The week before Christmas

I have enjoyed this week, boys at school and plenty of time for sorting things out. I have actually been into school every day along with many other dedicated teachers who carry on working up until Christmas.

Life on the "farm" carries on, the grass grows and we have been experimenting with using the mower as a brushcutter. If you are careful you can cut down 2 foot high grass. The area round the veggie garden has been done, along with a wide strip going down to the chucks. On the poutry front, I rescued one of the youngest shaver chicks from certain death. It was squawking loudly at dusk from the long grass in the middle field. One of the cats was sat over it, either guarding it or having just injured it. There were no superficial injuries but the bird was unable to perch or even walk much. Eric has taken it under his wing so to speak and it is recovering well.

The ducklings should have gone down to the dam by now because the volume of their liquid faeces is becoming more notieceable by the day on the path around the house. We have taken them down twice, but they have made their way back to the house. They did this the second time because the 2 larger pairs of ducks already living there did not take kindly to the newcomers - even though they were all close rellies! The solution to this dilemma will probably involve a combination of an axe and Xmas presents to duckless folk.

On a more civilised note, some of us went to see the latest Harry Potter at The Swamp Palace last weekend. It was the best one yet, actually better than the book which dragged on for far too long (IMHO).

Pictures included this week are of Eric and his rescue chick, a Tui feeding on the flax in front of the house, and the pea seedlings that Patrick sowed that have popped up this week.

Skools out!

At least it is for Dad, the boys have another 10 days. We had senior prizegiving last night and junior prizegiving today. Then a typical Northland feed that went on for several hours, with farewells for colleagues who are leaving. And although there is still work to do over the holiday, I am not tied to the bells that have ruled my life for the last 9 weeks. Looking forward to having the odd lie-in, to getting my evenings back, spending more quality time with the family, animals and garden.

We had a housewarming bbq last weekend, to thank the many people who have made us so welcome here. We cleaned the house up and got a hot plate from the market. It all went very well, no-one got food poisoning and the weather was kind.

Managed to get the veggie garden by the chickens fenced off at the start of the week. That allowed paddy and me to plant out the pumpkins and beans etc that we had grown in the top garden. Paddy enjoyed sowing peas and watering the veggies.

The other picture is of Eric doing his taiaha practice.

Frying time appears to be here!!

Well the summer seems to have kicked in. We really can't remember the last good rainfull to replenish our tank, which considering is 2/3 full. Our poor neighbours have already had to call out the water tanker.
The Weekend started with us ( Mike and Chantelle) going out for a meal and a walk along 90 mile beach to celebrate our 11th wedding anniversary.
Then on Tuesday Eric departed along with the top 2 years at Pamapuria school to camp. He has just returned today (Friday), and has promised an update when he's not so shattered.
On Wednesday ,Mouse the 6 foot something shearer came along to relieve poor , sweltering Masetse of his fleece. He also managed to do the goat as well . So they both look like little straggley beings plodding around the paddocks. Thanks to Mouse ,there are few shearers who would agree to shear such few sheep.
The attached photo's show Mo and Miss chicken having a chill under the stairs together, Masetse during and after shearing , Mike and chantelle on 90 mile beach. And goat, shania, being lopped.

Life and death down on the block

chantelle and I went down to feed the chickens on Sunday morning and were gobsmacked to see one of bantams had hatched out 18 youngsters. She had been sat tight on a nest in the ditch and this time we had just left her to it. Feeling vindicated by our laissez-faire approach I poo-pooed Eric's suggestions that we move them all up to the garden where we could keep an eye on them.
On Monday Chantelle did the chucks in the morning (for the first time in ages, I had not gone down before work). Poor bantam had only one chick left and the others had either vanished or were lying around the ditch in various stages of dismemeberment.

The stoat trap has been cleaned and baited with chicken fat.As of Friday morning the sole chick still survives. The other 4 chicks are all doing well. We have brought a shaver hen up the top to sit on a clutch. She has been broody for nearly 2 months now and hasnt hatched anything, so the enforced captivity in the broody box will either get her hatching something or will get her back laying again. Patrick managed to get the other shaver laying again, by opening her lid before she had settled on the eggs. She was off and couldn't be coaxed back onto them.

Other livestock news: the sheep remain twitchy but slightly less so than they were when they arrived. We are still trying to get a shearer for Mosetse (the ram). He is the opposite of the ewes, being bottle-raised he is too fearless. It makes him difficult to move around as he will not be driven. He has to be led, preferably by someone carrying something in a bucket! He has taken to harrassing us for his daily traet of sheep nuts and we are a bit worried that he will end up obese. The grass is romping away.

Ducks and ducklings are doing well. The ducks are well grown now and fly up to us for their daily grain. They have been showing signs of mating with each other, so we are looking forward to trying out lots of duckling recipes - I am - the others still find it a bit distasteful.

Stuart's Birthday

It was Stuart's turn for a birthday on Monday. after a number of options for presents had been debated exhaustively (I am not exaggerating here), he decided he would like to get an inflatable boat. This he did and assembled a crew of his mates to join him on the maiden voyage around the pond. Dad was instructed to rush home on Monday to supervise. The staff meeting finished and I raced home.

Then nearly a disaster - I was trying to carry the inflated boat down the hill on my own and it snagged on a piece of wire, puncturing it in 2 places. When Stuart found out all hell broke loose. Puncture repaired the trip was back on and proved a hit with the kids!

I went to Auckland with 8 Year 10 pupils for a bit more than 24 hours. It was weird being in a city again. Big buildings, lots of traffic, confusing road signs, cosmopolitan lifestyles and a more diverse racial mix. The purpose of the visit was to encourage Maori students to study Science and medicine at University. Although Year 10's don't give away too much about whether they are impressed or not, they were exposed to some good role models and an inspirational atmosphere. Even the 6 hour van journey each way wasn't too painful!

Pictures

Bonfires and holy things

Bulletpoint update this week; time is short!
Went shooting with Eric last w/e, he was let loose with a semi-automatic .22 rifle!
Went to a bonfire party on Nov 5th, very rural! Pitch black fireworks being let off on a windy hill-side. Chantelle tried on the latest must-have head-gear.
This week-end Stuart made his first holy communion and confirmation. Bishop Fleamy laid hands on his head, and Father Pat told him to tell the Bishop of Lancaster that he has now been confirmed. Could a reader in Lancaster pass on the message (along with our best wishes!) next time they see him.
That's it!
Been having problems with our connection, so cannot upload the pics. Keep checking and we'll get them up eventually.

Chantelle's Birthday

Today is Chantelle's Birthday. She received gifts and well wishes from all over and can be seen about to enjoy a juicy steak washed down with fizz. She said it was the first birtday in ** years that she had enjoyed the sun and not a dark night, cold and rain! One of the unexpected benefits of emigration to the southern hemisphere.

We have had a busy week. Last weekend the boys were demanding to sleep in my tiny tent on Friday night. As I was unwilling to see them knacker my only valuable possession, I suggested that we build a sleep-out on Saturday. Unbelievably a tee-pee was built in the space of one afternoon. It cost $0 and housed Eric and Patrick comfortably for one night. We had a fire and made toast and baked bananas before leaving them to nature.

Livestock news: 2 more chicks hatched from broody bantam on Wed/Thurs; We have another 8 muscovvy ducklings courtesy of Diggers Valley, Shanya is looking forlorn without her mate, sits about moping, we are going to run her with the sheep tomorrow as she has been on her own the last 2 weeks. Sheep all doing Ok, the ewes are very shy and won't come even when offered sheep nuts.

Other news: Stuart is moving from boats into go-carts. His team of ark builders are on stand-by. There have been a number of sparkler bomb incidents in Kaitaia. The mail box on our old house was blown away this week. Police and school are treating it very seriously.

Oh what a drama King!

Friday 28th October

Happy birthday Dominic! If you don't read this I am intending to send you a letter (along with letters to many other folks in the UK!). You will have to be patient as my emails get sent a lot more quickly than my letters.

Well we have had a rollercoaster of a week. We said good bye to Shazza the goat on Saturday as she had been getting progressively worse and was finding it hard to get up. She started scouring and went blind in one eye. Her mate Shanya was upset and stood a few yards away bleating. Mike came along with a gun and put her down. We buried her after shanya had had a chance to sniff at her friend's corpse. I was amazed at how quickly the blowflies moved in! Her rump was swarming with maggots within an hour of death. The flies over here lay live maggots and not eggs, which obviously speeds up the decay process. Makes me a bit nervous about the idea of going to sleep outside! You might wake up with half your arm eaten off!

It being Labour weekend, which is traditionally the start of the outdoor swimming season, I took the boys to the Takahue water hole on Sunday afternoon. It was a lot colder and deeper than it was last year. Shortly after we got back to the car, the heavens opened and we had a downpour.

Monday dawned cloudy and unpromising, typical UK bank holiday weather! It did get better as the day progressed and we went off to Tokerau beach on the East Coast. The boys all went in the surf on their body boards and I had a fish, trying to get the bait out into the surf as far as I could. It was a different way to fish, being battered by the waves and with gannets and terns flying over. I had a couple of bites, but nothing big was on. Apparently the Kahawi were running up the west coast!

On Wednesday Eric performed in his Drama club plays. It was a good night of talent, lots of variety, ranging from Dr Seuss poems, to Orpheus and including some funny little sketches, like the family eating out at a restaurant. Eric's main part was as the huntsman in Snow white and the seven dwarves. He played his part well, especially when he showed the step-mum a real bleeding sheep's heart as proof that he had killed off snow-white. Thanks To Ruth and Stephan for the offal, we might write a book "101 uses for a sheep's heart". The play was a good twist on the traditional story, as Snow-white steals the magic mirror and the dwarves use it to get rich at the horse races.

Until next week then.

Pictures

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.

Pictures

Friday 14th October

Kia ora koutou!
One week into school and time to resurrect the Friday night update. Listening to dance music on George FM because there is nothing on TV worthy of watching, even by my low Friday night standards. I am slowly moving towards a view that many have reached before me; namely that TV is a monumental waste of time. We have started an experiment in having one TV (and computer) free day a week. We are trying out Thursdays, so don't expect the usual speedy response if you email on a Thursday.

That is not to say that all the tv here is rubbish. One thing I am slowly getting used to is the ads on all channels. Even on the news shows. It slows down the flow and makes a half hour programme into a 1 hour programme. Some of the good programmes imho are:
- Brotown a cartoon about the doings of some Morningside youngsters. Not universally liked (some think it vulgar!), but we find it amusing. There is a lot of stuff that goes over the heads of the boys.
- Facelift - another comic puupet satirical - a bit like Spitting Image.
There have been other dramas on and short comedies that have been good.
The rest seems to be 80% imported from UK/US/Oz.

Back to reality, we are all excited by the new chicks and are finding hard to resist checking them every five minutes. It is very smelly out there as some eggs have blown up, the ones that were not fertilised and have basically been kept stewing under mum's butt for 3 weeks. SMELLLLYYY! She does not smell too sweet either; having rather let herself go! Her character has changed, she is all dopey, but delivers a mean peck if you go near her chicks.

We went to the Waiere Boulders last week when we were on holiday. Patrick and Mum had been there before so Patrick was keen to show everyone around. We walked quite a way and for the first (but probably not the last) time, Chantelle and I were left trailing as all six younger legs ran off in front to see this or that. Very photogenic place. The boulders are volcanic basalt and have fluting marks on them that had me wondering as my basic knowledge of geology tells me that igneous rock is very hard and resistant to weathering. Apparently, the grooves on the boulders are caused by kauri leaf chemicals that corrode the rock by constantly dripping onto the same place. Feel free to comment on this if you have a better explanation!

So it was back to school this week. It was a bit like being bulldozed on Monday as the easygoing attitude of the holiday was displaced by the faster pace of school. Probably made harder for me because I spent Friday and Saturday night at Te Tii Marae with the te reo course. Te Tii is a beautiful place not far from Kerikeri. The course was very good as well and I consolidated a lot of my language. It was a boost for my confidence to be able to explain a few things to some people who had just started the course.

Until next week then, if the volcanoes, earthquake or bird flu don't get us in the mean-time.

Ahhhhhhhhh.

Well our very first chick. Isn't it cute!
Here the little chook is peeking out from between it's mums wing. BB (broody bantum) was sat on 21 eggs. We moved chook and bub from the bush they were in ,into a special hutch/ run, which had sucessfully drought up the ducks. Another egg was in the process of cracking.
We wait to see how many eggs finally produce chooks.

pics

More pictures

Been having problems posting all the pictures in one go, so doing them one at a time.

Pictures

The workers

It is still the holiday and we are working on a range of projects. The water system is more or less fixed. Thanks to everyone who has helped with design advice and troubleshooting.
We made an exciting find today - well it was exciting for us simple country folk! We lost a bantam nearly 3 weeks ago, just before the strong winds. At first I assumed that it had either been blown away, or had been eaten by a hawk or a feral cat. Eric claimed to have seen a hawk fly off with a bantam, so we assumed the worst. In the last few days we started to consider another possibility - that our bantam was sat on eggs. If that was so we might expect it to appear with some fluffy bundles in the next few days - as hens take 21 days to incubate. Eric and I found the little luv this morning tucked away in a thicket and sitting hard. We did not want to disturb her, but are keeping our fingers crossed and eyes open. Eric and I fixed up a coop for any chicks that are led out. We think their chances will be better up close to the house rather than in the field with the hawks flying over all the time.
The picture of Stuart is a rare photo of him engaged in a work-related activity. One has to take these pics while one can. He took a strop about 30 seconds after the pic was taken and the mowing was left to me!
The lack of any pictures of the old man working does not necessarily mean that I am sat on my backside watching everyone else working ..... at least that's my story.

Ralph

This is Ralph.
Ralph was snatched from the jaws of Mo on Wednesday morning. At first we thought Ralph was a mouse, but on further inspection we found him to be a very small, baby rat. He was so small , his eye's were not yet open.
The vet gave us some suggestion, so we instead of dispatching him, we decided to make him tame.
AS you can see he is dead cute, and tiny.
Mo ,managed to get him a couple of times again, even though he was snuggled up on a hot water bottle in a box.
He brought great joy to us ,even though he was a rat.
Unfortunaly Ralph became unwell on Saturday morning, and died whilst being cared for on my lap.