Monthly Archives: April 2020

Well, what a task – I spent several hours this morning working through the thousands of products sold online by New World and made eight lists containing the items we’re most likely to need if not weekly then every month or so: “Fresh Fruit”, “Fresh Vegetables”, “Butchery, Seafood, and Bacon”, “Dairy, Eggs, and Cheese”, “Frozen Foods and Desserts”, “Pantry”, “Health and Wellness”, and “Kitchen, Dining, and Household”. These closely follow the major categories on the New World online shopping website.

In theory I should be able to tick the items we want on any one week, modify the quantity if necessary, and then import each list into the online shopping trolley. That’s the theory; tomorrow I’ll see if it works.

Because of the over-subscription of the pick-up times one has to jump in and buy something a week before you want to pick it up – hence my purchase of three bananas yesterday. And again, in theory, you can add/delete from that order up until 24 hours before you pick it up. Again, tomorrow we’ll see if that works with lists rather than individual items. When one is used to planning for at most three days ahead, moving to a weekly shop is not easy, but planning two weeks ahead is challenging – who knows what we’ll run out of, or not have touched, in two weeks time, so I do hope the last minute editing of the New World order does work as stated.

In what remained of the day I put the little panels up sealing off the gaps under the chook house eaves. Each of the eight panels has three ¾ inch ventilation holes, too small for a rat to get through. It worked out rather well.

Oak Avenue Weather:-1℃—24℃ no rain [77.32] IKBOrchard TdT

Up nice and early and after breakfast and feeding the doves and geese Karola drives me to Countdown for the weekly shop. We got there ten minutes before the advertised opening timer and I was let straight in. Plenty of shelf stackers and quite a number of pick-and-pack operatives filling other people’s orders – each one has a big trolley with several orders being filled concurrently. Over the last few weeks I have stocked up on most stuff we only need occasionally so it was a shorter list today and I shot round in 30 minutes. Then off to OMG for a loaf of their delicious paleo bread and home.

We’re going to try New World online shopping next week. I’ve ordered three bananas and booked a slot to pick it up; there were few slots still available until next Wednesday – New World only allow slot booking for up to seven days ahead. So I grabbed the 9:00am – 10:00am slot for my three bananas. One can edit one’s order any time up to 24 hours before the pick-up so of course I expect to flesh out the order over the next few days.

Installed the perch in the chook house and cut the hole for the pop-hole after fussing for ages over how large it needed to be. Orpingtons are big chooks which has two consequences: if their perches are too far off the ground they can hurt themselves jumping down; they need a slightly bigger pop-hole than most other chickens.

Table Of Covid-19 Tallies Worldwide

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

Oak Avenue Weather:0℃—19℃ no rain [77.47] IKBOrchard TdT

Anna sent messages about watching for Elon Musk’s satellites whizzing by – the next good viewing for us is 2nd May. She also, via Felix, sent a screen shot of an unexpected article in The Independent. It exaggerates the official state of things here but is pretty gratifying none-the-less. We dropped to Covid-19 alert level 3 today.

Bit more progress on the chook house. I still have to put little ventilation ports under the eaves, add a pop-hole, and a perch – then it’s time to decide what to paint and what to leave.

Nest Boxes And Awning Built

Leaves, Leaves, And More Leaves

World Wide News

Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—22℃ no rain [77.55] IKBOrchard TdT

Spent too much of the day wrestling with CountDown online shopping. I suspect it is easy to use but fiendishly unintuitive, confusing, and functionally deficient to learn. The search function beggars description – it’s a mess. The CountDown iPhone app is no better. Even Bridget struggled trying to guide us through it all. Her final advice was to use the barcode scanning option – to do another big shop at CountDown and scan all the products you might want so you then have a pre-loaded list.

Then she had a brainwave – to try New World online shopping. It is just what I wanted – sensible structure of goods and pictures of each one. Couple of downsides: New World says they will not deliver to this address, it’s probable that they won’t deliver to “rural delivery” addresses. And, although we can get the groceries picked and packed for pickup at the local store, there’s currently a five day wait for the next available slot. But so much better than the CountDown experience.

Much later Karola and I worked a bit more on the chook house roof extension. Made from some spare bits of corrugated iron from the Pump Shed project it juts out half a metre above the netting front, protecting the inside from driving rain.

Oak Avenue Weather:11℃—25℃ no rain [77.27] IKBOrchard TdT

The technology worked well this morning as we, me, Karola, and Bangle, used Apple FaceTime to videoconference with Anna, Dave, and Felix in Ealing over the internet.

Anna initially set it up to begin at 7:30am but we weren’t up and about then, surfacing and feeling almost human by 8:30am our time (9:30pm in Ealing). It was sunny in London at 7:30am when the videoconference was going to be in the Ealing garden studio; by the time the Karamu bubble had joined it was rather cool outside in Ealing and so the kitchen studio was used instead.

Dave’s cat lives in Richmond at Dave’s primary abode and I expect he’s missing him while Dave is “locked down” with Anna, Felix, and Barney at 2 St Mary’s Road in Ealing.

With help from Karola I’ve nrly finished the secondary roof for the chook house, protecting the netting front and egg boxes from driving rain.

Dave Moss’s Cat – Diesel – Who Is Self-Isolating In Richmond (Neighbours Are feeding Him)

Ealing Bubble – Kitchen Studio For Videoconference

Ealing Bubble – Outside Garden Studio For Videoconference

Oak Avenue Weather:8℃—21℃ 0.4mm rain [77.57] IKBOrchard TdT

Radio this morning taken up with ANZAC related stories – no Country Calendar. And tonight on TV footage of individual groups (bubbles) standing at the ends of their drives as dawn broke – quite moving.

Karola & I tried to have a discussion about communications on the iPhone and iPad but it was not a success – I get so frustrated so easily. Tonight Lexi offered Karola her “Lexi’s Technical Support” service and I think that’ll probably be best. Karola has adopted the new iPhone with good grace and says I can get the second one so we have one each.

Bit more on the chook house in the afternoon.

Graphs from Financial Times on 29th April accompanied a short article on Medium online feed saying how well New Zealand seems to be doing.

Lucky New Zealand – Touch Wood

Oak Avenue Weather:4℃—22℃ no rain [77.49] IKBOrchard TdT

Woke to find my hair brush perched atop a glass placed upside down on my dressing table last night. Now I know that means I have to remember a couple of things – but what are they! Perhaps one was to call Farmlands and order some hinges for the chook house before the lNZAC long weekend began. So I did that; I wanted six pairs but they only had three pairs of hinges in stock, however I could collect them today.

Breakfast and then Karola drove us down to Stortford Lodge to Farmlands where I picked up the hinges. There were maybe 20 groups of supplies laid out in front of the shop and a steady trickle of customers coming to pick up their goods- social distancing applied and we weren’t invited into the shop.

Took Bangle out to the letterbox to collect the mail, a daily ritual like feeding the doves and the geese, I was surprised to find a very clean, neat, robust parcel. It was the brand new iPhone due to be shipped starting today in the USA and due to arrive here next Thursday.

So, after my Tour de Twyford and lunch we sat down and Karola unwrapped the new phone. This phone becomes mine in a few weeks but in the meantime Karola is going to use it to see whether it is an acceptable alternative to her old, dated hand-me-down. The iPhone SE is the smallest Apple has made in years, hardly bigger than the ancient iPhone 5SE that used to be mine – and the small size is important to Karola. If Karola agrees I’ll buy her the same phone albeit with reduced storage and therefore substantially cheaper.

We set it up by having it clone her old phone. It was amazingly straight-forward, the new phone detected both of our phones and asked which of them we wanted to clone. I had to supply a couple of passwords and swap over the SIM card from Karola’s old phone and then it was pretty much done. We did set up Karola with Apple Pay because in the Covid-19 era contactless payment is important.

Later I worked on the chook house nest boxes using the galvanised strap hinges we got this morning.

Nights are closing in and the sun was setting as we went round the orchard with Bangle just after 5:00pm.

Oh, Says Bangle – What Can This Be – Didn’t Expect Any Parcel Until Late Next Week

“Packaging Designed in California” It Says Here

So, Lets See, What Are These Bits For

It’s Just Like My Old One (And That’s Good)

Geoff & Edwina In Darkest Hampshire Welcome Spring

Oak Avenue Weather:3℃—22℃ no rain [76.97] IKBOrchard TdT

Here we are well into autumn but having had no significant rain for weeks and weeks and weeks which is unusual. Normal Hawkes bay weather is a wettish spring, very dry summer, dryish autumn, cold quite dry winter. This produces lots of plant growth in spring and autumn, usually. But we’ve missed out on our autumn growth. There’s no rain forecast in the next ten days which will take us into May.

Karola often expostulates how New Zealanders have this propensity to inject into any conversation with relative strangers, “You should …..”; as if they always know what’s good for the unfortunate listener.

In that category of something someone else should do, I wondered if a new product could be developed that made your breath visible even when it’s not a frost or whatever. Like a small personal smoke cloud that showed as you walked along how far your breath was spreading, where your droplets were drifting. I imagine one could create a mint to suck which gave a warning visible signal to passers-by to keep their distance. It could become a fashion thing – with a range of colours to convey mood or status.

Karola had a long chat with her friend Lyn this afternoon – life in the old folks gated community, Frimley Village, seems rather dire – they may be prosperous pensioners but their village life sounds claustrophobic to us.

Bit more progress on the chook house, the outside of the cantilevered spaces at front and back are done, just needing hinges and, for the two pairs of nest boxes at the front, the two internal partitions. Nest boxes at the front to make them as dark as possible, and the opposite for the spaces for food and water. A (to-be-done) roof extension at the front will further protect the nest boxes and the floor near the netting from rain.

Cantilevered Space For Food & Drink

Four Cantilevered Nest Boxes

Oak Avenue Weather:7℃—22℃ 0.1mm rain [77.42] IKBOrchard TdT

Left at 7:45am and got back 9:15am with the shopping done. Prioirty queue was operating when we got to CountDown and I joined it to immediately become the front of the queue – so in and shopping within a couple of minutes. Fewer people than last time and by the time I was ready for check-out there was a counter just finishing its only customer.

Puddled around most of the day – not cold and sunny with cloudy periods – and got on with the chook house nest boxes.

Phone call mid afternoon from a man working for the Hastings District Council – they’re calling all their pensioners just to see if they’re alright and ask how they are getting shopping, medicines, and pet food – and if they have someone close-by that they could call in an emergency.

Oak Avenue Weather:5℃—20℃ 0.1mm rain [77.41] IKBOrchard TdT

The day just vanished – I didn’t get to do the Tour de Twyford until after 4:00pm and that wasn’t a good idea as the traffic, despite lockdown level 4, was quite heavy around 4:30pm.

Made a start on the chook house egg boxes.

Main feature of today was a reprise of a week ago, making the shopping list to last us for a week. Karola would like to experiment with online shopping but, apart from the delay from ordering to delivery, and the plea from Countdown to avoid online if you can because they’re over-stretched, there’s the remembering of things whilst walking round the supermarket and the selecting of alternatives for those items out of stock. Out of stock applies to more things than usual because of the unusual times.

Orpington – the teddy bear of poultry

These are the most adorable hens, in both looks and personality. They are a very popular breed of chicken for families with children, as they are so friendly. Big and fluffy, with big, dark eyes, these are truly gorgeous chooks that will steal your heart. They are a dual-purpose bird, laying large, creamy white eggs. They also make excellent mothers and are known for their ability to hatch out huge clutches of chicks.

Oak Avenue Weather:4℃—20℃ no rain [77.41] IKBOrchard TdT

A good start to the week as Jacinda says we are downgrading to level 3 in a week’s time, not that we expect it to make much difference to our bubble.

Today I did a little more mulching and then chainsawed up a tall old privet tree that I’d saved last time I did a major clear-out of privets – concerned that it might not be a privet. Well there was a tall privet covered in white blossom earlier this year so this must be the one – and down it came.

Karola had long phone calls with Janet Scott (next door) and Margery Cobbe, her primary school teacher now living in Havelock North. Anna sent Karola an email with delightful photos of flowers in her Ealing garden – spring has definitely sprung there – but the continued lock-down is making life miserable.

The Majesty Of Our Liriodendron In Autumn

Meanwhile, in Ealing It’s Spring …

Oak Avenue Weather:8℃—22℃ no rain [77.26] IKBOrchard TdT

… and there’s a lot more where they came from. The trees are gradually unburdening themselves of their leaf communities; still no rain and the grass has long since stopped growing despite quite warm temperatures.

Sunday tasks and an hour or so of mulching up branches – otherwise very quiet day.

Oak Avenue Weather:5℃—24℃ no rain [77.34] IKBOrchard TdT

The “eta” for my chooks is now at 1:30pm on Friday 5th June at the Bay View BP petrol station, lockdown levels permitting.

Ben sent me an article written by a friend of theirs, Bob Brockie, describing his view of the inevitability and some consequences of a virus pandemic. Meanwhile Gill showed me her fresh-as tomatoes from her own garden – I am a little jealous, neither my runner beans nor my raspberries did anything this year.

Karola and I attacked the large and growing pile of branches to be mulched. Today we got through about a third of the pile, the Privet trees, noxious plants, that have sprung up in the last 3 – 4 years, some with trunks too fat to chip and shred. Privet trees are known for their allergy-provoking pollen drops.

Branches To Be Mulched

All Gone – See The Pile Of Chippings

Gill’s Late Developers – Tomatoes From The Heights (Yes It’s A Walnut – I Do Know That)

Ben Sent Me This 2007 Article By Bob Brockie – Amazingly Prescient

Oak Avenue Weather:8℃—26℃ no rain [77.07] IKBOrchard TdT

As I woke from a night of stressful dreaming – not nightmares but fragments of the angst of travelling and unsuccessfully organising people – I have the solution to my dilemma concerning the place to put the chooks when they arrive, possibly next month. Karola has suggested that the chooks need to be close-by and in sight and she doesn’t mind if they free range like the bantams did, mostly under the oaks and onto the homestead lawn. So the new chook house will face north-north-east (like the homestead) from the edge of the lawn behind the homestead garage – so about 20 – 30 metres south of the west end of the garage, where the Mandarin (bantam) chook house used to be.

Unwound my bits of string, pulled up the marker standards, and tidied away the wire and netting and posts – they aren’t needed for now.

A large branch of an oak tree in the stump dump has been gradually drooping year by year and each year I’ve had to hack off the lower pieces so I don’t hit my head on them when driving the tractor into the stump dump. This year it almost touched the ground and a large split has appeared a few metres off the ground. So today I got our longest exgtension ladder and sawed through the branch above the split, all the time concerned that when the sawn end fell the remaining branch would jerk up flinging me and the ladder away. I did not use a chainsaw for this, it would be dangerous, foolhardy, and illegal. I used a pruning saw.

I’d saw for a bit then scuttle down the ladder and pull from the ground; eventually, when I’d cut through all but a centimetre or two, it worked and the branch – and ladder – came tumbling down.

Enough excitement for one day so I then Grillo mowed the Goose/Ram paddock, removing the thick blanket of autumn leaves that was choking the life out of the grass below. The ram will be parted from his ladies no later than 1st May so, if things go according to schedule, the first lambs should be born after 12th August and the last one before the end of September. That gives the grass in the Goose/Ram paddock two weeks to grow.

Karola and Lyn chatted on the phone for over an hour this afternoon.

As suggested by Dave Mitchell (UK) I watched the first episode of a French comedy TV series which in English is called “Call My Agency”. I found it on Netflix and was surprised to be able to see it without any demand for credit card or other payment. Just as I was signing off I found the reason – Anthony Fletcher had used the TV for Netflix when house-sitting for us in August last year and it still worked.

I rang Anthony and told him of my serendipitous viewing – and he said carry on, he didn’t mind. Obviously if any unexpected billing charges should appear he knows who to call.

For The Womenfolk

I Think This Says New Zealand Is Incredibly Well Positioned

Daring Cutting Of Oak Branch In Stump Dump – Before …

… And After

Goose/Ram Paddock – Leaves Off To Let Grass Grow

Oak Avenue Weather:15℃—24℃ no rain [73.39] IKBOrchard TdT

Another pretty quiet day. Sarah Robotham from The Chook Shed down Christchurch way sent me a couple of photos of my chooks – very thoughtful of her.

Long call with the Rashbrooke’s senior this morning. Phone calls with Gill and later Bridget – it’s very reassuring to find others living their pretty normal lives while the global picture is so dire.

My Light Sussex Rooster & Some Of Our Six Black Orpington Pullets

The Black Ones Are My Pullets – My They Are Growing Fast

A Surfeit Of Barbary Doves – Spot The Intruder

Oak Avenue Weather:12℃—21℃ no rain [77.22] IKBOrchard TdT

Up in good time and Karola drove us to CountDown just before 8:00am. Ten minute wait then the shopping took me almost an hour. Not as many people as last time but I still have problems remembering where everything is. Only a couple of items out of stock and they don’t stock Karola’s favourite yoghurt nor her favourite grapefruit-free marmalade so in both cases substitutes were bought. Then on to OMG bread shop ofr two loaves still warm from the oven. And finally to Farmlands for more kibbled maize and sheep nuts plus a last minute addition to the online order, some long, strong coach bolts to help repair the broken chook house undercarriage. Left home at 7:45am, arrived back at 9:15am.

Had breakfast and then a snooze – it’s exhausting.

Had a quiet afternoon, after my daily “tour de Twyford”, fixing the damage I did to the chook house yesterday. Yesterday I added a second 4×2 (100x50mm) to each axle assembly, attached them to the bearers placed directly under the legs where the weight is, and fastened with steel plates and long coach screws. Well that’s added quite a bit to the weight.

After dinner, in the gloaming, I towed the chook house over in front of the homestead garage to make it easier to add the nest boxes.

This evening, after searching for ages on the Internet for a film that might interest Karola, I found “All Is True”, Dench, Branagh, Mckellen – I thought it was excellent, Karola that it wasn’t too bad. A story woven around the last days of William Shakespeare. The name comes from an alternative name for Shakespeare’s “Henry VIII”, not many people know that.

The Broken Bearer From The Chook House – Showing The Internal Flaw

From Ben In Seatoun Heights – The Mighty Cook Straights High Tide Super Surge

Oak Avenue Weather:4℃—19℃ no rain [77.33] IKBOrchard TdT

Gosh it was cold last night – first time this year it’s been down to zero.

Listened to an interview with Australian renegade economist Steve Keen for the second time as I rode round the block – some interesting ideas as to why modern economists didn’t predict the 2008 financial melt-down and how deeply in debt and economic mess the UK is.

Graham Linwood called to say he was ready to submit his document and Ruth’s concept drawings to Chris Cochran in Wellington to see what he thinks. I said please do go ahead.

Spent a long time this morning creating a list of the groceries we sometimes need – something to scan before doing the weekly shop at CountDown. Most items are only occasional buys, the ones needing weekly refreshing, the perishables, are easy to remember. As when I last made such a list it quickly gets to be so long that it’s quite a bore to go through it all every week. Ah well.

Read a McKinsey online report and associated articles about Covid-19 and the virus that causes it, SARS-CoV-2, a balance of health and business perspectives. I do hope that we don’t just go back to how it was after the worst is past. I hear that in China the traffic congestion and pollution levels are rapidly returning to pre-Covid-19 levels.

In the afternoon pottered around with ideas for the chook run and tried to move the house with the tractor, lifting one end and gently pulling it along. The result was that both bearers running the length of the chook house split at one end, directly above the axle. It won’t be hard to fix but it will be harder to manoeuvre with the tractor and will be 100mm (4”) higher off the ground.

I am idly mulling over the idea of having the chook run be behind the rainwater tanks, the current plan, and having another big pen behind the solid wooden fence in which to keep a couple of pigs. Karola is exasperated and horrified – but it would be an excellent use for all the acorns.

Snow Crocus (crocus chrysanthus) – A Vivid Rich Yellow

Karola’s Tupelo (nyssa sylvatica)

Oops – Very Heavy Chook House Breaks Its Bearer

Oak Avenue Weather 0℃—17℃ 0.8mm rain [77.24] IKBOrchard TdT

It being Bridget’s 50th birthday today the Brackenburys in Hastings and in Ealing from their locked-down bunkers sent their good wishes electronically.

Otherwise for us it was a very quiet day activity wise thuogh quite windy at times outside. We were just pottering about. I did begin filling in the trenches holding pipes that join the rainwater tanks, making them operate as one. First I had to clear the luxuriant Tradescantia. It comes up easily in a carpet.

Karola & Ian Recite A Poem

Dave, Anna, and Felix (Two With Comical Fake Glasses) Sing Happy Birthday

Carpet Of Tradescantia Near Rainwater Tanks

Oak Avenue Weather:9℃—24℃ no rain [76.79] IKBOrchard TdT

Friend Iain Middleton emailed me today that a supermarket employee in Hastings ara has been diagnosed with CovId19. Online I found out that it was Flaxmere New World and the danger days were 3rd and 4th April. Well I did go there on 30th March, five days into lock-down, and was unimpressed with their response to the lock-down. Am very happy that I didn’t go on or after 3rd April.

Mowed cottage lawn and curtilage. Rubbish out – our collection agency collects on Mondays every week, come rain or shine or public holiday, which is good for us.

Email exchange with Dennis Schwarz in Wanaka means that we can tear up the cheque from IDS following the postponement of this year’s annual meeting in Geraldine and Dennis will just hold it for next year. Dennis then sent us these wonderful photos of autumn colour from his property in Wanaka.

Dennis Schwarz Sent These Glorious Photos Of Autumn Colour

Three Colourful Oaks (below) Small But Red Sugar Maple and a Tupelo (above)

Plenty of Doves

Riot Of Clematis Vitalba On The Casurina Shelterbelt

Oak Avenue Weather:12℃—24℃ 1.3mm rain [76.23] IKBOrchard TdT

Very odd day; knocked my knee against something solid last week and now it decides to react. Just a niggle but enough to wake in the night. Anyway, so the day spent on dozing. reading online, and writing emails, not even going round the block (TdT) until late afternoon.

Mostly sunny day but cool – on the cottage kitchen verandah it was just so nice to sit and relax.

Discussion about whether to have the chook run be in the triangle containing the rainwater tanks or further north, incorporating the long solid wooden fence, from the front 133 driveway over to the ha-ha. Still undecided.

Karola had a good day writing emails and on phone, for example with Annemarie and Henare. Tony Fletcher TXTed me so we swapped lock-down status. Charted with Harry about the combination of drought and coronavirus. He had an annus horribilis last year with the cattle infected with Mycoplasma bovis, and with drought, the freezing-works restricted capacity, and the coronavirus lock-down it hasn’t improved much.

Despite repeated forecasts of rain for the local area, Twyford, we have only had a millimetre or so. Consequentially I turned on the tree irrigation tonight, for the weekend.

Autumn Colours – Swamp Cypress

Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—19℃ no rain [76.02] IKBOrchard TdT

Mushrooms on toast for breakfast, our own mushrooms.

Had welcome messages from Annemarie in Wellington and Sheila Alexander, Karola’s AFS “family” in Maine, USA.

Took longer than I expected but the chook house inches forward (what do they say in metric countries?). It has a netting front now. Still plenty to do, the nest boxes at the front and food/water box along the back. Also under the eaves I need to block larger pests with netting – the gaps will be good ventilation. And I’ll have to wait until level 4 lockdown is reduced to get some clear plastic to make an awning for the front to keep the rain off. And a pop-hole opposite the door.

It is quite dark inside so I may paint it. Outside some combination of white and Karaka green – and maybe a blood red door; blood red is the old traditional New Zealand roof and corrugated iron paint.

Geese & doves all OK, sheep fine. We still wait for a decent rain.

Oak Avenue Weather:5℃—19℃ no rain [75.91] IKBOrchard TdT

A grey wintery day again and a little rain late afternoon.

Gave the sheep a bale of pea straw for a bit of variety, they aren’t short of feed but nor has the usual autumn flush started yet. Like the spring flush it’s when the grass grows very fast and it’s very late this year.

Karola has picked a few mushrooms, usually by this time of the year we are having meal after meal of mushrooms. She also has picked up and de-shelled (shucked?) a couple of colanders of walnuts from the trees she planted up by the concrete sheep trough and the line of Totaras. Actually rather good, so very much better than the dry dusty American walnuts that New World sells.

Otherwise it was more chook house.

Oak Avenue Weather:7℃—18℃ 1.2mm rain [75.85] IKBOrchard TdT

Got up early and went down to CountDown as suggested by the CountDown Help desk yesterday, arriving just after 7:00am. Only to be told that the store wasn’t opening for any customers before 8:00am but that if I came back then there would be a priority queue for Gold Card holders and others in the “vulnerable” categories. Went home, had breakfast and then Karola, Bangle, and I drove back arriving just after 8:00am.

The priority queue was quite long already but moved quickly and within a few minutes I was inside. There were about the same number of shoppers as shelf-loading staff and , like my experience at Flaxmere New World last week, it was hard not to bump into people due to the number of people and the narrow aisles. Just over an hour later I was through the self-serve checkout and wheeling my heaped trolley to the car.

It being after 9:00am it was time to drop by OMG (Oh My Goodness), the bakery, and pick up my three paleo loaves – still warm from the oven. Back home, shopping for the week done, inside two hours.

Good to see that Karola has adopted the new bamboo carving board that I bought online to replace her old one, bought from the Hastings Farmers Market years ago but recently splitting as if left in the sun.

It is a Joseph Joseph Cut & Carve Chopping Board! They say “This insanely clever chopping board features an integrated grip centre to hold your food in place as you cut, ensuring that carving a leg of lamb or a roast chook has never been easier! Plus, with angled edges to trap the juices, this food safe bamboo board makes for the ideal chopping surface for all your culinary creations”. Size: 400mm x 300mm and 35mm thick, approximately.

In the afternoon I worked on the chook house again, almost got the main door finished when darkness fell and rain began falling.

New Chopping Board – Ideal For Cutting My Paleo Bread and Making Cauliflower Rice

Oak Avenue Weather:10℃—19℃ 2.9mm rain [76.24] IKBOrchard TdT

As suggested by Bridget we investigated getting our groceries online. Countdown is urging those of us who are able to come to the store as their home delivery service is swamped. New World said to contact Age Concern if we wanted help as they had delegated their home delivery help for the over 70s to Age Concern. Countdown did say that if we came in between 7:00am and 8:00am we could get priority – and it was naturally a quieter period anyway, so we’re off to try that tomorrow.

Graham Linwood, architect, sent his second draft of a document about the heritage implications of our proposed changes to the homestead and we spent most of the morning discussing it. The first draft came yesterday and we sent our first comments back late last night. Anyway, we’re not too unhappy with it now and have agreed that it can be sent off to Chris Cochran for comment prior to being sent to the Hastings District Council planning department. It also needs drawings fro our draughtsman Ruth so I called her and we chatted about it and about getting her a large-size (A3) scanner so that her hand-drawn plans can be sent electronically to us, to Graham, and to the council.

Large flat-bed scanners were quickly snapped up by thoughtful people forced to work from home during the NZ lock-down. The only ones still available were ultra-cheap (a bad sign) or very expensive. I finally located a one with good reviews sold by a firm in Australia. Sent this info on to Ruth who says she will now order one and has emailed my contact in Ascent in Wellington to get the details. As Ruth pointed out if she gets it herself rather than me buying it and lending it to her she can “expense” it and get the GST back. Well, I’m not arguing.

Most of the day spent on the chook house, or as Karola calls it, The Ark.

Karola noticed that a large branch on the Chinese Hawthorne tree has broken off (photo below); just old age she thinks.

Early evening spent making as sure as we can we’ve listed all the groceries we hope to get tomorrow.

Broken Branch Of Chinese Hawthorne Covered in Berries – The Extra Weight Won’t Have Helped

Oak Avenue Weather:6℃—20℃ no rain [76.07] IKBOrchard TdT

Morning taken up with the spill-over from yesterday, Sunday, of biils, unanswered emails and unread web pages. Afternoon with more on the chook house – some. better progress there today. It would make quite a nice little library or sleep-out. Karola says it’s robust enough for a gorilla cage. I am enjoying building it and now feel that there’s a chance it will be ready for the chooks if they come in May.

Oak Avenue Weather:5℃—20℃ no rain [75.80] IKBOrchard TdT

The clocks “fell back” last night and a certain amount of time was spent resetting the many clocks that do not reset themselves. It is an opportunity to get them all back in synch as well. Of course the phones and computers and tablets do it themselves.

I did a little more on the chook house but it’s quite slow going.

I see Dr Michael Mosley is advocating a lot of hand washing during the pandemic – he made the helpful comment that one could sing “Happy Birthday To You” twice while washing to time your 20 seconds.

Queen Elisabeth II is due to make a speech today and we expect to listen tomorrow. (Scroll down on the linked Daily Mail page to find the video)

Iain Middleton sent me a link to video of one of the sessions of the 19th Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) conferences, held last August in Hyderabad in India. I tried to listen but combination of broken English spoken with thick accents and inpenetrable arguments made me give up rather quickly. The audience appeared to be minute and everyone looked thoroughly miserable – maybe that’s what one looks like when concentrating hard to try and understand. Iain and his wife Gaylene were there and another New Zealand proponent of UBI, Peter Brake, the latter gave a paper.

Iain & Gaylene Middleton At 19th Basic Income Earth Network Conference – Hyderabad, India – August 2019

Oak Avenue Weather:8℃—20℃ no rain [75.71] IKBOrchard TdT

The “Country Life” radio programme was I suppose pretty up-beat, farmers saying how they were successfully meeting the challenges of myriad new regulations, drought, The Virus, and family succession. But for me the overall effect was to think, who on earth would want to be a farmer.

Later, on Saturday morning’s Kim Hill programme, she had an interview with Dr Michael Mosley on sleep – he has a new book out called … Fast Sleep. He thinks moderate sleep deprivation is the path to resetting your habits and biological clocks to the sort of sleep pattern you want. This was followed by a very rational, calm, informative interview with regular correspondent (well for now, anyway) Dr Chris Smith, consultant clinical virologist at Cambridge University about the virus.

A smidgen of rain in the night – oh for a decent downpour for a day or so. Karola is switching the sheep with ram and the maiden ewes so each has about 24 hours on the crop. They are making headway, the lucerne and weeds are being eaten but the phalaris is shooting up again and gone to seed,

I had an enjoyable afternoon working on the chook house; where the morning went I’m not sure. Karola saw the black cat with dash of white again.

Oak Avenue Weather:11℃—18℃ 0.1mm rain [76.23] IKBOrchard TdT

Tonight we have a guest columnist, Karola. Here’s what she has to say about the last two days:

So much for writing a diary: Now I come to think of it somewhere I have squirreled away any number of multi sized diaries, somehow supposing that eventually that pattern of weeks and months would return and in the next period I would truly write up the daily round and what a boon it would be… Now Ian is so good on the weblog (with occasional slips but we can usually combine to rig up some sort of account) and better yet he often includes pictures of events.

It is, I think, quite true to say a picture is worth a thousand words: at any rate if there is a photo or two I can usually remember who, what, when, and where.

We have now been in level 4 lockdown for a week and a day (it started March 25th just before midnight.) The weather has been good although the days are getting shorter and many of the deciduous trees are changing colour. We have just enough grass for our sheep despite an unusual lack of rain. I have been switching the mob of courting ewes and the smaller group of lambs to take turns in the lucerne crop. It can be tricky as each lot must not be allowed to mix but going well so far.

On our visit to town ( we have only been once this week) we stopped at the vets and contacted someone about a coughing sheep for which we needed lung-worm medicine. We could collect it in half an hour. Well, after Ian stood in the New World queue for what seemed like hours he went in and took another age getting the week’s worth of shopping. I enjoyed sitting in a sunny park and carried on reading Barabara Tuchnan’s masterly book The Guns of August.

Note: this may seem like fiddling while Rome is burning, but when I read about the mistakes and folly of the military leaders in the period leading up to the First World War it is strangely comforting. Some things, having gone past a certain point, seem to have an extraordinary inevitability. Well in hindsight they are described as if they were. I already had this feeling a little while ago when I read about Monte Cassino. Meanwhile Ian did shopping for a week and we called in at Oh My Goodness (OMG) , the specialist baker. Another phone call and he was able to commission a pickup of loaves next week. Then back to the vet lab and the lungworm medicine was ready.

A major problem was that neither of us was absolutely sure which of the ewes we had heard with that rasping cough. I had written down #703 but couldn’t swear it was her…

Since we had a bit of daylight I shook the box of sheep nuts and ushered the ladies into the holding paddock. I was not hopeful but waited some time and then a loud rasping cough sounded. I kept my eye on her and came within reading distance of her ear tag.

But how to remember the number, damn no notebook, I must phone Ian: he is probably up a ladder securing the corrugated iron on the henhouse roof. But thankfully he answered and put #816 into his phone. We left the ewes where they were and planned to give the dose tomorrow. Actually more than one ewe might be suffering from lung worm and certainly many of them gave a sneeze or two but time will tell.

Ian is the “menu king” and he decreed “Beyond meat” for the evening meal. It is a new vegetarian product that we are adapting to by degrees – made with peas and tastes quite like meat. They have good flavour and come in different formats : tonight was burgers, with Kumera (me), beans, spinach, cauliflower rice (Ian) and followed by baked apple and ice-cream. I had tried to bake some small new spuds but without success, just to use the hot oven.

Also at some point I had emailed both Barbara Florent and Annemarie More, the two other grandmothers. Both are managing very well in these trying times. It is spring in Boulongne and Barbara goes down to sit in her garden when it is sunny. I can picture it but I would be happier if she had a dog as a companion. Annemarie is also doing well but she is envious that I have Ian to do the shopping. If she has had to wait in a long queue in Upper Hutt as we do in Hastings I am very sorry. The only consolation is that I already know she keeps a well stocked larder at all times just in case. Both these ladies have memories of the 1940’s although that is not necessarily a bonus.

Well we must walk our dog before dark….

… Now, back to me …

Ten doves counted today. And as Karola said, we did dose ewe #816 for lung worm today; I do hope she’s the ony one though one of the lambs, the #900s, was coughing chronically a week ago. ( Withholding period for meat for this stuff, Matrix Hi Min 14ml each, is 91 days).

Not a lot to show on the chook house today but I did clean the Grillo, ashamed that I put it away wet and dirty the other day when rain stopped a bit of mowing in the One Acre. Unblocked the shute, blew away some of the dirt, and unwrapped a length of electric fence wire from the little blade.

The air compressor is powerful and does a good job of expelling dust and dirt – and as I had it set up I cleaned the farm shed floor with it as well.

To get at the cutting blades I lifted up the front of the Grillo using the little tractor bucket – worked well.

Anna sent us a photo from Felix & Barney’s secondary school, Merchant Taylors’, where they are using a 3-D printer to make face shields against the virus.

A BBC news item tells the story.

Oak Avenue Weather:10℃—19℃ 0.7mm rain [75.69] IKBOrchard TdT

Mucked about most of the morning, eventually, after making a substantial food shopping list to cover the next week, we went off to Hastings to beat the Friday rush. Ha!

My new $250 wireless headphones arrived from Apple – their Beats” label. Look forward to trying them tomorrow when I listen to another couple of Tim Harford’s “50 Things That Made The Modern Economy” series two.

Off shopping for the next week. First stop the pharmacy in Stortford Lodge. Queue outside of six, one out allows one in rule being applied, there were about six customers in the shop.

Then to the Vets to see if we could get some medicine for a couple of coughing sheep – not Covid19 but lungworm, probably. No-one allowed in the shop which was in darkness but there was a number to ring. Eventially someone answered and agreed to make up the potions, they’d be ready in ten – fifteen minutes so I said we’d come back after supermarket.

Past supermarket Countdown with its queue of shoppers that went on and on, and on. Decided that despite they being the only local shop selling GF Wheatbix or meat-free Beyond-Meat patties we’d give it a miss this week.

On to OMG – the baker of fine breads without flour including my favourite “paleo” loaf that has very little added sugar.

In darkness but there was a notice on the glass of the door, very old and barely legible, with a number to call. On the third guess I got a lass who admitted to being OMG. Upshot was that they will next bake on Wednesday but it will go very fast so best to pre-order on Internet. And good idea to get several loaves and freeze them, she said, it still tastes good if toasted and you don’t know what the future holds. I told her that her phone number was barely decipherable and she seemed pleased to be made aware of that.

And so to New World supermarket. The queue was a snake into the car park, maybe 50 or more people in the line. Same as the pharmacy, one in for every one coming out. A few dozen people inside instead of the usual 100 or so during the day. I waited for about an hour I guess to get in and it then took me much longer than usual to fill my trolley with seven days of stuff.

We set off around 11:30am and got back home around 3:30pm.

Whilst in the New World queue there was an interesting incident, not just the one when employee came out and said, “any couple in the queue, if so, one of you go back to your car”. This one was a foreign gentleman on his cell phone speaking volubly in Arabic or Turkish perhaps. This went on and on and on at high volume and got mildly irritating; others were on their phones but not shouting. Anyway suddenly there was a bellow “Turn That Phone Off” as a person joined the queue “Droplets. You’re Spreading Droplets By Speaking”. The man shut up. The bellower said “I’m with the health serfvice and you should not be speaking if you haven’t got a mask” – he had a mask as did about a third of queue dwellers. Someone else took exception to the bellower, in typical New Zealander fashion, and said quite loudly and clearly, “Anyone want to use your phone, do it – it’s not our business”. I don’t know if the droplets would actually travel more than the social distancing of a couple of metres, and anyway the wind was blowing quite hard – which is tough on those downwind of a talker I guess – but I was happy he shut up.

Well that was most of the day gone so apart from Karola and I discussing the best way to attach the chook house ridge capping, that was it.

Gill emailed this morning to let us know that “A Stuff article this morning says “Bauer Media Group has announced its intention to close its publishing business in New Zealand due to the severe economic impact of Covid-19, titles including the NZ Listener.” Well that’s a blow, Gill & Ben buy us a subscription each year and we reciprocate. It is usually chock full of interesting articles that haven’t been “dumbed down”. On TV tonight our PM, Jacinda, assured us that even though Bauer was conveniently blaming the virus for their closure it was the decline in printed media, not the virus, that triggered the closure. Bauer had rejected government offers to help financially, she said.

And Gill sent on a photo, quite appropriate given the New Zealand (pre-virus) strategy to rid us of possums, stoats, and rats (“all marsupial and mammalian introduced predators”) by 2050. Feral cats are also a big problem but killing them is politically divisive.

Five doves on the bird table this morning.

Dr Ben Bell Making His Contribution To A Predator-Free Seatoun

Oak Avenue Weather:6℃—19℃ no rain [76.09] IBOrchard TdT

Karola & I went to the Health Centre this morning and had our annual flu jabs, through the window in the car in the carpark.

I spent the rest of the day slowly and quietly getting on with the chook house roof. Karola came and helped and observed and commented every now and then.

The Stink Bug that I found on my sleeve yesterday is not the first known instance in New Zealand of the dreaded Brown Marmorated Stink Bug – (Halyomorpha halys).

Oh Look, Roofing Iron

No It Isn’t The Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (BMSB) – Dreaded Pest Not Yet Found In NZ

Oak Avenue Weather:11℃—22℃ no rain [76.51] IKBOrchard TdT