Monthly Archives: September 2021

Paul and Matt proceed apace. Today Matt laid the Kwila hardwood floor for the back porch. The same timber will be used on the new west veranda and in the new sun porch. After a few years it fades to a pleasant silver grey.

The drawings for the pre-cut walls and roofing timber came back today. Paul checked them carefully and despite several hours on site yesterday the pre-cut merchants made two important mistakes.

Mark helped dock the two remaining lambs, ram lambs #124R and #125R. We then amalgamated the ewes with lambs and the ewe hoggets (replacement ewes), giving them the Front, Totara, and Middle paddocks while the six ewes without lambs were put in the Long Acre awaiting Jimmy Rural’s visit on Sunday afternoon to pick them up. The One Acre – Karola’s would-be lucerne paddock – is now shut up for a few weeks in the hope it will recover before the drought in summer.

Mark has almost finished mowing the homestead lawn and continued with that today until the Grillo broke down. He and I spent an hour or so trying to find out what was wrong without success> called Craig at Outdoor Power and he came out late afternoon and quickly found the problem. We had checked that all the safety cut-outs were clear of obstacles – the engine would start but a safety interlock was stopping the blades from rotating – but had not noticed that one of the sensors was broken off – a 100mm flexible plastic wire attached at the bottom to the safety switch had snapped off. Craig temporarily disabled the interlock, fastening it in the closed position so we can, with care, use the Grillo as normal while we wait for Craig to get a replacement part.

While waiting for Criag, Mark used the Kioti tractor with its mid-mounted, non-pickup blade to mow the remaining areas of the homestead lawn; he’ll pick up the grass tomorrow as long as it doesn’t rain.

This morning I noticed a small circular burn mark on the cork floor of the cottage kitchen. We concluded that it was made by my very strong (300 metre beam) pocket torch. I do know it gets way to hot to hold if left for even a few minutes in high-beam mode. It may be an LED torch but the battery is very powerful and expends a lot of energy in making the beam so powerful.

Powerful LED Torch Gets Very Hot – Burns

Kwila Hardwood Floor Laid In Back Porch

Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—19℃ 0.2mm rain [77.592] TdT eggs=3 Mark=4

We saw a second lamb in the Totara paddock this morning so ewe #925 has finally had her lamb. There’s no indication of any other late-comers so that means we’ve had five dry ewes this season. Soon we shall dock these last two lambs and then join all the female sheep and the lambs into one mob for the next few months.

Karola made a delicious fish pie this evening and in preparation we popped down to Gagan’s the roadside greengrocers for some potatoes for the topping. While there we spied and bought a big bunch of fresh asparagus, locally grown.

Mark Mowed The Cottage Lawn

… And Most Of The Homestead Lawn

Karola’s Grevilea hookeriana “Robin Hood” In Flower

Karola’s Orchard: Galaxy & Fuji Apple Trees Bedecked With Buds & Young Leaves

Underfloor Of New Homestead Laundry Complete

Oak Avenue Weather:7℃—19℃ 0.1mm rain [77.842] TdT TdO eggs=2 Mark=4

As forecast the rain fell pretty continuously today, getting heavier as the day progressed.

It’s shopping day again; maybe it was the daylight savings adjustment but there were few people in New World and they had no rhubarb, no Terakihi nor Gurnard. They did have Macaroons however.

Tried to get a new brush for Bangle (for Karola for Bangle) at Animates but nothing even vaguely suitable. Also they’re “de-stocking” the Nutrios brand which I used to get for Bangle because it was designed for “senior” dogs hence high on bulk and low on energy. I got a small bag of something different that is turkey-based and with reduced fat – maybe that will help with Bangle’s expanding waistline.

As OMG shop is still closed I got coffee and cakes from Artisan. but went to Cornucopia for GF bread – same make (OMG) but baked in Auckland. Asked for permanent order every Tuesday.

Later in the day Karola remarked that I’d missed my 10:00am appointment with Dr John the eye specialist. Haven’t done that for a while but then I’m not looking forward to the next assessment as I fear my eyes are getting worse.

Paul & Matt started at 8:00am as usual and later guys from Carters turned up; they’ve been expected for the last few days; and measured for the pre-cut walls and roof etc. Paul & Matt gave up around mid-day as the rain increased.

Despite the rain Mark came at mid-day and looked through about 1000 surveillance photos for signs of foreign animals eating the chooks food. Saw chooks standing on the pedal and eating plus a possum and Bangle and a pukeko fossicking around but not actually opening the chooketeria. The rain eased off briefly and Mark raked up the piles of old meadow hay that Karola had offered her cheep but they had, in the main, ignored.

Bangle, Karola, and I toddled off to the stop bank mid afternoon only to find the rain was even heavier down there so we returned home.

Oak Avenue Weather:0℃—11℃ 5.4mm rain [77.853] eggs=3 Mark=4

Paul and Matt continued adding joists to the ground floor of the homestead extension, today it was the back porch. They then laid the underfloor for the new laundry; we expect that’ll be finished in cork tiles. They want a secure base to work from as they begin working on the upper floor.

Paul has a mate from his days at Mackersey’s, Graeme Boaler, (8789964 or 0277744651 heather.graeme@xtra.co.nz), who is a master joiner now semi-retired and he’s agreed to work on the joinery needed for the homestead additions and alterations. Mackersey Construction, now MCL Construction.

Mark continued mowing the homestead lawn and indeed some areas of it have become very lush in just a week or so with rain and warmth so we’ve caught it just in time. Mark again found an egg laid on the ground – one of the hens has a strange idea of what constitutes a nest box.

Ewe #911 had a large lamb overnight but sadly still-born. Mark buried it in the death pit.

Met up with a trio of big tractors on the stop bank, mowing the grass sides. hey are very polite, stopping and pulling off the track as I cycled past.

Three Of These Mowers Work Together Mowing The Sides of The Stop Bank

Joists Laid For Back Porch

Underfloor For New Laundry

Oak Avenue Weather:9℃—15℃ 0.8 rain [77.864] TdT TdO eggs=5 Mark=4

Blindsided today by my iPhone which suddenly seemed to have lost an hour. Eventually the penny dropped; it was the other clocks that needed to “spring forward” so I dutifully adjusted the clocks in the cars, the cottage, and the homestead.

Rain forecast for the afternoon and intermittently over the next couple of days so we went down to the stop bank and narrowly missed the first main shower of the day.

I haven’t seen any small water snails in the fish pond / bath behind the cottage pump shed for a week or more but today I saw Mildred and two of her sisters. The water weed I brought back from the stream running through the Hastings Show Grounds seems to have died – well there’s hardly a green leaf left. I do wonder whether it just doesn’t like the bath or whether the geese appreciate it as a snack. I did wonder until today whether they were eating my water snails as well.

Checked all sheep; the broken-legged lamb #110R is still hobbling round on three legs and the splint is still securing the broken back left leg so perhaps it’ll heal, I hope so.

MailChimp didn’t include the previous Saturday’s daily journal entry in the digest that went out early this Saturday morning but nothing earth-shattering was lost.

Hailstorm At Seatoun Heights – Photo from Gill

Oak Avenue Weather:8℃—21℃ 3.4mm rain [77.515] TdT TdO eggs=3

Karola attended Margery Cobbe’s 90th birthday “high tea” today out at 96 Lane Road a spacious modern house with stupendous views north and east to the Kaweka mountains. They are up a steep no-exit road not far from where we get our pea straw and hay, on the Havelock North hills. It was a ladies-only affair; it had been postponed twice already due to covid19 lockdowns.

When walking Bangle for 1½km along the stop bank (and 1½km back) I snapped some youngsters being given a thrill in a battered old ute, driving through the deep puddles left by recent rains on the Ngaruroro river bed, amongst the gravel mining workings.

I ferried karola to her high tea then returned home, took Bangle along the stop bank, and also round the orchard by which time we needed to go back to Havelock North and pick Karola up.

Someone Giving Youngsters A Thrill On The Riverbed

Oak Avenue Weather:9℃—20℃ no rain [77.229] TdT TdO eggs=4

I rose leisurely in time to feed the doves, have a word with Paul the builder, and, with Karola, go off to my quarterly, government-sponsored diabetics health check. This begins with a session with the practice nurse, Janine, who takes blood pressure and other measurements and reviews the results of the blood test that is a prerequisite to these checks. And these aleays start late – there’s something about health centres, doctors, and ophthalmologists that they are always many minutes behind – even when you’re the second patient of the day in my experience. So a wait, then Janine, then a longer wait, then my doctor, Richard Jamieson. So far, touch wood, these session consist of them telling me how well I’ve done and me protesting it really isn’t so much what I’ve done but lucky genes and a healthy environment. Karola and I are both getting forgetful but our bodies are in fairly good nick considering our advanced years 🙂

On the way home we took advantage of being in town to visit first Cornucopia for a loaf of OMG GF bread (me) and lots of Zany Zeus yoghurt (Karola), then to Artisan for takeaway coffees and a cake each, on to Cory’s to buy a replacement fluorescent light fitting for the cottage garage and finally to Mitre-10. The visit to Cory’s was a mixed blessing. First they said that no-one had bought a fluorescent light fitting for decades, it’s all LEDs now. So as I thought I needed a new fitting they sold me an LED one, much longer than the one it was replacing and eye-wateringly expensive at $100 (without the fluorescent tubes even).

There’s recently been a barrage of prime-time advertising for something magical called EvapoRust so I intended to buy some but Mitre-10 didn’t stock it. Instead they had a different brand with almost identical magical properties in removing rust from old tools, car parts, small implements of all kinds while being non-toxic, reusable, kind to animals, and saving the planet. I also remembered to get a bottle of oil for the chainsaw chain. I also went to the lighting department, where I’d bought two replacement fluorescent tubes this week in the vain hope that this was all the cottage garage light needed, and asked whether they had the fitting to match the tubes I bought earlier. Oh, no, only LED fittings, and they are obviously quite incompatible with fluorescent tubes. Well, that was a relief – so Cory’s were not just tricking me into buying an expensive LED strip light.

Back to Karamu to enjoy our coffee and cake. I’d already TXTed Mark and suggested his afternoon’s activities. He also let me know he’d caught a possum and so would be some time plucking that.

Karola is going to Margery Cobbe’s 90th birthday celebration tomorrow – and in lieu of presents they’ve asked us to donate some food to the local Hastings Food Bank.So, having a surplus of fresh free-range hens eggs we tootled back into town to the Food Bank and gave them three dozen, gratefully received. So we have a place to take our surplus eggs, that’s excellent. On the way back we happened to pass by Rush Munro’s and it has been a hot day so we got ice-creams – well I had my customary iced-coffee laced with chocolate ice-cream, whipped cream, and boysenberry syrup drizzled on top; a real health food low in carbs, almost sugar-free – yeah, right!

Back home Mark and I played around with the fluorescent lights and got them working. There are three twin-tube fittings and one had stopped working. By the time we finished all three were working again; it was a pity that later when I turned on the lights only one lit up, so that’s the two-steps backwards we often encounter here.

Got a call from Paper Plus in Hastings; my order of a biography of Helen Kelly had arrived – I’d order it I think in May but it had to come from overseas, covid, covid, covid – mutter, mutter.

So, a third trip into Hastings today, to return the LED light fitting to Cory’s Electrical, to get a ream of A3 paper as I’d just discovered I was running out, pick up the book, and drop off some drycleaning somehow lost in the excitement of the earlier trips.

Oh and ewe #817 (no tag) had little ram lamb #124R overnight, mother and son both well.

A while ago Lexi sent me a picture of a sea slug known as the Leaf Sheep. This is rather interesting, perhaps more so than my enthusiasm for “moss piglets” or Tardigrades. It not only looks attractive, especially so for a sea slug, but it is one of very few animals which carries out photosynthesis within its own body. Each leaf sheep is only at most 10mm long; a rather small pet it would be.

The Leaf Sheep

Oak Avenue Weather:5℃—22℃ no rain [77.087] TdO eggs=4 Mark=4

Rained at night and in the morning past lunchtime. Even Paul gave up for a few hours mid-day.

Prodded Grayson Allen (Peak Plumbing) yesteray re coming and finishing the heat pump installation – left a message with his office. Also called Grayson’s electrician who is used to fairly complicated work and when he comes to help with the heatpump installation he’s going to discuss with me a project to give us a (probably diesel) solution to energise the homestead and the cottage in case of protracted power cuts.

Today I called Mitre-10 and asked about the new wood burner installation. They hadn’t heard from the installer yet. So I rang Ron Massey of Firestarter (021-073-1315) who came and did the measurements. He said it was with Steve (021-916-257) – Steve and his son are FireStarter, they do the actual installations. So I called Steve and he said problem was that law changes meant that our 45° crank through the wall into the sun porch is no longer legal. The legal crank needs a 90° angle – apparently so that chimney can be swept more conveniently. Steve is arguing our case as an amendment to an existing installation.

Mark didn’t come today as it was too wet.

Checked the sheep and lambs. Lamb #110R is hobbling along but still alive. Of the sheep who haven’t had lambs I’d say that three of them: #925, #911, and #817 (no tag) are either going to have a lamb soon or must have had a miscarriage earlier.

Paul Lays The Floor Joists

Oak Avenue Weather:6℃—19℃ 4.4mm rain [77.309] TdT eggs=3 Mark=4

Mark and I had put up the portable yards yesterday in anticipation of doing the ear-tagging and docking today. We had the same pen layout as in some previous years, a larger pen where the end was open with the hurdles made into a funnel and a smaller pen leading off that, most of the time, made catching the lambs easier.

Usually I would expect to tag the lambs a few days after they were born and then dock them en masse when the oldest were about six weeks old. However the lockdown meant that the ear tags didn’t come in time and eventually I found the order, placed with Farmlands, hadn’t actually been received by AllFlex – the manufacturer. We ended up writing on blank tags this year.

Our plan was to usher one or two families of ewes with lambs at a time into the portable yards and it began well. However after the first half dozen families the ewes were stubbornly refusing to be yarded, they kept on breaking back and running to the farthest corner of the paddock, I then tried luring with sheep nuts and that worked on a couple of families. In the end we just took all remaining families as one mob up to the portable yards and managed to get half of them in at a time.

Nark spotted one ewe lamb that I’d recorded as a ram; we caught that in time. And on the very last lamb to be docked I lost concentration and put its tag in the wrong ear. However I deftly snipped through the tag and wrote out a new one so no harm done. All lambs are docked; the ewes are button-tagged in the right ear and the rams, obviously, in the left. And we’re sure we have assigned the correct lambs to each ewe. There may be one or two more ewes that will lamb this year but according to the gestation schedule they should all be finished by this weekend.

The saddest thing was that ram lamb #110R, a pretty stroppy lamb, tried to jump the portable yard hurdle and got his leg caught and broke it. We took time out to splint it up but as neither Mark nor I have much experience in this and even with a vet splinting up an old ewe’s broken leg in the past (didn’t work) I am not optimistic.

After afternoon tea Mark did a few chores like emptying the farm shed rubbish bin and cleaning out the chook house – putting the manure around my Puriri trees.

Paul was here all day but without son Matt. Today he’s put solid wooden bearers across the piles.

Oak Avenue Weather:13℃—21℃ 0.4mm rain [77.425] TdT eggs=5 Mark=4

A rather hectic day. It began with taking Bangle for her 6-weekly grooming at Emma Speeden’s “salon” then back home, via Karamu Road’s Bay Espresso and coffe, to make the week’s shopping list.

Just before we returned to 529 Mangateretere Road, Havelock North, Emma’s Grooming Salon, the man from the council arrived to inspect the preparations for pouring concrete this afternoon. Later we found out that all was well, the council man approved this stage of the project.

And then Stuart from Classic Kitchens came and measured up for the new kitchen. We discussed moving the old door from the “room with four doors” into what was the long thin junk room sideways a little so that the pantry/food cupboard can be the same depth as the oven and sink bench on that same south-facing inner wall. I also explained that we wanted a small hot water cylinder, just for the kitchen, in the inaccessible south-east corner of the new kitchen so Stuart will ensure that shelving is removable for maintenance of that HWC.

So off we went to pick up Bangle, returning back through Havelock North and Hastings where we did the week’s shopping. New World have relaxed considerably since the first week of Lockdown Level Two; masks are still being worn but the counting of people in and out seems to have gone by the board and you seem once again to be able to take shopping bags into the store.

A much reduced shopping list this week as we still had quite a lot left over from Gill & Ben’s visit. Coffee and cakes from Artisan but OMG bread shop is still not open.

As per the emails exchanged overnight with Daryl Turner of Exact Key & Remote Service in Auckland I posted the spare Subaru key to him, he made it about six years ago and in a few days we’ll have a spare for the spare.

Now that Karola has had her right eye cataract exchanged for a synthetic lens suitable for driving she no longer needs a license endorsed for wearing glasses so we popped into the AA in Hastings and Karola had a new photo taken and will have a new license without endorsements in a few days,

Finally we went to Mitre-10 for some replacement fluorescent tubes (one of the three pairs of fluorescents in the cottage garage has stopped working), for some mini-curtain-sliders, and a new bedside light for Karola. The fluorescents may not be needed as it now seems the fitting is damaged. Using the mini-curtain sliders I put back the cottage living room curtain that had come adrift and spilled its sliders who knows where. The new bedside light is up but the jury is out as to whether it will catch on. As per Dr John Beaumont’s advice, Karola should have strong light on the page as she reads; her magniifying plastic sheets should not be needed, just plenty of bright light on the page. Hence the new bedside light.

Mark and I put up the portable yards over in the west corner of the Front paddock, where there’s a gate into the One Acre.

Paul and Matt finished preparing the last four piles for concreting. Concrete truck came twice this afternoon and all the piles are now permanently concreted in.

Paul Supervising Concrete Flow Into A Pile Hole

End Of Day – Piles All Concreted In – Looking East

End Of Day – Piles All Concreted In – Looking North

Oak Avenue Weather:8℃—22℃ no rain [77.800] TdO eggs=2 Mark=4

One maid, youngster caled Coralee, came today and did a good job.

Mark came and mowed the cottage lawn as well as doing more mulching.

A while ago, after my tirade about the indestructible Tardigrades (“moss piglets”), Lexi sent me a picture of a “leaf sheep” so I asked Mrs DuckDuckGo about them. I have changed allegiance from Mrs Google to Mrs DuckDuckGo because of the “no collection of personal info” offered by DuckDuckGo browser. Of course who can you really trust; even Apple could be under USA national security constraints to show their government anything and everything while being directed on pain of prison to tell us they encrypt end-to-end and promise us that Apple doesn’t know anything. Yeah, right! Who can blame the Chinese for wanting their own GPS system, their own Internet search giant and online shopping businesses.

Chooks Ranging Out Into The Totara Paddock

Charming Crabapple Blossom

Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—20℃ no rain [77.932] TdT TdO eggs=3 Mark=4

Now Gill & Ben have gone back to Wellington of course the sun is out and it’s warming up.

Landrover behaved today. Still no sign of the Subaru car key though. Stop bank busier than usual.

Browsing old emails I came across a link to a web page showing wind patterns around the world. I can see where our north-easterly wind has curled round from the antarctic, brrr, no wonder our wind is cold.

Sent a brief email to Anne Lacey with a photo of Bangle and saying how happy she was and how fond of her we are. She answered almost immediately and was delighted to have the contact.

Someone’s Corgi Having It’s Tummy Vacuumed

Oak Avenue Weather:7℃—16℃ 0.1mm rain [77.482] TdT TdO eggs=3

Gill & Ben took off from their motel near Clive after being woken before 6:00am by vineyard machinery and were home back in Wellington mid afternoon. It was a very welcome visit for us after our lockdown isolation which, under level three, meant even close neighbours were restricted to home detention.

We exchanged TXTs as they journeyed down and they went down the eastern route and over the Rimutaka hill. Except I found out that its name has changed and it is now spelt Remutaka – and the Featherston mayor wants the road renamed to Remutaka Pass as he feels it’s at least as significant a mountain road as Lewis Pass and Arthur’s Pass in the South island.

Yesterday the Landrover refused to start, a repeat of its behaviour last week. And when I tried again this morning it still wouldn’t start so I called the AA and Jim came round and sprayed ether into the air filter and it started. Jim’s advice was that the fuel pump probably needed replacing.

Jim has been here before and he again regaled me with the story of the antique glass jar that he inherited some years ago. Jim is a local man, used to work in a local garage, Dougherty’s I think he said. Anyway this old glass jar was embossed with the legend “Frimley Canning Company”. Apparently that was a canning company owned and operated by the Williams family, one of the original big land-holders in Hastings. Then there is a link with the Russells up at Tunanui Station and the upshot was that Mrs Russell, Karola’s cousin Phillida, is now the proud possessor of this old jam jar and she puts fresh flowers in it every day, or so Jim says.

We’re still looking for the Subaru car key that has hidden itself for the last couple of days. We do have a spare but getting another spare means sending away the original key so the embedded electronics can be copied – so that means being without the car for a couple of weeks.

Quince In Flower

Crabapple in Flower

Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—13℃ no rain [77.007] TdT TdO eggs=5

Haircuts this morning and afterwards we went round to Peter’s place to give him half a dozen eggs. He agreed to come and have morning coffee with us in Havelock North township. Unfortunately it was very busy and we could not get a table at his favourite, Hawthorne Coffee Roasters. So we ended up at Wright & Co, a cafe on Joll Road. Not too crowded and we three had coffee and a bite to eat. Afterwards Peter walked home and we traipsed back to Hastings where we picked up some dry cleaning – in fact a new pair of work trousers that needed the legs shortened.

Mid afternoon we were back home with a fire going – the wind was cold and the sky mostly overcast – Gill and Ben arrived from their motel in Clive.

Landrover not going and now the Subaru car key is mislaid so I had to ferret arround and find the spare. Spare keys for Subaru are hard to get as they have electronic chip locking and when I got the spare we had to send away the original key for several days so the chip could be copied into the spare. Karola, Bangle, Ben, and I went down to the stop bank and I did my usual cycling while Karola and Bangle had a walk and Ben recorded the local birds along the riverbank.

Another good meal cooked by Karola and then we watched another Maigret TV episode (Michael Gambon). Gill and Ben left with eggs and lemons; they’ll be leaving for Wellington early tomorrow morning from their motel in Clive.

A Simple Matter Of Climate Change

Observations to a friend after watching:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=123y7jDdbfY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgP-lwf2tb8

These two videos were forwarded to me by brother-in-law, Harry.

Geoff, having listened to both the videos Harry sent me, the long one by hydrologist/climate scientist Walter Jehne and the atmospheric science one by Walter van Wijngaarden I am puzzled as to what the important levers are, changing our benign climatic conditions into more extreme ones, levers which are forecast to cause effects like sea level rise, acidification of the ocean etc etc. Basically the huge known unknowns seem to be how clouds work and how the oceans play into all this. Nevertheless ….

The Jehne polemic left me with a couple of thoughts, helped by a long chat just now with Harry – who’s main interest I think is to seek out rationale for his beasts not being the enemy, for animal farming, New Zealand style, not being a valid target for vilification.

OK – so I have this model of the earth as a roughly spherical ball with a tiny skin of atmosphere surrounding it. And most of the sphere below the atmosphere is water, liquid H2O, around 70%+, and of the rest about 33% is desert. And about 40% of that 33% is semi-desert, grassland, and rangelands subject to escalating desertification, allegedly. Do these add up, maybe not – but a lot of the ⅓ of the earth’s surface, the non-liquid , is either desert or undergoing desertification. Desertification is rampant.

Global warming / climate change is caused by the trapping in the atmosphere of heat radiated from the surface and then some being radiated back to the surface, thereby heating up the land and sea. So it matters how much heat your favourite greenhouse gas can absorb per molecule, how much of that gas there is up there, and how good it is at re-radiating some of the captured heat back to ground.

The atmosphere, the thin skin, has (Jehne) 40,000 ppm of H2O compared with 406 ppm of CO2. And H2O can absorb 8 times as much heat per molecule as CO2. (Jehne again). The implication is that H2O is massively more important than CO2 (or CH4 or N2O or O3) in global warming. However the received wisdom is that the quantity of H2O in the atmosphere is regulated by mechanisms outside human control, mostly by the ambient temperature at the surface causing more or less water vapour formation.

Jehne also says that roughly 20% of the heat (infrared radiation) hitting forests and grasslands is re-radiated back out, compared to 60% for desert.

The Jehne hypothesis is, I think, two-fold.

A) If we arrange for significant areas of the ⅓ of the earth’s surface that isn’t liquid to become deep fertile soils, brimming with organic matter, then that will sequester absolutely enormous amounts of carbon. He calls this the making of the soils as a “carbon sponge”.

B) If we arrange for significant areas of the earth’s surface that isn’t liquid to be photosynthesizing green life then we could shift vast amounts of water vapour out of the atmosphere in the form of rain, rain that can be sequestered as a beneficial effect of creating the massive carbon sponge of deep fertile soils.

Jehne believes that pursuing these two agendas, which have many mutually positive feedback loops, is the only way to get the planet back on a trajectory sympathetic to human occupation – but he assumes the short term decarbonising of our societies must be accomplished too – a necessary but insufficient condition for us ending up in a good place.

Oak Avenue Weather:5℃—12℃ no rain [77.738] TdT eggs=5 Mark=0

As advised by email last week but ignored by me, today is the day for a power cut from 8:45am until 4:00pm. Karola had her first coffee just in time before all went quiet.

So it was a good lesson in how dependent we are on continuity of the electric supply. No power, no pump, no water. No hot water and the loos don’t work. No lights, obviously, no electric heating. no electric garage doors. No washing, no washing up, no shower, no computers, no charging of iThings.

My first reaction was to boil the kettle using the stand-by power from the solar Panasonic battery; I’d set it to save 0.2kWh for emergencies such as this. It took me half an hour to find the instruction book and ten minutes to realise it was incomprehensible to me. With a few guesses and several random button presses I think, but am not really sure, I got it into offline mode. I plugged in the kettle, the kettle lights went on … then off again. After a few attempts I figured that either it wasn’t really in offline mode, it had not even the 0.2kWh I expected, or the kettle was simply requiring more than the 1000 watts limit of the offline supply. I gave up.

Next I feched the trusty Honda electric generator; uncharacteristically it would not start. Saddened I, as a last resort, added fresh petrol and in doing so found that it was nearly empty. Then is started perfectly and purred away. Boiled myself a kettle and had my first coffee of the day.

Raining quite hard and looked set in for the day. Paul had been working over at the homestead for a little while so I went to see what he’d done. As requested the new kitchen area had been cleared of obstacles so that Classic Kitchens can come and make precise measurements for the new cabinetry. The end wall stud had been removed and the long, precious Kauri bench had been taken down and put over in the homestead garage.

Karola, Bangle, and I popped over to Bay Espresso on Karamu Road for coffee and brunch – not good driving weather but the rain is very good for the pastures and trees.

The old “junk room” door, now opening onto the outside, was held shut with a length of wire so I replaced it with a hook and eye. It doesn’t need to be locked; the door from the old Apple room into the hallway has a padlocked hasp, but with wild weather forecast it was sensible to avoid the door swinging in the wind.

Ran a long extension cord out to the pump shed, incorporated a purpose-made isolating switch, and turned on the pump. Flushed the cisterns, filled a few pots.

Lit the fire and tried to heat water on the wood-burner’s cooking top. Water started to bubble, and then the power came back on.

Late afternoon we, Karola and I, went over to join Gill and Ben at Peter & Charlotte’s place in Havelock North where we all ordered Indian take-out meals and had a feast together in P&C’s warm comfortable house.

The Area For The New Homestead Kitchen – Looking East

The Area For The New Homestead Kitchen – Looking South-West

The Precious Long Kauri Shelf – Now In The Garage

Oak Avenue Weather:8℃—12℃ 32.3mm rain [77.307] TdO eggs=3 Mark=0

Forecast for the day was rain; I agreed with Mark that it was too wet for him to come today.

Went with Karola to her eye appointment late morning. While she was there I went and had my regular 3-monthly blood test, got us coffees and put Zoe throuhg the car wash at BP in Stortford Lodge. Got back to the hospital just as Karola finshed with the ophthalmologist, Dr Beaumont. He said her eyes were good for driving and good for reading without glasses. He specifically recommended for reading a strong light shining directly on the page, 75W bulb or LED equivalent.

Gill & Ben spent the morning rambling along the shoreline near Clive and arrived with us in time for lunch at Lappuccino’s where we all had their special “chuffles”, very tasty but again very salty.

In the afternoon Ben walked round the paddocks while Gill chatted with Karola. Later Karola, Bangle, and I walked round the orchard as a mild drizzle continued to fall. Karola, Gill, and I prepared the evening meal which, while not the five-course feast of yesterday, was a big meal of fillet steak and lots of vegetables – followed by ice-cream and fruit.

In the evening we watched episode one of the 1991 TV series of Maigret featuring Michael Gambon. A real treat.

Oak Avenue Weather:9℃—13℃ 4.6mm rain [77.561] TdO eggs=4 Mark=0

We were just getting up, having breakfast, when Paul, who had been here since 8:00am, ambled over and spoke to us through a dining room window. One of the geese, he said, had fallen into an anchor pile hole, one of the deep ones almost 1½ metres deep. So I changed out of my town clothes back into working garb and went out in the rain to rescue the goose.

The three geese were all together, one rather crossly defending it’s partner down the hole, one on the periphery staying out of trouble, and one, pictured below, down the hole.

From the front line

It’s nine o’clock, a light rain falling, and has been raining steadily all night. Paul the builder is here in gumboots and heavy rain jacket.

Paul comes over; I rush to get dressed. Karola opens the dining room window and we speak to Paul through that. He says there’s a goose fallen into one of the anchor pile holes drilled yesterday – a hole that’s about half a metre in diameter and almost 1½ metres deep.

“No problem”, I say, “I can get it out”. Quickly change into work clothes knowing that this is going to be a very muddy job and imagining the goose flapping wildly spraying mud everywhere while I try to lift it out of the hole.

“OK, no problem, there’s room down there for both of us” I say, and I part jump, part slide into the hole. I grab the goose by its wings and heave it up over the lip of the hole.

I try to get out of this 140cm deep hole. But with slushy mud all round the lip, and only being 170cm tall, I cannot get out. Even the swimming pool manoeuvre, putting your elbows back onto the lip and levering yourself out, doesn’t work, I’m just not tall enough. Paul the builder comes to my rescue. He heaves away and I lunge forward like a seal crossing the beach en route to the sea and freedom. I pop out, Paul falls on his back in the mud, and I on top of him.

“That was a bit intimate” he says. And “you’re heavier than you look” he says. Music to Karola’s ears when she hears the story later.

“Oh”, he says, “it’s fallen into the next hole”. And so it had. “Maybe it’s blind” he says. We repeat the procedure that worked so well on the first hole.

It’s a pity”, he says, “that there was no-one to take a photo”. The rain gently fell.

No Mark today, too wet and anyway his shoulder is reacting to the vaccination he had yesterday.

We did a big weekly shop in the morning, enough for Gill & Ben for four nights. Also picked up coffees and snacks from Artisan. Neighbouring OMG bread shop still closed. Cornucopia however was open and had a loaf of PureBread GF, the bread I used to buy for years before finding the OMG loaf. Stopped at CountDown for some BeyondMeat patties for Gill & Ben to try, also at Rush Munro’s for ice-creams and some tubs for desserts this week.

I was somewhat appalled at the disregard for Level Two lockdown rules by a large party in front of me in the queue at Rush Munro’s but with no local cases and no local deaths this Covid stuff does seem a bit unreal.

Gill & Ben drove up and went to their Clive motel before coming our way for a splendid meal – a fish pie cooked by Karola. A five-course meal comprising a starter of asparagus or avocado, a main dish of Gurnard fish pie with potate topping, a cheese course, Rush Munro ice-cream, and finally a block of dark chocolate.

Six eggs from the six chooks today, for the second time.

Holed In One Goose’s Cross partner

Goose Down A Hole

Paul Covered The Holes To Avoid Repeat Performances

Rush Munro – Social Distancing, What’s That

Oak Avenue Weather:8℃—15℃ 1.6mm rain [76.595] TdO eggs=6 Mark=0

Gareth and Paul were here at 8:00am and had finished digging the pile holes by 1:30pm. As Paul suggested, I called Dave Dravitski (LDE) and said we were ready for civil engineer to come and test the pile holes. They are tested for soil strength being good enough to hold up the building under expected conditions of wind and earthquake. James from LDE came out at 1:30pm and spent a couple of hours measuring the size and depth of the holes and then using a long rod with a small vaned head at the tip to measure the resistance of the soil to pressure. James said that he took the measurements and between 70 and 100 were acceptable – excellent readings; our soil gave around and above 70.

As Gareth dug the holes with a large auger attached to his trusty little digger he created a lot of soil that needed a home so we decided to put it down near the cattle stop. Gareth’s ute and trailer are long and so he had to open the gate into the Long Acre to give himself manoeuvring space. The ewe hoggets couldn’t believe their luck and bowled through the gate with glee.

Very unfortunately one of the hoggets somehow waltzed across the cattle stop proving that it was not the obstacle it was meant to be. I mean it’s good to know that they can get across but really really annoying that the cattle stop’s sole reason – to keep the livestock in – isn’t effective. No-one saw the hogget get over the cattle stop but they saw it on the road side. I assume that it walked across on one of the two concrete ridges – beams – that keep the pipes rigid and at the right spacings. Very upsetting. Still, so far the cattle stop has been effective in keeping Bangle, the geese, and the chooks in and off the road.

Ruth came out at midday and photographed the pile holes in her role as official photographic recorder of all important stages of develoment – part of our “conservation methodology plan”.

It’s Gill’s birthday today and she and Ben are coming up tomorrow – staying at a motel near Clive because of course the homestead is closed until the additions and alterations are complete.

I called Vet Services at midday and got an appointment this afternoon for Bangle’s annual health check. We attended and they weighed Bangle, 18.4kg, about a kilogram lighter than last year, which is good. She was given a worming tablet and had her nails clipped. Two of Bangle’s back teeth are chipped but not causing any pain or problems at present. If either got infected they’d show up as a slight swelling under the eye – but it’s unlikely. No kennel cough vaccine for Bangle as she isn’t going to a kennels or other meeting of many dogs; she may go to stay with Graham and Tracey and their two dogs in November if we go down to Wellington then, but that’s not enough to warrant the vaccine.

Stop Bank – Bee Keepers Maintaining Hives In Waste Land

Stop Bank – Discing Orchard Preparing For Replanting

Pile Holes For The New Two-Storey Addition

Pile Holes For The New West Verandah

Oak Avenue Weather:10℃—22℃ 7.0mm rain [76.832] TdT TdO eggs=4 Mark=0

Landrover wouldn’t start so we used the Subaru today for our trip to the Ngaruroro stop bank. I tried again just now, in the dark, and it started just fine. C’est la vie.

Otherwise a pretty relaxed day. In Karola’s case she has been sorting out drawers and cupboards laden with the essentials of life admixed with detritus of decades long past. I used my quiet Saturday with no visitors or builders and the like to read online articles proffered by friends an family and then to fill their in-boxes with reactions and responses.

Bridget did call today to let us know she had watched a number of the “Just Have A Think” videos and found them stimulating and enjoyable.

Ewe #929 had ram lamb #122R

Oak Avenue Weather:5℃—20℃ no rain [77.129] TdT TdO eggs=4

Sunny, cool and very blustery day so apart from coffee, lunch, and afternoon tea on the cottage kitchen verandah we spent much of the day inside. I finally making some progress on configuring my little Asustor NAS computer and Karola fossicking amongst her piles and piles of papers.

All lambs present but no new ones and the latest, #909’s #121R has a gammy leg which Mark pointed out yesterday.

Later I accidentally bumped into a YouTube video of a band I’d never heard of, Tuba Skinny with magical singer Erika Lewis.

Quail Are Back After The Winter Away

Old Santa Rosa Plum Tree In Full Bloom

Oak Avenue Weather:2℃—17℃ no rain [77.335] TdT TdO eggs=3

Spent most of the day struggling with my computers, enjoyably although without a lot of progress.

Mark gathered in the little independent electric fence separating the two rams in the Goose paddock. The rams seem to be getting along alright for now. Mark also, despite very blustery gales – equinoxial gales Karola calls them – continued chopping up branches with the chipper/shredder aka the mulcher. After afternoon tea Mark scanned hundreds of surveillance camera photos looking for anything suspicious feeding from the chooks’ chooketeria. An inquisitive possum and lots of chook activity but no unwelcome feeders so far.

Guy from Copas called and he and a mate came round and serviced the “waste management system” – the cottage septic tank. They were at it for about two hours as apparently some water level sensor had broken. The old septic tanks lasted for decades without electricity or annual maintenance – sigh. Copas has been sold to another local plumbing business whose name for the moment escapes me.

It was so windy that even walking along the stop bank was a challenge, Bangle and I walked a couple of kilometres and battled the sideways wind all the way there and back.

Meanwhile, catching up on her backlog of journal entries, Karola said, rather unkindly, commenting on my explosion of information about the microscopic indestructible tardigrades, saying that she felt I was rivalling Lucy Van Pelt (from the Peanuts cartoon) in dissemination of “little known facts”. Not quite fair, although, like Lucy, I do consider “little known facts” to be a key skill, as in this case it was more overwhelming and somewhat boring rather than actually made up.

Ready For The Foundation Pile Holes Next Week

Junk Room And Apple Room Combined – For The New Kitchen

Above – Looking South, Below – Looking East Towards The Avenue

Oak Avenue Weather:8℃—22℃ 0.2mm rain [76.845] TdT TdO eggs=5 Mark=4

Another pretty hectic day.

Paul came at 8:00am joined later by his son Matt who will be assisting him for the remainder of the project. Elizabeth came and did her essential archaeologist’s inspection and, finding nothing, that’s probably the last inspection she’ll need to do in the absence of Paul calling her because he’s unearthed something of potential archaeological significance. Paul has had tooth-ache for several days and will be getting it fixed tomorrow which will lift his spirits a lot.

Karola and I drove into Hastings to the Health Centre for our annual skin checks. New Zealand has among the very highest incidences of skin cancer in the world so these checks are well worth while. No issues this year.

While in town we took the opportunity to patronise Artisan, open again under lockdown level two. The neighbouring OMG bread shop is still closed though. Dropped off one of my two moleskin work trousers recently purchased from Farmlands, for dry cleaning and to have the legs turned up. The $40 price was steep I thought; they’ll be ready in a week. Finally dropped in at Harris Pumps and Filtration, returning the broken T-junction I bought yesterday which broke as Mark was filling in the hole. Replaced at no charge.

It was a day of forgetfulness. On the way out of the Hastings Health Centre I took the Nelson Road exit when I wanted to go east – I could have taken the St Auben’s Road exit which only allows east turns. After the coffee purchase at Artisan’s in Queens Street, east of the railway line, I drove past the dry cleaners before remembering we had dry cleaning to hand in; then I overshot Harris Pumps and Filtration, and the round-about just after it. Retracing my steps I made those calls.

Later, with Mark re-fixing the twin-tap connection in the Middle paddock, Karola & I took the recycling down to Henderson Road Recycling Centre, in the Subaru. We forgot our masks but just unloaded plastic and paper anyway. However we didn’t drop in at greengrocer’s roadside shop, Gagan’s because we didn’t have masks. Today, as experienced with Mark doing the scrap metal drop-offs yesterday, we had to go the long way round, down Wilson’s Road, along Flaxmere Avenue, and back up Henderson Road. The Henderson-Omahu junction should reopen tomorrow.

Got home to find that we’d not emptied one of the three bins of recyclables. So, later, we set off again, with masks this time, and rid ourselves of the third bin of waste paper, browsed in Gagan’s greengrocers, and went down to Stortford Lodge BP where we got more coffees and put the Subaru through the car wash. Well at least the Subaru had the best exercise it’s had in months and it is gleaming from the wash and wax.

Geese Squabbling – I Guess Three’s A Crowd

Old Plum Tree Breaks Out In Blossom

Karola’s Subaru – Scrubbed Up Nicely

Oak Avenue Weather:10℃—19℃ no rain [76.978] TdT TdO eggs=3 Mark=4

Paul came around 8:00am and worked all day. Mark came early as agreed and he worked from 10:00am till 4:00pm. Gareth Donnelly (Paul’s plumber) came for half a day. Architect Ruth came in the afternoon for a couple of hours.

As planned Mark and I loaded the metal waste – broken pipes and rusty bits and bobs, mostly from Paul’s work on the homestead, into the big trailer and Mark drove us down to Hawkes Bay Scrap Metal in Stevens Place off Henderson Road, off Omahu Road. Trouble was that Henderson Road is closed at the Omahu junction so we had to go round via Chatham Road and Flaxmere. Fair bit of waiting round but eventually Mark got his turn to back the Landrover and trailer onto the weigh-bridge, back a bit further, unload, re-weigh, and then scuttle off with our ill-gotten gains, a princely $60. It being lockdown level two we had to unload ourselves and wear masks.

Mark and I did a second small load with the copper pipe and a couple of bits of lead pipe. Same deal, more waiting, but $140 this time.

On the way back we detoured via Harris Pumps and Filtration in Omahu Road and I bought a replacement tee-junction for the broken one – where we had an underground leak out in th Middle paddock. Mark replaced the broken part only to have it break again the minute he started filling in the hole. I think it was a faulty part so hope to get it replaced, maybe tomorrow.

Meanwhile Gareth on his trusty small digger (back hoe), took out the old foundation along what was the south side of the homestead. Gareth also managed to unearth the alkathene pipe that Henare buried along the back wall, taking water from the cottage bore to the old pump under the homestead east verandah. And we all had fun and games tryinng to retrieve some 50 metres of three-phase copper electricity cable laid from the homestead across to the cottage bore back in 1980s.

Gareth and Paul dug a trench across the line of where I thought the cable ended – by the bore. As expected Gareth first hit an old white plastic pipe that took bore water across the lawn to where it attached to the afore-mentioned alkathene pipe. No problem, I disconnected that from the bore a couple of weeks ago when Mark was creating a dripping tap into the bath-pool behind the cottage pump shed. Then he scraped into a couple of alkathene pipes that I’d forgotten to mention, the pipes and some associated thin electricity wires – low voltage control wiring for the valves next to the garden taps. The wiring got damaged but the alkathene came to no harm. Eventually we ad a trench about four metres long and a metre deep across the path – what I was sure had to be the path – of the three-phase cables from the homestead to the bore.

We tried a different tack. At the homestead end, where the cables used to come up under the house and join the homestead mains, Gareth dug along the enclosing conduit as it headed south and then turned west to face the cottage bore and pump shed. Gareth then tied the cables to his digger and gave a good yank. Ruth squealed as there was a loud crack. She said it came from the cottage pump shed and she saw flying bits of white plastic. The cables came free and we now have lots of eavy gauge copper wire for Ivan the electrician to reuse. Ruth and I examined he pump shed and, as she had exclaimed, a box housing a pair of three-pin plugs had disintegrated.

I now recall that the cottage pump shed had its main electricity supply from the cottage but that, in case it might one day be useful, we had a second pair of three-pin plug sockets wired up to one of the cables coming across under the lawn from the homestead. Mystery solved and no great harm done.

Ron from Firestarter came today and measured up for a quote for a new Masport Akaroa, the same wood burner that Bridget has.

I put longer screws into the hinges of the cottage door leading from the kitchen to the laundry. The existing ones had come loose and for a few days the door wouldn’t shut.

While checking on the ewes and lambs I noticed a newcomer, ram lamb #120R, mum #909.

Gill has been sprucing up her garden in Seatoun Heights Road, wickedly wielding a water-blaster.

Gill’s Vegetable Terraces in May

… And Spruced Up In September

Oak Avenue Weather:-1℃—18℃ 0.4mm rain [76.870] TdO eggs=3 Mark=6

Paul came all day; Ivan (electrician) came for a while too and fixed the third of our failing cottage outside lights. Mark came at midday as usual and continued scavenging for small branches and other stuff brought down in recent winds. He then attached the chipper/mulcher to the little red tractor, the Kioti, and began chopping up the branches into mulch.

We three, me, Karola, and Bangle, did the usual mid-week shopping today visiting New World and Countdown, and I picked up a bag of chook pellets from Farmlands. It is still level three for us until tomorrow so we wore masks (not Bangle) and I queued briefly at both supermarkets before being allowed in. The Farmlands phone-and-pickup meant I had to call yestedday and give my order and then agree on a time to pick it up. No coffee, no GF bread until next week.

Elizabeth Pishief called round, as arranged, and examined the ground revealed by Paul’s deconstruction of the old homestead kitchen floor. No surprises.

Don’t seem to be any more lambs today. Forecast is for wind and rain, which would be very welcome in this drier than usual spring, so at Karola’s request I let the sheep into the Front paddock so they can shelter with their lambs under the eucalypts and the macrocarpa tree down near the road boundary.

Oak Avenue Weather:5℃—19℃ 0.2mm rain [76.667] TdT TdO eggs=5 Mark=4

Two skips – big bins – were dropped off today next to the back of the homestead, the larger one for general unsalvageable stuff and the smaller one for concrete. If they don’t get filled from the “additions and alterations” work we will be able to top them up from concrete in the Stump Dump and from rubbish in our many sheds and garages.

Paul came and went, still on his own until later in the week I think.

Mark popped the old chipboard floor and other rubbish in the big skip before spending most of the afternoon scouting round the property picking up the many small branches blown off by winter winds. Late afternoon he mowed the cottage lawns.

Karola transplanted most of her rhubarb back into one of the raised beds. She expects to transplant a Banksia rose from next to the cottage sunporch door to where the rhubarb was, inside the west-facing railings near the cottage bathroom window.

Oak Avenue Weather:10℃—18℃ no rain [77.850] TdT TdO eggs=2 Mark=4

Frustrating morning and half the afternoon trying to find out why some particular part of the HostPapa web space isn’t working as expected. I wrote up a trouble ticket last night and today got back a reply which basically said “This is how it works”. Infuriating as I had myself said “This is how I think it works but it doesn’t”. So they agree with me how it is supposed to work but totally ignored my problem being that it did not work that way.

So today I did some careful tests to make the actual behaviour clear. I got about ⅔ the way through when, without warning, the HostPapa ticketing system logged me off – too long without finishing. So I started again and got it finished only for me to be BLOCKED when trying to submit it. Looks like it wasn’t happy with the content that looked like code. Happily I had a backup copy this time so I took screen shots of the reply, it took three screens, and successfully submitted the three images. I now wait for an explanation.

In checking the sheep today I found that ewe #712 had two lambs so that accounts for the extra lamb I counted yesterday and last week. So I retrospectively altered the journal to reflect the extra lamb. The tags have been delayed by lockdown so I haven’t actually tagged any lambs yet and the correction is just a paper adjustment.

The expected end of lambing has come and gone but there are still eleven ewes who have not lambed. A superficial visual inspection leads me to believe eight of them may still have lambs this season.

Oak Avenue Weather:0℃—20℃ no rain [78.280] TdT eggs=3

Must be spring I guess as several big trees have bud-break and there’s quail and kingfishers calling.

Nasty jolt – I was upstairs in the cottage – when a force 4.9 quake hit 5km north of Waipukurau around 5:00pm.

And while five eggs was a record just last week, today they laid an egg each – six eggs in one day.

One Egg Each – All Laid In The Chook House

Progress On The Deconstruction

Oak Avenue Weather:3℃—18℃ no rain [77.877] TdT TdO eggs=6

Having not seen any snails in the pump-shed bath pond recently I was delighted to count five “Mildred’s Sisters” motoring around on the water weed. Couldn’t tell if one of them was the eponymous Mildred though.

One of geese segregated itself from the other two and spent the day trying to get back – obviously the grass turned out not to be sufficiently greener. I herded her back through a gateway before dark – Karola insisted and I had no idea she even noticed them.

Paul came and did more on the deconstruction; Mark took several trailer loads of reusable wood up to the orchard shed. Mark also mowed the iris coming up thickly under the row of large trees along to the sheep yards.

I counted the sheep and lambs. Now they’re combined and the lambs are gambolling it’s hard to figure out the family groups but there are 23 ewes as expected and there are twenty lambs – which is one more than I can account for so maybe there was another birth on 1st September.

I had a good day programming my Network Attached Storage: installing security stuff like SSH cryptographic keys, SSL certificates, and some additional apps.

Karola is racing through her seemingly endless supply of John Buchan paperbacks.

Absolutely Almost The Last On Moss Piglets

Oak Avenue Weather:0℃—14℃ 0.4mm rain [77.807] TdT TdO eggs=3 Mark=4

Paul came this morning; Mark at lunchtime; Ruth dropped in after lunch.

My morning was in part spent on listening to videos about Moss Piglets. There is a considerable amount of video footage about all manner of scientific and natural phenomena ut I do wonder how we can judge the expertise of the experts as the videos and their presenters don’t have obvious believable credentials.

Mark, having located the leak in the water system by the twin taps and the Pistaccio tree, replaced the galvanised pipe and its taps and joined up the underground pipe so that for now all is back to normal, except for those two taps. He went on to dig another compost pit for Karola, put up one of my surveillance cameras pointing at the “chookateria” – to see whether the pukekos have figured out how to stand on the paddle and open the lid yet. And he finished the day by taking more of the wood salvaged by Paul up to the orchard shed.

I heard the hedge trimmer working in Scotts and went out to see what was happening. To my delight the Brimar Trimmer man, who happened to be trimming the Scott’s side of our Casuarina windbreak, decided to give the hedge a haircut, avoiding cutting the Kanuka which is a couple of metres away on our side. In talking to the Scott’s orchard manager he pointed out that the only way to cut the top of the windbreak was from the Scotts side. And he told me he thought I’d be calling to get the top done and so by doing it today it saved him a trip back here later.

I didn’t talk to Ruth but we waved; she thought I was being a good Covid citizen so didn’t approach.

A Really Glorious Sunny Day – Down At The Stop Bank

Tardigrade: The micro-animal scientists can’t kill

26 Jan, 2019 06:52 PM

The tardigrade can withstand being plonked in boiling hot springs or being buried under layers of ice.
They’re little battlers, the greatest survivors on the planet and you may have them in your garden, writes Lana Hart.

They’ve been boiled, frozen, put in vacuums, starved, and exposed to unbearable pressures and radiation – but scientists can’t kill this creature.

They are the only animal to have survived all five of earth’s mass extinctions. This incredible feat is due to their development of unique survival mechanisms not seen in other parts of the animal kingdom.

Extraordinary as they are, they are ubiquitous, found around the world almost everywhere that there is water: in mosses, carparks, sewers, glaciers, sand, the deepest parts of the oceans – from Antarctica to the Arctic Circle and on the highest mountains on Earth.

Scientists have found them in boiling hot springs and buried under layers of ice in the Himalayan mountains, withstanding temperatures ranging from –200C to 150C.

The mighty tardigrade; nearly microscopic with an average length of half a millimetre, it is headless, has eight legs, bulky segments, and a mouth tube that telescopes outward revealing sharp teeth. It looks like a fat caterpillar.

Outside of the world of zoology, not much is known about it.

Tardigrade literally means “slow walker” due to its side-to-side lumber, but it is also known as the “water bear” or “moss piglet”, giving us some idea of what early scientists thought the creature looked like. Discovered in 1773 by the German zoologist Johann August Ephraim Goeze, there are now over 1000 different species of identified tardigrades, with varying features that have adapted over time to the wildly diverse environments that they live in.

As extremophiles, tardigrades can thrive in conditions that are detrimental to most life forms.

In 2007, a group of scientists led by Sweden’s Kristianstad University exposed tardigrades to the vacuum and solar radiation of outer space. Some of the specimens survived and some even went on to produce viable offspring. The researchers concluded “only lichens and bacteria have been reported to survive the combined exposure to space vacuum and solar/galactic cosmic radiation… Our results, therefore, represent the first record of an animal surviving simultaneous exposure to space vacuum and solar/galactic radiation”.

Another group of scientists, from the Universities of Oxford and Harvard, considered in 2017 how three different astrophysical events – supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, and large asteroid impacts – might bring about global extinction via the boiling of the Earth’s oceans. Organisms “such as tardigrades would be the only kind of life that could survive long-term in such conditions”. Thanks to the tardigrade, they concluded “complete global sterilisation (is) an unlikely event”.

How do they do it? What makes these creatures nearly indestructible and more tolerant of harsh environments than any other known animal on earth?

In two words: dehydration, sugar.

Tardigrades have the ability to change themselves into a lifeless cyst, called a tun, if life gets too tough. The process is called anhydrobiosis and enables tardigrades to live for long periods in a sort of deep hibernation without being harmed by most environmental dangers.

Photo Of A Moss Piglet Aka Water Bear Aka Tardigrade

By alternating through active and anhydrobiotic stages, some tardigrades can survive more than 100 years. One specimen was found in dried moss that was 120 years old. Once it had been soaked in water, the tardigrade sprang back to life.

During anhydrobiotic or dried-out periods, not much is known about what actually happens to the tardigrade. Scientists agree that metabolism slows to slightly above zero or can sometimes cease altogether. Some tuns survive longer without oxygen, suggesting that oxygen could be harmful to some species. But tardigradologists admit that the biochemistry and the molecular pathways of these animals is largely unknown.

Although nature has not reserved anhydrobiosis solely for tardigrades – some parasitic nematodes and microscopic marine animals also claim this survival trick – it is the chemical way tardigrades protect themselves from damage that gets microbiologists excited.

Dr Siouxsie Wiles, Associate Professor of Microbiology at the University of Auckland, explains that a sugar called Trehalose is found in many invertebrate animals. It is used as a blood sugar, or source of energy, by many insects for flight, for example.

“What is unusual for the tardigrades is how they use Trehalose. When they dry out, Trehalose helps convert their bodies into a glass-like substance, keeping their organs and membranes in place. With this hardening, the tun is less likely to get damaged and allows them to survive for a long time. Tardigrades are the only animals that we know of to use Trehalose in this way.”

The animals are capable of different types of transformations that allow them to survive in all sorts of extreme conditions. For instance, if the oxygen content of the water around them becomes too low, they stretch out into a long, relaxed shape, reducing their metabolic rate, and allowing as much water and oxygen to enter their cells as possible.

If the temperature falls below freezing, the tardigrade forms a cold-resistant tun using molecules that prevent the formation of ice crystals that could damage cell membranes.

With all these special stunts to respond to their environments, it is no wonder that scientists are looking for ways to utilise tardigrade’s features to improve the lives of humans.

Wiles explains: “Tardigrades are able to protect their bodies from all sorts of potential damage. If we can better understand how they do this, we could be able to stop damage to other things that we want to preserve. Vaccines, for example, can be sensitive to changes in temperatures and yet need to be transported across many different temperatures. It would be really useful if we could learn to make proteins stable in different conditions.

Considering how hearty tardigrades are, understanding this could also be used to make crops more tolerant to temperature. This could involve modifying genes in the plant so that we can grow them in more extreme weather conditions resulting from climate change.”

She also notes that with tardigrades’ experience of space travel in some experiments, we know that they can survive against space’s damaging rays and vacuums. This knowledge could help us understand what life forms we might be looking for in space. For example, in our exploration of Mars.

But in order to learn from the evolutionary brilliance of tardigrades in these ways, she says, we need to know more about this little creature. “We still don’t know where tardigrades fit in the tree of life. Their genome has not been sequenced and until this happens, we can’t fully understand this animal.”

There are many gaps in scientific knowledge about the tardigrade, especially in New Zealand. The NZ Inventory of Biodiversity explains why it is difficult to discuss the distribution of the hundreds of tardigrade species across the planet, reporting there is a “paucity of collecting in many areas of the world, especially in the Southern Hemisphere. Distributions are really a reflection of where tardigradologists have collected.”

Dr Donald Horning was one of the few scientists in New Zealand to have studied tardigrades closely. In 1978, he and other microbiologists conducted a comprehensive survey of tardigrades in New Zealand, reporting 58 different species from areas including the Three Kings Islands near Cape Reinga, Kaikoura, and D’Urville Island in the Marlborough Sounds. Much taxonomic work was done in the years following: grouping individual specimens into species, arranging and naming species into larger groups, and considering how different biological characteristics related to known tardigrade species from other continents.

Despite the highly-detailed work, New Zealand tardigrade specimens were not always indisputably categorised, with some species becoming the focus of controversies and misunderstandings amongst international tardigradologists. One species, for example, “was based on a general and potentially inadequate definition of the taxon (organism class)”, according to the NZ Inventory of Biodiversity.

By 2010, tardigrade classifications were being agreed upon as more species were discovered, but most of this work was done overseas. There are currently no resident New Zealanders who work specifically on the tardigrade; experts on the NZ tardigrade hail from Europe, the UK, and North and South America.

The tardigrade “hotspot” of New Zealand is Arthur’s Pass National Park. Two creeks in the Park, Halpins and Kellys, have yielded more species of tardigrades than any other place in New Zealand. But these are just the areas that scientists have so far discovered – there could be many other tardigrade-rich locations.

And you don’t have to get on your hiking boots to find tardigrades. They’re probably hanging out in your garden right now. Lichens and moss are the most common habitats for the NZ tardigrade, and they also reside in soil, sediment and leaf litter.

With all the extraordinary characteristics of the commonly-found tardigrade, you’d think that more people knew about this little critter. Why hasn’t the tardigrade been anthropomorphised in modern culture like ants, spiders and butterflies? Why don’t we teach kids about tardigrades in science class? Where are the songs and pictures about the only animal on Earth that has survived since the dawn on life on our planet?

Modern culture could be just starting to catch on. The American adult animated sitcom South Park began featuring a “Moss Piglet” in 2017 and a subsequent episode concerned “Water Bears”. The TV series Star Trek: Discovery has an oversized tardigrade with thick, rounded body armour called Ripper, inflated to a massive size due to a science experiment gone wrong.

But it will take more than a bit of animation and sci-fi to escalate the terrific tardigrade to its rightful position in our understanding of the biological world we live in. Wiles believes that first, “we need to get teachers interested in them. Once they start teaching kids about the tardigrade, they’ll be much more interest.”

One of the problems is of course their size. Microscopic that they are, you wouldn’t exactly spot one on the bonnet of your car. But Wiles assures us that backyard scientists are become more common as scientific technology becomes more available to everyone.

There are now microscopes that you can attach onto your smartphone. They are low cost and anybody can do this. You only need a little moss or water, it could take a bit of searching, but the tardigrade is almost everywhere and is very distinctive under a microscope.

“Go find a tardigrade and see what they look like. Do they really move like that? Yes, they do.”

This kind of enthusiasm for the world’s most indestructible animal will start to shine a light on the amazing, albeit tiny, world of the tardigrade, inspiring more students of science – and their teachers – to take an interest in NZ’s own species. This will bring about more research, more scientists specialising in NZ tardigradology, more fascinating facts, and more opportunities to learn what tardigrades have to offer us.

If you don’t have your smartphone microscope and a bit of moss already, it’s time you got them.

How to Find Tardigrades

1. Collect a clump of moss or lichen (dry or wet) and place in a shallow dish, such as a Petri dish.
2. Soak in water (preferably rainwater or distilled water) for 3-24 hours.
3. Remove and discard excess water from the dish.
4. Shake or squeeze the moss/lichen clumps over another transparent dish to collect trapped water.
5. Starting on a low objective lens, examine the water using a stereo microscope.
6. Use a micropipette to transfer tardigrades to a slide, which can be observed with a higher power under a compound microscope.

Oak Avenue Weather:3℃—15℃ 0.1mm rain [76.931] TdT TdO eggs=5 Mark=4

Paul was already at work when we got up this morning. Down to level 3 from level 4 for everyone in New Zealand except the poor Aucklanders. The gate into the Ngaruroro river domain is open again so we can drive to the top of the stop bank before beginning our walk and cycling.

Gently shepherded ewe #927 and her twin ewe lambs born yesterday towards the One Acre and the rest of the ewes with lambs. All the ewes without lambs were at far end of the Middle paddock seemingly minding their own business. Opened the gate into the One Acre, ewe #927 was just about to go through when woosh, the other ewes had crept up on me and now thundered past into what they considered the very desirable lush pasture of the One Acre. So now all 23 ewes and all the lambs were mixed up together.

Anyway, Karola agreed there’s no point now in trying to re-segregate them; more than half have lambed. So I shut the gates into the Front paddock and let all the ewes (except the virgin hoggets in the Long Acre) have the Middle, Totara, and One Acre paddocks. I counted them, twice, and got the right number of ewes, 23. I counted the lambs twice and got 20 each time. This is odd because I didn’t notice any new lambs overnight and by my reckoning there should only be 19. Hey ho.

Mark came mid day and helped Paul by taking loads of the reusable Kauri timber – but timber we’re unlikely to reuse this time – up to the big shed in the orchard. He also took the old roofing iron to join the stack from when we moved the cottage (2013) in the Stump Dump. Mark also dug down and exposed the leak in the paddock watering system by the twin-tap post west and slightly south of the cottage. There had been a tell-tale persistent puddle there for the last week.

See tardigrades take an adorable stroll on their stubby little legs

Here’s an animal that fascinates me every time I bump into a reference to it. I wonder whether it’s legal to keep them and where one would get a supply. They are the easiest care of easy care I’m told.

With their “dumpy plod,” water bears move like insects, and scientists are trying to figure out why.

“Plump and ponderous.” The Rockefeller University in New York has quite a way of describing tardigrades, the microscopic animals that can survive freezing, radiation and even being fired from a gun.

A new study isn’t testing their invincibility, but it is investigating why and how the micro-animals walk and run.

Known as “water bears,” the charming animals have eight short legs and move a lot like insects. “Their dumpy plod, however, raises the question of why tardigrades evolved to walk at all,” the university said in a statement last week.

A team of researchers filmed tardigrades walking across different surfaces. The footage of the chubby-looking animals is delightful, but it has a serious scientific purpose. “Tardigrades have a robust and clear way of moving — they’re not these clumsy things stumbling around in the desert or in leaf litter,” said Jasmine Nirody, lead author of a study on tardigrade movement published in the journal PNAS on Tuesday.

The team found the tardigrades adjusted their gait as the substrate got softer, until they were moving in a bounding or galloping fashion. Nirody shared a GIF illustrating this as part of a Twitter thread on Monday. Nirody said the movement was similar to that of some rigid-bodied desert beetles.

There are still questions as to why these miniscule, soft critters ended up moving like insects that are so much larger than them. The researchers have some ideas — they may have a common ancestor or there’s an evolutionary advantage to being able walk this way.

Tardigrades are extremely hardy and adaptable to different environments, from water to land. Understanding their moves could help with advancing robot locomotion, especially for microscopic robots, soft robots and ones that need to navigate tight terrain.

The tardigrades in the study seemed to be active participants. Said Nirody, “We didn’t force them to do anything. Sometimes they would be really chill and just want to stroll around the substrate. Other times, they’d see something they like and run towards it.”

You can understand why so many people are obsessed with these unusual creatures. They’re fascinating, weirdly cute and they look like living croissants.

Paul Is Getting On With The Deconstruction

Oak Avenue Weather:1℃—13℃ 0.4mm rain [76.869] TdT TdO eggs=4 Mark=4