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Monthly Archives: August 2021
Last Day Of Winter (In City Speak)
Ewe #927, a first-time mother, had twin ewe lambs: #119E & #120E.
Shopping again and still under lockdown level 4. Tomorrow we revert to level 3 and I expect builder Paul and helper Mark will both be here. As required by their level 4 procedures I called Farmlands yesterday and ordered a bag of enhanced chook grain and a bag of kibbled maize. We picked those up this morning. My plan is to go from having five types of bird food down to three. From: whole maize, kibbled maize, wheat, layers pellets and layers mash. To: kibbled maize, molasses-coated chook grain (wheat and maize), and layers pellets.
I have for some weeks been feeding the chooks on mash with pellets sprinkled on it and they don’t leave any so I think moving to mash-free will be OK. Whether they will take to the special chook grain is anyone’s guess.
Rather beautiful stand of daffodils on the edge of the circle at the front of the homestead. There are lots of daffodils and jonquils round the circle and at odd spots around the place, all inherited.
Oak Avenue Weather:3℃—13℃ 0.2mm rain [76.800] TdT TdO eggs=4 Mark=0
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Tutu – Poisonous Poisonous Plant
Forecast rain keeps moving away and in fact there were only a few scattered drizzle patches all day, enough to make the ground wet but very little serious rain.
Yesterday the towel rail in the cottage bathroom started to fall down. Screws were failing as they were only into gib board. Today I cut a couple of lengths of 30mm wide, 12mm thick plywood and made rails for the towel rail supports, screwing the rails firmly into underlying studs under the gib. Painted these rails in the morning, put them up in the afternoon, all back to normal by this evening.
Karola and I have been watching reruns of the New Zealand equivalent of Midsomer Murders, called Brokenwood Mysteries. This Saturday’s episode, series 4 episode 3, “The Scarecrow”, was about death by Tutin neurotoxin poisoning, honey contaminated with the toxin from Tutu shrubs.
What I didn’t remember was that it’s not the bees foraging Tutu flowers directly but:
And as in the Brokenwood Mysteries, the vine hopper is really only prevalent in hot summer season.
tutu
1. (noun) tutu, tree tutu, Coriaria arborea var. arborea – native shrub with mostly opposite leaves with three to five parallel veins, shiny and dark on top. Stems are four-sided and the purple-black fruit hang in long strings. Extremely poisonous, except for the juice of the fruit.
Karola has a framed botanist’s picture of another poisonous New Zealand plant, Turutu, which is not the same as Tutu. It has leaves like grass or flax.
Turutu – Dianella intermedia
Oak Avenue Weather:6℃—13℃ 1.4mm rain [76.822] TdT eggs=3 Mark=0
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Premonitions Of Spring
Just yesterday there was hardly a hint of pink but today, magically, peach blossom aplenty. Most of the orchards along our section of the stop bank are apples and there’s a big block of asparagus next to a small vineyard.
Oak Avenue Weather:10℃—17℃ 9.5mm rain [77.318] TdT TdO eggs=4
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Five Eggs Today
All quiet in the orchards, all quiet on the roads. Apart from a handful of families with dogs, cyclists and a walker or two it was a very quiet day. Karola again sitting in the sun and reading a lot. I wrestling with a recalcitrant computer as I attempt some housekeeping.
Today is the first time my chooks have laid five eggs in the nest-boxes. I’ve had four eggs a few times but never five before. It’s possible the layers mash and pellets are considerably more nutritious for my chooks than whole maize.
Oak Avenue Weather:11℃—21℃ 0.2mm rain [77.123] TdT TdO eggs=5
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Lock-Down Drops To Level 3 On Wednesday
Highlight of the day for me was, having not seen any of the three large snails I bought and put in the bath pond (next to the cottage pump-shed), I was delighted to see a tiny snail clearly today, racing round the rim of the bath a few inches under water. I imagine I imported him/her on the weed I got from the Hastings Show Ground stream.
I, with help from Karola, replaced bulbs in the eight identical outside lights on the cottage and cottage garage. Four of them are 12w LEDs, four are 7w LEDs. These replace the incandescent 100w lights that I foolishly put in a year or more ago – foolishly because the fittings are only rated for 60w and the incandescent lights burned the sockets – in the case of the two on the side of the cottage garage the neutral wires burned through. Safe now.
Karola & Bangle Walked Up To The Top Of The Stop Bank Again Today
Henare’s Four Bee Hives – A Few Bees A Buzzing
Small Water Snail In The Bath Pond – Only Few MM Long
Oak Avenue Weather:11℃—15℃ 1.7mm rain [76.870] TdT TdO eggs=4 Mark=0
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Not Giving Up Yet (Covid Freedom)
Actually not a bad day at all. Very quiet in the avenue, as expected. I carried on with a pretty boring task trying to consolidate the last more than two decades of computer backups into one 4TB external disk, which I’ve duplicated. Lockdown at least until tomorrow night; we’ll hear more tomorrow afternoon.
Prompted by Dave Mitchell, I am also listening with interest to a long interview by Lex Fridman with Jeff Hawkins, a neuroscience theoretican. I find that I first heard of him, I listened to a TED video, back in 2006 – the TED talk was actually in February 2003. In 2006 I actually saved two TED talks, one by Jeff Hawkins and one by Michael Shermer the editor of Skeptic Magazine and debunker of myths and conspiracies. I have played the Michael Shermer one several times since then. In it he surprises with the power of suggestion, plays a Led Zeppelin song, Stairway to Heaven, backwards – incomprehensible – and then tells us what others say you can hear in that song done backwards, and suddenly, played again, it is crystal clear, every word – about Satan in the toolshed etc. Michael Shermer also played a revised version of Katie Melua’s, hit single, “Nine Million Bicycles in Beiing”, where she corrected her original lyric insisting that we don’t know how far it is to the edge of the universe. As an aside: I attended the very first TED conference in Monteray in 1984, an extremely expensive invitation-only conference with megastars of the technology, education, and design. It was here that I bumped into Douglas Adams, shook his hand and proudly said “I’m from New Zealand you know”.
TED was conceived in 1984 by Emmy-winning broadcast and graphic designer Harry Marks, who observed a convergence of the fields of technology, entertainment, and design (that is, “TED”). He approached architect and graphic designer Richard Saul Wurman for assistance, who agreed on the condition that he be allowed to be a co-founder.[20] The first conference, organized that same year by Marks and Wurman with help from Dr. Frank Stanton, featured demos of the compact disc, co-developed by Philips and Sony and one of the first demonstrations of the Apple Macintosh computer.[2][21] Presentations were given by famous mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot and influential members of the digerati community, like Nicholas Negroponte and Stewart Brand. The event was financially unsuccessful; hence, it took six years before the second conference was organized.[22]
TED2 was held at the Monterey Conference Center in California in 1990. From 1990 onward, a growing community of “TEDsters” gathered annually with Wurman leading the conference in Monterey until 2009,[23] when it was relocated to Long Beach, California due to a substantial increase in attendees.[24][25] Initially, the speakers had been drawn from the fields of expertise behind the acronym TED, but during the nineties, the roster of presenters broadened to include scientists, philosophers, musicians, religious leaders, philanthropists, and many others.
Karola is racing through a number of John Buchan novels, paperbacks, which requires sitting out on the cottage verandah in the sun and drinking several cups of coffee until it’s time to go down to the stop bank for our daily perambulations.
We pushed ewe #514 and her twins into the Front paddock with the other ewes with lambs.
Meanwhile Max Rashbrooke, the only son of Felicity & Geoff Rashbrooke, our long time friends from university days, has written a nice piece for The Guardian. I think the tone and intention of this piece are on target. Thank you Max.
Why we’re happy hobbits in Jacinda’s ‘mysterious socialist hermit kingdom’ | Max Rashbrooke
Physician, heal thyself. This phrase has been in my thoughts ever since global media outlets, most of them British, started mocking New Zealand’s Covid elimination strategy last week.
I’m a proud British passport holder, and spent some of my best years in London, but not once during this pandemic have I ever wished to be anywhere except New Zealand. That holds true even though we’re now back in lockdown while the British freely enjoy what passes for a summer there.
As Twitter users were quick to point out, it was indeed crazy of New Zealand to go into lockdown with just one case – no wait, 22 – hang on, 107 … You get the point. The fact that coronavirus case numbers can mount rapidly should be obvious by now, but apparently not.
Also apparently, some British columnists believe New Zealand has become “a mysterious socialist hermit kingdom”. But we’ve led infinitely freer lives over the past 18 months. On the Oxford Covid-19 Stringency Index, they’ve had – crudely speaking – 60% restricted lives for most of that time, while we have seldom been over 20%. We have lockdowns, but they’re generally short and sharp.
The lockdowns are also effective: we’ve had just 26 people die of Covid, a number which – and I cannot stress this enough – is very different from more than 130,000, the current UK death tally. Our per-person death rate is 400 times less than the British one. And if any British people think that’s down to New Zealand’s being an island, they might want to take a look at the shape of their own country on a map. Luck, and living on the bottom of the world, have also helped us, but not that much.
It’s hard to think of any downsides to our approach. Lockdowns are not great for one’s mental health, admittedly, but also probably not as bad as having to watch “the bodies pile high”.
Our compassionate response has also been an efficient one: New Zealand’s economy recovered more quickly than Britain’s did, while our unemployment rate, at 4%, is so low that firms trying to recruit staff are contemplating desperate measures like actually raising wages.
Yes, we can be sleepy little hobbits, less protective of our civil liberties than the British. But when infringements are proportionate to the harm they seek to prevent, and governments act competently, citizens are right to be trusting. And it’s not as if no one dares criticise Jacinda Ardern.
In short, our coronavirus response has been that rarest of things, a win-win-win situation. In the “slightly magical animal” stakes, we can boast not just hobbits but also unicorns.
As to the “hermit” line: it’s not like we want to be isolated. We organised a trans-Tasman travel bubble with Australia as soon as it looked safe, only for the Aussies to mess everything up. If we don’t have one any more it’s not for lack of effort on our part.
Of course our government has made mistakes. Managed isolation bookings are chaotic, intensive care beds inadequate, testing systems far from perfect. Most notoriously, our vaccine rollout is the developed world’s slowest.
But we could afford some slowness because of our previous victories. What’s more, the continuing deaths and resurgent infections in vaccine “success stories” such as Israel, the US and the UK suggest there are few role models out there, unless one is willing to tolerate a body count of hundreds of people a day, tens of thousands a year. New Zealanders would be more excited about “learning to live” with Covid if it didn’t look so much like learning to die with it. We would also probably prefer not to open up to Covid with a very partially vaccinated population, a delightfully British approach that appears perfectly designed to create the next Delta variant.
Given Delta’s exceptional infection rates, of course, our latest lockdown may not work. We have no monopoly on perfection, no crystal ball. But for the moment it looks like the right strategy.
And of course we need an exit plan, just like everyone else, and we may eventually have to accept a few coronavirus deaths a year. But that exit plan, and the opening of our borders, will seem feasible only once global vaccination rates are sky-high and the rest of the world is a safe place for travel.
That, in turn, does not look likely to occur before the end of this year, by which point New Zealand will be in the same situation as everyone else – that is, having got the vaccine to anyone who wants it before commencing a desperate battle with the anti-vaxxers.
I’m genuinely delighted that the UK has nailed its vaccine rollout, helping protect my many British friends and family members. But rather than mock others, Britons would do well to contemplate their own past – and continuing – problems with a pandemic that is sorely testing us all.
Oak Avenue Weather:7℃—19℃ 10.8mm rain [77.163] TdT TdO eggs=2 Mark=0
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Ewe #816 Twins & Ewe #514 Twins
Another sunny cool winter’s day. Rhododendrons and Camellias in flower. Grass growing a bit.
Last night I called NatWest in the UK. A month ago I called them to say I’d forgotten my debit card PIN. I’d made several failed attempts to use my old card with various PINs and so the NatWest security card reader locked up. They agreed to send me a new card. It arrived yesterday with the unhelpful remark that I could continue using my existing PIN. Yeah, right!
And then it appeared that I’d triggered some fraud trap and so I had to follow an extra procedure that involved taking a selfie and photos of both back and front of my drivers license and upload these to some UK site for verification. Allegedly the verification succeeded but the bank hasn’t sent me confirmation that a new PIN is on its way. We shall see.
Ewe #816 had two bonnie ewe lambs overnight, #114E & #115E.
Karola and I moved ewes #714 & #815 and their lambs from the Middle paddock, joining the rest of the ewes and lambs in the Front paddock and One Acre. A little later ewe #514 had twins, #116E & #117R.
In the morning had some email discussion about how to provide us here with a backup electricity supply and did a little browsing on the web. Chris More yesterday discussed this for a bit and surprised me by saying that many households in northern America have backup diesel generators because their harsh winters make for frequent power outages. In retrospect I guess that is obvious.
I also online chatted with a representative of RIEquip, Tony the chatbot. Well if he wasn’t a human he was very good.
Tony agreed that 7kVa was a good ballpark (I demurred at adding up the watts on every electrical device as he suggested) .
Yes 7000 watts will run your fridges, computers, TV, lights, and possibly the pumps or at least one of them. The solar power would probably be enough to run the computers and TV anyway. If you overload the generator it will just click out on overload and may need to be restarted to produce power again. Generally with a backup generator, 7000watt is enough to get by with but if you just want to switch everything on then you need 12-18kva. Anything that heats will use the most power so if you can use a BBQ for cooking and limit the heat pump usage then it makes a big difference
His suggestions for a system to just seamlessly take over whenever we lost power from the grid is:
Okay, i reckon at this stage you would need a generator like this – https://www.riequip.co.nz/shop/Generators/Generators+By+Brand/Genmac+Diesel+Generators+5-300kVA/Genmac+Yanmar+Powered+G20YS-E+Generator+16kVA+Silenced+230v.html
Price $14,300+GST
Plus installing a lead and changeover switch on your switchboard – around $1200 approx
However if we wanted something lower priced that would still enable us to use all our lights, computers, TVs and most appliances, perhaps not cooking on all hobs at once and using the woodburner for heating, then:
This is a popular model around the 7000watt size – https://www.riequip.co.nz/shop/Generators/Generators+By+Brand/Honda+Petrol+Generators+1-14kVA/Honda+EU70is+Inverter+Generator+32amp+Plug+-+FREE+DELIVERY.html
Can do a good price of $7299 incl GST
So it doesn’t seem so crazy. An inexpensive way to keep the lights on in the event of the predicted much more severe gales and storms as global warming ramps up.
Got the following photos from Anna, on holiday with Dave and Felix in Boulogne, staying with grandmother Barbara Florent. Barbara recently had two hip operations and, as she said, compared with before the ops, she’s skipping round like a spring lamb.
Grandson Felix Converses With His Grandmother Barbara Florent In Boulogne.
Anna’s Partner, Dave Moss, Challenges A Very French Mixed Grill
Oak Avenue Weather:-1℃—15℃ 0.6mm rain [77.389] TdT TdO eggs=4 Mark=0
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Shopping At Level 4 Lockdown
Shopping day so no coffee, no fresh GF bread, but New World was much as usual. As per the photo below we did have to: wear a mask, queue up and be let in only as others left (strictly controlled numbers in the store), and could not take reusable shopping bags in with us. Otherwise it was much as usual, no obvious shortages, no panic. So I got the usual weekly shop and it cost I uess about $50 more than usual, most of which must have been the (acknowledged and many customers noticing) level-4 related price hikes.
The pharmacy in Stortford Lodge was only letting people in via the front door and they too were counting us in as others came out. Inside, apart from the mask wearing, it was just as usual.
I popped into Farmlands really just to see what their lockdown deal was. Same as last time, if I phone in an order they’ll arrange to have it stacked in the car park for colection at the agreed time.
New World Covid Queue (About 100 Metres Long)
Oak Avenue Weather:-2℃—17℃ no rain [77.249] TdT TdO eggs=3 Mark=0
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Still Locked Down
Ah, cold much improved today. Another cool but sunny Hawkes Bay winter’s day. No more lambs today. Spent my morning listening to videos about Elon Musk’s Tesla AI project – an astounding vision and amazing technological advances. The AI activities I was involved in back in 1980s bear about the same relationship to Tesla magic as the New Zealand Treasury main computer in 1970s does to today’s smart phones. There’s more computing heft in a smart watch or probably in a credit card than we had back in the day and Tesla’s AI work is just unimaginable in the context of 1980s.
Was delighted to hear today (an opposition MP talking to the media) that New Zealand wasn’t clambering over the bodies to be near the top of the Pfizer vaccine delivery list in January and that we declined when we were offered a bump up the rankings if we paid an additional $50,000,000. So someone in NZ government had some scruples – because $50M is nothing compared to the money being printed to keep vulnerable businesses alive during our lock-downs. Despicable American behaviour, dribbling out pandemic vaccines to those who can be blackmailed into paying the most when those who can barely afford to pay anything in India, Indonesia, and Africa are left to writhe. That’s the way to make America Great Again.
Our lock-down has been extended, as expected. Auckland until next Tuesday, the rest of us until at least the end of this week.
Oak Avenue Weather:-1℃—17℃ no rain [77.029] TdT TdO eggs=4 Mark=0
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Life Under Lock-down, Not So Different
Second night of a stinking cold. I’ve had both my Coronavirus shots weeks ago and there’s no positive testing for the virus in Hawkes Bay so far, so I’m pretty sure it is just a cold. It’s been so long I forgot what a nuisance they are.
Freed a lamb caught between some fence panels and the fence itself – it had forgotten where reverse was.
Two more ewes lambed today: ewe #712 had twins, a ewe lamb #111E and a ram lamb #112R; ewe #714 had ewe twins, #113E and #114E.
On Thursay we found the automatic sliding metal gates at Ormond Road and Carrick Road were both shut and I assume that’d be the same at the Pakowhai Dog Park and at the Omahu settlement. So we gave up the Tour de Twyford and went round the orchard. We’d seen a family on bicycles (dad on a scooter) up near the stop bank and met them again when going round the orchard. They said that there is a little gap suitable for walkers and cyclers next to each gate. So, yesterday and today we left the Landrover by the metal barrier and I cycled the extra ½km up to our usual start point, did the usual circuit, and returned the same way. We did the same today but Karola and Bangle, instead of just sitting in the Landrover, walked up to the starting gate on the top of the stop bank. That’s quite a solid walk for them both.
Ian In Mini-Burka – Off To Get Petrol For Landrover
Oak Avenue Weather:-2℃—14℃ no rain [77.610] TdT eggs=2
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Nasty Cold
I’ve developed, nurtured a nasty cold. Wondered if I should be worried about “the virus” but given there have been no positive tests in Hawkes bay yet and I have had both vaccinations some weeks ago I think it’s safe to assume just a cold.
The onion paddock down our road a bit which used to be rotationally cropped year in, year out: onions, squash, ryegrass for fattening lambs, has been sold. The rows of old oak trees round the north and west boundaries were uprooted and suddenly it’s a forest of young apple trees and supporting posts.
Oak Avenue Weather:-2℃—14℃ 0.1mm rain [77.898] TdT TdO eggs=3
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Lockdown Continues
Positive tests in Wellington today, one person in Miramar, two in Johnsonville. No surprise then when the lockdown for all of New Zealand was extended to match that already in place for Auckland and Coromandel. And I anticipate it’ll be extended again on Tuesday which is the next day for review.
Ewe #531 had ewe lamb #109E, ewe #813 a ram lamb #110R
Had more email conversations with my UK friend Geoff, musing about what practical things we could do in the light of intensifying climate change.
CLIMATE CHANGE – PRACTICAL ACTIONS?
There are several reports out which attempt to summarise the more significant pronouncements of the latest IPCC report on Climate Change. It makes for depressing reading.
I did wonder whether we have thought enough about how we would be affected personally by significant changes in weather severity and concomitant: flooding, fire, road network disruption, Internet disruption (unthinkable!), electricity disruption, lack of emergency services, and so on.
As Harry has pointed out in the past, there are many geophysical points of no return which threaten to amplify the effects of warming, but I suggest these “known unknowns” are beyond our control, so far beyond that discussing them is more an act of escapism and relaxation than useful in any practical sense. Ocean current changes, polar caps and glaciers melting, arctic tundra thawing, sudden release of vast methane clathrate deposits on the ocean floor. These discussions are not necessarily bad but not actively helpful either.
One response could be that the clear and not-far-off danger is so unpredictable that whatever one chooses to do in mitigation is bound to be wrong, therefore doing nothing except being alert and prepared to be flexible is best. One could, at the other extreme, do the equivalent of building nuclear fallout shelters in the back garden.
I wonder if there is a prudent middle ground where some things which cost little in time, effort, or money might make things a lot easier. For example we have no excuse for not charting the escape routes by road and foot from here to higher ground in case of tsunami. And having a week’s potable water on hand should be obvious. Cutting fire breaks round the buildings in the long dry grass in summer is something we do already. It is sad how dependent we are on electricity and the continued working of the electricity grid. Water from the well needs a pump; the modern septic tank requires electricity. Lighting, heating, communications, and to an increasing degree transport all require electricity.
Some of my wilder ideas include making an ark in the form of a large pontoon with sides so that the sheep can be given mobile high ground in case of local flooding. And having a winch attached to the front of the Landrover – as used by the 4WD fanatics to pull themselves out of mud etc. The tall trees surrounding us are significant risk – several close enough to squash us as we sleep but more likely inhibiting us from getting off the property. Chainsaw and oil/fuel will be critical there.
I am musing about our water supply. It comes from a bore 30 metres into the ground. We are about 20 metres above current sea level. We are only 4km from the sea. I should find out the effects of sea level rises, independent of the shoreline hazards of storms when levels rise. One possibility is that the aquifers below us become saline; this is already at risk from the large amounts of water extracted for horticulture, especially grapes, further inland.
Karola has reminded me, that in 2001 we bought each other 5000 gallon concrete water tanks for Christmas, to complement the single one already in place. That’s about 68,000 litre capacity for holding rainwater off the roofs. Soon I’ll have a small mechanical switch in one of the tanks, they’re connected at ground level to act as one big tank, so that in the event of prolonged drought the tanks will be fed from the cottage bore or well. Main reason is so that the sprinklers always have a minimum supply all year round but it also means that there’ll be many litres of drinking water at any time. One 5000 gallon tank is considered normal for a family so we should be well placed. And it is a fair protection against the salinity issue, will give us a while to sort out a permanent solution.
My little petrol Honda generator is very good; it starts very easily and can purr away for hours and hours powering drills and saws and other tools. Bridget’s Chris recommended I buy one almost 20 years ago, before battery-powered tools became ubiquitous. In an emergency it’d be for boiling the kettle and recharging communication devices. Our vanity project, solar panels generating a soupçon of electricity, requires grid connection and only works when the grid is active. The equipment is a lot cheaper than a totally off-grid solution. But given the major dependency on electricity for much of our domestic paraphernalia it might be straightforward to have a hunky diesel generator that can switch in to become the totally self-sufficient source for the fridges, the car, and so on.
Our current wood burner, and indeed the new one Karola wants, (as our little Jøtul is both unlicensed and damaged), has a cooking plate and we have rather a lot of wood so there’s another way to cook and keep warm.
Our equivalent of a land-line phone and Internet will likely be an early victim to falling trees and high winds, being line-of-sight wireless from the end of the garage over to Te Mata peak 15km away. So maybe I should know a bit more about the robustness of the cell phone network here; I know we’re on the edge of 4G coverage but have no idea how storm proof the cell towers are nor even where they are. Because that’s our backup for phone and Internet, “long live the hotspot”.
Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—19℃ 1.0mm rain [77.057] TdO eggs=3 Mark=0
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The Lord Of The (Co)Rona
Quiet inside day. Me on computer, Karola reading. Gill sent me the rather magnificent poster below with a cast of familiar characters from the New Zealand Covid-19 scene.
Tried to go down to the stop bank today but found both the Ormond road and Carrick road accesses were barred. Met a family out on bikes and a scooter doing a circuit round Ormond – Raupare – Evenden – McNabb including some orchard short-cuts. They said they’d used the side gaps for cyclists at each closed gate so perhaps that’s what I’ll do if this lockdown continues beyond Friday.
Had chat with Anna this morning. In the terrible news about the West’s withdrawal from Afghanistan she hadn’t seen that we’d dropped into level 4 lockdown. Anna is going to France tomorrow with Felix to see grandmother Barbara Florent. Felix & Anna can make the trip because they’ve both had both shots of the vaccine but Barney hasn’t.
Ewe #511 had twins but one was still born leaving his sister #107E. Later ewe #904 had a little ram lamb #108R.
Weta Workshop’s New Poster – Well Locked Down
Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—17℃ no rain [77.203] TdO eggs=3 Mark=0
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Three-Day Covid-19 Lockdown Begins
OK, so Karola’s appointment with Dr Beaumont is postponed, as is her hair appointment later this week. The guy to give us a quote for a new Masport Akaroa woodburner will reschedule.
We have emails about the level 4 procedures from: New World, CountDown, Vet Service, Chook Manor, Farmlands, OMG breads, and Vodafone. And of course Mark won’t be coming, nor Debbie.
Paul made a surreptitious visit to weatherproof the doors left open to the elements by his demolition work on Tuesday. That’s him gone until further notice.
I have delayed the notice I was going to give the sprinkler installer, the smoke alarm installer, and the kitchen designer saying we’ve really started at last.
Alan Copas (plumbing, maintains our “waste management” system for the cottage) called to get my email address – obviously something he could do, update his records, during the lockdown.
No cars nor trucks, no planes nor helicopters. We were so lucky to do our weeks shopping yesterday.
Oak Avenue Weather:0℃—17℃ 0.3mm rain [77.312] TdT TdO eggs=1 Mark=0
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Paul’s Careful Demolition
Paul here again before I got up.
Shopping day then GF bread and coffees and snacks. Mark is taking wife Caz to get her first vaccination shot today and so won’t be here this afternoon.
Ivan Alach (electrician) came mid morning and continued relocating the homestead mains box to its new position under the stairs. He said yesterday he’d look for replacement light sockets for the two that I’d burned out on the wall of the cottage garage and blow me down he brought them with him today. Within half an hour both lights repaired and we’re back to a well-lit cottage-garage go-between. He also took a look at the mechanisms for opening and closing the transom windows in the cottage kitchen. Wiring is all OK, the units themselves seem to be broken.
There were four chook eggs today although one of them seems to have been laid late in the day outside on the ground and had been eaten by some creature.
Demolition Of Lean-To Progressing Apace
Oak Avenue Weather:6℃—19℃ 0.3mm rain [77.123] TdT eggs=4 Mark=0
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Landrover WOF
After breakfast Karola, Bangle, and I trundled off to Tamatea Automotive, Heath Goldfinch, to get the Landrover’s WOF and any servicing it might require. The brakes seem to be a bit soggy to me. Karola and Bangle in the Zoe of course. On the way back we stopped at green Meadows New World for coffee/snack and a few more groceries.
Builder Paul was already hard at it when I got up. Ivan “The Croatian” Alach, our electrician, came and moved the homestead mains box through the wall. So it’s in the same place as far as the wiring is concerned but the access is now from under the stairs. Also, as discussed with Ivan a long time ago, he’s fitting a larger box and will put RCD circuit breakers on all the main circuits. While he was on site i grabbed a few minutes and asked Ivan about the two (of three) outside lights illuminating the cottage-garage go-between that ahve stopped working. After a significant amount of humming and hawing Ivan tracked it down to burned out wiring inside the lighting sockets. He will see if he can find replacement sockets so we don’t have to search round for complete replacement outside light fittings. I am to blame, obviously putting in lights that were too bright for the sockets.
Mark came and completed planting the ten in-fill Kanaka trees, putting a fertilizer tablet under each tree and giving each half a bucket of water. Meanwhile I planted the two rhubarb plants and six silver beet seedlings in the middle raised bed. After which Mark made a temporary netting cover for that raised bed to reduce the likelihood of a repeat disaster. A few months ago the rhubarb and silver beet were eaten to the ground presumably by my geese, chooks, or doves, or perhaps a possum or pukeko. Two of the original three rhubarb plants are recovering slowly so I may end up with four plants eventually.
Mark mowed the cottage lawn before giving me a ride down to Tamatea Automotive to pick up the Landrover. Heath will attach the winch to the Landrover front bumper, suitably reinforced, if I give him a call and book it in in a few weeks time.
Rang Dave Dravitzki, the civil engineer to get a soil strength certificate once the new foundations have been excavated, but seems lie he’s unavailable until 20th. The iwood burner installer for Mitre-10 for Hastings, Ron, TXTed to say he could come round on Thursday afternoon.
Late this evening I found the mistake I’d made in the Mikrotik router configuration and suddenly my smart scales and the solar panels and the TVs sprang back into life.
Oak Avenue Weather:8℃—18℃ no rain [76.443] TdT TdO eggs=1 Mark=4
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Sunday Discussion Group
Every month on a Sunday there’s a dozen of us, more or less, that meet at Karl Matthy’s house up on the hills behind Taradale with wide city prospect over Napier and out to Cape Kidnappers. We meet after lunch and talk for an hour or so with a round-robin discussing any worry-bead or hot button that we might have. Then, after afternoon tea, coffee, and snacks, we settle down, more or less, to the chosen and pre-circulated topic of the meeting. About four o’clock we drift off back to our respective burrows.
Peter Offenberger, my ex-brother-in-law, introduced me to it. I already knew Karl and his wife Lorraine through my occasional attendance in Karl’s house at meetings of Basic Income New Zealand. Peter’s friend John Timpson also attends many of the meetings he goes to, including this one. John’s reliably consistent response to almost any problem is that it’s a consequence of the evils of capitalism. John Warren is a long-term Canadian resident, an engineer, who somewhat overplays his card of “we do/did this in Canada”, is literal-minded and rather too black-and-white for comfort. His wife, Mary-Ellen had polio when young and is wheelchair bound. Fergus Veitch is tall and long, a Scottish New Zealander. His wife Esther is I think Swiss and she has her own business run over Facebook and her only sister, in Switzerland, is a rabid anti-vaxxer, seeing conspiracies in every direction. This tears Esther in two directions, loyalty to her sister or a rational grasp on life. Sigs Ziegler was a translator for the UN I think, European born I’d say from the accent. Alton Harris is a truck driver, well more of a truck business owner I think, outspoken and tries quite hard not to portray himself as a died-in-the-wool conservative. The list goes on.
Anyway, this afternoon was no exception, a very broad range of topics from local ones such as new retirement village developments being given resource consent to build on the edge of the beach to global ones such as the future of energy and water.
Lorraine has been urging us all to watch a film by David Attenborough called “A Life On Our Planet” (Netflix and YouTube) so tonight Karola and I watched it.
As one expected, a beautifully produced and narrated film with The Attenborough doing his very best to put across his message. I particularly liked the apposite book-ends to the film, the rubble of Chenobyl to begin and the optimistic flourishing of nature at/near Chenobyl at the end.
He touched on so many issues, each of them a possible existential threat to all humanity living a western-style existence.
The fishing solution didn’t quite make sense to me in that by just leaving fallow huge swathes of the ocean, he implied, would soon magically have the unprotected fishable areas produce as much or more food than say 20 years ago before fisheries started crashing – well it was a lot longer than 20 years ago if one believes the book entitled “Cod”. Knowledge about how fisheries work and better more targeted fishing technology would help, independent of the marine reserve arguments. I believe that now the scientists know that by focussing on the biggest fish of a species they’ve put evolutionary pressure towards downsizing but entrapment technology to avoid killing by-catch or the biggest and best breeders is improving.
I do buy the meat- versus plant-based foods argument though not solely on the space used. In fact some do argue that the energy density of meat is much higher than is achieved with plant-based food and that if use of wide open spaces is the problem there’s lots of scope for feedlot skyscrapers and other inhumane ways of reducing the cattle-beast physical footprint. But the more telling argument is the inefficiency of the food chain to produce a kilogram of beef, and the water requirement, and the synthetic chemical inputs in that food chain and the final animal itself.
Also, once the warming already set in motion has happened, what chance of there being any trees left in Chernobyl.
Karola tells me that one important reason the New Zealand Phizer vaccine rollout has been so slow is that Pfizer have been using their world-wide frantic demand for the vaccine to up the price and maximise returns to shareholders. If true this is absolutely disgusting. And I don’t understand the argument from Bill Gates that patent rights should be strenuously asserted, that the idea of cheap unlicensed generics being produced in Asia or Africa must not be tolerated, this is more important than helping the other 5/6ths of the world combat the disease.
My practical view of the future is that humanity will survive but the current civilisations will not. A new balance will eventually emerge and flora and fauna will move or evolve to occupy a new set of ecological niches and humans will use their intelligence to adapt to the new world and build new civilisations. For example, the great grain-producing plains may well be in current Siberia; New Zealand may become one big city of the super-wealthy as one of the few places on earth with a balmy human-compatible climate.
We shall see (well I may not 🙂 )
So, in my opinion, Attenborough’s film included unsupportable optimism in the last ten minutes or so. But of course without it what was the point of the film.
Probably prohibited by what is politically possible without guaranteeing loss at the next election, the local councils have some very difficult issues they’re not facing up to. The provision of unpolluted water is one. Also the granting of green-field sites for housing next to the sea is short-sighted. One can hope that these houses will be constructed with ease-of-relocation a non-negotiable criterion. But also criminally short-sighted is the covering of rich fertile agricultural land with human dwellings. A longer view would try to reclaim all such land whenever it becomes available and return it to food production.
Oak Avenue Weather:-1℃—17℃ no rain [76.800] TdT eggs=3
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Too Much Rugby
I was glued to the computer much of the afternoon. Karola read newspapers and magazines.
Windy day and cold. In fact so much so that we only walked a little way along the stop bank before returning to the Landrover and heading for home. We did then go round the orchard as the wind died down a little later in the afternoon.
We watched the All Blacks again this weekend – a much better game than on the previous Saturday. New Zealand won the Bledisloe Cup (again, sigh) and I hope we can resist the siren call of rugby until next year as watching is such a waste of time.
Watched another repeat of Brokenwood Mysteries; although I’ve seen it before I had no recollection of the ending so it was a nice surprise.
Oak Avenue Weather:0℃—17℃ no rain [76.805] TdO eggs=2
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Debbie & Mark Today
Mark & Debbie both arrived at noon. I set Mark going on planting the ten new Kanuka to in-fill gaps in Karola’s line of Kanuka in front of the Casuarina windbreak along the southern boundary. Karola, Bangle, Debbie, and I then went down to the stop bank and did our thing. Another glorious sunny Hawkes Bay winter’s day.
Karola in good spirits with her second cataract operation behind her; we have four weeks of eye drops beginning today.
Oodles Of Lambs At End Of Ormond Road Near Expressway
Oak Avenue Weather:-1℃—19℃ no rain [77.087] TdT TdO eggs=2 Mark=4 Debbie=2
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Homestead Project Begins At Long Last
Well at last the additions and alterations at Karamu did begin although that was not the most important event of the day.
We left at about 8:45am for Royston Hospital where we went through half an hour of filling in forms etc – even they were mostly the exact questions we’d been asked to fill in and return before the day of surgery. Finally a nurse arrived to take Karola away to the operating theatre and I nipped out for a bit of light shopping therapy.
I asked for small water snails at Pet Essentials but they didn’t have any water snails at all – wrong time of year they said. I popped back to Animates and asked for the scientific name of the snails I bought earlier this week, it’s family Ampullariida, common name Apple Snail (how apt). Allegedly their eggs are bright orange which may mean my three snails, Faith, Hope, and Charity, are species: Pomacea (pomacea) canaliculata.
Popped into Rush Munro’s for a large tub of Feijoa ice-cream for Karola and an iced coffee for me. The lass behind the counter said: “iced coffee?”, “chocolate ice-cream?”, “boysenberry syrup?” – right on all counts. Off back to Royston and pick up Karola then we went to BP and got a coffee on the way home. The woman there said: “Large Latte, Colombian?”, “Medium Flat White, Colombian?”, “name Ian?” – right again.
So they recognise me (as “Mr B”) in Artisan coffee shop, also at Rush Munro’s and at the Wild Bean Cafe at BP in Stortford Lodge. The tall bald Canadian pharmacist at Unichem in Stortford Lodge also recognises me. I wonder if it’s the wild haircut.
Mark put up electric fence diagonally across the One Acre and we shepherded the three ewes with twins into the Front paddock with a gate open to one of the quarters of the One Acre. Karola says “you can’t over-feed a nursing ewe”.
Ten Kanuka in 25 litre hessian bags arrived from Takana Native trees north of Auckland, half way to Whangārei. The trees are over a metre tall and look very healthy.
Apple Snail
Snowdrop Clump Looking North From Next To The Canary Island Pine
Paul The Builder Really Has Started This Time
Oak Avenue Weather:6℃—19℃ no rain [76.301] TdO eggs=3 Mark=4
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Meeting: Architect, Builder, Archaeologist
No new lambs today. Much much warmer.
Mark came at noon; we’d just finished our daily Tour de Twyford – glorious sunny, crisp winter weather. He finished the slow-drip tap for the fish pond bath, patched a hole in the bit of flashing he added to the back roof of the chook house, and carted off more of the firewood I’d chainsawed up around the big fallen oak last week.
Subaru battery had gone too flat to start it so Mark and I pushed it out under the big oak and I jump-started it with the Landrover.
Karola is always mislaying her stylus sticks for prodding her iThing screens so I bought her another five online today.
I prepared a package for each of the meeting participants comprising copies of the various consent documents and authorisations, one for Ruth Vincent (architectural), Paul Libby (master builder), and Elizabeth Pishief (archaeological). At 3:00pm we all sat round the table in the cottage and went through these documents making sure each condition of the various council and Heritage NZ permissions had someone who agreed that was their responsibility.
I am to contact the soil civil engineer, Dave Dravitzki (IDE), the sprinkler man, Paul van Weerden (Homesafe), the smoke alarm man, Selwyn Cook (CooksAVS), and the kitchen cabinet makers, Stuart Bryson (Classic Kitchens). What with the pandemic and the relative chaos in the current New Zealand building industry things are much less certain than usual and because of our Karamu Homestead grade II listing almost any little artefact can cause a “down tools” and time-wasting investigation.
Elon Musk – A Maverick But With Real Engineering/Manufacturing Insights
It gets really interesting about 13½ minutes in. He talks about his five-step process for manufacturing very complex, novel, and ground-breaking machinery – for example Tessla cars and Space-X rockets.
The Daughters
Would You Buy A Used Lawsuit From This Woman?
And, also noticed on the Internet today Bridget Brackenbury, Senior Analyst Programmer at BNZ. The very same title as I had when I had both top technical jobs in the computing department of Dept Statistics in 1973.
A Flock Of Daffodils On The Homestead North Circle
Oak Avenue Weather:0℃—18℃ 1.4mm rain [76.117] TdT TdO eggs=3 Mark=4
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Tags Ordered For This Year’s Lambs
Shopping then in the afternoon we both had 6-monthly appointment with our ear hygienist, Frith Gray. Also went to Farmlands and ordered this year’s ear tags for the lambs and hoggets.
The lambs have yellow button tags comprising a printed male button tag with the name BRACKENBURY and three-digit number 101-135, and a blank female. The first digit is, of course, the last digit of the current year. The hoggets have their adult yellow tags: one large female and one medium male, both with the name and number printed on them. I asked for a couple of pairs of blank tags so that when I catch up with them I can give tags to the mature ewes who have somehow torn out their tags – I know there’s at least one. The hoggets have numbers based on the year they were born and strictly in the sequence they were born. As we have only got eight ewe hoggets as replacements the tags are not now in sequence: 003, 004, 006, 010, 012, 021, 023, and 026.
On the way home I dropped into Animates and bought three hardy water snails, called Apple snails, three in the hope that I;ll have at least one male and one female.
Mark completed the “aquatic centre”, the bath behind the cottage pump shed – the dripping tap – and the new snails were introduced to their new home this evening.
Oh My Goodness Specialty Bread Shop In Queen Street East, Hastings
Where I Get My Weekly Loaf Of Gluten-Free Bread
My Aquatic Centre: Water Weed, Snails, And Gently Running Water
Oak Avenue Weather:-1℃—15℃ no rain [76.149] TdT TdO eggs=3 Mark=4
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Two More Sets Of Twins Today
Ewe #814 : twins #103E & #104E
Ewe #510: twins #105E & #106R
A cold and wet day so Mark deferred until Tuesday.
Ewe #814, Lambs #103E & #104E
Ewe #510, Lambs #105E & #106R
Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—10℃ 0.6mm rain [76.658] TdT TdO eggs=2 Mark=0
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Ewe #803 Twins #101E, #102R
Tha first lambs for 2021 have arrived. They’ve been licked clean but mother seems to be bunting them away when they try to drink. The first few days are heart-wrenching waiting for them to show they’re drinking and gambolling about, after that it’s mostly pure joy to watch.
Took Bangle for her stop bank walk in the morning; she got another one round the orchard as dusk fell.
Margaret Thompson came at 1:30pm as planned and the three of us went to St Matthews for the advertised concert. About 100 people attended, predominantly elderly music lovers. Unfortunately the actual concert was not a choir with accompanying strings or anything similar, it was unaccompanied brass bands recital. We stayed for the three numbers from the Deco Bay Academy Brass Band – the learners – and for three of the numbers from the Senior Deco Bay Brass Band before stealthily creeping away.
Went to Bay Espresso on Karamu Road for an enjoyable afternoon tea with Margaret. Afterwards we had dinner together at home with lively and interesting conversation – well I thought it was :-).
Ewe #803 With Ewe Lamb #101 & Ram Lamb #102
Hawkes Bay Deco Bay Academy Brass Band – Learners
Margaret Thompson (Foreground) Alongside Karola
Oak Avenue Weather:4℃—17℃ 13.3mm rain [76.777] TdT TdO eggs=2
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Unseasonably Warm Today
Margaret Thompson rang. She’s up in Hawkes bay visiting her relations and suggested we could go with her to a concert in Hastings St Matthews tomorrow.
Karola bumped into a woman from Fiji, of Indian descent I’d say, and they chatted amiably about the stop bank walk. She was alone and in town clothes but set out to walk a bit along the stop bank lime cycle track. As we imagined afterwards she might well be missing her family at home as travel between NZ and Fiji is not possible at present while Fiji suffers from a major surge of Covid 19.
Tonight it’s an old episode of Brokenwood Mysteries then, if we have the patience, the first match of this year’s Bledislooe Cup – a rugby thing.
Oak Avenue Weather:0℃—18℃ no rain [76.615] TdT TdO eggs=3
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Warmer Winter Day
Mark came and continued with the provision of a slowly dripping tap for the old bath now resting behind the cottage pump shed. Gentle rain stopped play mid afternoon.
On our walk/cycle down at the stop bank we were delighted to see a Hastings District Council ute and trailer and a jolly Māori lady picking up rubbish. Other sites, she said, are much worse. Gladdens your heart that does.
Guest ‘Incerpt’ from Geoff in England On Narrowboat Holiday With Family
Geoff says: It isn’t just the rural tranquility that I enjoy, though we’ve had plenty of that on this trip. It’s the people one meets : they are almost without exception helpful and friendly. We found ourselves chatting to this couple for example
who were walking the 800 miles from John o’ Groats to Land’s End to raise money for charity.
And the history – especially the industrial archaeology. The canals were a fundamental driver of the Industrial Revolution. Much of it started round here, and traces are everywhere: the machinery of the locks themselves; grooves in rocks where the horse’s tow ropes sent round corners; tow paths surfaced with clinker from 200 year old iron smelting; caves cut in rocks to stable horses; 6-inch deep locks to prevent water flowing from one privately-old canal to another; more than one hotel called The Tontine, reflecting the approach to life insurance of the early industrial barons, and on and on!
As lifeboats go, theirs was not so much narrow as very long.
A Napton Elite 6R2B
And Ben sent us a charming little video today. Brian Cox showing us corroboration of Galileo’s Theory of falling objects.
Oak Avenue Weather:3℃—18℃ 1.0mm rain [76.764] TdT TdO eggs=2 Mark=2½
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Black Cookie Day
Mark came and worked on making a dripping tap for the bath behind the cottage pumpshed. There is already a pipe connected to the bore/well head before it gets to the pump and the idea is to connect that to a garden tap on a post overlooking the bath and set it to drip slowly. This water will come directly from the bore and hence the pressure is only what naturally pushes up from 30 metres down underground. In this case the bore is acting like an artificial spring, no electricity needed.
Grayson(Heat Pump) has TXTed to say not this week. I TXTed back to say not next week so probably the first time we have two consecutive days free is Wednesday 18th August.
Debbie came and made a batch of those scrumptious but sweet ginger cookies, using up the ingredients I bought for the first batch. I had to go out and buy more almond flour, we had enough of everything else.
I scooted off in the Zoe to Countdown in Hastings for the almond flour and a cauliflower and some more Beyond Meat patties – as I was going there I might as well make use of the trip. However as I trundled down the avenue Zoe exclaimed (via her dash panel) that the tyre pressure needed adjusting. It’s happened a couple of times recently but only when the temperature has been a few degrees above zero. It was 7℃. I thought Id make a quick detour to the nearest garage and top up the tyre pressures which I did, at Caltex on Omahu road. All tyres at 36 psi as per the instructions on the driver’s door frame. But the error message did not go away.
I continued on and got the groceries and on the way home stopped at BP in Stortford Lodge where I again topped up all the tyres to 36psi. Still the error message persists.
By the time I got back Debbie’s time was almost over but she finished the cookie preparation and popped them in the oven. Now the first time Debbie made these cookies for me she left them baking with only a few minutes to run. And when Karola did take them out of the oven they were very brown but still edible though not as soft and doughy as expected.
I was out talking to Mark when, with an ear-splitting shriek, the cottage fire alarm went off. Poor Bangle howled and squeezed as far into her bolthole under the stairs as she could, I grabbed the alarm remotes and pushed buttons until it finally stopped. Then of course the phone rang as Havelock Hills Security checked whether we were OK – it’s reassuring to know that works. A for the batch of cookies – the cookies for which I made a special trip into town for almond flour and which used up all the ingredients left over from the first batch – were not just a little too brown, they were like charcoal, black as black throughout. It’s taken hours to try and get the smell out of the cottage.
The silver lining is that the recipe, one given to us by Marjorie Cobbe a few months ago, is full, is almost entirely, sugar. So I have been saved from eating a dozen or more scrumptious but, to me, poisonous cookies.
I asked Mark to check the Zoe tyres in case I was having a “senior moment” and he checked them first with our excellent foot pump and again with one of those old fashioned tyre pressure gauges that look like a fat silvery pen. Both times Mark’s reading was about 36psi on all four tyres. Oh and later, when I again forayed into town for some pipe connections for Mark’s project, the message went away. C’est la vie.
Now, a little more on how lucky we are in New Zealand:
The 5 countries that are best suited to survive the apocalypse
Silicon Valley billionaires are already investing their riches into bunkers and doomsday shelters in New Zealand and other parts of the globe.
New Zealand. Photo Beerpixs/Getty Images By Madison Hall and Hannah Towey
With climate change strengthening its grip on the planet, researchers are searching for the best possible hideout locations post-apocalypse.
Using data from the University of Notre Dame’s Global Adaptation Initiative, researchers at Anglia Ruskin University’s Global Sustainability Institute in England graded the 20 least vulnerable countries on three main criteria:
- Carrying capacity: How much land is being used for farming to sustain the current population? High agricultural land per capita is good.
- Isolation: How close is the country to other highly populated areas? Further away is better.
- Self-sufficiency: Does the country produce its own renewable energy and have manufacturing capacity? More is better.
Using these parameters, co-authors Nick King and Aled Jones found five locations particularly suited for global collapse, or what they call “de-complexification.” Each of the five are notably islands with large metropolitan regions, meaning they’ve already shown they can sustain millions of people. Their work was published in the peer-reviewed journal Sustainability on July 21.
New Zealand
Hydroelectric plants in New Zealand. Photo DeAgostini/Getty Images
Located roughly 2,800 miles from the equator, New Zealand is naturally cooler than many regions in the world, boding well for the area in the event of a large temperature increase due to climate change.
Close to 40% of the country’s primary energy supply comes from renewable energy sources and the nation produced enough energy to cover 75% of its energy requirements, according to a New Zealand’sMinistry of Business, Innovation, and Employment, making it an ideal location in the event of societal collapse.
The only highly populous country close to New Zealand is Australia, making the country harder for global refugees from around the world to travel to in an apocalypse with scarce resources. Based off the country’s COVID-19 response, New Zealand’s already proven that its leaders and region can survive intense periods of hardship.
The nation shuttered its borders to nearly all travelers early on in the pandemic and instituted internal lockdowns to prevent the spread of the virus — and it worked. Only 26 people have died of COVID-19 in New Zealand, making it one of the safest places to be in the world during the ongoing pandemic.
Wealthy Silicon Valley executives have reportedly been buying property in New Zealand over the last decade in preparation for an apocalyptic scenario. Billionaire Peter Thiel has already purchased several properties in the region and buying property in New Zealand is code for getting apocalypse insurance
Iceland
Coming in at №2 on the list, Iceland is home to an abundance of natural and renewable energy sources in the form of geothermal and hydroelectric power plants.
Being substantially closer to the North Pole than the equator, Iceland’s climate is much cooler than other regions of the planet. So the arable land should continue to be tenable as the climate keeps warming.
While Iceland’s land is icy and seemingly inhospitable, the country grows more than half of its produce with renewable energy, according to the US Green Chamber of Commerce. Many farmers use greenhouses and natural geothermal steam to “actively enhance photosynthesis” in their plants.
Workers transplant saplings at Kvistar greenhouse near Selfoss, southern Iceland before the young trees are planted on May 20, 2019. Photo: Halldor Kolbeins/AFP via Getty Images
Iceland is also home to an abundance of fisheries along its coastlines, allowing for readily available food in the event of a sudden collapse. According to the the Global Sustainability Institute, the nation has several “favorable starting conditions” and is prepared to survive a disaster.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom has lots of available farmland, a milder temperature climate, and a plethora of precipitation that makes it a fantastic region to rebuild society, the researchers found. The area also isn’t regularly hit with major natural disasters, which bodes well for its survival chances.
One major drawback of the United Kingdom is its fairly limited amount of land and increasingly large population. The study authors noted the energy demands of the UK’s population is substantial enough to be a problem in the event of an apocalyptic scenario.
Nearly half of the UK’s energy comes from fossil fuels and nuclear power generation, making it difficult to adjust to changing supply chains in a de-complexification scenario. About 42% of the country’s power comes from renewable energy, a statistic that continues to rise as the nation slowly taps more into unexploited wind resources.
Australia
Sheep graze in front of wind turbines on Lake George on September 1, 2020 on the outskirts of Canberra, Australia. Photo: David Gray/Getty Images
The only continent on this list, Australia’s location and massive land mass make it another prime spot to ride out the apocalypse. Each region boasts a different climate and temperate, which allow for increased agricultural and animal biodiversity.
The study notes that climate change is expected to have a large impact on Australia by exacerbating trends: rainy regions will see more precipitation, deserts will get less water, and so on. Trees becoming drier and drier due to hot and arid conditions have already led to repeated wildfires in the continent.
Tasmania, an island state directly off the coast of Australia, faces fewer effects from climate change and already uses an abundance of hydroelectric and wind-powered stations. A quarter of the island is already used for agriculture, which could be increased in the event of a disaster.
The study authors note that Tasmania could become Australia’s “lifeboat” if conditions on the main continent become uninhabitable.
Ireland
The entire island of Ireland comes in at fifth on the shortlist and is notably a combination of Northern Ireland — which is part of the United Kingdom — and the Republic of Ireland. Ireland’s climate is similar to the UK’s with lots of precipitation and fertile soil.
Ireland’s low population conversely means it has less energy demand. While about one-third of Ireland’s energy came from renewable sources in 2018, the region continues to expand its clean energy initiatives via wind generation and hydroelectric plants.
Low energy demand and increasing renewable energy sources make for a promising spot for a doomsday bunker, the authors concluded.
Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—14℃ 0.1mm rain [76.370] TdT TdO eggs=3 Mark=4 Debbie=2
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Chainsawing The Fallen Oak
No sign of Grayson Allen, the heat pump system installer. But at least he hasn’t disassembled anything and all I’ve done is to take off the door and surround for access into the space for the hot water cylinder. He said he intended to come today and Thursday because he had an urgent job to do on Friday but he has to coordinate with his electrician so that we get a fully functional system at the end of a day.
I spent a few hours chainsawing, beginning the cutting up of the large fallen oak into three sorts of logs: two-metre sections of the trunk to be piled on top of other large trunks and branches between the bund and the 121 driveway; up to 450mm long branch sections for potential firewood – to go on the growing pile of surplus firewood; and the remaining small branches and twigs, the “slash”, to be mulched up.
Mark Griiio mowed round inside the fence of the One Acre paddock and then did the two long diagonals for electric fence. This is so that when lambs start appearing we can shepherd them into the (relatively) lush pasture in the One Acre. As Karola never tires of repeating: “you cannot over-feed a nursing ewe”. I don’t expect any lambs till the end of August but we’ll be prepared.
Oak Avenue Weather:0℃—13℃ no rain [76.506] TdT TdO eggs=1 Mark=4
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Shopping Day Again
Mark didn’t come today – too wet.
Last night I filled in the admission forms for Karola’s cataract surgery next week and we dropped it off at Dr John Beaumont’s consulting rooms at Royston Hospital on the way into town.
After the usual shopping we detoured via the Hastings Showgrounds on the way home. A while back when looking for plants to populate the old bath behind the cottage pump shed I spoke to an assistant at Animates who suggested the little stream – well more of a ditch really – at the showgrounds. Turns out she was right, there was some sort of slimy weed growing in the water. So I took some home and we’ll see how it grows.
As forecast the wind turned to the south today and strengthened, so much so that when we went to the stop bank to begin our walk/ride it was too strong for cycling.
Water Weed In The Stream At The Hastings Showgrounds
Oak Avenue Weather:8℃—14℃ 1.9mm rain [76.718] TdO eggs=3 Mark=0
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At Last – The Heat Pump Arrives
No Mark today, maybe tomorrow though the forecast is for lots of rain for the rest of the week.
Grayson Allen and apprentice Ben came at noon and installed the heat exchanger part of our new heat pump system for the cottage. I disassembled the shelves and doorway of the HWC cupboard ready for the installation of the “water tower” replacing our long-ailing large cottage HWC. Last time we had to do this, make room to install the current cylinder, Paul replaced the doors, shelves, etc using screws so it wasn’t hard to dis-assemble again.
Tour de Twyford – Beautiful Winter’s Day
Our New Cottage Heat Pump Ready For Connection
Bridget’s New Wood Burner At 34A Izard Road
Anna & Felix Went To Lords Today
Oak Avenue Weather:5℃—16℃ 0.1mm rain [76.524] TdT TdO eggs=1 Mark=0
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Lots Of Spring Bulbs Are Out
A quiet Saturday in the lead up to spring. With the amount of lambing and calving going on and spring bulbs a-blooming I’m unsure where the winter-spring boundary is these days. For city folk spring begins on the 1st of September, next month but in the real, natural world maybe it begins earlier these days.
Instead of the usual Tour de Twyford Karola suggested we walk along the Clive wetlands for a change – which we did. By our standards it was busy with cyclists and dog walkers.
Summer Cooling Snack (lessons from TiTok)
The easy, peasy whipped lemonade recipe
For the basic whipped lemonade recipe, all you’ll need is:
- 3 cups of ice
- 2 cups of whipped cream (store-bought or homemade)
- ¼ cup of sweetened condensed milk
- ½ cup fresh lemon juice
- Vanilla extract (if making whipped cream)
- Granulated sugar or sugar substitute (if making whipped cream)
1. If you’re making your own whipped cream, beat 1 cup of whipping cream (or heavy cream) with a tablespoon of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract in a cold bowl or cocktail shaker until peaks appear. I used a handheld milk frother for this, but a manual whisk or electric mixer works too. Set aside in the fridge.
2. Combine ice, condensed milk, fresh lemon juice and 1 cup of the whipped cream in a blender. Blend until smooth and creamy with no ice chunks left.
3. Pour into a glass and top with the remaining whipped cream. Garnish with a lemon wheel.
Karola Catches Bangle In Reflective Mood
Daffodil In Goose Paddock
Jonquils In Goose Paddock
Jonquils In Goose Paddock
Jonquils On Edge Of Homestead Circle
Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—16℃ no rain [76.191] TdC TdO eggs=4
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