November 2013

A very busy month all round.  Not only work-wise, but also the spring activities at home.  There’s the enjoyable stuff like seed/seedling planting and watching new growth emerge; the fresh bright green of the pastures and trees awakening from their winter slumber; the reality or prospect of baby animals.  This beautiful blossom is a tulip tree flower, on a tree in the garden which we can see from the kitchen (under the rainbow in the last photo). Then there’s the other stuff.  Bottom of the list has to be thistle-bashing - a tedious and unsatisfying, but sadly necessary, task.  Also low down is weeding, which ordinarily I do quite enjoy, but right now the volume is pretty overwhelming.  Then there’s the stuff that’s so far down the priority list it’ll be lucky to get a look in by 2015.  That’s mostly the kind of thing that doesn’t grow - building a pizza oven out of wetland clay and river sand, glamming up Lazy Mazy the caravan, and housework.

We've had our first really hot days, with the mercury hitting 29/30 degrees in Blenheim so probably a couple of degrees higher here.    Orchard irrigation immediately moved up that priority list.  Right now everything’s lush and green in there, but that’ll soon change.  I've begun the process of setting up the hose but ran out of attachments so fingers crossed for some rain soon.  It’s a particularly beautiful place to hang around in the early evening of a warm day.  It’s the first zone to lose the day’s sun, so it’s refreshingly cool and there are plenty of trees to admire and communicate with.  There’s a good view of the wetland too.

Most of my outdoor time lately has been spent in the veg garden.  Happily it has turned a corner in terms of becoming manageable (zikes, that seriously sounds like famous last words).  I’ve cleared out the hefty weeds in the fruit beds, and re-filled them with thick layers of pea straw.  That should retain moisture as well as reduce weed growth.  It’s tidied them up too, and frames the developing fruit so it’s much more visible.  It’s looking like a bumper year for gooseberries, with several currants and blueberries on the way.   Any fruit is really a bonus, given that they’re newly planted.  The low hedges around the bed are coming away.  Some of the lavenders needed replacing (chicken-damage I think, during one of their escape-missions) but otherwise they’re looking like they might one day grow up to actually be hedges.  Potatoes and corn are planted in the newest keyhole beds, with plans for another spud patch and bean/pea bed once weeds have been cleared.  The weeding is relatively easy here, as the thick layers of newspaper have done the job of holding back the hardy pasture weeds.  Last year’s beds, which had largely been abandoned during the creation of this year’s beds, are another weeding matter entirely.  Though there’s no sign of any of them catching the gardening bug, I’ve felt obliged to shell out sums of money to pay boys to help - a strategy which has sometimes bitten me on the bum.  If you want a job done properly…. etc. etc. 

On the flying livestock front, the bees have been tremendously busy.  Their presence around the place is incredibly delightful - many a happy few minutes stretch out just watching the hive activity.   We were the venue for the bee club this month (when housework did temporarily jump up the priority list, though only the minimum).  Several people attended a talk on swarm prevention (thank you Philip!) and it was great to have my hives checked over by an expert.  He found that one of the hives had already swarmed and located the virgin queen and several queen cells.  This meant that the hive could be divided, and a very happy Neville (who’d lost his bees to varroa and was desperate to get up and running with more bees) returned later that day to collect a frame with queen cells and a couple of frames of brood from the other very vibrant hive. 

The calves and lambs are getting bigger by the day.  Oddly, Athena and Zeus have swapped colour.  Athena was white with black patches, and Zeus white with brown patches.  Now it's the other way round.  I guess hair colour changes happen with human babies too as they age.  The cattle are spoilt for choice in terms of pasture options.  Peter’s been in touch with the ‘Artificial Inseminator’ (which you feel obliged to say using an awful American accent) to plan the next pregnancies.  The plan is for Hera to become pregnant with Speckled Park semen, and for Aphrodite and Persephone to have pure Galloway calves.  Given the difficulties that both heifers had during calving, we don’t want to put them through that again.  Galloways are likely to be smaller calves, so hopefully will have easier births this time (not necessarily the same for humans!).  Here's hoping it all goes to plan.  We have to watch out for signs that they’re coming into heat (noisy mooing and the playing of ‘mounting’ games), and then hope we can get the Inseminator here on time.  It’s one of those events that I fervently hope will happen on a weekend when Peter's around. 

The sad demise of Gandalf, the buck, has significantly contributed to our unhappy run of rabbit bad-luck.  His was the first rabbit loss which may have been due to an infectious disease.  He basically just went downhill over a period of days, eating less, then moving around less.  We’ve always been aware that wild rabbits may pose a health risk, and maybe this is what’s happened.  He’s buried under a strawberry patch in the veg garden.  However, his offspring live on.  Belladonna’s 6 kits are lively and healthy, and another doe has recently had her first small litter of 5 kits.  This little family is currently sharing a run with another rabbit, which we think is also female.  We’d like to move her into a different home, but are having difficulty working out just who’s the mumma.  We haven’t observed them during their very infrequent (only twice a day) feed times, and removing the wrong one would be simply disastrous.    Assuming that this is indeed another female, it also means that we won’t be having any more kits until one of Belladonna’s sons reaches maturity (and then shags his mother and/or Aunty). 

One of Derryn’s hens has been sitting on a dozen of our eggs and now has a clutch of 6 chicks (hurray - Bob-Junior has got lead in his pencil after all).  Another hen is proudly raising her clutch of 5 cochin chicks, and they will come out to us when they’re a bit older.  They’re already well-behaved, having been taught by their mum to clean under their wings before bed.  They have fun riding on her back before the settling-down routine, after contented days of scratching around the whole garden.  Coincidentally 3 of our own hens are also broody and sitting on eggs.  We’ve moved them into their own mobile run so they’re not disturbed by the others, and also in the vain hope that the others will continue to lay.  It seems that as soon as one hen gets broody, the others decide to slow down on the old egg production.  That would be fine for a few days, but given that they take 21 days to hatch, it can get quite frustrating.  Alternatively they may continue to lay but in a different place to usual, meaning that someday you chance upon a heap of un-eatable eggs.  We clearly have much more to learn about the art of the chook-keeper.

Things are happening on the home front too.  Sam is just old enough to be whizzing around on our motorbike.  What we’ll be saving in time and fuel costs will no doubt be replaced by episodes of parental anxiety.  He’s got himself a part-time job (at McDonalds) and bar an exam or two, has finished up at school for the year.  Peter’s been forced to have a couple of weeks off work following a nasty accident at work in which the end of his middle finger was sliced off.  The surgeon had to grind down the bone further so that there was enough tissue and skin to pull over the end of what’s left of his finger.  The after-math of the surgery was considerably more painful than the chopping off.  He’s now wandering around with his middle finger bandaged up, looking like he’s giving the finger to everyone.  We’ve had a lot of comedy mileage out of it, fingers crossed the pain diminishes for him soon though!
Roll on Christmas and safe travels to Marcus, Nikki, Arthur, Jago and birthday girl Freya.  Cant'wait to show off the place to you all!