What a hectic crazy week, on Monday afternoon, the idea of me flying to Auckland to help out a customer was floated, and then on Tuesday morning I found out that I was heading up on Wednesday morning on the 6:30 flight, meaning leaving home around 4am….We didn’t get home until around 10pm that night. Whilst I was up there I found out that it was likely that I would be heading out to England very shortly, little did I know it was going to be the next weekend! Yep, this weekend I am flying out of Wellington, bound for Sydney, Hong Kong and then London. I’m heading over for 2 weeks of work, and hopefully a week of holiday with family and friends down in the SouthWest. Because of this sudden change in plans, things on the farm that I was going to be over the next few weeks got brought forward. The main jobs were spraying out the last paddock, and resowing the paddocks. On Friday afternoon I managed to repair the spray bar for weed sprayer (the pins that attach it to the trailer snapped off, so I had to weld them back on. Whilst I was doing that I also shortened the bar from over 3m to just over 2m, that way it fits around the trees better. With that done, on Saturday morning, whilst there wasn’t much wind, I sprayed out the paddock. After which Steph and I headed into town to pick up 800Kg of lime to use as a filler for the grass seed (we only apply around 10-15Kg of seed per paddock, and to make it easier, we mix it 10:1 with lime.
Once we got home, I had to make space in the barn for the trailer to sit for a while so that the lime didn’t get wet, the only problem was that it was the FEL taking up the space. With a bit of grunting and heavy lifting, I managed to turn the FEL around in the barn, and with the bucket still sitting on a dolly I lifted the arms onto the cargo tray on the tractor, and chained it in, and slowly drove off. To my surprise it stayed on the dolly even whilst I was reversing it into it’s temporary resting place. Now it’s sitting under some trees with a massive tarp over it.
With the trailer then backed into the barn, I loaded about 150 Kg of lime and about 13 or 14Kg of seed into the hopper and proceeded to sow the paddock I rotavated the weekend before. After that I loaded another 200Kg of lime and headed over the Julia’s place to lime the paddock the alpacas had been in, meanwhile Steph was trying to harrow the seed in, but due to a carbonized sparkplug (which we didn’t know at the time) she wasn’t having much success.
Once I got back, I cleaned the spark plug, and I then finished the harrowing whilst Steph had her shower and started preparing dinner.
Also during the course of the day, we moved the ewes and lambs at foot from our place to Julia’s front paddock, moved the other sheep from the back paddock in with them, and then moved the alpacas and goats into the paddock that Markissa had during winter, ah, that reminds me, before lunch I finished building one of the tree pens.
All in all, Saturday was really productive, Sunday wasn’t much different.
It started off with Steph and I discussing the big fish tank, trying to decide to keep it or not as it is quite power hungry ($30/month for the lighting alone, along with another $30/month for heating). It’s really quite neat, and it would be a shame to lose it, so we came up with a plan, the tank currently has no insulation, so we decided to put a sheet of polystyrene down the back and sides, here we hit a minor problem, when I put the tank on the plinth, I didn’t put it on square, and the gap behind the tank and the back of the plinth was about 5mm too thin at one end…I gave that end of the tank a pull, and surprise surprise, it didn’t move. We half emptied the tank, still no movement. Caught all the fish and removed all but a 1/3 of the water, still no movement. Took out one of the big bits of wood, nope, the other big bit of wood, nope…The boulders, nope, the only thing left was the gravel. We moved all the gravel to the other end of the tank, and finally it started moving. Once the gap behind the tank was big enough, we started rebuilding it. We first bleached all the plants so as to try and kill some algae, and then slowly started putting it back together. By the afternoon, the tank was heating again, and all set up, what a mission. We lost 1 fish whilst doing it, never had a fish die like that before, caught it, put it in a bag and about 10 minutes later it was dead!
All that’s left to do now before I head to England is the other paddock needs rotavating and sowing (Thursday hopefully), and Devil Spawn’s fleece needs the last 2 stages of tanning done, I’ll start that on Thursday morning and hopefully be finished around lunch time Friday.
So, being Wednesday, today is my last day at work, tomorrow I’ll be rotavating, harrowing, sowing, and then putting the rest of the lime somewhere…Also, Thursday morning I’ll neutralize and rinse DS’s hide, and put it in the tanning solution. On Friday morning, I’ll be sorting out the barn so there is some space in it again, and then around lunch time I’m off to the sales with Julia to try and buy some sheep. Thursday evening I’ll probably pack, and then on Friday afternoon, I’ll drive to Wellington, as work is putting Steph and I up in a hotel on Friday evening. Whilst we’re in Wellington, we’re meeting up with Amy, Nigel and Mum, and heading out for a dinner. Then the next morning at some crazy crazy hour it’s off to Sydney and 2 weeks of stressful work in London. Fingers crossed for it all going smoothly.
Anyway, I might not get chance to blog again until I’m over in the UK.
So until next time.
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