Busy weekends

We have all had a busy week at school, slowly getting used to our new routines and especially the getting up early part. All is going well for us at our various schools.
So we get ourselves to Friday night and collapse in a heap.
Whilst we have not done anything very remarkable this week and weekend, we have been busying ourself with lots of projects.
Chantelle has been plastering over the gib in the lounge. It is almost ready for painting and then we can move in. We shall double our communal living space in one slow move. It will be a cooler room because it is sheltered from the afternoon sun.

We have done our town visit, a crazy rush roundthe shops that open on a Saturday, most of which close at 12 midday. I used to think it was a bit unshop-like to close so early on a Saturday, but am assured by locals that it is actually an improvement on the past when no shops were open on Saturday!

On return we very efficiently sorted out a water supply for the ewes in the top field. I was feeling that we have been neglecting them in terms of water because they have only the muddy stream to drink from. To remedy this I bought 18m of hose and a few connectors from RD1 and ran it down from the garden to the gully bottom. I used a water butt that was originally part of the house water system (before we revamped it). Now we can connect one end of the hose in the garden to the veggie watering pipe and fill up the sheep trough with clean water. The sheep themselves do not seem to have found it, but with a bit of gorse pruning they will no doubt be very happy woolies.

We did consider getting rid of the sheep this week and concentrating on poultry. I feel far more comfortable looking after chickens and ducks rather than big, unco-operative sheep. But we will stick with for a while yet. The advantage of the sheep is that they are daily converting grass into meat. If we had none, we would have to mow the grass, or it would turn to scrub. Plus by keeping them, we are in with a chance of getting some home-reared meat for the table.

Other jobs done today: completed stuarts chicken pen the Mark II. Estimated cost $40. The plan is to have several small tractor like pens dotted around the place with a few chucks in each. That way they will be protected from predators and we will be able to get the eggs much more easily. We all went for a swim in the pond at 4 when it was a bit less hot. It was 29C yesterday! With help from Jethro we removed weed from the swimming lanes. I did some work on the veggy plot, keeping the kikyu grass from invading the beds. I did some gorse clearance. eric and I mowed a strip down the top field which is being invaded by gorse at an alarming rate. eric decided that it was too hot to mow at 2pm so we took the mower back. I fixed my back wheel back onto the bike. The boys made some to boats out of scrap wood. Chantelle made home-made pizza for tea. I fixed the iron onto the new sheep race and decided it will need an extra post for strength. One day we will be able to get the sheep in to check their feet. we do visual checks from a distance every day to look out for foot-rot and fly-strike. I will be happier when we can get them in for a closer look. Plus they are all due for a shear in March. We attempted to catch 4 chicks from mrs chicken to put in stuarts pen, but they were too fast and we will have to try again tomorrow. I got rid of a wasps nest that was getting pretty big next to a main path. Plus all the poutry were fed twice and the eggs collected.

Wow! So you see we keep busy even at the weekends. It is a different sort of work to what we do the rest of the week. They say that many lifestyle block people give up after 9 months because it makes too great demands on their time. It must be about 8 months since we moved in, but I am not considering selling up yet.

I shall attempt to add in some aerial photos from our trip back from wellington.