Documentary evidence

For those who like visual evidence click on the link below to see the Christmas Day swimming.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU4hZ561CfE

Christmas Day Part II

We are now at the end of our Christmas day. In keeping with the spirit of reinventing the tradition which we started by opening the presents at Midnight. Our church service was at the Salvation Army, then we went round to Mike and Rissy's for food. And what food! No turkey, brussels, and roast potatoes. But BBQ steak, ham, chicken under a gazebo on the lawn next to a swimming pool where we all had dips at various points during the day.
There was also shooting practice, sunbathing, stories, trampolining and puddings.
Very nice and thanks for the invite.
The evening has followed a more traditional route of wall to wall TV of dubious quality (Brotown, My name is Earl, a UK drama about a woman who has 4 autistic boys, and the history Channel: the worst jobs in the world).
There you go our second Kiwi Christmas.
Suggestions for what Chantelle might be saying by email please.

Christmas Day

We are into Christmas Day here in the Southern Hemisphere. Seasonal greetings to all our readers around the world and hope you have good years in 2007.

We let the boys stay up until midnight last night and they had the countdown going on the computer.
Presents were opened at midnight in a break from tradition and to take the pressure off this morning.

Eric is going to add a few words:eric
"For many years i have been buying toy guns NOT THIS TIME! ......"
Stuart says:
"Mine is dad's old gun. We will be shooting for many years!"
Patrick says:
"Nah"
Chantelle says:
"Happy Christmas to you all"
The rabbits and possums in Church road are trembling.

See y'all and have a good day

Posy

Posy was a joyful bundle of black cat. She spent alot for time either sat on the deck with Zephyr or sat on top of the chicken coup counting the chickens.
She cracked us up when she scaled the great heights of the net curtain on the ranch slider , and gave us a giggle when she hid in the blinds of Mike and Chantelle's bedrooom, then absailed on top of their heads whilst they were asleep.
Best of all is that you always came out of the cat flap when we arrived home ffrom work and school.
Posy was killed on the road on the night of saturday the 9th of December.
We loved Posy.

Skools Out

Well that's it for me! I have sat through 2 prizegivings this week, the seniors on Monday night and then the juniors yesterday. I joined the rest of the staff in farewelling various colleagues who are moving on. I was thanked for being the Year 9 Dean. Today after a lovely lie-in and a mosey round the garden, I wandered into school at midday to tie up some loose ends. I cleared out my office and handed the key to my successor. And that is it until next year. I need a break and to remind myself who my family is.

The boys and Chantelle have to carry on until next week, because for some reason primaries have longer terms than secondaries. I get to have the house to myself, which is blissful especially as Stuart and Patrick are going through a music stage at the moment. Stuart is dithering between guitars and harmonicas. Patrick is showing some promise in the woodwind section and has been practising mary had a little lamb on a very cheapo Wharehouse recorder. Such was his enthusiasm that we splashed out on a $10 upgrade tonight. They go to school at 8am ...

Some pictures above, with more to follow. Firstly Captain Stuart on board the SS Matty. As well as being a pleasure craft, his boat has proved its worth as a work boat when we had to repair the irrigaton system to the veggy garden. Then there is the eating of the first peach from our tree - the one that Margaret and Ian bought us when they were over. It was soft and juicy and divine and we hope to have a bigger crop next year. The boy watching Paddy eat is Reuben and though it does not look like it, he had some peach as well!
The other pics are of the Christmas parade which was held last weekend through town. The boys had helped make the float, but Stuart and Patrick were both ill and could not go on it in the end. Eric was a shepherd with his sheep. The other float is of some pupils from Chantelle's school. Maori women often used to have facial tattoos on the chin like these girls - theirs are not permanent.

England vs NZ

I have not done an update for ages. Lots has been going on, mostly at school, where we have all been busy marking exams, writing reports and then getting ready for next year. All takes a long time, but not the sort of stuff I want to put on this blog really. Tonight is Friday night and the pressure is off me. Prizegiving next week on Tuesday ( and for seniors on Monday night). Then that is it as far as obligatory attendance at school goes until February. I worked out that we get 7 weeks off! It seems like we deserve a long holiday as we have been under a lot of stress this term. I do wonder if this holiday is too long and the others are too short. One day when I am minister of education, I will realise why things rae like this, in the mean-time the future looks good.

Check out the pictures. I wanted to compare our crowded UK life with our spacious existence here. The Google Earth image is taken at the same altitude 280 feet and our property is outline in yellow. Nuff said!

We finally bought 3 more more sheep last week. Beautiful dainty Pitt islands they are. The residents are not being too friendly, but they will accept them eventually I think. We knocked Stony on the neck and had him for tea last Sunday. Decided that we only really need 1 cock and that Stony was a brute and was better off to us as slow cooked tea rather than a vicious rapist!

Other news Northern Force won their first match on Wednesday against the Brazilian team Futbao. We are getting better every week though we have some way to go before we win the cup!

Hopefully the next update will be quicker coming than this one.

Stuart's 10th

It was Stuart's 10th Birthday on the 14th..

He had a really good day and recieved some really cool gifts. Her you can see Stuart with 2 of his best gifts, a watch from Great grandad( thankyou GG), and a hammer from his expansive tool box he got. Now he is busy fixing or in the case of his bike , dismantling things. Infact it's going to take a while to work out what goes where on the bike.
Busy week for all at school, Collage is at the peak with exams and year 12's going off now for study leave.
The primary school still bumbles on towards the summer holidays.
A beehive has been installed up the top of the top paddock, in in the photo you can see 2 aliens inspecting it.( Chantelle in the goldie suit mike P in the other.)

Chicks

Spring has sprung with chicks all over the place. Eric has been rescuing the ones that are too weak to make it on their own. Stony (cokerel son of Rocky) was getting too cocky (!) in the back garden jumping up and attacking us when we came out with food. So he was sent down to his dad's in the coop to get sorted out like some adolescent being sent off to his dad's. That worked pretty well as he was beaten into submission. You could cut the tension with a knife in the coop as they were regularly scrapping, so today we rehoused him in a tractor on the veggy patch, with a wife to keep him company.
One hen with chicks lost a chick on Thursday night and we noticed evidence of a rat or stoat run going through its cage. I set the trap last night and we caught a rat this morning.
We said good bye to Independence the wether sheep last weekend as he went back to Pete and Irene's farm. So now we only have 3 ewes and the grass is romping away. We are still waiting to get hold of a new ewe and ram to get our breeding flock into the shape that we want it.
It was Chantelle's birthday last weekend and we had a pleasant celebration. Chantelle had the day off on Saturday apart from rounding up the sheep (some things just have to get done!). We had a nice meal on Saturday night with bubbly. We were going to go to the beach on Saturday but the weather as not good so we went to Rarawa beach on sunday morning. What a place! It is halfway up to the Cape from here on the East coast. White sand and pretty crowded with 2 other people there apart from us! Chantelle had been camping there with Rissy and the boys in the holidays and our school Year 10's camp there at the end of the year. We had a fish and a swim and Stuart made a hobo stove and cooked bacon, picked a handful of tuatuas, and had an icecream on the way home. Being there reminded me of why we moved here and made me more determined to have more trips like that.
The army came to the boy's school this week and took them on trips round the field in a big lorry. Paddy thought it was cool but eric found it boring. He is getting geared up for leaving primary school and going to the Intermediate next February. Stuart and Eric are going on a one night survival trip at one of the teacher's farms at the end of November. Then they both go on the end of year camp in December. They have certainly had some good experiences at Pamapuria.
I started playing in a football tournament on Wednesday night. Our team is called Northern Force, but I don't think that I will be selected to play for NZ just yet. We are a mixture of school kids and parents playing other teams in a local league. Soccer is not as big as rugby over here, but it gets support especially from mums who don't like the violence and injury associated with rugby. I do not much enjoy watching union, league is better as the pace is a bit faster. Anyway we had two games and lost both. I thoroughly enjoyed it came home knackered but buzzing and wasn't too crippled on Thursday.
Oh yes! we had fireworks last Saturday. It was fun especially when the last one fell over and set fire to the hillside. Chantelle and I have never moved so fast with a bucket of water. Due to increasing problems with youths misusing fireworks it is likely that we will not be able to buy them next year.

What a good dog.

Zeph is amazing. He is so tolerant of the other animals.

When posy came , he let her bite and play with his tail. And now he is such a softy with a couple of new chicks. Mind you I thought he inhaled one the other day when he was licking it.
God bless big , scary looking dogs ,with small brains!

Blog Anniversary

I was looking back to see what we were doing and realised that we are into our second full year of blogging. It feels like a lifetime ago in a parallel universe!
Here was our first post
http://bryans2nz.blogspot.com/2004_10_25_bryans2nz_archive.html

Labour Weekend

Last weekend was "Labour Weekend", the traditional start of Summer, when people start swimming outdoors again, the camping season starts in earnest and everyone gets Monday off work. We all felt at home here cos it was like a British Bank Holiday weekend, blowing a gale, lashing it down and tv pictures of traffic jams as people crawled out of and then back to Auckland. Still no-one could take away the 3 day weekend so we had a chilled out time pottering about, dodging the showers.
We shouldn't really complain about the wind here as it hit 120km/hr down in Welly and people took 9 hours to cross Cook Strait (normally 3 hours) with 5 metre swells.

It was a strong wind which put paid to my ideas of catching our sheep and checking out feet and other bits. We went to see Dee's Pitt Island sheep on the Saturday. They have a farm carved out of the bush up in the hills and the boys like it there, because they have big wooden drums on the lawn that they can play on. We watched some of their sheep being shorn by a professional. I was convinced that whilst hand-shearing is an interesting experience, it is better to do it with an electric hand-piece in a fraction of the time. We didn't get to see our potential new ram Skippy, as he had skipped off into the bush and hadn't been seen for days.

On Sunday we retreated indoors and all the boys helped make a new mail-box to replace our old one that has taken a hammering from someone. We painted it a couple of times and it will go up soon (in the next year hopefully).

Marine aquarium news: total smelly disaster, only the crabs survived a week and the rest had to be siphoned out. Perhaps I should have believed the book that warned about using real weed and sand and recommended scrubbing everything.

Pictures to follow, luckily for you all we cannot upload smells!

Marine aquarium

We have been back at school for a week. All of us apart from Stuart who did 2 days and then came down with a nasty strep throat again - he had to take off Wednesday to Friday. We arrived at this weekend worn out from the unaccustomed early mornings and full on days. This weekend has been time to catch up on sleep and generally chill out.
We had a Fawlty Towers video night with Mike and some of his kids l;ast night. 6 episodes one after the other. Still funny but I couldn't have coped with any more. Basil is such a tragic character. Why does he not save himself a whole load of trouble and tell the truth. Him and Sybil could use some Relate counselling as well, either that or a ME weekend!

Today we heard through the grapevine that there was going to be a 12 hour power cut while some repair work was done. Fortunately I heard early enough to go into school yesterday and do my photocopying. That meant we had the day to play. It has been a bit grizzly, overcast with an unsettling wind and rain not far off. we decided to do something with the large fish tank that has sat gethering dust in the corner of the dining room for a year. This was brought about by Paddy producing some mud crabs that he had been "storing" in a plastic bag since his camping trip .... 11 days ago!
By some miracle of endurance they were all still alive and he had them housed in an ice cream tub. So we trotted off to Henderson Bay and got rocks and various invertebrates from the rock pools. we picked up some sea water at pukenui wharf and put the whole thing together at home. As Eric said it is like having Animal Planet next to your dining table. I will stick up some pics in due course.

Animal news: 2 ewes have been shorn. No 14 took 2 1/4 hours last Sunday. I am getting the sheep back on nuts so that we can get them doing what we need them to instead of chasing them round the paddock over and over again. One of teh barred rocks started sitting on 11 eggs on Tuesday so we put her in an isolation coop today. Eating lots of broad beans and are concerned about the resultant increase in greenhouse gases from Northland. A lot of my seedlings do not like the nutrient poor compost I am growing them in and they aren't too keen on the strong winds that have been drying them out either. In a future time I will build a lean to greenhouse.

Crazy Boy

It has rained a lot today so we have had a domestic day of pottering about, watching vids and getting out for short spells between to showers.
Patrick has been getting pretty obsessed with various computer games "Age of Empires" and "Settlers" which seem to be very complex games that go on for days and involve building civilisations and having battles with other civilisations.

In between doing that, or rather, when he is forced to do something active to stop his legs from turning into withered stumps, he goes hard out. Check out this vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzWEmzEmjGQ

Walk to the Cape

Last Friday Eric and I started our long planned "survival" trip to Cape Reinga. We were accompanied by Mike and Nathan - who is the same age as Eric. The plan was to walk from the top of 90 Mile Beach to Cape Reinga taking 3 days and carrying all our own gear.
The short of the story is that we did it!
The long version could take a while to tell, but here are some of the highlights.
Looking back down 90 Mile beach towards the Hole in the Rock from the top of the cliffs. Taking off a heavy pack at our camping spot. Completing the 10km walk on the first day so that we could explore on the second day. Catching and eating Kahawai and mussels for breakfast, lunch and dinner on Saturday. Finding alsorts of treasures washed up on the beaches: a whale jawbone on Twilight, a sea horse, life belt. Not seeing any other humans apart from ourselves and a couple of fishing boats on Saturday. Listening to the sound of waves crashing whilst sleeping and dozing. Not being caught by a tsunami - we would have been scuppered as our camp was a few metres above the high tide mark. Being out of cell phone range. Seeing Eric walk and reach the end. Completing the challenge myself. Being stranded on Taupiri Island as the tide came in. Seeing Cape Reinga from Te Werahi beach far below from a completely different perspective than the usual one. Getting picked up by our transport - Marty's Pack and Paddle from the Cape Car Park - just after we arrived there. Having a shower to remove 3 days of grime when we got home. Starting to plan further adventures.
The pictures show various stages of the walk. I was amazed that despite it being a maintained track that is mentioned in the guidebooks, we saw only one other backpacker in the 3 days, despite it being a holiday weekend. Not taht I am complaining too much. The character of the trip would have been different if there had been more people about. I was profoundly grateful that it was so relatively easy to escape from the rat-race for a couple of days to recharge.
I will perhaps post other news in another post.

Walkin to the Cape trip pics

Link to Stuart's play

Having trouble getting the link posted up! Attempt no. 8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHQRjCb8nVc


or try this:

Drama King

If you have a fast connection, you might want to check out part of Stuart's debut to local acting:...
He has been rehearsing every Wednesday night for the last few terms and on Thursday night we trooped down to the Little Theatre to watch him perform.
We were treated to a smorgasbord of dramatic pieces, ranging from classical Macbeth to a modern play on the 3 little pigs - where the pigs have got a scam going where they lure wolves to their death for regular food. Stuart had bit parts in several pieces and played Evilus Ploticus in a Playlet called "Evil Plots".
He did the part well and got some laughs from the audience.
More soon ...">

Spot the weeds

Sheeps revenge

No update last weekend as it rained all weekend, were all fighting off illness and feeling a bit fed up given that it had been sunny all week and then the rains descended on Friday night and it remained wet all weekend. Don'tya just hate it when that happens? Eric and I were up at first light on Sunday to despatch 3 of the ducklings. We ate 2 of them for tea and they made a good feed. What with all the hens eggs we are getting, we are doing pretty well for produce at the mo. The veggy garden is coming on slowly, peas have come through and we had the first broad beans with the duck. We bought seed potatoes and I sowed lots of tomatoes, courgettes and pumpkin today.

We have been busy today doing some outside spring cleaning. gave the lawns their first shave of the year, more than anything else just to pick up all the detritus that has been sat there for months. The back lawn has taken a battering from where the ducks and chickens have been crapping all over it. It will recover, but it will be a while before it resembles a Cambridge College lawn.

I sheared Shania the goatess last week. Using hand shears. It took ages and my hand still aches a week later. She looks better now without all the long gorsey hair. She is a bit emaciated, but whenever we think that she is going into terminal decline, she pulls out and starts springing about the place. I don't have many very sentimental feelings towards any of the animals we have, the cats aren't too bad but I could happily live without them. I have to admit to quite liking Shania though, she is quite tame an will eat maize from my hand, plus she is pretty independent and disappears when I am looking for her sometimes. She is also co-operative in her attitude towards treatment, is easily caught when she needs her feet doing or is being shorn etc. I guess that she is a pet and I have no plans to eat her as she came with the house and has slaughter immunity. Well there you go.

The same cannot be said for the sheep! I have no feelings of sentimentality towards the sheep at all. Our friend Mike says that he does not have the patience to deal with sheep and that he would finish up shooting them all. (Which is what he did to the 2 the other week!) I can sympathise with that. Sheep are reckoned by some people to be determined to kill themselves. Let me give you and example. Independence and No14 have been limping slightly for a week now. They obviously have a problem with their feet that needs addressing. So this afternoon all the boys were rounded up and kicked out of the house to get the sheep into the yards. The yard was prepared, the holding gate strengthened to stop them from busting out and breaking the poor sod's hand who is holding it shut at the time. The foot shears, spray, drenching liquid and hand shears gathered together. Then we went down to bring the 4 animals up. 3/4 of an hour later we gave up, having chased them 5 times round the middle field. They were determined not to head up the hill. If they had done so they would now be able to walk without discomfort, their tummies would be free of parasitic worms and one of them might even have had a haircut. Instead the stubborn little woolies are wandering round even more footsore than they were before!

We shall have another go tomorrow....

Cardsharp

A few pictures for you. We have been extending the boys education by teaching them about the perils of gambling. We started with Pontoon and as you can see by the size of Paddy's pile, he is a natural. He has got the game well sussed as you can see from my worried expression. We will learn poker when I can wean them all off pontoon.

Been nice and dry this w/e. NZ Father's Day so I got breakfast and bed and was indulged by having a non-whinging trip to the garden centre. I have been getting the veg garden ready. as you can see from the picture, it is a very heavy, sickly looking clay and so we got 4 bags of soil conditioner and with Paddy's help, planted some peas, beans and radish and carrots this afternoon.
The other picture is of a peach tree in the garden which is now in flower. I do not hold out too much hope of us getting any peaches, but we live in hope.
I spent Friday night at Te Hapua marae with the school trip. It is the northermost settlement in NZ, rich in natural beauty and steeped in history. We got a locals view being shown round the cemetery by Bundy Waitai and the school by the Y9 pupils. We all embarked on some boats that looked like WWII landing craft and that had powerful motors but no rails. We went to an oyster farm and ate oysters fresh from the sea, then on for a fish. Despite several combined centuries of fishing experience and about 30 lines being dipped in the water, we caught nothing big enough to take home, but it was lovely out there.
All in all an amazing stay and difficult to convey in words, so i'll stop there.

Not for the squeamish

Pictures

Mutton on the menu

Well we finally got around to killing 2 of our ewes today. We chose No19 and No 55 because they were the wildest ones who always hung back when I fed them every day. They are the most difficult sheep to yard and given that we do need to get the sheep in for a check regularly, it was fair enough that we should cull out those ewes that were least cooperative.
The starter plan was to get all the sheep up to the yard and then pop the 2 chosen ones in the race. It all started off well as they were the only 2 that headed up to the race. the other 4 stayed in a tight flock under the totara tree. So mike and I steered them up the hill very gently towards the race. Our race is set at quite an obtuse angle that apparently does not encourage entry and the 2 girls decided to make a break for it after all.
Plan 2 was to drop them in the field. Using the bins to read the ear tags and with Mike using the .22, the ewes were shot cleanly in the head from 20 feet away whilst they stood next to their mates.
The living sheep only ran off when we started to approach the carcases. Their throats were cut to drain the blood and we left them for a bit.
The next job was to gut them. The boys took a keen interest in this, especially Stuart, who did his best to identify the internal organs. We found that each ewe had 8 teeth the 4th pair of which were fairly small relative to the others.
We kept the heart and lungs for school dissections and the liver and kidneys for our own consumption.
We took the carcases up to the garden to be skinned. This was quite fiddly and time consuming but working as a team we got the job done - just like Bob the Builder!
We had thought about butchering ourselves, but decided to use a professional for this first time.
Stuart and eric have commandeered the fleeces and Stuart has been trying to spin some of the wool.
Tea was liver and fried bread - very tasty. We have asked the butcher to turn the rest into roasts, chops, mince and sausages.

The other pictures are of a trip Eric and I took last week to the gumfields above Ahipara. They used to dig up Kauri gum here many years ago, now it is a vast expanse of low growing bush and scrub.

My family and other animals

Some of us are coming out of illness, Chan and nyself, while Stuart is going down with the lurgey. All 3 boys took part in their school's cross country races yesterday which took place at Pukepoto School. They are all a bit achy today.

Not a lot of news this week. The chickens have started to lay much better and we are getting more eggs now than we have had since the Autumn. That gives us something to barter with. Our neighbour gave us a long roll of instant fencing that was surplus to her needs and so we installed it as the veggy garden fence last weekend. I also started to dig a drainage ditch along the edge of the wire. The plan is that each veggy bed will be raised and the water will drain down into the stream. I might be able to use the same channels to irrigate in the summer if I can rig a pipe up from the water trough to the garden.

The pictures are of assorted animals and eric. The centipede was about 6 inches long and was found by Mike in a manuka stump. They have a nasty nip apparently, but I did not try it out.

London Visit.

During the next few weeks i shall start to add photo's of our journey to the UK.
As well as meeting up with lovely family and friends ,we also had a small cahnce to visit some great places.
Here follows some photo's of Eric's trip to the big smoke. The smoke was this time caused by the heat as well as fumes.
As you can see the weather was great and so were the views.
Visit to London courtesy of Grandad Ely.

It is still raining and now we are ill!

Well we could be in Lancashire the way the weather has been this week. Cold winds and heavy showers. Last w/e there was so much rain that the river that flows past the start of Church road ad risen by 6 metres. I did wonder if it would go over the top before I got back from school. Fortunately it did not. In fact the council are pleased that the drains coped with such a lot of rain as they have been removing silt and obstructions over the past year and this was the first dbig test of how well they had done their work.
The dampness took its toll and whilst the rest of the family soldiered on, I took thursday and Friday off work. It was very quiet and restful being at home with just the animals for company all day. I am over the worst of it and hope to get back to things on Monday.
Other news: Eric has started working out 3x a week at a local gym. Chantelle is going as well, so they are spending quite a bit of time inspecting muscles in front of the mirror for early signs of swelling. Myself I don't see what's wrong with taking an axe to the pampas when you want an upper body workout, but I guess it is not the same.
There are some signs of spring in the air. The nights are slowly but surely getting shorter. Being a nerd through and through I have marked the outline of Kaitaia Heights onto our kitchen window and I am marking the position of the setting sun every week. it is good to see it heading back towards Ahipara and getting later by a few minutes each night. Early on in the week I was able to go down to the dam and cut scrub for an hour in the light after work. The chucks have started laying again, production began within 2 days of my increasing their rations and giving them layers mash.
Pictures may follow when I take some.

Its raining

The forecast was for a weekend of rain and so far that is what we have got. Hence the logburner picture.
We have spent the week recovering from journeys. Chantelle was back at school on Monday, but were both under par with a bout of the virus that is doing the rounds.

The sheep is called Independence which is not a very appropriate name for a wether who jumped 2 fences to get back to his girls rather than go off a solo journey back to the farm on which he was born. The 2 most awkward ewes got a week's reprieve because the homekill butcher we were going to use is busy today.

Meanwhile we are feeding increased rations to the hens as we havent had a single egg for a fortnight and no more than 1 a day for the last 4 months. i am starting to wonder if they have either a) all gone on strike b) are not getting enough food or c) are actually all cocks in disguise.

They are back

Just a quickie to let you all know that Chantelle and Eric are now back at the official residence in cloudy Kaitaia.
The short version is that the plane they were travelling on (Emirates) was steadily delayed as the journey proceeded. They ended up landing in Auckland at 8.30pm on a Saturday night with no flights north until Sunday at 9. So I nipped down to the airport to pick them up.
We got home at 3.30 am. Eric is still sleeping off his jet lag, Chantelle is communicating with her mother by phone, Stuart and Paddy were acommodated at Mike and Rissy's which is where I will be heading shortly.
More later, maybe with some pictures of Blighty ...

Very ,very hot ,believe it or not!!!

It's been cracking weather over here. My goodness, it's been between 34-36c here. Mind you see people on the beach in the full with nothing more than a small bottle of factor 2 next to them.
All this means that since arriving in blightly ,Eric and myself haven't really slept at all well. Never mind.
Some photo's that follow are of Eric with Great Grandad and Great Grandma. We had a smashing time with both Greats , and hope to able to see them again . GG took us to Southampton to see some sights of the city and them onto a rather nice restaurant next to the yachts. Whilst Eric went with GG to the forest , I went with GGM to Shirley for some girly shopping.
Then off up to Lancashire, first stop , Mike and Joy. Joy is looking really well despite having a broken femur. Mike being well as well.
Then up to Lancaster. Here we bumped into loads of people, and enjoyed many a glass of wine too.
Peterbough was the next stop at Alexes. Here I had a chuckle.
So now i am at Stretham, sweating.
So that's just a potted run through. More to come.
P.S Matty is cute.

Start of Term 3

Back to the routine with a difference of having half of the family not here.
We started off well getting up bright and early and getting to the bus-stop early. It got more and more difficult as the week went on, so it was a relief to get through to this morning's lie in.

The weather has been pretty wet for much of this week, but we were back to strong sun today. There was a chilly wind and Patrick complained of feeling cold as he set off for town wearing nothing but a tee shirt. (Don't worry Chan, he had a coat but hadn't put it on!)

There has not been much earth shattering news. We watched our various vids last night. Stuart enjoyed The Motorcycle Diaries with me picking up on the comic moments if not the subtitles and strong socialist message. I had only seen this film on the plane coming over here so it was good to see it under more comfortable circumstances.

We did the Saturday morning trip into town to get food and fruit and animal feed.

This afternoon one of Paddy's friends from school came overto play with lego. I made them go out for a fresh air braek after an hour and suggested that they feed the animals. I got a funny look when I suggested that they wear gumboots as they trotted off down the hill into the mud and manure wearing no shoes. It is quite a struggle to get Patrick to wear anything on his feet and even though I send him to school wearing a coat and shoes, he rarely comes home wearing either "They are in my bag!"

I made the most of the peace by planting 2 of the apple trees bought in the holiday. Someone suggested that you should dig a $100 hole for a $20 dollar tree. That made sense, looking at how some trees I just bunged in last year are not doing particularly well. We now have well planted Lobo and Ballarat on the hillside next to the dam.

It was great to be able to sit down in the sunshine and enjoy the peace. I remember being on the allotments and never feeling very relaxed about sitting down because of all the other people about.

There have been several wild ducks on the dam this week. 3 male mallard this morning. The harriers seem to be displaying at the moment as well. I saw a pair high up over the Matthews reserve during the week, making big swoops round in the sky and calling to each other. I remember seeing marsh harriers doing a similar display in the UK where they passed food to each other whilst in flight.

I let the chicken run chucks out for some freedom this afternoon. Rocky was first out followed by his six hens. They were reluctant to come out. Rocky was soon up by the goat pen checking out Stony and sh**ing all the hens he has not had access to in the last week. When it came time to get them in we managed to get Rocky and 3 hens back in.

Been having a think about sheep this week and am interested in the wiltshire breed. They shed their fleece in the spring by themselves so do not need to be sheared or dagged. Their feet are better than the Romneys we have got, and they supposedly have 2 lambs each that put on meat quickly. I am looking into places that might be able to sell us a few.

This time next week Chantelle and Eric will be back - yippee. How about sticking up some pictures of Blighty?

Pirates

Paddy did this pic of a pirate using Tux paint.
We were supposed to be having a day out 1:1 father son bonding sort of day, but it has not gone too well. It was rainy and cold so we decided to go to the pictures at the Swamp Palace rather than drive for several hours down to see Tane Mahuta. We were late setting off because someone could not find any shoes to wear, then when we arrived the place was sold-out. Paddy has told me that he hates me at regular intervals and that he would like another dad! My main crime has been to say that he cannot have $60 from his savings to buy (another) Lego set. This after he has spent $50 of bithday money in a fortnight. We have come to a truce whereby he saves $30 of pocket money and then matches it with his savings.
Stuart come back tomorrow from his camp.
Eric and Chan have just phoned and are off to the Titanic museum with (great) Granddad Ronald this morning

Back at the ranch

Meanwhile back at the ranch, Mike and paddy soldier on keeping the home fires burning. We have just stacked a ute load of firewood to keep said fires burning. Its pretty cold at times and having a warm house helps to dry the mound of washing.
This is an abbreviated version of the post I wrote this morning that was several paragraphs long, full of witty comments about the soap opera that is our life - who needs to watch corrie?
Anyway I was about to add a picture and publish my offering to the world when the screen went blank and the music stopped and the fridge stopped. For those people looking for a downside to this idyllic life that we are leading - one of those is the power-cuts that we suffer here in Northland. NZ is struggling to generate enough electricity to meet peak demand and most generation happens south of Auckland. Up here we are the first to lose power. A few weeks there was a major cut that lasted for several hours. The kids were sent home from rural primary schools as the sewage and heating all need electric. Auckland came to a stand-still. It was all caused by a rusted piece of metal at a sub-station apparently. Gave us a wake-up call about the need to be able to cope on our own. Mind you we all moaned up here where it is quite mild even in the depths of winter. There were farmers down in South Island who were cut off for 2 weeks by a heavy snowstorm that brought down their lines.
Anyway the blog entry disappeared into he ether and this is the replacement.
The picture shows the new chicken run that houses Rocky and 6 wives, it is an artistic representation of reality. Chantelle has the camera in the uk, so I shall be illustrating my blog entries in alternative ways!