Rain, rain go away, come back next year.

We need rain in the winter to re-charge the groundwater, our dam, fill up the water tank and generally see us through the dry, hot summer. Now, I think we have had enough rain. We are into our second week of daily grey and wet. We have had about 10mm every day on average for 2 weeks. So, that's enough thanks. The pictures show the effects of this moisture on the garden. Gloopy mud on all the paths, sodden beds and depressed looking grass. It remains warm enough for some plants to keep moving. In fact it has been remarkably mild the last week or so. The main crops I have in at the moment are the garlic, the broad beans and the mustard. The garlic will sit through this weather without any problems. I put it in a month earlier than I usually do in the hope that the bulbs will not split like they did last year. The broad beans are partly there for eating and partly as a seed crop for school. They also give the bees some forage and finally act as a soil improver: they add nitrogen and keep the soil structure more open than a bare bed would. The mustard is another over-wintering green manure. It has a yellow flower and I will have a go at saving some of its seed in due course. The chooks like eating the big plants and it makes a change for them from eating grass. The chooks are laying pretty well at present. They have a break just before the solstice as the days get really short. Just before the shortest day (June 21st) the first hens started laying again. We get about 5 - 8 eggs every day from 13 chooks. That means we can have a couple of egg dishes a week, never need to buy eggs and can even barter the surplus. One picture shows the view down the hill towards the middle field. We planted 6 more olives on the hill this winter. Along the pathway we have planted apples and other deciduous fruit trees. On the left a band of native trees is going in. I had tried growing forest trees out in the open in this area. Species such as kohekohe and taraire. After they kept dying I pondered on why this might be. I suspect that they do not like to grow straight into grass with no shade or shelter from the wind. The latest plan is to plant a mixture of karo, coprosma and guava for the first five years. As these establish, they will shade out the grass reducing the need to mow. The guava will hopefully attract pigeons in and these will crap out native seed in their shit. These will be able to grow into the bare soil and will do much better. That is the plan. Check back in 10 years time to see if it works!

Silly pictures

Not got a lot of exciting pictures at the moment, so I have added some borrowed from other people. Quirky and made me smile. A bit like the Olympic opening ceremony that we watched live last Saturday morning. Chantelle called me in just as the music sequence had started. We had missed the rapid move through English history. With MySky we were able to watch it later, and then again with an invited audience during the week. Not sure why they were showing all the history - Kenneth Branagh swanning about pretending to be Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Why? Never mind, it was a good summary of the incredible things that have come out of England. The Industrial Revolution, the internet (apparently), a diverse range of cultural innovations: the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Punk, Dance Music and on into the present day. Comedians such as Rowan Atkinson, the Pythons, Harry Enfield. It was 2 hours of pure nostalgia. A mixture of raw power mixed with funny bits. James Bond parachuting into the stadium with the Queen and Rowan Atkinson playing the Chariots of Fire - genius. It made me reflect on my roots. And on my status as an immigrant. I will always be English in my core, no matter how long I live in NZ or anywhere else. My children will eventually be more Kiwi as they stay here longer and their English experiences fade into the background. But I will always be English. There is a shared Englishness that marks me out as different from a 100% Kiwi. Defining what makes the 2 races is an interesting exercise. The English are at heart cynical complainers who none-the-less have a blitz spirit when faced with adversity. Kiwis don't like to complain out loud - or feel gulity when they do. A whinge is quickly followed by a "She'll be right" or "It's all good". POMs are labelled as "whinging POMs". The English regularly moan for extended periods without feeling a need to lighten things up. There are arguments both ways for which race has the better mental health. Another point was made by an Ozzy colleague at work. She said that when you emigrate you take with you a snapshot of the culture you are leaving as it was at the time of departure. That stays the same in your head while the culture left behind continues to change. You end up a decade later having a vision of the Motherland that bears no relation to the reality. She talked about Greek friends at school whose fathers were very restrictive and protective of their daughters because that was how Greek society worked when they left Greece a generation earlier. Modern Greece is different now. This maybe mean that after being an immigrant for a decade or more, you end up not fitting in anywhere. Immigrants are always different in their new homeland with their strange accents and ideas. But if they go "home" they are also different like time travellers. I do not regret emigrating from England when all things are considered. The quality of life of my family has improved on the whole. Nuff said. PS I apologise for any typos. I am off duty!

Auckland

We went to Auckland last week for a couple of nights. Stayed at a motel in Mount Albert that was right next to the railway track. So it was only natural that we would use public transport to get into the city. For $24 we bought a family pass that gave us unlimited travel on the trains. Of course the boys wanted to push this to its extreme by visiting every station on the 4 lines. We did not quite do that but we went on all the lines and had a good look at the back of lots of houses. I certainly would not want to live in Auckland fr any length of time. It took me 10 minutes to cross the road each morning to get to a abkery to buy bread and to visit the newsagent. Double lanes of commuter traffic that would have run you over if you tried jaywalking. We met Walter in town and went out for a pizza at Cassette 9 down a backstreet. He is doing well in the traveller community and is meeting lots of people. On the way home we found a new place of wonder called Farro Fresh. When I say we found it, I mean that we visited it for the first time. There were 20 people working there and a car park full of people who had found it before us. It is a giant deli and we drooled over the breads, meats and cheeses. We shall be returning.

Cabaret

On the last Saturday of Term two stuart went to the school Cabaret. This is the NZ equivalent of an American prom. The girls spend weeks selecting outfits and talk about little else at school. They spend all Saturday getting ready. The boys make an effort to look good. Most of them wear suits and together they lookm smashing. It is a nice evening to go along and help at. There is rarely any trouble and all the students have a good time. Stuart went with a couple of friends. The school hall is decked out by the senior council who burn the candle at bth ends setting up and taking down the whole cabodle. This year's theme was Narnia. The guests arrived in the hall through a door that was a cupboard.

Garden

Winter in the garden means that plants slow down. Some carry on growing albeit slowly. The temperature goes down to below 0 at night and we have had a couple of ice forming frosts so far this year. But most days the sun comes up and the temperature steadily climbs to about 15C. So plants experience a wide fluctuation in temperature. The sub-tropical plants do not like this and die. We plant them next to the house where there is protection from the cold. We have guava and tamarillo in fruit as I write this. Down at the bottom things have to take their chances. We have been doing a fair bit of work on the middle field this year. When Walter was here the boys dug quite a lot of holes for new plantings of olives and natives. I have a snakey path that connexts the dam to the bottom field. The plan is that there will be a band of native planting to the left of this path. There will be a temperate orchard on the other side. To this end I ordered 6 rare breeds of apple trees from tastytrees.co.nz . These are grown by Chris and Brit who live way up in the hills near Mangamuka. Brit delivered 6 bare rooted apples yesterday. For the first time ever I was ahead of the game because most of the holes were already dug! I still spent 1/2 hour planting each tree as they will hopefully grow strong and produce lots of fruit. Today I planted a Cox's Orange Pippin and a Merton Worcester. The pictures show some close ups of a tree lucerne (tagasaste) that is flowering. I grew this tree from seed bought from Trademe. I do not think that they like our wet clay soil. But this one has lasted long enough to flower. They put nitrogen into the soil and are favoured by food forest gardeners. There is also a picture of a globe artichoke in flower mid-winter. What is that all about? Close to this plant are a couple of capsicums that have fruit on them. I found them to be perennial when planted close to the house, but did not expect them to be so hardy. Thanks to Hunter for pointing out that there were spelling mistakes in this post. Have I found them all?

More holidays

We are just over half way through the mid-winter break. No posts for a whole term since last holiday! Why? Busy, busy , busy during term-time. In fact that was a really busy term. Busier than usual, though teachers rarely get much down-time during term. Lots of good things happened at work. The new course we have been developing has taken off and we took 3 days off school to go possum trapping, 1 day off to learn quad riding skills, plus 3 afternoons of bush walking around a local nature reserve where we have started to trap pests. Each day out takes organisation in itself with a lot of paperwork to take kids out of school. Plus you have to set lessons for all your classes who are staying at school. It is a major pain and it does put one off leaving the "safety" of the establishment. But the minute you drive out of school with a van load of escaping students it feels exactly like that .... you have escaped from some kind of prison. I think that a large portion of students would learn more and faster and without the tensions that arise in school, if those children were taken out of the institution of school. There are echoes of previous work in learning disability services in that last paragraph. Normalisation is just as important for mainstream kids as for those with disabilities. It is cheaper and more "efficient" to herd large numbers of them into one class room with a teacher ratio of 1 to 25 pupils, than it is to allow pupils to learn in more life like contexts. Just as it is cheaper to stick all the disabled kids into a special centre with the minimum number of staff that you can operate the place with and say that you are meeting their needs. Anyway, after that little digression you will be wanting pictures of the children I suppose. I shall hunt through the hard drive and post some up.

Found some pictures atken during the term. Stephan turned 60 and he had a birthday bash. Good food and company. Been trapping in the garden to get the hang of the traps we are setting in the bush. Here is a rat caught in a fenn trap. They are pretty effective and my favourite trap so far out of the ones that I have set. Stuart and I spent an enjoyable evening on Moturoa Island counting calling kiwis. We went over on a Saturday afternoon and were sent to a bush edge towards the end of the island. We had to listen out for and record any kiwi on a large map. We heard 2 males calling. Overall the survey estimated an island population of about 60. Very healthy. We were posing for the pictures!

Work

The following posts show some of the fun things that we have been up to this holiday. We have also had lots of jobs to do so the boys have been lending a hand. One big job was cutting the firewood into stove sized lengths. We used a circular saw to do this with appropraite safety gear. Some of the fish was filleted and smoked in our homemade smoker. We salt it first and then coat in a brown sugar glaze. Smoking is done with ti tree wood from the firewood. It takes about 4 hours but the result is delicious. We have also been planting trees in the fields. Boys have been digging holes and then I pop a tree in. So far we have planted 6 olives, 2 cherimoyas, 2 karos, a persimmon and 2 cranberries. There are plenty more trees that need planting and so we still need plenty more holes.

More fishing

Walter has been with us this holiday. He arrived in Auckland a week ago and has been getting used to New Zealand. One day last week we went out fishing with Merv on his big boat. The forecast was not too bright - a 20 knot South easter. That is supposed to be the worst direction for fishing and I was tempted to postpone the trip. It was our last chance of the holiday so we went for it. Sadly Chantelle had to work that day and we left her in town. Paddy was not interested and went off with Rissy and Reuben. The forecast was very wrong. It was calm as a mill pond for most of the day. We had a great day fishing, birdwatching and generally chatting as we went up the harbour asthe tide went out and then came back down the harbour as it came back in again. Merv favours longlining and uses what seems like ridiculously long traces with 2 hooks baited with a small mount of mullet. A weight is put on after about 15 metres of line has gone out with the trace. The system worked and we caught a mixed bag of mostly kahawai with some snapper. Nothing very huge but a serious amount of fish to keep us and some friends fed for quite a few meals. I also like spinning off the boat. There were little schools of kahawai drifting past the boat at regular intervals slurping small fish and flies off the surface. As each school passed we cast the lure over the top of them and then pulled it through the school. It was not easy but that made the occasional successful hook-up and even rarer landing a real thrill.

Fishing

We went collecting firewood at Ruth and Stephan's place one day. Chantelle and I escaped way up north to Paua for a night in a tent. The wind was freshwhen we arrived but we caught a good haul of kahawai. The next morning, the wind dropped to othing and we had a good paddle about the harbour. A good paddle but only one fish that time. Paddy is holding the first decent watermelon that we have managed to grow here. They do not seem to like the wet soil, but this one survived and fruited and even ripened. It was eaten in a matter of hours by the watermelon addict.

Easter holiday

Uploading some pictures from the last couple of weeks. We have been on Easter holidays and have been blessed by some very fine weather. The first Saturday I went exploring a huge waterfall with a teacher from school. Easter Sunday saw us up at Puwheke beach camping long-lining and having a paddle. Stuart let off a rocket in memeory of his Grand dad who dies last year. It went about 1000 feet into the sky with a great whoosh and landed far out to sea.

New lawn mowers

We got rid of the sheep a few years back, partly because they were very time consuming, but mainly because they kept on beating the fences and ate the fruit trees I was trying to establish. With no mouths to eat the grass it just kept on growing and growing. Scything keeps it down, but I do not have the physique, time or inclination to keep 3 acres under control. The trees wille ventually grow tall and dense enough to shade out some grass, but there will always be some areas of more open orchard.

Hence the geese. Research told me that they are good at converting grass into meat. They are good guard birds and produce goslings that can be eaten and manure the ground. So I sourced a trio of birds living on a farm in the South Hokianga and Eric and I spent most of last Saturday preparing a vehicle, a pen and then picking them up. That was an adventure in itself as the goose pen was down a very steep loosely metalled farm track on a north facing slope with great views over the harbour. Very nice on the way down. Geese were loaded into the back of the Capella and then we said our good byes to the owners. First problem was the stench of goose s@#t emanating from the boot. Quite distinctive and penetrating. Eric claimed to have a cold and he could not smell it. Solution: drive with windows open and be thankful that I had had the foresight to lay a tarp over the back. Second problem: the car would not go up the hill. Not in low gear. Not when going slowly. Not when taking a run up and flooring it. And not when Eric got out and observed from the roadside. NZ/ life continues to throw up these little challenges. The solution we adopted was to get towed up by the farmers in their 4WD van. Talking to people later on I discovered that my car is a front wheel drive. As it was trying to go up a steep hill, most of the weight was resting on the rear wheels and the front wheels were just spinning. If you ever find yourself facing the same problem, try one of these solutions: 1. Reverse up hill or 2. Put a couple of heavy (and risk loving) people on the bonnet while you drive forward.

So, once we got going we headed for home. Past the car that had crashed into a ditch in the morning and was having some crude bodywork repairs done by a bloke with a lump hammer so that he could drive it home. Past the family of semi-domesticated pigs that were running all over the road. Through Kaikohe and home over the Mangamukas to the accompaniment of the geese chattering away in the back and with the windows wound down.

Nearly a week later and they are finding their way around the property. They did not think much of their original enclosure and soon hopped over the sheep fence into the veggy garden. They took up residence on my newly planted broccoli bed and proceeded to liberally fertilise all the plants, trample over them and then have little exploratory nibbles. They say that what doesnt kill you makes you stronger, so if the broccoli survive they will be great eating.

My next plan was to lure them out of the veggy garden into the middle field which has a large pond (called a dam over here). So at chicken feeding time I would stand by the pond and call them over. They would start making aracket and slowly waddle up the path from the veggy garden. They would take about 5 minutes to make this journey. I threw corn in the grass right next to the pond for them to eat. They ate it and then turned round and walked all the way back to the veggy garden. This little pantomine played out for a few days but they seem to have decided to stay on the dam now. It is great to see them preening themselves and squawking away. The 2 white ones are males. The one with the fluffy feathers is a Sebastopol (who shall obviously be called Sebastian). The other male is a Pilgrim - any ideas for names? I like "Father". The grey one always walks behind the males and she is a female Pilgrim. What should we call her?

Other news: Walter has landed in Auckland and is finding his feet in the city there. He thought it was going to be cold and wintry and was surprised to get sunburnt on a day trip to Waiheke Island. He will be travelling north for Easter.

The pictures from last week show Paddy spending his Saturday exploring some caves near Whangarei. This was his second trip out with the school caving club.

Stuart continues to build and launch rockets. We watched the DVD of October Sky last week. This was his original inspiration.

Eric continues to rid our local bit of bush of its invasive possums.

Chantelle is knitting. Pictures to come.

Paddy goes underground