Friday 21st October

Kia ora readers, whoever you are!

We are at the end of the second week of term 4, with about 7 to go until the end of the year. The pictures below are from the holiday. I tried to post them several times last week but could not get them to load up.

We have had a typically busy week. Exchanged our 6 rams for 4 ewes and a ram last week-end. They are now officially ours, to look after and ultimately to eat! The plan is that they will mate in November and lamb in April. Pete assures us that they have all produced healthy offspring up until now. The ewes are quite different to the rams. They are more flighty and my initial impression is that they are not eating as much grass as the rams did. As a consequence the grass seems to be getting longer all over. The ram is a bottle reared one called Mosetse (apologies to Irene if the spelling is not right). He is hanging around his women after taking a few days to connect with them.

Before we went shopping for sheep, we went to the Diggers Valley rally. It was one stage out of several. I have to admit that it was quite exciting to see and hear a load of cars come tearing down the normally pretty much deserted metalled road. We tried various vantage points around Ruth and Stephan's farm eventually realising that the front gate probably gave the best vantage point!

We followed that with our first swim of the year in the water hole, neatly before the traditional start of the swimming season which is this weekend (Labour Weekend).

Other news: chicks are doing well, at least the 2 of them that survived their hopeless mother's pathetic attempts to keep them alive. We now have them in the spare room with a lamp on them and mother back down the bottom with the flock. We have another bantam up the top sat on 5 eggs, due to hatch in about 10 days. Meanwhile down the bottom, there are 2 shaver hens trying to hatch imaginary eggs in the nest box. It must be broody time.

The ducks are growing daily and stray further away from the pond now than they did. We ate the smallest one for Sunday dinner. Yes I know .... it wasn't the easiest thing to chop its head off, but this is not a zoo. It is concentrating my mind on the amount of meat that we eat and at how easy it is to divorce eating meat from killing animals. I am also realising first hand something that I have been teaching for years, namely that animals eat 10x the amount of food for every unit of mass that their bodies actually grow. I take down grain and buckets of food to the ducks and chickens every morning and most of the energy just goes on keeping them warm. When one actually prepares a bird for eating, by removing feathers and feet and inedible parts, it hits me how little of that grain we are getting on the table! The vegetarians have always used this as an argument, but I have never appreciated what they are on about as much as I do now. Not that I am about to go veggie, far from it when there is so much meat and potential meat walking round the paddocks. But my ideal diet would involve eating far less meat and far more vegetable protein. The top veggy bed was finished last week-end and planting will start soon.

Other news: Labour managed to pull together a government that involved some interesting compromises. New Zealand First were in the limelight( as usual) and their main man Winston Peters got himself a key post - minister for Foreign Affairs. He insists he is not part of the government and even wants to continue sitting on the oppostion benches. He likes it both ways. Sadly for my political persuasions, the greens were left out in the cold as none of the other minor parties would serve if the greens were part of the mix.

Eric went on a clean-up of the Mangamuka Gorge with his school.He is also busy rehearsing for his performance on Wednesday. Paddy is into planets and produces fantastic posters about them and their charcteristics. He acted as an advisor on a worksheet for my Year 10's. Stuart is busy trying to build a boat that will be able to carry 14 people. He is scrounging wood from off cut bins at various businesses in town. Chantelle is the official shepherd as she is better with the stock than I am.

Until next time then, with pictures due of sheep, chicks, rally cars. If there are any pictures you would like to see on here, just email or leave a comment.