Christmas Day!!

We had a relaxing start to our Christmas day, and that theme carried on during the entire day! Called Italy to send our regards, and will be doing the same tonight to other family members .
We had the Newman family over for a BBQ and a float around on the pond.( As seen on the photo)
The weather came out to play which was a relief as it had been raining for about 2 days preivous. But it turned out to be a steamer.
We also viewed the Queens speach after one news, at around 6.50pm, which made a change from the British time of 3pm.
So all i have to say now is have a cracking , peaceful Christmas!!!!!!

End of year awards

Well it's that time of year when schools, colleges and other organisations give out their annual awards.
and this year we are proud to announce that all the boy's received various awards in different areas.
Eric received 3 awards- one was for being the best turned out air cadet over the year, one was for outstanding conduct , and services to the school.
Stuart also was awarded an award for outstanding conduct, and Patrick was awarded an achievement in mathematics award ,at his prize giving at the primary school.
It's getting nearer to Christmas, and it still feels strange being summer during the yuletide instead of being freezing. It jut doesn't feel right!

Text for pictures

I spent half an hour writing a humorous entry for the blog last night. It gave all the news and the low-down on all the pictures. I pressed the button to publish and the delightful machine informed me that there had been a malfunction. About 1 millisecond later I remembered that it is a really good idea to save your work regularly.

Anyway I am not going to recreate the same entry, the time has passed.

You will see 5 new pictures have been posted. 2 of them relate to Chantelle’s birthday meal at The Bushman’s Hut in Kaitaia. Good food, much appreciated by us all especially on a Tuesday night. Chantelle has a new hobby that is keeping her out of mischief. She has been coating boards, plant-pots, wine bottles, even a new post box in mosaic. It looks good, kind of Hundertwasser style. You have to be careful, if you leave something long enough it ends up coated in mosaic. Chantelle is typically modest about her creations, and has not taken any pictures herself, so I shall have to go round and take a load of shots.

Stuart is pictured just before going to his school disco. It was an 80’s theme night, so he went as a Beatle! His rabbit lives on, though it did escape for a few hours when we had a BBQ for some friends a few weeks back. Fortunately it came back to food and the safety of its hutch when the party had finished.

Paddy is shown waiting for his food. He was quite hungry. He has spent today back at Action world in Paihia swinging about like a monkey. He has a couple of friends round tonight and they are currently making a bivvy tent in the back garden.

Eric is still wearing the mouth metal, and will be doing so for another 18 months. He went on school camp to Houhora Heads again, camping and swimming and fishing. It seemed to go well. He has spent the day helping me dispatch the pig. It took quite a while compared to a sheep. Eric shot it with his .22 and then we heaved it up to the back garden where we put it in an old bath with a fire underneath to loosen the skin and bristles. Once these were off we hung it off the clothes line and removed its guts, lungs and heart. Then we hung it up in the shed covered in wet muslin to set overnight. We will get up at dawn tomorrow while it is still cool and cut it up. We will have a go at making some bacon from the belly flaps. The rest will go into roasts, ribs and random bits of meat. The head and trotters will get boiled up and turned into brawn. We had the liver for tea – very tender. The lungs and heart will be duly be dissected at school.

We did have 2 pigs; the other one has gone to live at Debby’s small-holding until it is a lot bigger. I have to say that I am relieved that they are gone. They are funny animals in a way that I cannot quite put my finger on. Much more demanding than sheep. If they don’t get what they need they squeal loudly. If they are scared they scream so loud that it is painful to listen to them. In fact they do seem not far removed from humans in some ways. I was spending a large proportion of my veg and animal time each day tending to their needs, so it will free up a lot of my time now that they have gone.

The chicks are a bit of good news. They prove that Sidney the expensive rooster from Russell is not in fact infertile as we were starting to think. Their hatching on Wednesday has saved Sidders from the slow-cooker.

Lets see if I can get this on the blog.

Summer Days

Democracy

In amongst all the elections taking place world-wide, people are asking me where is the bryans2nz comment on these momentous events. So having had my lunch, a cup of tea and a couple of nice biscuits, here it is.

Firstly the big one. Shawn Murray was elected as the student rep on the Board of Trustees election at Kaitaia College. His campaign was based on that old electoral favorite "time for a change", and he was greeted around school with the slogan "Shawn for change". I am sure that he will make a competent Board Rep and will learn a lot about how organisations change during his period of office.

More recently we had the House Captains election and Trigg house had to choose from 4 candidates. The whole house assembled in the Hall last Friday to hear their speeches and to make their choice. Sven Wright was one of the duly elected and will continue the family tradition of school leadership - his older brother Shay was Head Boy last year. His speech was witty and well rehearsed and must have contributed to his success.

Obama took a leaf out of Shawn's book and capaigned on a platform of change. I was not alone in expecting hime to be shot when he stepped out in Chicago to greet his supporters after having trounced McCain and co. What a speech! What a task he has in front of him, and yet I feel hopeful that he might be able to do it. If McCain had got in, I would not have been surprised at the American electorate, but it would have made for a deeply depressing global situation. Every time he spoke, all I heard was the word fight.

And then finally last night we had the result of New Zealand's election. Not a world shaking event, but momentous none-the-less given that Labour were kicked out after 9 years and national got in with a sizeable majority. Last time I was most concerned that national would win because their leader was openly divisive. I feared for race relations in this npart of the country where Maori and Pakeha live closely together and mostly get along with each other. National's new leader John Key is a more slippery character. He has a permanent smug grin and to me gives off that aora (?) of slipperiness. We shall see what happens.

NEWSFLASH

NEWSFLASH**** After 13 years and 4 months Eric has now passed his mother and is at least 2 inches taller. It must have been something ate ,as itseemed to happen over the space of fortnight.Here he is with stuart who is not far behind

Milk and teeth

Mike took a trip over to see Ruth and Stephen and their house cow. Soon the boy's were given a milking lesson, Stuart managed well.
And so did the cow, what a patient beast.
Eric went down to Whangerei to have his brace fitted. Apparently , according to kids at school, they are the "cool braces", called Gritts or something. They will be on for 18 months ,then the top ones comes off and a clip on /off retainer fitted ,then 6 months later, the bottom ones come off.
The plate of seafood ,are a little taster of the seafood that we picked up at one of our fav fishing spots.

Bush Camp

Here we are agian. Friday night at the end of week one Term Four. It is light outside at 7.30 pm as our clocks went forward an hour a couple of weeks ago. We are exactly 12 hours ahead of our friends in the UK.

We went on a bush camp in the holiday. It was one of the more notable events, as we did not go away this time. The plan was that the boys had to cope with 2 tarps for a shelter and they were given basic rations - a small bag of rice, oats, lentils, sugar, tea - plus a large bar of chocolate. No meat. If they wanted meat they had to shoot it themselves. Our patient and accommodating hosts were Ruth and Stephan and we based ourselves in a paddock next to the water hole and the hill where we have been very slowly cutting down trees over the winter.

In the end we took one small tent with us as well as the tarps, because we had a small reliable tent and it seemed silly to buy tarps when we could take one tent. Eric and Stuart elected to take the first night iunder the tarp, while paddy and I got the tent. Paddy and I had also thought to bring sleeping bags (plus a Karrimat for my old bones!). Eric and Stuart scoffed at the need for such trappings of civilisation with Eric taking very little in the way of clothes and Stuart taking a thin fleece blanket.

Day one was spent setting up camp, getting a fire going, having a swim (Paddy only) and trying to shoot the elusive rabbits. Zero result, so we had rice and lentils for tea, all cooked in the same pot. Filling, but bland. That night we went out to try and get a possum. Eric tripped over a tree root and bruised his arm and leg quite badly, so the hunting was postponed. We went back and turned in.

3 hours later I awoke in my snug sleeping bag to the sounds of boys trying to stoke the fire up. Eric and Stuart were frozen! What a surprise. I got up and helped them get the fire going well. Stuart and I decided to head off for another hunt, leaving Eric to keep the fire going. We walked a fair way aroung the farm lanes. Possum hunting involves shining a bright torch at large paddock trees. The possum's eyes reflect the light and they generally freeze when they are lit up making an easy target. We were having no joy and I was resigning myself to a meatless breakfast when we heard male possums screaming at each other. We carried on in the direction and found one out in the open in the grass. It was an easy shot.

Back at camp, I left the boys to it and went back to my tent. In the morning I awoke to a pot of possum stew. Stuart had spent the night skinning, gutting and then cooking the beast. It tasted OK. Gamey, a bit stronger than chicken, not far off rabbit.

We spent the morning pottering around camp. Making brews, visiting the house, putting on a bread mix so that we could make camp-bread.

In the afternoon, Stephan took us on one of his trap runs. The animal shown in the trap is a weasel. These are introduced predators that have a devastating effect on native birds including kiwis. He was using potassium cyanide as a poison bait in specially constructed hoppers.

After another tea of .... rice and lentils again with fried bread dough - we called them chapattis, I had another go at the rabbits. There are small numbers of rabbits about the farm and I was very keen to shoot one to eat. They are several orders more difficult to shoot than possums as they are very shy and tak off at the first sign of danger. I had one decent shot during our visit - and missed. Still, it was nice to get away from the incessant chatter of camp and sit hidden in the undergrowth, waiting. Rabbits took ages to appear, but in the meantime alsorts of other wildlife would appear - quail, tomtit, grey warbler etc.

Later on we went to the river to try and catch an eel. Eric pulled a good sized one out. Ruth and Stephan feed them when people come to visit, so it was a bit like taking a pet. Eel is very tasty and we did eat it all....

Paddy and I were under the tarp on night 2. Eric and Stuart slept abit better in the tent. I liked having the openess to the fire and the stars. It was a lot colder than the tent.

On Day 3 we had smoked eel for breakfast. Split down the middle and rubbed with salt and brown sugar. Very tasty. We slowly took the tent down and cleared the area and made our way back to civilisation. Showers were nice, boiling a kettle was convenient, Eric slept like a very tired person for a couple of days until he had caught up on his 2 nights lost sleep. But .... I felt like I had left a part of me back in the woods. The part that dreams of living a simpler life, that read Walden, that finds much of the distraction of modern living to be ultimately unsatisfactory. I resolved to go back and have a longer camp in the summer. We could go for 5 days, do some tree felling, get really dirty, run out of food and go completely feral. At the moment, the boys are not that enthusiastic!

Fishing at Aurere by Patrick

10.9.08
We went fishing at Aureri me and stuart went crab fishing in the rock pools with
our hands sticks and boots.
While eric mum and dad went fishing we found hundreds in a crack but we couldent get them.
We got about 9 crabs but we couldent eat them because they were too warm and there was a sewage thingy magig.
we went home and on the way I got a raspberry tree and an ice-cream i got banana-berry type.
The End

Bush camp

End of Term 3

Here we are at the end of term 3.
It has been a long wet one but the weather has started to come right just in the last week. Back in the last holidays, 10 weeks ago, I said to the boys that we would be leaving the car at home a few times a week and cycling to school. That has not been an option on more than a few days, so we have not got into the habit. Next Term will be different .... maybe.
Pictures are of our piggies first. They are friendly but nervous. The girl is the more friendly of the pair and she quite likes having her back scratched. The boy is still wary and squeals blue murder if you touch him. We gave them fresh grass 2 weeks ago just after the last entry and it has been thoroughly dug over now. I give them 2 sacks of weeds a day so that they get their greens. To my amazement they seem to love carrotweed which is an umbelliferous weed. They scoff it enthusiastically slapping their lips and making more noise than I do eating which is saying something.
The other pic is of the spoonbills at Awanui Wharf, where we went for a fish and a gawp last weekend. It was very still and calm and our fishing was accompanied by a family playing guitar while they fished. We didn't catch much in the way of fish, but we had a nice time.

I went to Auckland on Monday and Tuesday with 2 other teachers and 30 Year 10 boys. They were visiting the main tertiary providers, to get a taste of the possibilities of post-school life. We had talks from Auckland University of Technology, The University of Auckland and Unitec which offers practical based courses. Lots of good messages for the boys on the importance of carrying on at school. One speaker at Unitec quoted Malcolm X who apparently said that "Education is the passport to the future". It was hard to work out how much of the message was going in as most of the participants on the trip are going through that stage in life when a grunt or monosyllable is the maximum response that it is deemed necessary to give to any adult question. We got them all back to Kaitaia safely and breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Family news: Eric was off sick for most of last week, there has been a nasty bug going round. Chantelle has been on a mosaic course today, so guess what you will be getting for Xmas pressies? Stuart wants to build - nothing new there. He took part in his school speech competition last week, talking on the subject of the damaging effects of Playstations. Paddy has been doing a space project and was pleased to get 19/20 which was a big improvement on his Skunk project!

Farm news: The ground has gone from mud to grey dusty clay. I have been planting spuds into the beds where the chicken coop was last winter. The ground is a lovely chocolate colour and looks pretty fertile. We had our first broad beans last week. Priority jobs this holiday are sowing more veggies and finishing the sheep race. That has actually been a priority for most of this year, but I can see it happening this time, fingers crossed.

Til next time.

Signs of spring

Howdy reader(s)! It is with great pleasure that I can declare that spring has sprung upon us. It arrived on September the first technically, but there is a change in the air to back up the dates as well. It stays light until about 6.30pm. That makes it almost light eough to go out and play after tea. It has been a bit warmer as well and I swear that the grass looks a bit happier. It still showers heavily most days, but we cannot have everything.

So the farm pootles along. The pigs are growing and show their displeasure at having turned their entire area into a mud-bath by escaping under the wire every day. They are high on the list for getting fresh pasture tomorrow.

The picture shows the results of a fast and furious fish last weekend. With a low due in on saturday night and a low tide at dusk, Eric and I went for a late afternoon fish at our favourite spot. We had action from start to finish and put smaller fish back to grow bigger. We pulled 6 fish home and smoked some fillets with manuka honey on Sunday. Also did some as sushi and smoked some whole fish with brown sugar and salt. Eric is displaying the fillets. They tasted very good for our tea.

Donna the rabbit escaped while we were all at school and we found her later on in a deceased condition. Stuart was bereft as she was his first pet.

The lambs are all doing well. We had some fun last w/e trying to catch 82, the ram lamb. If humans could run that well at a week old, primary sports day would be like the Olympics! After finally running him down on stewart Island, a ring was applied to his tail to keep it short.

Not much home news really. We are hanging out for the end of term in 2 weeks time.
Helen Clark (the PM) announced that the election would be on November 8th. Could be a close race this time. The opposition is provided by National who are keeping their cards close to their chests, because people are not going to be happy to hear that public services are going to take a hammering. We shall see.

Til next time.

Fishing

We seem to have lots of digital photo files called "fish" or "fishing". Got another one last weekend when Eric, Stuart and I headed north on Saturday for a fish at Paua wharf on the Parengarenga Harbour. There was a(nother) big low due in and the conditions were auspicious for a good fish. That was the forecast ... we awoke to a steady drizzle and wondered if the low had arrived early. We went anyway, stocking up on a range of baits, burley and fuel before gunning up to the North Country. I like heading north because it is quiet and elemental up at Paua. It is often blowing strong wind as well and there is little in the way of shelter.

We arrived to glass like water and an empty wharf. Not many fish to start with but the berley attracted small fish like pipers and parrot fish. To cut a long story short, we caught a kahawai and a parrot fish and lots of pipers. One of the pictures shows Eric modelling the parrot fish. The piper have ridiculously long beaks that must have some purpose thoug I am not sure what. The snapper in the fish bin was donated to us by a boat fisherman who stopped at the wharf to get some pipers. It turned out that he lives just up the road from us in Kaitaia!

The lamb arrived with the low on Sunday morning - we don't call its mother Dippy for no reason. Not only was her timing dodgy, she also decided to have it on Stuart Island before it was cut off by a flooding stream. That gave me a bit of a worry as it would have been tricky to rescue her. Fortunately, the rain stopped and out came the sun and dried up (some) of the rain and the little new born. It is called 81 as it will be eaten. Boo-hoo!

Dippy's daughter Nippy had her lamb on Thursday morning. A little ram lamb "called" 82. He is quite a bit smaller than 81 despite Nippy looking like she was carrying twins. Pregnant sheep look quite deceptive. No sign of a lamb from our last ewe Hilary and in light of my last comment, I am not prepared to speculate on her state.

We had a lovely spring day today after weeks and weeks of rain. The ground dried up a bit and I actually got to do some soil preparation in the veggy garden.

Family news: not a lot really, all tootling along nicely ta.

National news: Winston Peters who is the Foreingn Minister has been stood down by the PM for allegedly cooking the books. An election draws near.

Local news: a fishing boat came in too close at Waipapakauri and was wrecked. It had to be cut up and taken away for scrap. Kaitaia Chess club had an almost double figures turn out last week when the youngest member Paddy Bryan had a shock win over the oldest member George Johnson. Order was restored this week when George beat Paddy!

Til next time.

Noah's Ark

Feeling a bit like Noah on account of the incessant rain and the number of animals that we are accumulating.

The latest acuisition is Donna a Giant Flemish Rabbit that Stuart bought from Kaitaia Market last Saturday. He had been complaining on and off that he was the only child who did not have their own pet. Now he has a rabbit. She will grow into a massive thing. I have tjo keep reminding myself that she is not a meat animal, though crosses of Flemish Giants with other rabbit breeds are apparently good for meat. While she is being doted upon in the first glow of ownership, she spends the days outside in a large coop on the lawn. She is brought inside at night to be cuddled and to run around the front room looking for cables to chew and things to amuse her. She is quite cute. Zephyr the dog and Camo the cat were trying to work out why the rabbit was allowed inside when they were banished into the wet and cold.

You may have noticed in the previous pictures that there was a photo of 2 pigs. We have gone porcine. They are interesting compared to sheep. Very noisy when we go to feed them - squeal their heads off. I will try and remember to take a pic of their pen after a couple of weeks. It has been trashed. As one bloke round here said there is one month's difference between pigs being good for the ground and ruining it. The plan is that they will root up a whole area of grass, crap all over it and then we will be able to grow spuds and pumpkins on it before we get new stock next year. We bought them at 2 months old for $50 each. We will kill them early December and turn them into hams bacon and sausages in time for Christmas.

Other news: no more lambs though I think that Dippy is pretty close. Chickens are coming back into lay with 3 eggs most days off 9 females. The ground is sodden from all the rain so it is hard to get much work done on the place. That's my excuse anyway. Eric and I did make an extension for the pigs last weekend. I have been clearing long grass down our Eastern boundary, partly to increase grazing for the sheep, partly to make way for their race, and also to give to the pigs so that they churn it up and make even better soil.

Family (human) news: Chantelle has been hit by an illness this week. It is sweeping round the country, a sicky, throat coughing bug that has also hit Paddy and Eric for a day each. Paddy moves into his new class room on Monday and wanted that mentioning in here. Eric has started at the gym and is doing some punchbag work. I let him punch some cushions the other night and he nearly knocked me over. He will be a force to be reckoned with if he converts a bit of marge into muscle.

Stuart has been selected for a school chess team playing against Kaikohe Intermediate. He has had a few games with me of an evening and is accepting advice on how to improve his game. Paddy had a game last night and he shows promise as well.

We have the wood stove burning here to fend off the gales, it is Friday night and I have cold home brew in the fridge. Have a good week folks.

New Lamb

We survived the weather, though it carries on being wet and windy. The only casualty
was the pump shed which got blown over. In the middle of all the wind, Survivor, our oldest ewe showed signs of impending delivery. She did not come running over for food as she usually does, but stayed away from the others in a secluded spot. That evening I went out at 8pm to check on her and she had popped out a little lamb and was delivering the afterbirth. I went back at 10pm and the lamb was bleating, but on its back in a pampas clump. Mum was staying close and protecting it. The rain was not as bad, but I was not 100% hopeful that such a small creature would survive through the night. It did! We have named her Ivette because this is the year of the letter "I" and she was as bouncy as the Ivette that we know.

Every cloud has a silver lining, and the bonus of the storm was that scallops got washed up in large numbers on the exposed beaches. A friend of Chantelle's went out and collected some. They were delicious raw.

Weather bomb

Writing this as we are in the middle of a tropical storm. Pressure is going down to 959kPa (?).
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10523616&pnum=0 for all the details.

The wind and rain started at 3am and there was surface flooding by dawn. Rain has been steady since and the wind has been howling. Fortunately for us it has been an Easterly so far, and we are protected by our hill from the brunt of the storm. If my understanding of lows is correct, the direction will swing around to the West as the low goes over and that is when we will feel it. So we are staying close and all feeling a bit nervous. The low pressure is making some of us feel a little light headed. So a day of staying in cleaning up and having a nice warm fire.

Back to the pictures when we went to Auckland a couple of weeks ago now. We travelled down on Friday and had the obligatory toilet stop in Kawakawa and then the UK shop in Orewa. We stayed at the Mount Albert Motor Lodge where we got 2 rooms with a decent kitchen, 5 beds a heater and Sky TV for $140 a night. It was off a main road and a lot noisier than what we are used to, but it was also handy for the places we wanted to visit.

We started off with an Indian takeaway on Friday night. Yummmmm!! I can still taste the lamb pasanda now, and Stuart has developed a taste for Mango Lassi. Everyone had some and even Patrick liked the tandoori chicken. It was from a place called Little India, that was almost empty at 6pm on a Friday night. Apparently all the eating places are having a hard time as people tighten their belts against the recession.

On Saturday we went down in the rain to MOTAT, the Museum of Transport and Technology. This was a favourite with the boys, especially Stuart. Lots of hands-on things to do including a big science hall. We took a tram over to MOTAT 2 and saw all the planes.

I took the chaps over to a wave pool in the afternoon where Eric and Paddy went down the water slide about 100 times. Stuart was obsessed with a set of buckets that are hinged and slowly fill up with water before tipping it on your head. We went to the poshest 4 Square I have ever been in on the way back. It had hand made pasta selling at $15 a packet.

In the evening we watched England getting smashed by the All Blacks, or was it South Africa? I can't remember, it was some rugby game that involved much shoving and pushing and dangerous looking tackles.

On Sunday Chantelle took Patrick and Stuart to church, while Eric and I went up One Tree Hill. This is the famous land mark immortalised by U2 and which once had one tree standing at its peak. The tree was cut down as a protest against something, so now there is a fanatstic view over the whole Auckland area and a large obelisk. It was funny seeing the sheer number of people toiling towards the summit, some running, some panting, some looking rather overdressed with hiking boots and poles (going up a tarmac road), others taking the easy way by driving.

On Sunday arvo we went to Auckland domain to the War Memorial museum. This was a very imposing building that Stuart is "holding" between his hands. It had enough material for several visits, so we split up and Eric went to see the war exhibits on the top floor. The rest of us checked out the Natural history and then we all got varying degrees of lost. There was a large Maori and pacific section on the ground floor that I did not have time to see.

We went over the grass to a huge glass house holding tropical plants. Very well tended and tidy and free.

We went home on Monday stopping off at the inspirational Koanga Gardens on the way. It was good to get away from small-town Kaitaia, but with all the people and cars and pollution and tiny gardens in Auckland, I know I would rather live where I do than there. The boys agreed, not sure about Chantelle...

We all had another week off school which was obviously good. Even Chantelle got a week off. The weather was not too hot, so we dodged showers and had little trips out. Eric went to stay with his friend and we went for a bit of tree felling and shooting at Ruth and Stephan's farm.

That'll do for now.
This was apparently our 366'th post. So we have posted the equivalent of a leap year daily!

Visit to the big city

Paddy's Birthday

Firstly, a big sorry for having not updated this for ages. It is the kiss of death for getting a good readership to leave a blog without an update for more than a few weeks. So here is hoping that you have not forgotten about us.

Winter is here with a vengeance, with lots and lots of rain. We even had lightning this week and strong winds. It was just over a year ago that we had extensive flooding in Kaitaia and other parts of Northland. It was as a result of a very heavy spell of rain on top of weeks of wet weather that had left the ground saturated. Strange that just a few 1000 km to the West there is desert land in Australia that goes years without any rain. What a strange planet we live on.

All in all it has not been the best time for getting out there in the outdoors.

A couple of weeks ago Paddy had his birthday. He is 9 now and growing about 12 inches a week, or so it seems. He had some of his school friends over for the day. In between Lego games, they set off bottle rockets, played tag and had a shooting competition. He had requested chicken and chips for lunch and then they all had icecreams.

There has been a lot of illness around in the community. Kids at school and our own have been limping on until the end of term. The bugs that have been getting people are tricky to shift, coughs that sit for weeks and viruses that come and go making you feel hot and achey for a few days every week.

All in all we are glad to have made it to the high ground of a holiday. We can have a more relaxed routine for 2 weeks. Lots of lie ins and late nights, afternoon siestas. A bit of time to catch up with farming jobs, in between the showers. The sheep are expanding outwards hopefully with lots of lambs. My big jobs are to finally get the race finished and at the same time to fence off the orchard so that the trees can grow without being browsed.