 5.7 mm rain [83.0]

More sunshine after rain overnight. More electric fencing and we also dealt with #672’s bad left front foot – some deep seated footrot.

The main mob had spent the night in the Island paddock; now they’ve access to all the areas of mature apple trees in the orchard as well. Every few hours the sheep up sticks and “beat the bounds” of the orchard, returning to rest and ruminate in the Island paddock where it’s a bit more sheltered and drier.

Karola put #672 and #409 in the Front paddock for some special treatment – more food and the entertainment of “piglet” to talk to in the adjoining paddock.

Dave Gordon of Baywide Dingo came round to assess the job I have for him – repairing some potholes in the drives and creating a gravel drive through the new gateway near the 121 entrance – he expects to do it next week, weather permitting.

Karola planted several trees remaining from our earlier purchases and mended some tree guards to use to protect these from rabbits and sheep.

Hawkes Bay Weather: -1°C—16°C; no rain [82.8]

The rain stopped, during the day at least, and out came the sun.

The electric fence around the peaches was in tatters; the heavy rain softened the ground so much that parts of it collapsed and in jumping over it the sheep dragged lengths of it into tangled skeins. The time outside was spent reconstructing the fence round the peaches and adding more fence to fence off the young apple trees near the Scott’s boundary. The sheep had nibbled the bark of 30 of these trees, 4 or 5 extensively.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 3°C—12°C; 4.0 mm rain [83.2]

More gentle rain.

Today we moved Karola’s computer desk and computer into my room along with her new three-high filing cabinet and began tidying up the mess of stuff on tables, shelves, and floor.

Hawkes Bay Weather: 4°C—9°C; 5.7 mm rain [82.0]