Cambridge

We spent the w/e in Stretham. Visited Jimmy's Farm outside Ipswich on Saturday on our way back. It features on a tv programme that had just started in NZ. We went in the shop which had lots of yummy food. Did not see the man himself, but bought some bacon and sausages. The bacon was very fatty and strong and melted in your mouth. The sausages were very meaty and tasty. Essex pigs ... very rare apparently.

On Sunday the boys and I went into Cambridge to meet Walter. He took them off for a tour with some of his friends leaving me with 3 hours to look around. The place was heaving with Xmas shoppers. The market was in full swing and has gone upmarket. Got some lovely bread and organic sprouts. Onto the Fitzwilliam to look at their art. We dont see much of Picasso and Matisse in Kaitaia. My favourite was a village scene by Peter Bruegel. It was great walking slowly along the backs looking at all the architecture. It is a very carefully laid out place - manicured. I did not really appreciate it all when I was a student there.

We all stayed at Nick and Karla's house on Sunday night. They have 2 dogs who were a big hit with the boys. Horace and Burt.

On Monday we started North to Leicestershire. Got about 15 miles before we hit the first traffic jam (actually it was the only one - but it did take us an hour to travel about 1 mile.

We will update about what happened when we got there tomorrow.

East Anglia ... in Winter

Let loose in East Anglia

Look out folks the Bryans are now roaming the country. Watch out for "The Beast" as they have named their campervan. If you look carefully you can see Eric in the upper window. We spent a few days at a lovely campsite in Hollesley called Run Cottage. Very clean site in a wooded area next to a woodland. A little egret was a regular visitor to the pond.

We were going to spend a day at my old stomping ground of Minsmere, but decided that the boys would probably moan the whole time and turn it into a miserable experience. So we went to Orford instead and enjoyed a tour of the 12th Century castle. It cost about 12quid for us all to get in and we were given little phone to walk round with. If you typed in numbers off signs on the wall, it would talk to you pointing out significant features. Much better than having to read lots of text and we saw things that we would otherwise have missed. My favourite feature were the toilets - basically long-drops from second storey all the way down to the ground. It must have got a bit wiffey round the base in the summer!
The next day we had a "free" day walking along the local beach from Shingle Street to a gun emplacement. It was quite cold and I was the only one who enjoyed the experience. See if you work out the sequence of 3 photos from the body language.

Now we are back in the warmth and civilisation of Stretham.
Blogger won't let me upload the pics at the mo so they will follow later.

Back2uk!

Sitting in Stretham in bright winter sunshine writing this. Freezing cold outside but clear. Couldn't ask for better weather on our first day.
Journey was more of a 'mare than I was expecting or remembering! Mind you, it was only the expected stuff, based on it being so long. Not like the plane crashed or anything bad. There was quite a lot of turbulence which became trying for Chantelle. For me the lack of sleep was worst, I catnapped for a few hours on the Melbourne to Dubai stretch, but there was not a lot of room. Rest of time watched loads of tv - the inflight entertainment was good enough for 24 hours - easy even for my weird tastes. Kept the boys busy too, endless films and Simpsons cartoons - that and lots of food. What more could 8,11 and 12 year old boys ask for?
We were delayed for a couple of hours on the tarmac at Dubai and it looked like we might have had to get off at one point,so Chan and I were mighty relieved when the plane took off. Taxied up to the runway just as Uncle Richard flew in on a Quatar flight. The views on the first part of that flight were stupendous. Not entirely sure of the countries we were flying over so will be going back on Google earth to check. Some interesting geological features including the pic shown which looks like a meteorite crater.
I shall post some pictures up and maybe do another update later. We are being put up in royal fashion in Stretham by Ian and Margaret. Chantelle and I stayed with Nick and Carla last night in their beautiful house. I swear I was asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.

December happenings

Here are a few pictures of our happenings at the end of Term 4. Eric is looking smart before he went off to the Sally Army volunteers dinner at the Taipa Resort last Sunday. Eric helps after school in the shop shining shoes mostly. He and Chantelle had an enjoyable meal.
Stuart is combining his love of making things with his love of Dr Who by making a large scale 2-D Tardis. He also has his sonic screwdriver in his hand. He bought this with his birthday money.
Patrick is picking the peach crop. We doubled last year's crop, taking a total of 2 ripe fruit from the tree.
The pig has been visiting us from the wilderness next door. It is getting tamer and we may end up turning it into bacon one day.
Talking of which, the pan contains sheep offal from Sally and 2 of her lambs that were slaughtered last Saturday. That was a 6 hour epic that would take a page to do justice ... another time as we are quite busy tonight. Suffice it to say that as I had never dealt to a ram lamb before, I was intrigued to see what their specialised offal tasted like. There were 2 lambs and there are 4 pieces in the pan. Chantelle and the boys were not keen. I wouldn't make a big effort to eat them again - they did not taste like chicken. Spongy and soft .... nuff said. See some of you soon. Rest of you l8r.

Darling Shania

Our darling Shania has been gradually getting more and more fragile as the weeks have worn on. Her little back leg was in a really bad way, no amount of treatment seemed to be helping. She was limping so much her leg was starting to become deformed.
Dispited this she still managed to come over every morning and evening to see what was in the bucket, and have her fair share.
She was lovely.
Shania was put to sleep on Saturday the 24th of Novemeber 2007.

Fireworks in Summer!

We have been getting a bit lax about posting weekly recently. Something to do with the nights being light and wanting to be out playing in the fields. Oh and also being mega-busy. Anyway tonight it is Friday and there is only netball on the telly, which Chantelle is enthusiastically watching. Nz takes its netball very seriously - same as all their sports - and tonight they play Jamaica in the world cup.

2 weeks ago was Chantelle's birthday and we got an invite to a teachers' bonfire party at Irene and Lees. They live in the most amazing house, old kauri villa in the sticks. A verandah that goes right around the house. Food is always good there, good company. Great night. Lots of fireworks and a huge bonfire. I overheard one of the lads (not ours) say that it was the best night of his life!

We had some fireworks left and let them off on saturday night back at ours. The dog was not impressed by all the banging and explosions and was allowed in every night for a week.

On the Sunday I took off for an adult day. The Far North Ornithologists were doing a wader count and 4 of us counted the waders at Rangaunu. This is a massive harbour that the Awanui river runs into and goes up to Kaimaumau and Rangiputa in the North. This is an important place for bar-tailed godwit to spend their summers. These are the birds that fly back from breeding in Alaska. About 300 godwits overwinter here, but we counted about 1800 on Sunday so the other 1500 must have completed the huge flight. Quite amazing really. There were also about 100 knot and turnstone and small numbers of wrybill and a couple of NZ Dotterel.

Kevin Matthews facilitated the count and as usual added a whole load of extra value by drawing our attention to beautiful flowers that we would have otherwise have missed. He took us to track in the swamp where orchids and a tiny harebell were growing.

The other picture is of a california quail which got friendly with our ducklings. The quail is wild and has a funny little quiff of feathers on the top of its head.

change of seasons.

Well, at last the season have changed. as you can see both Picton (in the chair), and sister Camo ( poking out tounge), are enjoying the sun.
The boys are counting down the days to going away, they cant wait.
It's also the season for celebrations, Chantelles birthday today ,and Stuart's in 10day's the Mike an Chantelle's Wedding 13th aniversary later in the month.

2 weeks ago, New Zealand had a Labour day, or as peep's in the UK will know it as , Bank holiday Monday.
Mike took, Stuart, Paddy and Reuben over to the Matthew's collection for their annual fair day. As you can see fun was had by all.

Friday Night Again

End of the first week of Term 4. We made it and are stranded like beached whales on the beach of Friday night. Listening to http://www.georgefm.co.nz/listen.php?sel=george and writing this while the boys do their thing.
We enjoyed the last week of our holiday, even though the weather turned all 'orrible. Strong winds and lots of rain for several days. We did not do a great deal. Had a few days of gardening. One of my projects has been digging out the stream so that the drainage in our fields improves. The water table is pretty high in the bottom field, just below the surface in the Winter. It isn't helped by the stream level that backs up over the brdge to Stewart Island when we get a dumping. That is because there are about 6 huge pampas clumps in the middle of the stream along its length. So given that it was too wet to work the veggy garden, I set about cutting down the pampas clumps one by one, then hacking out enough root so the water could get round. This was followed by digging out the sediment and weed between each clump. Basically playing with lots of mud, getting filthy and slowly dropping the water level by up to 4 feet.
Now lots of people have seen the stream (or Foveaux Strait as it is sometimes called!) Most of them reccommend that I get some mechanical help and do the job quickly and efficiently. Their solution is to hire a JCB which would drive down from the road leaving massive marks across our beautifully manicured duck and sheep grazed paddocks. The banks would be covered with a great heap of clay and vegetation, that would be useless for grazing. There would be a raw, probably arrow straight scar that would take several months to heal over. I would then be invoiced for maybe $1000 for the work.
Being an awkward sod, I am doing it mostly by myself, taking plenty of time to finish the job. The minimum of bankside vegetation is being cut which is better for the birds and insects. I have deliberately left a large gorse and privet by the boundary because I think at least one blackbird is nesting in it. The vegetation I cut out goes onto the veggy garden to rot down into humus to grow veggies next year. The clay goes onto a different pile. The stream meanders down its course in a very wonky line, making a pleasant noise as it trickles over the higher parts. There is much less noise, pollution and damage to the paddocks. It is cheaper. Perhps most importantly to me is that my own muscles (and a bit of Paddy's) are doing this work at a rate that I can accomplish. There is no rush.
End of sermon!

We also had a trip up to Te Paki and went for a fish at Paua Wharf, boys caught a few small fish, C and I did not get any keepers. We stopped at Te Kao for the customary huge ice cream. Still good value for $2.

The "farm" is going OK. Ducks are laying, pretty much where they happen to crouch. They don't bother with nest boxes, so finding their eggs before the hawk does is a race. Sheeps are all good. Shanya is in hospital (goat pen) having her foot sorted out. She has had problems pretty much all winter, and I am determined to stop the old girl from limping round the paddock.

Local news: voting in the local elections closes tomorrow. It is the first time that Chantelle and I have been able to participate in NZ democracy, so we have taken it seriously. Postal vote for lots of different bodies. One vote for Mayor of the District Council. 3 votes for the local councillors, then some votes for the regional council and finally 7 votes for the District Health Board. The whole process aided by a booklet containing staements from each candidate. It took us quite a while to decide who to vote for. Apparently not many people bother. Up here the incumbent mayoress Yvonne Sharp is facing a serious challenge from a famous NZ businessman called Wayne Browne. The papers have been full of endorsements for each candidate. The pro-Brown people say that he will bring a better business mind to running the council. His critics say he will sack half the workers, saving money and then will go and live somewhere else and leave a damaging legacy. Hard to know who to believe.

I guess the other bit of news .... no not really a "bit", given that it has been headline news every night for a week, is that the beloved All Blacks were knocked out of the rugby World Cup last Sunday by France. We had been warned that such an event would be followed by major depression and it has been almost comical to see how seriously the event has been taken. I have tried to not mention it too much at school, but it has been hard not to smile at the boys who have been bantering with me for the last few months about how the All Blacks were going to thrash England. England surprised everyone including me by beating Australia. A good time to be English!

Last few walk pictures

More walking

Pictures of walk

As promised, a smorgasbord of pictures for your delectation!

The last cutie of the season

Well here he is, the last lamb addition of the year... Bisto, and isn't he cute.
We watched as his mum , Nippy gave birth to him yesterday ( you can see her in the background of one of the pics)
Bisto will be weaned ,then put up for sale, as we already have one Pitt Island Ram lamb to replace Skippy. Any offers will be considered...

We are extremely happy with our lambing this season as all the ewe's have produced without problems. And all are proving to be excellent mothers.

Holiday japes

Saturday evening here and we are getting into the flow of being on holiday. Even Chantelle is off! Deeply chilled with the occasional outbreak of fighting is how I'd describe the atmosphere right now. Boys have been out and about doing their things so enjoying some downtime with the vid.
Stuey and I are just back from our Challenge walk. It is the second in a series, started off last year with Eric's trip along the beach from Te Paki to the Cape. Stuart finishes at primary this year and we decided to walk from Ahipara to Herekino. Eric took a keen interest in the plans to make sure that Stuart didn't have an easier time that him! I think that in the balance Stuart had a tougher walk. For one thing we were not on a recognised walkway, so there was not always a path to follow. Our decison on which way to go led us into some tricky situations at times. The low point for me would have to be crawling through chest high kikyu grass to climb out of a bay onto a headland, struggling to move forward whilst my feet filled up with stinky bog water and Stuart urged me to get a move on because his feet were getting wet. The funny (?) thing was that when we dragged ourselves to higher ground we realised that there was a car track going all round the back of the headland that we had spent 1 1/2 hours negotiating!
On the plus side we had good weather, saw some sights and places that few others round here will have seen. We camped out wild for 2 nights, ate some wild food - rock cod, mussels crab and winkles. We had nothing but pleasantness from the people we met which was a relief as some of the blokes at College had suggested that we were heading into bandit territory.
We walked out today and decided to follow the vehicle route off the beach instead of going out along the coast. It took a lot longer than I was expecting and involved climbing from sea level to 200m and then back down again. We were both pretty stuffed when Chantelle drove into sight by Rangikohu Marae.
The icing on the cake - apart from the coffee, iced bun and pork bone she'd thoughtfully brought us as a snack, was that Nippy went into labour as soon as we got home and gave birth to a beautiful chocolate ram lamb in front of our eyes.
Pictures of all the above to follow.

What Eric has been getting up to

And yet more lambs

One of our ewes is called Survivor, because she is the last remaining ewe out of the 6 that we started off with. We culled out her fellow girls one by one as they were so difficult to work with. Survivor also survived the only case of flystrike that we have encountered so far. So we know she has staying power.

I knew that she must be close to lambing last Friday because she did not come to me when I went to feed the nuts out. She had selected a rather inappropriate (to my eyes) place to lamb on Stewart Island. It is overgrown and boggy over there, but there must have been something that she liked because she had pushed out triplets by lunch-time. 2 ewes and a ram. Fortunately Chantelle had been keeping an eye on proceedings because one of the lambs had fallen into the ditch.

Now a week later all are doing well and we have a 100% survival rate. Touch wood!

There is one ewe - a Pitt Island called Nippy, who might yet lamb. She is a 1 year old ewe - a hogget - and they normally lamb later than their older kin. We did actually catch Skippy mating with her a few months ago, so she might be pregnant. The Pitt Island's do not tend to have as many lambs as the larger white breeds.

We are consequently very pleased with our first lambing season. We have had to intervene hardly at all and yet have a whole field full of lambs. Either we are doing something right, or we have been very lucky.

Other news: Illness has been the dominant news this week. Paddy was up and puking on Sunday night, Eric was down with it Thursday and Friday, I have been fighting it all week and finally succumbed last night when I got in from school. Chantelle has been off for the last 2 days as well. Stuart is the only one to escape - so far.

Patrick qualified for the cross country champion ships in Houhora but came home limping with his knee in a bandage because he had twisted it.

Overseas visitors who went as far as Cape Reinga will be interested to hear that the last 19km of road from Waitiki Landing is to be tar-sealed. There was a bit of a spat at the dawn service on Monday as the work was blessed by the kaumatua from the Ngati Kuri tribe on whose lands the road runs. Other Maori were there to protest against the road-works saying it would ruin a very spiritual place. The Cape is the most northern part of New Zealand that can be easily visited and is believed to be the departure place for souls going to the ancestral homeland of Hawaiiki. I can see that there is a conflict between a place being spiritual and having several tour buses of foreign tourists stopping off every day. This sort of conflict is nothing new though and English cathedrals find some balance between tourism and spirituality.

The solution at the Cape was for the local Maori elders to tell the protestors to go back to where they came from (which wasn't local!) and get on with finishng the road.

It just so happens that some of the Ngati Kuri children attend Te Hapua school and are having some of their lessons delivered by video-conference by various teachers at Kaitaia College, one of whom happens to be me. This week the Educational Review Office has been looking at this pilot project with a view to rolling it out in other remote areas. I have been observed delivering a lesson by VC, doing a face-to-face lesson, and I had a meeting with the review team after school on Thursday. It was all a lot less threatening than I had expected, and it was different from my last experience of ERO at the College, when they were doing a regular audit. So Ngati Kuri may be the northern-most tribe, living 2 hours from the big city in Kaitaia, but they have shown themselves well able to embrace new ideas to their advantage.

Final news for those interested in our feathered friends is that the Kuaka are on their way back to New Zealand. They are the bar-tailed godwits that migrate to Alaska to breed during our winter and fly back for the NZ summer round about now. Last Autumn a number of Kuaka were fitted with transmitters and then were satellite tracked as they flew north. The first one has just arrived back. Here is a fantastic website that shows you where they have been for the last 6 months. http://www.werc.usgs.gov/sattrack/shorebirds/overall.html

More lambies

Spring has sprung up here with a grand total of 6 little lambs bleating in our paddocks. Ginny sprogged on Wednesday sometime and produced 2 more ram lambs. She is a refugee from Don and Ivy down the road who lost Ginny's pal to a parasite attack and so she came to live with other sheep at ours to get preggers. Skippy has done his work well. We were surprised that both rams were pretty white looking when Dad is a brown colour.

So the total score now is 5 ram lambs and one ewe. All have survived so far and there have been no problems with births. Touching my head now in the hope that Survivor and Nippy don't have problems lambing. Channy and I spend a bit of time checking out the forum at LifestyleBlock reading threads such as this one:http://www.lifestyleblock.co.nz/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=23991
and having nightmares about our little darlings.

Further confirmation that spring is here or at least coming is that we have our first bunch of chicks hatch yesterday. A barred rock starting sitting on eggs in the pump shed a couple of weeks ago and was duly shifted to a safer place on the front lawn, where 4 cats and a dog can keep the rats and other predators away. She hatched 6 little chicks. Future replacement pullets or rooster dinners. We had a rooster for dinner 2 weeks ago and he made a fine meal. His friend is currently in my sights as he is upsetting Rocky (not to mention our good neighbours Goff and Janet with his early morning crowing.

Kid news: The boys have all been down with various bugs. In fact we have all been afflicted by bugs that are rife at present. Eric has been off for the last 2 days. Stuart struggled in today and did cross country at Pukepoto school. He came last. Paddy was off for several days last week and I was down with it last Sunday. Chan has been on and off ill with it as well.

We escaped the wet and dismal on Saturday when we went to see Irene and Lee with their 3 girls at Peria. We had a bbq and admired Lee's veggy garden. He shows me what is possible round here. He has carrots in the ground, ripe tomatoes and capsicums in his hot house. Very impressive! We all ate well, drank, and had a good yabba about this and that.

That's all for now folks.

Super Sally !!!

Well, at last Sally has produced her lambs, and what a surprise, TRIPLETS!!!. 2 boy's and a little girl.

We awoke to the sight of them in the paddock opposite.

We went stright over to invesitgate, our neighbours came out to tell us that they heard the lambs being born last night at about 9.15.

We feel lucky that Sally has produced 3 live births, without help, and has not rejected any. All are feeding well. The next couple of days are important, so let's hope they are prograssing well.

All this after Sally nearly drowned in one of the streams at the bottom of the paddocks. Thank goodness Mike was there on hand.