August 2015

It’s still mid-winter of course, but that’s frankly beginning to feel like a pretty poor excuse for never-ending cold weather.  We’re getting a bit over the numerous freezing nights and frosty mornings during what’s been our chilliest winter so far.  Complaining is not usually necessary between about 10am and 4pm when we are blessed with fresh and vibrant sunshine.  We’ve also had some rain, which the land still needs, so there is an occasional reprieve from the cold.  It’s rarely wet and cold together, though the nor’wester winds can blow in uninvited any time.  Talking about the weather again – hmmm, my Englishness is never very far away.  However, it’s also true now that much of our lives outside of work are weather-dependent, so we do have another feasible excuse for weather navel-gazing.

On the ‘getting on with jobs’ front, we’ve been seriously tardy.  Shorter days and too much paid work have contributed to this, as has a lack of urgent in-your-face tasks whilst the land appears to be tucked up and sleeping.  

The day after I posted last month’s blog, we got the first lambs of the season – twin ram and ewe lambs.  They were followed by another set of boy twins and finally a single boy.  The first twins were born one hideously rainy night, which we’d heard is potentially more risky than extreme cold.  They were dripping wet and shivering away when I spotted them, so I tried to gently coax them into the hay barn.  I ended up having to pick them up, one under each arm, and then carry them into the barn.  It was a heck of a job getting the mother ewe to join them there, and for a while I wondered whether I should have intervened at all.  Seasoned farmers don’t interfere with lambing, as the general rule is that you’re more likely to make things worse.  Anyway, all was well in the end and the lambs are now robust and energetic and beginning to get into mischief.  We’re a bit disappointed with having only one girl, but probably not surprised.

Spring is definitely in the air in the orchard, with many of the fruit trees sporting fat buds and some fresh twiggy growth.  The nut trees need to be better staked, but otherwise most of the fruit trees are looking well-anchored and strong.  Some of them are supporting their stakes, rather than the other way round, so definitely an orchard sort-out needs to happen.  We’ve done a whole heap of cutting back and tidying at the front of the property, around the pig run/orchard.  There’s a pittosporum hedge which had got too high and wide to manage with a hedge-trimmer.  We’ve hacked it right down to waist-height so it’s looking bare and very sorry for itself right now.  Hopefully it’ll take off again once the temperatures increase.  It’s opened up a different view and we can now see the pig run from upstairs in the house.  We just need to decide how best to fill the gaps left behind the hedge, which are now open to sunlight.  And then we need to get on with it.

For the first time, we bit the bullet and ordered lime for the property.  We had been advised that it needed liming when we first moved in, nearly 4 years ago so have taken way too long to get around to it.  We used a local company run by my good friend Jax.  A guy came in a truck and it took him minutes to spread the lime everywhere.  I have to wonder why we never got round to it before, as it was a painfully easy process.  We were left with a small pile of left over lime which was spread around the drip lines of the orchard trees.  Hopefully we’ll see a positive difference with this year’s hay and pasture growth.

The horse arena is slowly taking shape.  Jorgi came and did some more clearing, and now we’re nearly at a point of being able to put down weed-mat between the raised beds which are all constructed.  The dividing fence is in place, only a gate needed now.  There’s lots of hefty work to be done around filling the various beds with organic materials to break down into soil.  We have new neighbours who have horses so can now add liberal volumes of horse poo to these new beds.  And I'm planning on another seaweed run soon.  Some of the beds are priorities for filling with decent soil as they’ll be planted up in the next few weeks with olive, feijoa and citrus trees. The rest will be filled up then covered with hay and left until next year for planting. They will be used to experiment with grain-growing, just to get the hang of it in a small area.  It’ll be great to finally get some things growing in there. 

We finally managed to coordinate Athena's heat with some Artificial Insemination.  It all ended up happening at a busy work time for us, and I chickened out so we called an AI technician to do the deed.  In the end it was definitely meant to be as it wasn't straightforward.  Fortuitously the technician had also brought along a student to whom she explained every step of the process.  I was all ears and learnt several practical tips.  I felt slightly vindicated when she said that heifers who had not been pregnant before (like Athena) are the most difficult to inseminate.  Here's hoping that it worked and we can look forward to her beautiful calf in the autumn.

Karyn joined us to help round up all the sheep and give them some unwanted attention.  One of the ewes had very long and curled up nails on her back feet, and another also needed a bit of a pedicure.  We got them into the race, which had been specially adapted with plastic netting to hold the lambs in (a lesson well-learned from last year - thanks Karyn).  First the lambs were unceremoniously tail-docked and vaccinated.  They probably don’t appreciate how lucky they are to have avoided castration - we’ve decided to downplay the possible genetic implications and keep the best shedding of the ram lambs to be the flock ram for next year.  The other 3 boys can then either be sold as ram lambs, or dispatched in the usual way.  Then we were onto the ewes and the truly disgusting task of trimming toenails.  The vet nurse suggested that garden shears would work – it turned out that she did mean secateurs and not shears, which was a huge relief.  The nails were duly cut, and aside from a spell of nauseous heaving (for me, toenails are the most repugnant things in the world), I’ve recovered from the ordeal.

The prosciutto is hanging in the kitchen and happily no rotten meat smells are lingering in the air.  The salami only took 4 weeks and has been a success – it looks and tastes like salami, just a bit of an odd shape.  It’s not the best salami in the world, but things are looking promising for next year when I’ll be confident enough to be a bit more adventurous with the ingredients.  We’re still very much enjoying the sausages, bacon and other pork products from the freezer. Luckily for Zeus, there's still a shortage of freezer space.

Sam has been busy in the last month.  On the back of the National Brass Band competition last month, there’s been the school performance and the Southern Jam.  His 18^th birthday fell in the middle of the show, and Kevin the band leader secretly arranged for the band to play ‘Happy Birthday’ to him.  We celebrated later at home in our usual way with cake (Lolly Cake at Sam’s request) and champagne.  The Southern Jam is an annual Jazz competition for South Island schools, which always takes place in Blenheim.  It’s a lovely event, this year with 22 bands or ensembles playing over the course of a week in several venues across town (cafes, bars, wineries and schools) before the main Saturday evening event.

 

It's hard to believe that yet another month in paradise has passed.  We're still eating our own eggs, meat and some vegetables, feeding out our own hay, generating solar power and using firewood from the property.  Billy's even making a bit of money on the side with his 'Poo-well Ltd' cow poo sales.  My vege seed order has arrived and I'm itching to get them started.  Roll on spring.  Our lovely 'Grannie-Annie' will be here next month - we hope you're ready for us!