August 2014

Beautiful Maggie

The days are getting longer, though we’re far from being done with frosty mornings.  Madame Cholet, the tunnel house, keeps cosy warm though.  The seeds I planted a little while ago have germinated and are coming along well.  Some are about ready for either pricking out into individual cells or planting out directly. Several more seeds are sown, including some flowers.  The straw bale beds don’t look much different, but it was very easy to create holes with my hand and plant some tomato seedlings.  Inside the bales it was warm, soft and soil-like.  This is definitely my favourite phase of gardening – beautiful delicate seedlings with so much promise and no disappointment yet.

    

   

All of the ewes have had twins, but sadly we were faced with the old adage of ‘where there’s livestock there’s dead stock’.  The last ewe to birth had a ram and ewe twins.  The ewe lamb died during its 2^nd night, and we’re not sure why.  It was quite a wicked night – wind and rain followed by a frost.  Perhaps the lamb got separated for too long from her mum.  Peter thought that she’d had an unusual bleat, so there's a chance it was never meant to be.  She’s buried in the wetland under a kahikatea seedling.  There was a little ceremony, a celebration of her short life.  A few tears were shed.

The remaining 7 lambs are all boys.  They’re robust and old enough to be mischievous, and can get through the fencing into the veg garden.  There’s not a great deal to nibble in there, but they’ve enjoyed the beetroot tops and the brassicas.  Their utter cuteness means that it’s impossible to be cheesed off with them for long.  Every day they have a sequence of happy hours, charging and bounding around the paddocks, closely watched by their mums.  With the help of Karyn (shepherd) and Emily (the Vaccinator) we rounded them all up for tail docking, castration and vaccinating.  We decided to go ahead with tail docking of our new lambs until we’re sure that they’re all full-shedders of their wool – which Wiltshires are supposed to be.  We’d previously assumed this to be the case, and then ended up mutilating the poor critters with our hand shears.  Castration will allow us to keep the boy lambs for longer, and we were advised by the vet that we probably should vaccinate if we’re lopping bits off.  There was a modicum of chasing around to catch the lambs, but essentially it all went rather smoothly.  For us at least – the lambs weren’t impressed.

The final lamb from last year was dispatched, and then butchered by Peter.  There’re plenty of lamb joints in the freezer, and another large batch of lamb sausages and patties.  Aside from a rabbit or two, that’ll probably be the last round of meat production for a few months.  We’re down to 8 chooks right now – 2 roosters and 6 hens.  Derryn is raising another clutch of chicks which will find their way here in time.  I’m hoping that our hens might decide to go broody so that we can have our own chicks.

 

The rabbits are all thriving.  There are 7 kits in the recent litter and they’re growing fast.  We had an escapee adult who went on walkabout for a few days.  We didn’t think it was in with any chance of survival – a bright white bunny among the hawks.  But with a degree of poetic justice it turned up the same morning that the ewe lamb died.  Sam and I managed to round it (eventually, despite a pretty ineffective though very lively rabbit-catching technique) into the vacant chook mobile, where we suspect it had already been making itself at home. 

The beds in the veg garden are now sorted – either covered in barley straw or growing winter crops.  Some areas of the path still need to be completed, particularly around the pump shed.  The circular fruit bed (raspberries, blackberries and boysenberries with a central ballerina crab apple and step over espaliered apples around the perimeter) is well tidy now.  The straggly berry stems are tied into the netting and the ground mulched with straw.  Hopefully it’ll be easier to maintain in the long run (thanks Karyn!).

Another garden bed has been tackled. It’s the part of the garden that makes up our view to Mt Riley and had become seriously overgrown.  It’s planted in natives which have now had a severe short back ‘n sides.  The bed itself has been widened and extended, and planted with some of the natives that Peter acquired from work and a few dwarf flax that I raised from seed.  I've got rid of an old square raised bed that sat on the edge of the garden accommodating strawberries and lots of weeds.  It’s going into the horse arena to become the first raised bed in there.  It’ll be blessed with some of the several fruit bushes that were gifted by Ange and Matt who are immigrating to Aus – gooseberry, raspberry and currant.  There were also a couple of pear trees, grown from pips by their daughters in the millennium which have already been planted in the orchard. 

The native planting in the wetland is definitely coming away, visible now from a distance as well as close-up.  The lambs can get in through the fence and pruned a few tender leaves, but damage to the natives isn't too bad. There are parts of the wetland where none of the natives we planted have survived.  The plans are to concentrate on the areas where they are thriving and plant more in those places in the hope that once established, the natives will procreate. 

The tagasaste trees in the newly-planted woodlot adjacent to the wetland must be really tasty tagasastes.  At least the chooks think so.  They've stripped every last green leaf so they’re now just sticks in the ground.  I've attempted to protect them by setting up wigwams of old wire netting around them, though it’s probably already too late.  All of the new trees have got wool mulch mats, to give them a bit of a head start before the rampant weeds kick in.

At home, Sam celebrated his 17^th birthday.  He requested a ‘double lolly cake’ – a NZ lolly cake formed into a circle and filled with lolly sweeties.  He didn't quite get that.  In honour of his penchant for creating turds, the lolly cake was instead shaped into a giant turd.  It was actually quite effective, and I’m sure there’s potential to develop the concept - chocolate cake would lend itself well to the theme.

Having gone ‘no poo’ for many months now, it was heartening to see some publicity on national TV news.  A book called ’Happy Hair’ has hit the headlines.  It’s about the experiences of using shampoo alternatives which don’t wash away your hairs’ ability to cleanse itself.  Nowadays I wash with baking soda and rinse with apple cider vinegar every 5-6 days.  In between it just gets a wash and scalp massage using water, and it gets brushed a lot more than ever before.  For a bad hair day I use a dry shampoo made of arrowroot and cocoa powder.  I concede that I’ve never been renowned for the glossy shiny slickness of my hair – it’s more of a raggedy mop really.  But it’s no more of a mop than it was when I was spending money on hair products.  Must have saved a fortune on shampoo and conditioner. 

Mornings are particularly picturesque times in winter/early spring here on the farm, especially when the frostiness gives way to the morning sun.  Though there are many times when I just don't want to go out into the cold and do the round of animal feeding - again - it's always a pleasure when I get outside, no matter what the weather's doing.  I'm grateful that there's always something to do, in fact lots of meaningful somethings.  It's much better than wondering how I'm going

to fill my day, or filling it with only work and screens.  Being surrounded by things that are waiting to be done is a small price to pay for the privilege.

'It is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful.

Strive to be happy' 

Max Ehrmann (Desiderata)