September 2014

The arrival of the spring weeds puts a bit of a damper on the early season, but otherwise it’s great to have sprung into spring.  In contrast to this time last year, it’s been pretty dry.  A recent rain sprinkling was welcome - enough to get the weeds growing, but more is needed to thoroughly soak the ground.  Daylight Saving begins at the weekend, and I'm looking forward to more outside evening time.  I’m writing this month’s blog from Greymouth (renowned for its rainfall!) where I’m working for a couple of weeks.  Somehow I've managed to land a night shift on Saturday, so I'll get the pleasure of working the extra daylight saving hour.  No surprises there.  Since moving to the farm I’m finding it hard to be away from home, though the freedom from the daily chores is refreshing and right now it feels like I’ve got all the time in the world.

The lambs are utterly delightful and have grown rapidly.  Like the kids they like to play with the tractor inner tube.  They usually have an early evening session when they bounce up and down and in and out of the ring.  They all seem to be hale and hearty and have finally lost their tails - that took a while longer than we expected.  We've found the tails in the paddock.  Probably they've also shed their testicles, but curiously no one's found any of them on the ground!  Perhaps they have a little farewell burial ceremony for their lopped-off bits when we're not looking.

 

The bees seem to be happily buzzing, and Derryn and I spent a morning with beekeeper Phil who showed us how to use queen cups to raise queens.  It’d be great if I could separate my hive back into 2 hives and use a queen I’ve raised.  Unfortunately that’s looking a long way off as a recent sugar shake varroa test revealed 72 mites.  I was hoping for less than 10, so this was quite a blow.  I treated the hive straightaway with Apivar and will repeat the sugar shake test next week to check that it’s working.  The photo shows the mites in the icing sugar.  Yuk.

 

The orchard is totally bursting into bloom and leaf.  Even the new nut trees are awakening from their slumber.  The herb garden has had a serious weed-out and is now heavily mulched with barley straw.  The remaining native plants which Peter brought home from work have also been potted on so should be easier to plant out.  I'd heeled them into some weighty soil bags to keep them alive.  They didn't all make it, so hopefully this will give them more of a fighting chance.  They'll eventually be planted into the wetland. 

 

 The veg garden is actually looking good, in places at least.  Most of last year’s crops are eaten, but some of the autumn/winter planted veg is ready - mainly spinach and leeks, and a few beetroot and lettuce which are fattening up.  There are many seedlings sprouting in Madame Cholet and potatoes are next up for planting.  The fertility of the soil has been enhanced by large volumes of delicious compost courtesy of fellow-midwife Marion.  She has horses so creates magnificent compost – happily for me in volumes too great for her needs. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The cows and sheep are happily munching on the fresh pasture, and now that our boundary fence is secured (hurray), they’ve been moved along into a couple of paddocks which we’d been avoiding for fear of wanderlust.  We’ve asked the fencer to come and fix up the interior fences too, so maybe the orchard, veg garden and woodlot will truly be no-go cattle and sheep zones.  Hopefully then it’ll just be a case of keeping on top of freeing the fence lines from grass/weed growth to stop it matting up the lower fence wires.  Persephone, the only pregnant heifer, has been sold to a new family in Canterbury so will be gone soon.  I’m planning on having a go at artificially inseminating Aphrodite in a couple of months as we still have one Galloway semen straw.  I just need to source some equipment. 

Since the veg seedlings were planted out, the chooks have been confined to barracks.  The two roosters don’t seem to be getting on like they used to, and Cornelius has taken over as top chook.  The poor hens take the brunt of them proving their superior masculinity, so one of the boys will have to go if we are to avoid their death-by-shagging.  It’s a difficult decision because this Bob is the gentlest Bob we’ve ever had – quite unusual for a Rhode Island Red.  Unlike his predecessors, he’s never shown any sign of aggression to humans.  Cornelius isn’t aggressive either, so we just have to decide whether we want to hang onto Rhodies or continue with Cochin crosses.  I’ll probably leave that decision to Peter.

The rabbits have been occupying our time and emotional energy lately.  A little while ago we had 4 litters of rabbit kits.  The first litter is now around 7 weeks old, and the other 3 were born around the same time 3 weeks ago.  All was going well until we found one of the mothers dead.  There was no warning, no obvious health decline, so it seemed to be a mystery.  Her kits were still alive so we divvied them up and put them in with the other 2 litters of the same age, in the hope that the adoptive mums would look after them.  To our dismay, the next day another of the mothers was also dead.  This was an even bigger problem as it was unlikely that these kits could possibly survive - one mother surely couldn’t raise 3 litters?  We were debating whether it was kinder to let them die or to euthanize them, when another possibility dawned.  The mother of the 7 week old kits may still be lactating.  Perhaps she would adopt them.  It was a very long shot which ran the risk of them either being killed by her or by neglect.  We didn’t predict that she’d also die a couple of days later.

A little research revealed the cause of death was likely to be calicivirus – a particularly virulent and nasty disease killing rabbits within about 24 hours and which is currently prevalent in our region.  Young rabbits don’t get it until they are several weeks old and this time of year – late winter/early spring is the commonest time for it to break out.  Vaccination is possible but would cost $120 per rabbit initially, then a $60 booster jab annually thereafter.  Not an option alas.

Probably we’d been lucky until now, but this may well be the beginning of the end of our rabbit venture.  I don’t know how many more dead rabbits I can face burying.  In the meantime we have a litter-and-a-half (10) of rabbit kits which Billy is keen to save.  So far this entails twice daily milk feeds, gently squirted into their mouths, followed by rubbing their tummies, a little stroking and then returning them back to their run which has been scrupulously cleaned and re-assembled in the dining room.  They are incredibly cute and this is generally a very pleasant task, though quite a challenge when you have to do it before work/school.  The chances of them surviving even with this level of care is still small, but the alternative would be to euthanize them.  Fingers crossed there’ll be photos of them in next month’s blog.

The fruit bushes gifted by Ange and Matt have all been re-homed.  The pear trees are in the orchard, some of the raspberries were claimed by friends and the remaining raspberries, currants and gooseberries now have their roots in new beds in the horse arena.  They are raised beds (no chance of digging through the hard core under the gravel) enriched with more of Marion’s compost.  They’re constructed from the wood planks which held in the horse arena base.  We figured we didn’t need them to do that anymore, so they are resurrected and put to a different use.  There are more to dig up so other beds will be created.  In time hopefully they will hold feijoa, citrus and olives, and anything else that comes to mind.  Maybe eventually sunflowers or grains.  Peter’s also working on plans for a second pig run in the horse arena if he can cobble together enough building materials. This will mean that we can rotate the pig accommodation – which we’ve read is a good way to reduce the risk of disease build-up.  We plan to get more piglets towards the end of the year.  Hopefully there’ll be an excess of fruit by then to keep them happy.

 

Sam has attended the College ‘Formal’ for which he required a suit and a haircut.  The usual deal applied – he had to submit to being photographed if he wanted our financial contribution.  It’s never easy to capture him smiling, and this was no exception.  He’s in the local paper fairly frequently with his musical events, and only one so far has pictured him with anything other than a frowny scowl.  Whatever….

 





My favourite quote of the month came from a speaker at the NZ College of Midwives Conference in Hamilton at the end of last month:
‘Words cast spells.  That’s why it’s called spelling.  Words are energy – use wisely’. 
This really struck a chord with this word-lover, even though I’m guiltier than many of word over-use.  These blogs just aren't getting any shorter, despite it being nearly 3 years worth of entries.  Here's to the next 3 years of happy memories!!