10

SwimGym, a bit earlier today in order to be sure to be back in case Brett turned up at 8:00am.

Brett came and spent the morning on the painting. The gates to the walkway and three original cupboard door exteriors plus surrounding frames. are now painted. Bramble spent a couple of hours chained up in the corner of the dining room in order she not bother Brett. She quickly settled and didn’t seem to mind.

The cat did turn up for her food this morning.

Henere Ormond popped in briefly at lunchtime.

After lunch Mike Croucher and lawn mower did a non-pickup mow of all the usual areas including the newly levelled area round the big oak and the alley down along the ha-ha, and the overgrown front drive. He and Shane will come back late next week – if not raining – and do a pickup cut of the same areas plus the cottage lawn and the one in front of homestead garage.

A Fisher & Paykel fix-it man came mid afternoon and fixed the fridge problem,  a blocked defrosting tube. He showed me how to do it myself in future. He also said the door seal was fine and he put it back where it’d popped out and put some fridge putty in corners.

Johnny Laurie came here mid evening – I didn’t recognise him – wanting to shoot some possums. I said that was OK but thanked him for asking and said asking us first was very important. He was introduced to Bramble.

Made a bit of progress on my electronics. I’m sort of where I hoped I’d be by the end of August.

Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—15℃ no rain [80.7]

11

Brett Newton (Newton Painting 006-876-7562 or 06-877-4931) came today and began painting of the cottage gates and three cupboard doors inside the cottage. He’ll be back tomorrow if fine.

Mike Croucher (ex Garden Groom 06-877-7149) called to say he’d be over after lunch. But it’s raining again so he and Shane Ray came, they looked, and they left – maybe tomorrow.

Sally Pearce (Meticulous Maids 0800-662-437 or 021-658-410 or home 06-870-4262) called back and i talked to her again this evening. She has a slot for Karola on Monday afternoon for just a regular clean of the homestead, as I said, to make it a bit more welcoming.

F&P repair man due tomorrow afternoon to put new seal on the fridge – hope that fixes the leaking. Interestingly when I told them the serial number they knew all about it, it seems.

Bramble got quite wet when doing her daily walk – not from rain but from wet grass as high as she is.

Cabling For The Cottage Garage Access Point

The end result is quite tidy. An existing wall plate having a live ethernet feed and two unused telephone cables was reused. The leftmost socket is now the connection to the cottage LAN. The middle socket connects to CAT5E cable going up the wall and through it to an ethernet socket on the Access Point outside. The right socket is 9v power for the Access Point which uses spare wires inside the Cat5E cable. This “ad hoc” PoE (power over Ethernet) merges the power and ethernet signals behind the face plate here and splits them out again next to the Access Point on the outside wall of the garage, high up.

Oak Avenue Weather:7℃—14℃ 2.3mm rain [80.3]

12

SwimGym

I saw two stray/feral tabby cats today – the adult and the kitten – on the homestead front verandah looking for the food I put down for “the cat”. There’s no sign of “the cat” though I called and called.

Mobile Car Valet man came at 9:00am.

Things were looking really good – beautiful weather, chores behind me etc, and then poor Bramble – probably due to something I gave her to eat – made a smelly messy poo upstairs and a trail down stairs and through to the back door. So the rest of the day became essentially reacting to that.

One good thing; I hadn’t intended to clean the muddy cottage floors but only to sweep them. Today I wet washed all the floors in the cottage. There’s less mud now and what’s left is more evenly distributed. I did go into town for food supplies, a new sponge head for the mop, and a couple of other things.

I gave the rotating mob of ewes their next tranche of pasture late afternoon.

One thing struck me – if the windbreak hedge is going to be trimmed next week

• Pregnant ewes should be kept away from there if practical as the noise would be frightening – kept away while the hedge is trimmed and while we mulch up the fronds.
• We need to get the mulcher blades sharpened. 

I tussled with the bolts on the mulcher flywheel – using much WD40 – and finally, I’d almost given up, I got the bolts to come out and got the blades off. I took them to The Saw Doctors and they’ll be ready next Monday.

At dog training Bramble was a bit too excited initially and nothing went right but by the end she’d settled and we did a couple of things really well.

There’s 28 acres of land for Bramble to dig holes in; most of it unencumbered by actual trees or buildings. So Bramble chooses to dig in two quite difficult places: the upstairs floor in the cottage (I put lemon juice on these shallow holes to discourage further gnawing) and now in the middle of the carefully laid and compacted driveway. Way to go, Bramble.

Oak Avenue Weather:5℃—15℃ 1.1mm rain [81.0]

13

Wildly changeable day – warm to cold, sun to rain.  I spent quite a long time on training with Bramble, chopping a few thistles as part of it. Bramble seems to be getting the hang of my “come here” command – except when there’s sheep to play with that trumps all.

Karola’s car is to be valeted here tomorrow morning.

Wade of Brimar Trimmers said only the very wet paddocks stopped him doing our windbreak hedge last week. He plans to do our hedge next week.

In the afternoon I bought a few more railings – for the enlarged planting triangle at the northern end of the Totara batten fence directly in line with the back of the cottage.   Afterwards I bought another trailer-load of metal (gravel) for the potholes on our drives.

I did various fiddly bits of electronics work during the day – connecting plugs and so on, but the real checkpoint for the day was the first time a wireless router 5 metres up the power pole communicated successfully with another one at the apex of the end of the cottage garage. The signal is strong and performance is good.

The 23 ewes still on a grazing rotation haven’t eaten enough of the cell they’re in so I’m giving them an extra night.

Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—14℃ no rain [80.6]

14

SwimGym

Another exciting day in effervescent Hawkes Bay. After breakfast a little light shopping.

In preparation for Karola coming home in 14 days, I took her car to the car wash to get the first layer of caked mud off. The forecast is for a week without rain which also makes it worth while. I had previously put the back seat drivers side window down a couple of inches so that Bramble had fresh air while I went shopping for bolts and sandpaper and the like. Before I drove the car into the car wash I fiddled with the window openers on the door to my left. I pulled and nothing seemed to happen. Odd, so I tried pushing and heard behind me the familiar noise of the window shutting. On into the car wash.

Imagine my surprise, I almost dropped my “latte with cinnamon on top”, when I was showered with (thankfully detergent-free – this was the $10 cheap “get the first layer of mud off” wash) water. Erk. Panic. stop and think, WTF WTF, panic again. Finally, calmly, as if on the Titanic, I pulled myself together and shut the window. Of course the wash boom had passed on by then. It’s one way to clean both sides of the can, but not one I’d recommend.

Sometimes when I drive in Karola’s car in the vicinity of our local meat processing works, “Progressive Meats”, the odometer, trip meter, air conditioning, clock, etc lights pulse in a most “encounter of 3rd ..” way. Spooky but Karola’s garage just think I’m loopy. Jack (Karola’s personal mechanic) did suggest a new cellphone tower might do it. It certainly is distracting.

A discerning colleague suggested these implausible causes:

• Bramble gets excited by the smell emanating from the meat factory,  gets restless on the back seat and presses on a loose electrical connection.
• The factory has a powerful transmitter to jam the electronics of any nearby car, thereby ensuring a ready supply of road kill for their products.

I talked to Adam Ladbrook today (son of Alan) and Adam said did we mind if they cut the windbreak trees to the south of the peaches down as it would save them having to get them trimmed every year. I replied that I’d already talked to the trimmers to ask them to do the whole windbreak. I have the ungracious suspicion that Adam sees these trees as a source of timber for his firewood business.

And so where is the trimmer machine? It was weeks ago that I talked to him and the trimmer driver said he’d be in Twyford in couple of weeks. Maybe the continual rain showers have slowed things up.

Our plan still is to have tthe windbreak trimmed this year, as we have done every year or so for decades. We’ll talk about it to Alan Ladbrook again as part of deciding what happens to the orchard for the next lease period. The lease comes up for renewal in less than a year. Meanwhile I’ll call Brimar Trimmers and get an estimate for when he’ll do it. I had discussed shortening the whole hedge with him but as there’s no new wireless coming over it I’m inclined to say “normal trim please”; that’ll avoid worry about heavy logs falling on our plantings below the Casurinas.

Mowed and re-mowed the cottage lawn, and suddenly it was dinner time – basically the day was done.

Before …

And after …

Oak Avenue Weather:4℃—21℃ no rain [80.4]

Sunday is for housekeeping tasks and the race is to see whether there’s any time left over for more interesting things. Today was complicated by having an extra dog training course at 10:00am. Bramble did well; she won the fastest sitter competition (a fluke I assure you) and we did the cone slalom with “no fences down” so to speak. However there’s still plenty to be improving.

I got almost all the rooms swept before we left for the training session; I’d done the washing on Friday night and I thought I was in with a chance. However the excellent weather and the drying out of the ground coupled with ferocious grass growth meant that some lawns should be mown. Today I mowed Karola’s D-shaped lawn in front of the homestead garage – twice.

saw an adult cat near the homestead back door, not a kitten like yesterday’s sighting, with exactly the same tabby appearance as the kitten and the old homestead cat. It scarpered at speed. I put out the old cat’s food and later it turned up and ate that, and asked for more so I gave it a second helping – wolfed down.

Henere and Scott popped in around 5:00pm so I took them with me on Bramble’s walk across the the orchard drive then over to the pump shed to read the water meter. Henere and then Scott climbed the ladder just to prove they weren’t scared. Maybe they should have been.

The Homestead Garage Lawn – Mown

Bramble’s Vocabulary – August 2012

Lorraine’s Training Exercises

• Watch Me
• Stop That: Sharp, firm w/o prefixing with Bramble
• Off you go: release command
• Sit:
• Lie Down:
• Heel: sit on left of owner facing forwards, looking alert
• Walk: no pulling, not in front, head up
• To Me: on a long lead
• Stay: staying put when owner goes out of sight
• Freeze: Immediate sit and stay there until commanded otherwise
• The gate routine: sit – to me – sit
• Gently punish jumping up – knee & reward for not jumping up
• “On the mat” or being quiet while chained in corner when guests are here
• Cones 1: slalom round line of five cones
• Cones 2: figure of eight round two cones
• Tying up to fence peacefully
• Staying put when owner goes out of sight

Dog (Owner) Training

Lorraine Lennox: 06–844–9323 or 027–248–6161

Ewe Disposition – 26 August 2012

(* means new tag)

Oak Avenue Weather:7℃—19℃ no rain [80.2]

Beautiful day. Got the sheep organised ready for Mark to come and help with drafting, putting in ear tags, and docking the two lambs.

The logistics were not straightforward. Ram #106 was to be separated from #699 and her two lambs #201E and #202R. Ewe #915 was to be put with the ram as his replacement friend – she is probably dry – she was dry last year. The rest of the 37 ewes were to be divided into two flocks for lambing – which shouldn’t start until next month, but you never know. In addition the older ewes who’d lost their tag were to be retagged and the dozen ewe lambs  were to be given their adult tags. It was like one of those tower of Hanoi games and we were very pleased to see that at the end:

• There were no tags left over
• There were 13 ewes in the Front paddock, as planned
• The ram and #915 were in the Island paddock, as planned
• The rest of the pregnant ewes and the dozen ewe lambs were in the next fresh cell of grass in the One Acre paddock

It feels like spring, the willow stakes buds are breaking (see below) and the old plum tree is in full flower (see below).

The ground is at last beginning to dry out so Mark and I put the big trailer load of grit into potholes on the drives. I had bought it for “mulch” to put round the Bay trees that are to provide a hedge just inside the cottage railings but I think I’ll ask Karola what she’d prefer to go on top of the weed mat when she returns from her three months overseas.

After that Mark helped me make my climbing up and down our power pole safer. A couple of days ago I made my first foray up about five metres and it did not feel comfortable. So, today while Mark held the ladder firmly I put in a pair of stout hooks at the top of the ladder and lashed the ladder to it. Now at least the ladder isn’t going to slip out from under me and it feels a lot safer. I took some photos of the surrounding orchard from the top of the ladder and Mark took one of me pointing towards the other end of the line-of-sight WiFi network I’m installing as part of the Water Meter project.

Oh, and a small tabby kitten looking like a carbon copy of our old homestead cat scuttled away off the cottage verandah when I opened the door after breakfast. Maybe we could tame it as a replacement for the homestead cat as we do live in Rat heaven with all the fallen fruit in the autumn and nearby fields of maize and so on.

Other news: Rowena called asking if her friend could have some of our old red bricks for a patio. This is not for the first time of asking. And there’s another orchard for sale in the avenue, or so it seems from noticeboards. It’s next to the Unison offices at the Omahu end of the avenue.

Willow Stakes Bursting Into Leaf

Old Plum Tree In Full Blossom

Old Salt Points To Cottage Garage WiFi Receiver

Panoramic Orchard Views From Up The Power Pole

Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—18℃ no rain [80.9]

SwimGym then shopping – it’s Friday – but all done by lunchtime. Over an hour in the morning spent searching cottage and homestead for the receipts for the two recessed power point containers, as mentioned below. They were where I put them.

As part of the shopping I took back the two expensive recessed power point containers – the ones intended to go behind the two wall-hung TVs to avoid dangling cords. Well I gave up on that idea, it was only necessary because I bought TV brackets that nestled very close to the wall. One TV is now on a different sort of bracket so that it can be turned at an angle so of course it isn’t snug to the wall. The other, well I just replaced the plug with one of the ones I bought specially with a sideways-exiting cord. All done and money refunded in full.

More on the electronics front today but I’m waiting for Mark, who’s coming to help with the sheep tomorrow, before I go up the power pole again – it’s a long way up and even further down.

Saw the cat again today but she seems pretty confused; I picked her up and took her to her food.

Saw a possum on the Lawsoniana last night and a squashed one on the avenue outside our 121 entrance this morning.

Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—14℃ no rain [80.3]

Bramble decided it was time to get up at 5:00am today – so it’s been quite a long day and not a lot to show for it. I did wire up my first Ethernet LAN cable with plug at either end and, to my surprise seeing as how fiddly it is, the cable worked. I also learned a little more bout PoE – “power over ethernet” which lets you run power and the ethernet signals on the same piece of ordinary Cat5 cable. I plan to have just one wire leading from the shelf next to the power and LAN socket in the cottage garage up to the WiFi box mounted on the outside of the west (back) wall.

It seems that Graham Harvey was very fortunate nay astutue in his choice of where to place the WiFi routers when he did his test. There’s a small canyon through the trees, the trees in the shelter belt and the peach trees, which means that until the peaches bud and sprout it will continue to  work very well. However the WiFi link needs to work all year round so I do have to lift the WiFi routers up high enough that they can see each other over the tops of the trees. With one router up high on the outside of the back wall of the garage and the other well up the electric power pole next to the pump shed I get a decent signal. That’s where the day went, half scaring myself to death climbing high on a ladder to test for strong WiFi signals.

One reason it’s been taking me so long to get positions that work, even out in the paddock, is that the penny finally dropped, one of the WiFi box aerial sockets just isn’t working (they have two aerials). When that socket was the one expected to get a good signal no wonder I was disappointed – again and again. Using the good socket of the router on the garage wall I’ve been able to browse the web on my iPhone from the top of the ladder pictured – so the signal is getting through.

It’s a long way up the power pole. I’ve screwed a large bracket to the pole as a hand-hold; you can see it in the photo just above the top of the ladder. The WiFi box and the Arduino microprocessor need to be attached to the pole above that – then they’ll get a decent signal.

I saw the cat again today so she’s hanging in there.

Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—14℃ 0.7mm rain [80.2]

SwimGym

Bramble and I went shopping, it being Wednesday.

Main event was the fourth hour of dog training at the Hastings racecourse. Bramble did her exercises well, being neither a skite and outshining the others, nor a delinquent, mucking up her exercises. A good time was had by all.

Sheep pleased to get a new cell of grazing. Bramble played with them as they moved to the new cell and some got quite cross, bunting Bramble end-over-end repeatedly but she does’t seem to mind and just comes back for more. I’m not sure how we’re going to stop her chasing sheep but at some stage it’ll be dangerous for her to do that. Right now I’m focussed on the training that means we can stop her from hurting herself, eg by running on the road and not coming when we call, and from annoying others by jumping up in the way that non-dog-owners really dislike.

Bramble managed to get sheep manure embedded in large patches of her hair so there was nothing for it but to hose her down outside the cottage laundry. Much solid protesting but she bore no malice; after a single treat she was bouncing round as if nothinng had happened.

With help from Karola I sent off my UK driving license details to her so that I get the license photo renewed before it expires.

Mark will come and help with the sheep on Saturday morning, if it’s not too wet, and we’ll draft them into the Front-Paddockers and the Middle-Paddockers, and put the ram #106 and the dry ewe #915 in the Island. At the same time we should tag and dock #699’s twins and put in the adult tags for the ewe lambs that survived the cull.

Oak Avenue Weather:6℃—15℃ 0.3mm rain [80.8]

Rain in the night but sunny start to the day, ending up in showers again this afternoon.

Some progress with the electronics, the mocked up circuit to measure the water flow works. In addition I changed the plug on the end of the wire coming out of the water meter because when Bramble chewed off the plugs on a cable I’d ever so carefully en-plugged I rethought how the sockets should be arranged and decided to switch them around. It took over an hour as soldering and shrink-wrapping a cable outside is a bit trickier than inside – with the wind, let alone occasional showers.

Bramble likes wearing her harness and going for her walk every day. For the first ten minutes she walks very well on the lead, just trotting along and not pulling. Then I suppose the stress of being good is just too much so gradually she starts to play up. Still heaps better than last month though.

Sheep are in very muddy grazing but while the rain keeps on coming it really can’t be helped. This weekend is when the first tranche of ewes get to roam the Front paddock, wild and free, and hopefully spying out good places to have their lambs.

Frank Haywood called, as he said he would after coming back from holiday. The work on group water meter services for local orchardists has not progressed; Frank is still waiting for details of a proposal by a local telemetry firm. Frank has also been slowed down by a severe bout of Camplobacter, so bad tht he ended up in hospital on a drip and it took him a fortnight to recover. He knows what I’m trying to do with a low-cost home-brew meter (Arduino-based) and connection to our home LAN for access to the Internet. He’ll let us know as information comes to hand about the group service, which is our “Plan B”.

Oak Avenue Weather:8℃—16℃ 0.3mm rain [80.5]

SwimGym – a little late but Bramble got insistent I got up around 7:15am. She is an “early to bed, early to rise” animal – my opposite in fact.

It rained again in the night and there were intermittent showers in the afternoon, and it’s raining now. Nice morning though.

The cat is alive, looking thin and old but alive and pleased to be fed.

Monty Jones called from Norwood Machinery – he’s been able to sell the old orchard mower for $200 – about what it’d have got for scrap and so low he didn’t want to charge any commission. But I thought we’d have to pay to get it taken away, so I’m happy.

There are sounds of mulching from up in the orchard so perhaps Willie’s team are finally finishing the pruning for 2012.  On my walk with Bramble today I notices some buds breaking on the peach trees – not enough that one could photograph, but little splashes of pink.

This morning I achieved minor bliss – went to Hastings: Jaycar for $4 of bits, New World for food for next two days, and bought a new shaver and was back home in under an hour. To make matters (trivially, I know) better, I’ve had to buy more supplies for making Bramble’s beef/liver/rice meals so I spent over $25 today and happened to therefore win a free 2.5Kg bag of Agria potatoes – and Agria is the sort I use. My old shaver has been limping along on two heads for months (out of three) but on Saturday I was down to one head and shaving with a single head of a tri-rotor shaver is a bit tedious, not to say ineffective. Went into Harvey Norman as part of my shopping trip and got a functionally identical shaver for $180 – marked down from $320.

Oak Avenue Weather:4℃—18℃ 1.3mm rain [80.3]

Day started off cold and sunny but now it’s raining again. Between times Bramble and I finished off the thistles in the Orchard paddock and put up the electric fence for the cells in the One Acre. (Photo below).

We went into the homestead and looked around today because I haven’t seen the cat for a couple of days, even though her food disappears but that could be another cat. I wasn’t concerned because with the alarms set I thought she’d surely set them off – until I remembered that she could be shut in a room without a sensor. Anyway, no sign of any animals inside the homestead.

Henere and son Scott called in for a chat early evening and we had a cup of coffee. Bramble was jumping up objectionably so I chained her up in the corner of the dining room where she contentedly watched events and dozed, not at all upset.

The One Acre Fenced Into Four Cells

Oak Avenue Weather:8℃—15℃ 4.8mm rain [80.7]

Saturday – sunny and most of the day a clear blue sky and almost shorts and sunhat weather – what a contrast. Ground was so wet that it’s taking its time to dry out, but that’s happening now.

Bramble and I went for a walk. We also let the ewes have another already-grazed but well recovered cell and we got half way through setting up the next four cells in the One Acre paddock. I also chopped thistles in five of the seven cells that make up the Orchard paddock – you can see them once the sheep have grazed the grass well down.

Rest of the time I just enjoyed programming my Arduino “embedded processor”. I have it talking to the Internet and writing to a tiny microSD storage card – really a card for a digital camera and with whopping 8,000,000,000 characters per removeable card.

Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—17℃ no rain [80.8]

SwimGym

Friday shopping then, after Bramble’s walk, electronics. We let the ewes into the end cell – one that’d been grazed last week but had recovered quickly. Their current cell was eaten down and muddy due to yet another night of light showers.

I was delighted to get a newsy email from Karola who seems none the worse for her hectic week in Poland. Gill also TXTed from Vancouver; she and Ben are in good health now and enjoying the local flora, fauna, and landscapes – mountains and trees and otters apparently.

Oak Avenue Weather:3℃—17℃ no rain [80.6]

Rain overnight but a beautiful sunny day. Karola returned safely to Ealing from Poland mid morning my time. She sounds somewhat exhausted but happy.

Apart from animal chores and Bramble’s walk I spent the day on my Arduino lessons.

Oak Avenue Weather:6℃—17℃ 0.9mm rain [80.1]

SwimGym in good time this morning.

I noticed that the orchard directly across the road is for sale, tenders closing 17th August. There are signs on the white picket fence entrance.

Bramble and I went shopping – for food but first to pick up this year’s sheep ear tags from Farmlands. While there I took advantage of a 30% off sale and bought two rather nice checked R M Williams shirts as work shirts. I said if they could find another two just like them at the sale price I’d buy them too.

Yesterday Bramble bit her grooming brush (the English one) to bits. She’s also chewed up her rope toy so, after looking at the offerings in Farmlands and Vet Services I bought replacements at New World. Also Bramble jumped up at Jenny and Noel last night so she spent the evening in her den in the bedroom. I remembered a technique that our puppy preschool course had mentioned and so I installed a short chain and clip next to the broom cupboard in the dining room. Now she can be tied up and avoid being a nuisance while still enjoying the company.

Later Bridget called and asked for one of her staple-removing tools to be posted back to her so I went into Stortford Lodge and posted it after my kipper lunch – it should arrive tomorrow.

On Bramble’s walk we saw that the sheep had eaten and trodden their current “cell’ of grass almost to the point of permanent damage so I gave them the next cell a day early.

Bramble and I went to our third Dog Training course at the Hastings racetrack. I’m beginning to enjoy it a bit more now. Bramble likes the other dogs and is not disgracing hrself (or me) with her obedience. All of us are only partially successful at present.

The Bramble tethering post shown below will not only stop Bramble from annoying Henere and Rowina by jumping up – though we hope to train that away before too long – but it’ll also be a boon when Bridget comes up so that if Bramble gets too boisterous for Alex or Natalie Bramble can still join in things but not be a nuisance.

The gentle door closer, also pictured below, is proving very helpful in allowing Bramble back in without either constantly being interrupted to go and open the door for her or alternatively letting out a lot of heat. In summer it’ll be good too, limiting the ingress of flies. Less heat out, fewer flies in.

Bramble’s Inside Tethering Post

Bramble’s Door Closer

Oak Avenue Weather:8℃—15℃ 1.5mm rain [80.7]

The day started well with speedy correction of the plug fitting up at the pump shed (see below) – it all looks quite neat and tidy now.

After lunch I disassembled the flying fox – the wire and the connectors – and unbolted the platform. I expect I’ll pull out the post later with the tractor.

Then I browsed the photos taken last year by Tim Whittaker and sent him an e-mail saying what I’d like. Basically it’s just multiples of the two photos Karola has seen – one of the family, including Chris, on the homestead verandah, and one of just me and Karola. This pair for Mary, Anna, and Bridget, us, and for the Polish family – Witek and Hanka – share.

Jenny and Noel came bringing a roast chicken and vegetables and we had a pleasant meal round the cottage dining room table. Noel is very good natured in putting up with my argumentitiveness – Jenny was knitting a very small shawl for a doll all the while.

Emily Clark’s Bunny Rug

Old Ewe With Energetic Lambs

The grass is long and green – ready for 12 more ewes shortly. There’s still water in the ha-ha, and under the big oak, and there are still shallow pools in the Middle paddock. The gateways: Island to Totara, Totara to One Acre, and One Acre to Orchard paddock are horrid pools of liquid mud. Hope it dries out quickly.

The Pumpshed Cabling

Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—15℃ 0.1mm rain [80.5]

Sheep truck coming at 8:00am they said in a phone call last night. So instead of going straight to SwimGym I had breakfast and then, planning on getting the lambs into the temporary yards at 7:45 – before the noise of the truck added to their skittishness and not so long before that they churned up the yards into a big mud bath. But the truck (and a portable race towed by a ute) arrived 15 minutes early. Not to worry, the lambs went into the yards quite easily – the truck driver helped – and on up into the truck wasn’t too much of a hassle either.

Then they said “got the documentation?” – the form allowing the sheep to travel and be accepted at the works. I had forgotten completely about that. The forms must be in the homestead, but where. Panic and much running in circles screaming and shouting (me and Bramble) but luckily the ute driver discovered he had a pad of blanks and I used that.

I accidentally – allegedly – used only the top form and so didn’t have duplicates for me as owner and the truck driver – just the one for Progressive Meats. The ute driver could see I was struggling – not having my glasses and being acutely aware that they wanted to be off – and so when it came to the check boxes he took over. “They should all be ‘no’ except for one” I said. He’d just ticked ‘no’ all the way down the page. “It’s the one where it says all the lambs were born on the place” I said. He crossed out a ‘no’ tick and put a big tick in the adjacent ‘yes’ box.

Aside: Peter, I think it was Peter who brought the race towed by his ute, Peter from “Stevies” Stephenson’s Transport, said he’d been here many times when the Harris family lived here – but he thought they lived in the homestead. Anyone local who hasn’t been here at some point and known the Harris.

Off they went, straight to Progressive Meats, 1.5km away.

I then changed quickly and rushed off to SwimGym only an hour later than usual. By now it was raining hard – the truck only just got the lambs loaded in time.

About a third of the way through my gym routine my mobile phone rings. It’s Debby from Progressive Meats. I’ve apparently ticked a box saying some of the lambs were imported and she said that if that was true Progressive Meats will have to reject them, return them to us. I apologised profusely and ran out of the gym and drove hurriedly to Progressive where I filled out another form – and that seems to have done the trick. Karola may have some smoothing of troubled waters to do when she returns – they do not like having to divert animals from their flow through the line, especially for perceived owner carelessness.

And so the day continued. A quick trip with Bramble in the car for food. A walk with Bramble which included giving the ewes a new tranche of grass – to their delight. More painstaking stuff with soldering leads onto mini jacks – very fiddly. Bramble got muddly on her walk – deliberately rolling in grass with mud and manure, so I hosed her down outside when we got back, She protested, but not a lot.

Late morning I scared off a black kitten from the cottage kitchen verandah. I presume it was after any scraps that Bramble might have left.

Late afternoon the sun came out and so I decided to venture up to the orchard pump shed and apply my new skills into putting a plug on the cable coming out of the water meter. The existing cable, despite some heavy and destructive nibbling by the lambs a few weeks ago, is long enough to reach inside the pump shed. My plan is to drill a hole through the tin wall and, using a weatherproofing screw-up gland, thread the cable into the shed with a watertight seal.

The end of the cable was to have a typical jack as seen on AC/DC transformers – the so-called “wall warts”. In this case it would be a female socket but even that is small enough to thread through the hole in the shed wall. If I thread the cable and then attach the plug I have to work kneeling down on a wire only two inches long, in the dark. Obviously it’d be a lot easier to attach the plug outside, standing up where there’s room to maneuver, and that was my plan.

Soldering and assembling these plugs is very simple for ordinary young folk with a steady hand and eye. It just pays to remember that you need to thread the plug backing over the cable before you solder, and the same goes for the heat-shrink tubing you use to make the connection waterproof and neat.

I remembered these simple things and, pushing the envelope, included a 200 ohm resistor inside the plug. I’ve calculated that is all I need to avoid blowing up the meter when I apply 9 volts to the wires in the cable. The end result can be seen beow, hampered only slightly by heavy mud directly underfoot and a couple of breaks for showers to pass – the electric soldering iron being a somewhat unknown quantity when out in the rain – and my glasses get a tad mussed up. It looks quite professional and is certainly the best plug-soldering I’ve done all day. It’s now 5:30pm and more, heavier rain is threatening.

Unfortunately – UNFORTUNATELY – I had forgotten one simple thing. The “gland” to seal the hole through the shed wall has a chunky piece which grips the cable and goes on the outside of the shed wall and a nut that goes on the inside, screwing onto the outside piece. The assembled plug can pass through the hole in the wall with ease. It can pass through the hole in the fastening nut on the gland, but it is much too big to go through the chunky piece that goes on the outside of the wall. BOTHER, or words to that effect. Tomorrow I’ll unsolder etc and remember this time to thread the cable through the chunky bit, before the heat-shrink tube which is before the plug cover. As I said, BOTHER.

Oak Avenue Weather:7℃—15℃ 2.5mm rain [80.2]

Oh yes, more rain, and quite heavy too. Same old ponds reappear. Just got Bramble’s walk in when there was a break.

It being Sunday it’s the day for washing and cleaning and tidying up. Just sweeping the cottage is more than an hour’s endeavour. The Enjo cleaning cloths actually do what they say, quite impressive in the bathroom and the kitchen.

Did fit in a little electronics coursework. And brought over one of the homestead fire extinguishers. As I’m using a soldering iron and a small bunsen heater it seems a good precaution.

Gill’s E-Mail From Canada Today

Gill said . . .

Ben has just done his talk and that went well. Poor guy, his back is still not so good because he’s now got a cold and the coughing is a bit rough on it.

We heard a lot of coughing/sneezing/nose blowing on the plane and thought it was extremely likely we’d get colds. So far I haven’t but others on that flight have.

Anyway we are muddling along and hope that we can get past health issues so that we can do a bit more looking about.

Luckily the environments we’ve been in are very nice.

One night we were in this delightful little floating house”waterlilly”.

The bed was up close to the ceiling (no sitting up) and Ben had no show of getting up there so he was set up on the bench seat under the window. The 2 photos show the extent of the little house and the 3rd photo the peaceful Fraser river outside.

Two mute swans and their signets and numerous ducks glided about, saw the odd bald headed eagle flying overhead.

Oak Avenue Weather:6℃—14℃ 6.1mm rain [80.3]

Cold start but sunny day although much rain is forecast.

Called Stevies, the transporter, about when our lambs were scheduled for Progressive meats on Monday. Peter said he knew about the consignment but hadn’t received the time from Progressive yet – maybe later today or tomorrow. Again I said we need small truck with a race and he agreed that was the case.

However even a small truck would get stuck if we had more rain and so I went ahead with the temporary yards next to the gravel driveway. Mark came over and helped design and build these. Then he spent the rest of the morning digging post holes for the gateways between the One Acre and Front paddocks – to match up with the realigned fence. On the orchard driveway end Mark met water at 700mm and was able to ram in the gate slam post. On the other end, near the ha-ha, the water rushed in just over half a metre down and that post couldn’t be rammed as the soil turned to porridge.

The temporary yards went up quickly and was much less of a problem than I anticipated. To get the lambs used to them, and to give them a bite to eat as the Goose paddock is pretty bare, we drove them into and through the temporary yards. No problem at all. We popped them back into the Goose paddock before Mark left at 1:30pm.

The Temporary Lamb Loading Yards

Later I heard the noise of the maize harvester so Bramble and I went over to watch and take photos. All the maize was harvested – plants cut, corn taken off the cob and decanted into large bins – in a few hours.

Corn-Eating Monster

Gill TXTed From Canada….

All ok. Bens back improving. In gr8t UBC accom till I4th. About 36K student pop in term time so amazing campus grounds/facilities.

Oak Avenue Weather:6℃—14℃ 4.7mm rain [80.3]

SwimGym

Then after breakfast the usual hop into town with Bramble for the weekend food.

Later, in my break from “electronics”, I decided that too much time was being spent with the back door wide open. Bramble likes to go outside now and then but deciding when she should come back in isn’t easy. I usually leave the back door ajar to keep the warmth in but she pushes it wide open when she comes back inside. So, enough is enough.

We did talk about having a dog door initially but decided against it then. Now is the time and as the back door is solid cedar it’s not difficult to make an appropriately large hole at the bottom. By taking the door off, turning it upside down, marking the edges and carefully using the chainsaw one can quickly have quite a neat hole for the door. By looking at the specifications for dog doors in Mitre-10 I knew the size to make the hole. It’s a pity that the chainsaw leaves such rough edges but not having anyone here to help I couldn’t use my table saw – the door is just too heavy. Anyway, once the dog door is fitted the edges don’t show. And if Karola really doesn’t like it – or more likely, if Bramble refuses to understand how to use it – we can always get a replacement door, no real harm done. A good project to finish this weekend.

Well, this might have been going through my mind but I had a better idea. I’ve bought and fitted a door closer – low cost, fitted in 30 mins and it seems to do the trick. I’ve set it up so that the door gently swings to but stops just short of actually locking. Bramble uses it already. The door starts off closed except for a crack, she comes in, it closes back to “just a crack” behind her. And again, if Karola is not amused there’s five screws to take out and repair and it’s back to where it was.

Searched high and low in the cottage and the homestead but couldn’t find the multiple address books Karola used to have around so not sure I could help much with the phone numbers she wants.

Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—16℃ no rain [80.5]

Ewa emailed to say Karola had arrived safely in Poland – but hinting that the plane was late.

Got some good hours in on the electronics course today.

Bramble training continues – she’s a bit better today. This evening I picked up a halter arrangement which is v highly recommended as an aid to getting Bramble to walk calmly by my side. I live in hope.

They’ve started harvesting the maize next door – huge machine but I think it got stuck as it’s so wet.

Ewes are fed up with the mud. #699 still has her twins and is enjoying the Front paddock grass but would prefer more company, not just the ram.

Oak Avenue Weather:5℃—15℃ 0.9mm rain [80.2]

SwimGym

Quick trip into town for food, to order sheep ear tags, and pick up a small “project box” from Jaycar for my electronics course.

After the morning routine and the shopping and Bramble’s daily walk it was lunchtime. Read Economist and then spent afternoon on electronics.

Bramble and I went to the 2nd class of our Dog Training.

Last phonecall with Karola before she sets off for Poland later today (UK time).

Oak Avenue Weather:8℃—17℃ 23.9mm rain [80.5]

Nice day, mud disappearing and sun appearing. Light cloud and breezes.

I drafted out the ewe lamb keepers and stared at them long and hard as a group, comparing them with the ones left behind. They are on the whole a fairly even range and, apart from #101 and #130 who look distinctly Romney, have clean faces and legs. I accidentally let one of the ‘no-tag’ lambs through after deciding not to keep any of them. However she’s a fine looking lamb and both Karola and Carl rated her highly so I’ve kept her and will start a new dynasty. Her founding number will be #160E. I made another mistake and didn’t end up with 13 keepers, only 12. I’d let them out by then and was so panicked that I’d be bound to have mis-drafted the one lamb Karola had her heart set on keeping that I brought them back into the yards again and checked carefully. No, it was #119E that got mistakenly put with the wethers and neither Karola nor Carl rated that particular lamb highly so it doesn’t matter. Whew.

I put the keepers with the rest of the ewes, the “sacrificials” with the wethers in the Goose paddock. The ewes have done well in grazing their current grass cell in the Orchard paddock so I moved them to the next cell. First though I gave them some apples cut into quarters from the bottom tray in the fridge – they were beginning to go off. And I gave them a few slices of Henere’s lunchtime white bread – also starting to go off.

Henere dropped by late morning for a chat. He’s been following some of the Olympics with interest.

Most annoyingly I have succumbed to advertising in the TV programmes sent to me from UK by Geoff Robinson – I have bought and am demolishing quickly some Magnum Mini ice creams on a stick. Tsk, tsk.

Called orchardist Alan Ladbrook and told him the orchard was sheep free now till next winter. He said it was almost time for him to start spraying again so it was welcome news.

I now have a list of the sheep ear tags needed for this year, in addition to about 40 button tags for the newborn lambs to be (#201-#240). There’s the ram, #106, and Kaz’ old ewe #699. There are lost tags to be replaced for: #007, #106, $904 and #911.

The chosen ewe lambs need tags: #101, #108, #111, #113, #116, #121, #128, #130, #133, #150, #152, and the no-tag ewe lamb who is to become #160.

The trip to the works is already booked – see earlier post today for details.

While at SwimGym on Monday I was mulling over what would happen if the rain continued. There’d be a flood and we’ve a very flat property so what should we do with the sheep. Getting them up on the homestead verandah would be nigh on impossible; getting them into the cottage garden and from there up onto the cottage verandah would be feasible but there’s not a lot of room so we’d have to let them inside. Would they go upstairs? Would they trample on the bed, the electronics etc. The mess would be horrendous – but then so would a flood that came inside be horrendous. Maybe we’d just jam as many as possible in the cottage garage, it’s nice and high off the ground, and hope for a speedy rescue.

Bramble got very excited when I started yarding the ewe lambs and jumped another gate and got out. She thought she was so clever :-).

37 Lambs To The Works

Deb (Debbie McCurrach debm@progressivemeats.co.nz) at Progressive Meats (06 8739204) put me through to the scheduler, Emma (Emma Rough emmar@progressivemeats.co.nz). Emma schedules the following week on a Thursday so this Thursday she’ll send me and the transporter e-mail saying the time and date.

Emma already has chosen Monday for us so it is only a matter of the time. I took Emma’s recommendation (and Carl’s as it happens) to use Stephenson Transport Ltd (20 Irongate Rd, 06-878-5171, contact Kent). They have a small truck and will bring a race. Once they receive Emma’s e-mail they’ll contact me to let me know the pickup time on Monday.

2011 Ewe Lamb Grading – Final – 7 Aug 12

Oak Avenue Weather:7℃—17℃ 1.9mm rain [80.5]

SwimGym

The sheep are out of the orchard today. No more gates to close, no more endless manure.

By 9:00am I had the ewes in the yards ready for Bruce’s man Carl and was ready to help Bruce’s dad, Ian Richardson and dog Spy, get the lambs from the orchard into the Island paddock.

My plan was to have the ewes crutched and given their 5-in-1 vaccine first and bundle them back to their grass cell in the Orchard paddock, out of the way. Then to draft the lambs by sex. Crutch the ewe lambs and put them back in the Island paddock for later grading, then crutch the wether lambs.

So: ewes into yards, tick.

At 9:30am the team arrived, without the shearing truck. Ian Richardson and Spy played footsie with the lambs for a while but eventually we got them all into the Island paddock and from there into the yards, in a pen behind the ewes of course. Then Ian and Carl go off.

At 11:00am I get a call from Bruce. Carl is delayed because Ian dropped him off to collect the truck and then Carl found it had a flat battery. Carl’s personal cell phone had run out of prepay money and his work cell phone he’d accidentally left in Ian’s ‘ute’. Wherever he was, Carl couldn’t ring to say what was happening, nor could he come because the truck was stuck. So, Carl fixes all that and arrives in the truck around 11:30am.

So of course the truck starts skidding and gets stuck the minute it tries to cross the paddock by the cottage and go out to the yards. So we end up towing it backwards with the Fergie and chain.

Now for the setting up. The back of the truck folds down and rests on two metal pipes, forming a pen. The metal pipes carried on into the ground about a foot and were still sinking when we realised and hastily pulled them up again. A wooden plank under each leg solved that.

So where’s the 5-in-1 vaccine that is usually held in the truck – must be empty. Another half hour of searching and negotiation and I am dispatched off towards Stortford Lodge to Elders to buy vaccine and put it on Bruce’s account.

Given all this Carl was actually quite calm and the rest of the crutching went smoothly. Carl yelled out whether each ewe would be early, middling, or late to lamb, based on the condition of the udder. All the ewes were sent back to the Orchard paddock, the separation of ewe and wether lambs was quick and the ewe lambs were soon crutched and back in the Island paddock. The wether lambs were crutched and left, temporarily, in the Middle paddock.

Next Carl graded the ewe lambs, based on size, conformation, wool. He raddled the top third with green, the bottom third with blue. Then, around 3:00pm he packed up and left.

To minimise the wolfing down of good grass by the lambs I planned to keep the ewe lambs in the Island – already well chewed out by the big ewes – and the wethers in the Goose paddock. First I had to move the current occupants out. I put the geese in the Middle paddock and shepherded the ram and Kaz’ old ewe with twins into the cottage garden and out the little gate int the Totara paddock and on into the Front paddock, thereby avoiding the wethers in the Middle paddock. After that the wethers went quite docilely into the Goose paddock and that was it for the night – outside at least.

Quite exhausted and the whole thing having taken hours longer than expected, I spent the evening working out which of the ewe lambs should go, which should stay.

The other incident involved Bramble who, to stop her being a nuisance, I chained up on the front seat of the Landrover where she could watch but not interfere. At some point during the crutching she stopped her usual excited ‘let me play too’ barking for a yelp of surprise. Carl noticed and so we went to investigate. Bramble had fallen head down off the seat and was suspended by the chain (it’s only a little chain) wrapped round BOTH heels. We released her amid yelps of fear and pain whence she immediately changed to barks of indignation and ran off as if nothing had happened. Nothing broken or damaged there then.

2012 – Ewes In-Lamb (Carl) 6 Aug 12

Gill & Ben Land In Canada

Gill TXTed today . . .

Arrived safe and in pretty gud shape. Ben scored us brill seats. Gr8t 4 his back. Very hot here. Sitting on deck over river @ cottage. Absolutely lovely.
Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—15℃ 0.2mm rain [80.4]

Ground drying out. Bruce Richardson (HB Mobile Shearing) and his dad say they’ll come tomorrow to do the sheep. They think it’s dry enough underfoot.

Did the fortnightly Bramble Mince Cookup. Also swept the cottage – even if it doesn’t look particularly dirty there’s still huge amounts of hair and dust on the floors. Rubbish out, water meter read, sheep checked (yes the old ewe with twins seems to be looking after them OK so far), 90 minutes down at Jaycar choosing various resistors, capacitors etc ($68 in total), and so it went on.

I think the laundry cupboard door change is actually going to work:

Cupboard Door Shut

Cupboard Door Wide Open – As It Used To Be

Cupboard Door Wide Open Now

Karola’s Sheep Families

The Sudoku Family

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Texel two-tooth ewes: 003 and 007 (no tag)

Summary of Texel ewe lambs from 2011: 106 (no tag), 107, 114, 116, 144, 145, 149, 155

The 406 Family (Including 604)

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Two-tooth ewes: (039)

Summary of 406’s family ewe lambs from 2011: 133

The 217 Family (Including 616)

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Two-tooth ewes: 019

Summary of 406’s family ewe lambs from 2011: (104), 123

The 218 Family (Including 613)

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Two-tooth ewes: (035)

Summary of 218’s family ewe lambs from 2011: 119

The 219 Family

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Two-tooth ewes: 009, (010), (012), (037), (038)

Summary of 219’s family ewe lambs from 2011: 111, 127, 128, 152

Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—13℃ no rain [81.2]

Starting to dry out although there are occasional short, gently showers still.

Karola’s ewes given a new tranche of pasture. When arranging that I found a button sheep tag from #917 – not sure how she could have lost it.

Otherwise I spent the day with my electronics lessons.

Bramble and I came upon this sight when patrolling the estate late afternoon. In fact it’s not that we can’t count – our lambing is not expected until next month. This is the old, sad ewe that Kaz sent with the ram in May (we had to get a replacement when our own ram died suddenly) for company. She must have been in-lamb when he sent her. He said she’s a useless mother; we shall see. Ewe #699, lambs #201E and #202R.

Oak Avenue Weather:6℃—14℃ no rain [80.4]

SwimGym a little earlier today as I woke up and got up before Bramble for a change.

I needed a bit more time so that the animals could be fed and Bramble taken for her walk before my doctor’s appointment (quarterly government-sponsored diabetic check) at 10:30am. (Karola: all A-OK there, 130/70 and a CPR of 5 and iron levels good, and blood sugar levels fine).

Just before I left for Hastings, builder Paul arrived and quickly pointed out that the hinges I’d got to allow the gates to swing in and out were in fact no better for the job than the existing strap hinges. What he suggested and did was to reverse the gates and hang them so the existing strap hinges allowed opening inwards as before and opening outwards – in case of strong wind gusts etc. He’s done it so that it can be reversed if Karola prefers the risk of gate damage to the new gate position. The gates are painted with undercoat not final coat so there’ll no damage to paintwork in what’s been done. Paul also fixed the cottage garage door which, in the prolonged wet spell, had somehow swollen a bit and started jamming again.

After seeing the doctor I dropped in to the solicitors because the final, modified, papers concerning Kaz’ will and Trust arrived in this morning’s post. I was lucky in that Sue, Alan Pierce’s legal secretary, was able to witness my signing and do the necessary copying etc. Small hiccup is that my driver’s license doesn’t have my middle name on it but the photographic evidence needed by the papers requires 100% match with the names on the papers – so Sue asked me to bring in my passport for them to copy.

So, knowing I had more to do in Hastings but that I also had to go home and get my passport I thought I’d try and pick up the laundry cupboard door from Classic Kitchens. I went out ‘on spec’, it being a normal working day but the doors were locked. Bother. I was just driving away when I saw a Classic Kitchens van outside the open door of part of the factory so I went back and found them at lunch. I got the cupboard door with its new folding end.

Meanwhile I’d got a TXT from Kirsty and Bruce about to set off on their way back to Wellington from Gisborne – another funeral – and we agreed to have lunch together at Cornucopia Taste in Hastings. We rendezvoused at the cottage, I picked up my passport, and we went in convoy to Taste where we had a very pleasant lunch – more like a main meal actually. I regaled Karola’s exploits as I knew them and they told me about their continuing house hunting. I had a second coffee but walked out without remembering to pay so, when I remembered much later I called and apologised – they had noticed but were OK with me paying next week.

After Kirsty and Bruce had departed for Wellington I did the weekend food shopping, including large amounts of mince and liver for Bramble but New World has stopped stocking the specific brand of dog sausage I’d got Bramble used to – so I went to Countdown and got the right sort of sausage – but between these two supermarket forays I took the passport into the solicitors’.

Bramble accompanied me on the first trip in the morning but I left her in the cottage garden for lunch and the ensuing hours of retail fun. So, finally homeward with only a short stop at Jaycar to get a ‘pencil point’ for my soldering iron.

All this excitement had me exhausted so I went to sleep for a couple of hours before my evening snack and Bramble’s dinner.

I do wonder if I should pick the profusion of lemons on Karola’s main lemon tree – in case someone spots them and decides to help themselves as in previous years.

And another thing, I’ve been using the auto-dispensing hand soap thingy that Karola bought as a parting gift for weeks now; it’s very useful but I’ve forgotten to mention it before.

Oak Avenue Weather:12℃—13℃ 0.8mm rain [81.1]

Bramble insists that I get up despite the day ahead being wet and muddy – though mild.

On her walk today Bramble felt the full force of the electric fence – her feet were wet, her coat was wet and she just got unlucky with timing her dip under the bottom wire. Much shrieking and heltering-skeltering but five minutes later she’d forgotten about it.

Just basic electronics coursework today. Helped Bridget briefly a couple of times re computer.

I’ve asked Paul to come and fit the Parliament hinges on the swingingl gates into the cottage walkway. With gale gusts sweeping directly through there it’s just a matter of time before someone forgets to latch back a gate and it’ll get torn off its current hinges. I noticed that going out Harry tried to push it the other way anyway. Paul says he’ll come and do it tomorrow.

Dave from Panache (Frith) came in the afternoon and put up the curtains. Lovely curtains – good heft and feel and the colour is very good likewise the pattern. Thanks to Karola for directing me to Panache and for making the choice.

New Curtains Upstairs In The Cottage

And the water mounts up. Newspaper full of pictures of rising rivers, flooded paddocks.

Oak Avenue Weather:11℃—13℃ 7mm rain [80.5]

SwimGym

More rain, lots of it with infrequent dry spells. The ground is sodden but our cottage stormwater drains are working just fine.

Rain stopped briefly after breakfast so I quickly took Bramble for her walk. Afterwards we went to Greta’s shop for Agria potatoes – I’ve run out. Having just tried another variety I prefer Agria. We also dropped into Newport Automotive Electricians and I bought some 3amp blade fuses and carriers ($12) for my electronics tuition.

I had been unable to get lesson 2 to work – it required a 3 amp fuse and a single AA battery. There’s something suspicious about the cheap AA batteries ‘on sale’ I bought yesterday. Hoping to find a good battery here already I got Karola’s excellent Radio Shack battery tester and tested every battery I could find. I think Karola must have done that herself recently because there are far fewer batteries around than previously and almost all of them seem to have charge. I think we have over 30 live AA batteries and a dozen AAA batteries – with another four AA and 2 AAA being dead. So, I was able to conduct my experiment and satisfactorily blow one of the 3 amp fuses. Lesson accomplished.

Apparently NZ equestrians didn’t do too well at the Olympics but, as happens too often, my attempt to record it over night was unsuccessful – the recording cut out after an hour or so and before Mark Todd had his turn at the show jumping.

Enjoyable exchanges during the day via computer with Geoff in the UK and Bridget in Khandallah

Oak Avenue Weather:7℃—13℃ 12mm rain [80.5]