Baa Baa Black Sheep

Be warned this blog entry is not for the faint of hearted (I will warn you when), today I learnt how a bouncy happy lamb becomes sausages! There are photos, but out of decency I've but them on another page with links from here to them.

The weekend started out with me feeling ill, I had a cold on Friday which wasn't much fun. But on Saturday Steph amd I headed into Masterton to price up curtains (ouch, I didn't realise they were so expensive), and pick up paint for the fish tank stand. Once we got home we brought the lambs in from the paddocks to give them a check over, and select out a few for slaughter soon. We drenched them (which was well timed as we found what look like tape worm in their poo), and selected one for slaughter today, and a couple for us, and the freezer. Whilst we had the lambs up and were smelling like sheep, we also rounded Devilspawn and Winston up. We needed to get Winston off the paddock for 24 hours to "empty him out". Winston and a lamb were put into a pen to spend the night but we ended up seperating them 'cause Winston kept bailing the lamb against the rails and ramming her (in the wrong way!), we didn't think she would survive the night (we knew she wouldn't survive 24 hours, but we needed at least 12!)

We also wormed and trimmed the alpacas feet, yikes....I didn't know alpacas were lap animals, Jamie sits down when you touch his feet, so I ended up sitting underneath him, so as he cushed down, there was still room for Steph to work underneath. After about an hour of wrestling alpacas (Adam was the only one who didn't really care what we were doing), we finished for the day.

Also at some stage in the day, I put the first coat of dark dark blue on the back of the tank stand.

On the new grass front, we already can see shoots growing, so hopefully it won't be long before the paddock is green.

Today, I got up nice and early, and went to back to bed (well Steph did once we got one of the lambs unstuck from some fencing, the same sheep had already been freed yesterday, from the same bit of netting, and later in the day, it got stuck again, that one is for the pot). Whilst Steph was snoozing, I put another coat of paint on the tank stand, it looks really cool, and I also undercoated the doors ready for later on when I paint them grey.

After that we trundled into town to get the pattern name from the warehouse for our curtains, unfortunalty whilst we were in town, Martin (friend from work) came visiting.

Once we got home we started getting ready for the afternoons task, we started off by putting the alpacas down in the bottom paddock with the few lambs that we want to keep seperate for the time being. The 'pacas really enjoyed having the extra space to run around in 'cause they "gamboled gaily" around for a few minutes, until they realised that the stuff they were on was GRASS...

Before:
Winston and lamb






After:




Then Michelle and Joe arrived, and it was time.....Do not read past here if squimish.

After a coffee we wandered down to the pens, and whilst I was collecting the tractor (so has to hoist the carcases up on the FEL) Joe dispatched Winston, because of his strength and his neck muscle it took a fair cut to be effective. When I got there with the tractor he was already culled, and we were just waiting for the muscle reaction to stop (which can take up to five minutes), he was kicking for quite a long time, but definitly dead!.
Once he had settled down, the skinning started, first by removing a strip along the back of a front leg above the elbow, and then freeing the skin all around the leg, and then severing the foot by cutting through the joint and snapping the leg off. This was then done to the other front leg and then two slits up to the throat so as to free the brisket. The back legs were done in a similar fashion. Once we had the back legs skinned, we put him on the meat hooks and hoisted him up on the FEL so as to make the rest of skinning and gutting easier. Skining was basically just punching the skin of the meat (it was surprising hard in places, and required quite a bit of strength). After about 10 minutes we had the fleece of and all that was attached was the head, this was snapped off, and from there on, it just looked like something from a butchers.

Winston skinned
The lamb skinned
What was wasted from the lamb (grusume photo)

The next thing was to gut it, first a cut is made around the anus (very carefully), and it is allowed to fall back into the cavity, then starting just between the back legs a small slit is cut (enough to get your hand in), and then using you hand as a guard (so you don't slice into any thing) the slit down the abdomen is made bigger. The bladder and bowel are removed from the top of the cavity and with the anus it is allowed to drop more towards the lungs etc. Everything at this stage is sitting in a pocket below the cut (a good time to bring a bucket or something to put under the sheep). Then very carefully, again using you hand as a guard, move the knife down until all the insides are hanging outside, then run a knife along the edge of the diaphragm and then delve deep into the chest cavity and pull out the throat etc, then everything should just fall into the bucket, one more cut across the chest where it is still holding on, and there you have one lamb carcass ready for the butcher.

After the initial cut, it is very surprising how little blood there is, except for a small pool in the bottom of the chest cavity, there is basically none. also the other thing that was odd was how much empty space there was inside.

Once I got the insides in the bucket, I hunted through them to dig out the kidney's and heart (Joe found the lambs fry, but I can't seem to remember where that was put, oh well, till the next one). After we had wrapped up the carcases and tidied up, Joe and Micheal left. I prompted removed Winston's head, and threw the fleece in the washing machine,whilst the other fleece was hosed off before salting. Whilst the fleece was being washed, I dug a pit for the offal (unfortataly I think the pit was a bit shallow, so I've thrown a pressure tank on top to stop dogs), the stuff is covered, but it isn't very deep, hopefully it won't smell too badly (being just soft tissue, it should decompose pretty quick.) Now we just have to find a temporary home for the head until nature does it's job (he has an amazing set of horns!).

On Tuesday I will be fleshing Winston's hide and hopefully turning it into a deep rug for the lounge.

Joe did Winston, then I did (euphemism for slaughter and skin) the lamb.

In the evening we dropped the carcases off to a butcher to be turned into sausages, and salami, and also collected 2 bails of hay (as we think we're going to be short of grass this year during winter).

Anyway, I'm also in Wellington now (and feeling surprisingly hungry, how odd). Till later.

Some Photos

Finally Photos

Long [read tiring] weekend

Four days, and not a single day of rest! On Thursday evening we made a long list of jobs (finally finishing the decorating was on it!) So on Friday morning I took the first big job, tilling the paddocks, whilst Steph continued with striping wallpaper. After a while I discovered the tiller worked best whilst going around corners, so I spent the day driving around in circles! That took the good part of a day, especially once I finished harrowing it too. Unfortunatly the exhaust on the tractor had split and was in two halves which meant it was VERY noisey. Meanwhile Steph had removed all the wallpaper and the lounge was ready for an undercoat. We did the undercoat and finally went bed around 11pm.
Saturday was a bit easier, we went into town for the morning and picked up a small arc welder so I could fix the tractor exhaust, and then in the afternoon we tidied the house as we had guests coming around for dinner!
Sunday morning was spent sowing seed (10Kg seed mixed with 200Kg lime, spread over 1/3 acre approx) whilst Steph giving the remainder of the lounge a first coat of yellow. In the afternoon I started building the framing for the rabbit cage shelves (unitl I ran out of timber).
Then in the late afternoon another coat of yellow was done, and then in the evening we started reassembling the lounge.
Monday morning I spent doing the last few cables on the entertainment unit. After which Steph and I went down to the bigger paddock and spread lime (600Kg split into two loads) then I proceeded to clean the barn whilst Steph cleaned out the garage and surrounding area. Yikes, what mammoth tasks they were, I had to reorganise all the tractor implements, de-panel two rimu walls etc etc. But both the garage and barn are now tidy and safe to walk around in again, no pieces of fencing etc to catch your legs!
On Monday morning, I fixed up the split in the exhaust (without blowing a hole), but I need to remove the exhaust from the manifold as there is a much bigger crack right around where the exhaust attaches to the engine, but the bolts are really rusted in.

All in all a very tiring weekend, but mainly productive.

Photos of the welding and decorating coming soon.

Last week end

Well, I was supposed to do this last week, but oh well. Last weekend we discovered that no one wanted to resow our paddocks because they are too small. As you can imagine, this was very frustrating (esp since I've been trying to contact a contractor for over a month now. Anyway, I had the idea of doing it ourselves using a rotary hoe and a fert spreader. So on Friday afternoon I went into Carterton and bought a hoe and spreader for the tractor, and then arranged for the weed spraying guy to come out and kill our paddocks. That was eventually done on Sunday due to rain, and hopefully today I will start to notice the paddock yellowing slightly.
In addition to that, on Saturday I finished building the frame for the rabbit house and it's now got a roof and walls, hopefully by the end of this weekend we'll have racks for bunnies....but this weekend is going to be pretty full on, I have the paddocks to till over tomorrow, we're sowing the seed on Monday (hopefully), inbetween we're decorating (the lounge is now coming along really well, should finish it soon) and I would also like to do some work on the fish tank stand (and the iQuarium), and thats only a little bit of our jobs list..
Anyway, my compile has finished, so back to it...

Bunny house, step 1

  

Back area, tidy for once!

  

False starts, no phones, but still successful

This weekend, the plan was for me to build a lean-to on the side of the garage for the rabbits, whilst Steph finished off installing weedmat and spraying off lots of weeds. However the day went as follows:
Early this morning I spent around an hour cleaning up the user interface on the eQuarium (the embedded computer project I'm working on), then when it was a respectable time (around 7ish), I went for a stroll in the paddocks (looking for mushrooms, no joy). After which Steph and I had breakfast, and then I went off to get some builders mix for the posts whilst Steph worked Markissa. Every thing seemed to be going to plan,, upon getting back, I fired up Tom (the tractor) so I could level off the area, and pull out a fuscia. But I got as far as the grass outside the shed when he died! Out of gas! He's still there, combination of flat battery and not a lot of gas, oh well tomorrow. So I had to do it the other way, bloody big chain around base of plant, to the Safari and then drive. A few minutes later we were minus one fuscia. Then is was a case of marking out lines for the walls and digging post holes. Once more I had over engineered the problem, and bought enough concrete and posts to build a shed twice the size (but we don't have the framing). Whilst Steph was helping me dig holes, we found out that our telephone cable comes out from underneath the garage! Yes we splice it in. Thankfully our neighbours were in, and the telecom guy came around this afternoon and fixed it.
Whilst that hole was out of action, I finished digging the rest, and filled them with timber and concrete, so hopefully tomorrow I can do the walls.
Steph managed to finish off all the weedmatting and spraying (it took her two attempts, I left a clear fluid (called water) in the sprayer, so she went off thinking it was weedspray, and instead she ended up watering the weeds... Anyway, must do dinner..
Till tomorrow.

False starts, no phones, but still successful

This weekend, the plan was for me to build a lean-to on the side of the garage for the rabbits, whilst Steph finished off installing weedmat and spraying off lots of weeds. However the day went as follows:
Early this morning I spent around an hour cleaning up the user interface on the eQuarium (the embedded computer project I'm working on), then when it was a respectable time (around 7ish), I went for a stroll in the paddocks (looking for mushrooms, no joy). After which Steph and I had breakfast, and then I went off to get some builders mix for the posts whilst Steph worked Markissa. Every thing seemed to be going to plan,, upon getting back, I fired up Tom (the tractor) so I could level off the area, and pull out a fuscia. But I got as far as the grass outside the shed when he died! Out of gas! He's still there, combination of flat battery and not a lot of gas, oh well tomorrow. So I had to do it the other way, bloody big chain around base of plant, to the Safari and then drive. A few minutes later we were minus one fuscia. Then is was a case of marking out lines for the walls and digging post holes. Once more I had over engineered the problem, and bought enough concrete and posts to build a shed twice the size (but we don't have the framing). Whilst Steph was helping me dig holes, we found out that our telephone cable comes out from underneath the garage! Yes we splice it in. Thankfully our neighbours were in, and the telecom guy came around this afternoon and fixed it.
Whilst that hole was out of action, I finished digging the rest, and filled them with timber and concrete, so hopefully tomorrow I can do the walls.
Steph managed to finish off all the weedmatting and spraying (it took her two attempts, I left a clear fluid (called water) in the sprayer, so she went off thinking it was weedspray, and instead she ended up watering the weeds... Anyway, must do dinner..
Till tomorrow.

Nicely edged flower beds.

  

Super Productive Weekend

After a week of not knowing what we were going to do (for those not in the loop, Steph and I were considering selling up and moving on to bigger/better things), we have decided to stay here for a few more years, and really make our mark on this place. We're in a good position on all fronts and if anything happens which causes us to lose an income, our lifestyle isn't threatened, any of the options we were looking at, would have meant moving on again (with a loss probably!). So here we are....
This weekend I bought a nice new trailer, we've had a small one for quite a while (Steph's brother bought it as a Christmas present after we moved here, but it's had a lot of use, and it's had too many encounters with fence posts (my driving on the bike!) and will no longer pass it's warrant of fitness. Since we are intending staying, and there are heaps of jobs around here that require a trailer, I drove to a town about an hour away and bought one, measuring 7ft by 4ft. I also bought a stock crate as we occasionally move stock around (from the sales and then to the slaughter yards!).
With the trailer, we decided to have a crazy cleaning weekend, we took lots of old fencing to the tip (it's been sitting around for about 18 months!), and brought back 72m of flower bed edging and another trailer load of misc timber (I like to have a mini timber yard in the workshop so when I'm doing "things" I'm not left waiting (it's quite a trip to town just for one piece of timber). Whilst we had the edging, we decided to stop in a local garden centre to look at a few shrubs, and as typical we got carried away and came home with 26 different plants. We managed to rip out half the beds around the house, and re-edge and replanted them (they look really good now). That was a pretty full on day!
Today (Sunday), we started by chainsawing up the timber frame of a shed that had been left to rot since we moved in! After loading it into the trailer (stockcrate was a real bonus as it increased the capacity of the trailer about 6 fold), we trundled (slowly) off to the tip, once more intending to get a few more shrubs (we need two more grasses for the front bed), we came home with 51 plants! We have now planted flax all down two sides of the arena, a cabbage tree on either side of the entrance to the arena. We have some grasses for the bank leading to the arena (waiting till next weekend to plant those, as we only just weed-sprayed the bank). The arena area is going to turn into an extension of the garden as we're going to build a picnic table out there, it should look really nice when its finished.
After planting the flaxes Steph tried another saddle with Markissa, unfortunately it didn't fit, and I planted out another bed. Once I had finished that I took the tractor over to a neighbors paddock (where our sheep our) and mowed about 3 acres, only took it to about 20cm, but it did deal with a lot of weeds.
Once I got back, we stopped for a tea, I spoke to Mum and Dad for a while, whilst Steph was ripping up what was to be my herb bed (but never did). Instead I'm now going to plant a lime tree there as it will be along side the lemon and grapefruit tree. That bed was edged with bricks which I used to build a hard standing for our new bin (which should arrive soon).
We've made a massive pile of dying plant matter, two trailer loads.

Oh, today Strider got another hen (the chick we hatched a while ago)...I wish we could stop him, this morning he got a "severe" telling off because for the first time we actually caught him at it!

Anyway, time for a shower then tea..

Till later.

Field Days and impulsion

Well,what a stressfull weekend, what was supposed to be a stressfree weekend, turned out to be the complete opposite. Whilst walking around the Field Days we were caught by a real estate agent, and they showed us a small farm in Hawkes Bay that was apparently quite profitiable. It wasn't until we were driving to Mum and Dads place we thought about the viability of using a farm to replace Steph's income, and me working from home full time. So a few stressfull evenings working things out, speaking to people etc trying to get as much information collected as possible, and initially it all seemed like it could be achieved. On Monday though I spoke with my boss about working from home (not opposed to the idea), and a rural bank manager. The bank manager knew the property and was very dubious of the figures I quoted, so they were not willing to come along to the party. Oh well, back to the drawing board...We've got other options thankfully....
Apart from that, the field day was good, and Steph got off to Horse Of The Year for two days.

The decorating has started.

Well, it was a semi productive weekend, on Friday afternoon I picked up several sheets of custom wood for finishing the tank stand, and then did some work on the iQuarium project, it's coming along quite nicely. On Saturday morning we went into town and picked up a new roller and a paint tray and upon our return, painted the wall in the dining room, it looks really nice, basically that was Saturday! Sunday wasn't too different, a coat of paint in the morning, and building the sides of the tank stand around lunch time, and in the afternoon I made some more Quince Jelly, unfortunatly this one didn't set quite as well as previous attempts. The afternoon was also spent on the iQuarium, I've now got the new LCD display working, so back to writing the software (after I add a 8 bit shift register to avoid using so many IO pins when talking to the LCD display).

Anyway, this evening I think we're trimming the goat's feet, and then I'll be working again on the tank stand.

Vege bed coming along

  

The rabbit condo

  

Hollywood, Snowwhite and Rubun-ny (front to back)

  

This weekend we were suppose to have a BBQ, but the weather was appalling...oh well. Saturday morning I finished the rabbit condo, a bit extragavant for just two rabbits, but oh well. Today I cleaned the workshop up after builind the hutch ready for the fishtank stand next, and then this afternoon I made a hat out of DevilSpawn. Steph and I have been carding the fleece for the last few days, so that is the first piece of clothing from our farm. We're slowly getting there. What with my hat, my 54 year old tractor and a piece of stray in my mouth, I really look the part! And no I'm not taking photos..
As you can see from the photos the vege garden is back in full swing with leeks, celery, silverbeet, beetroot, lettuce,spinach and herbs.
Also this weekend I picked a large number of quinces, not sure what I'm going to do with them yet, but I've got them stored in a cool place, so I have a awhile..

Anyway, tea calls.

The first 'Devil Spawn' Hat..

  

Bunnies

Since we're almost self sufficient on the meat stakes (we only need to buy chicken and fish), I thought I would replace the chicken with something else, we could breed the chickens here, but plucking is a major problem, so I've decided to breed New Zealand Whites for meat. I'm currently trying to find a breeder to get us started, hopefully I'll remember to ring her this evening, but last night Jag came trotting through the cat flap, with a young rabbit (by it's scruff). He carried on down to one of the spare rooms (where he normally kills things, as astested to by the carcases when we get home!), and let it go. So I quickly caught it, and now it's in a rabbit hutch for a month or so...hmm, rabbit pie.

The Weekend

Well, I said I would try to do a blog entry, and because the weekend was so productive, it deserves one. Yesterday morning we brought the sheep up, and split the adult ewes off, and put them in with a neighbours ram "Biggles", who is a big black faced boy, so hopefully next year, they will all have twins, and grow fast...The other lambs went over to Jenny's paddock with our other lambs, hopefully they will finish off quite well, they certainly are growing well (almost ready to slaughter now). Devilspawn and Winston have been put in a small paddock together, we're hoping Winston does his "thing" before we get him turned into sauages. Before we did all that, Steph worked Markissa and has a small ride bare-back, and I chainsawed up a big pile of timber that has been waiting for chainsawing for 2 years!, now we have even more lawn to mow.
Speaking of mowing that lawn, Steph started mowing it yesterday but the lawn mower fell apart (the gas tank fell off!), so this morning since the tractor had the mower on, I cut our back lawn with the tractor, 3 passes and it was basically done!
Yesterday after all the stock were moved out of the paddocks, I went over them with the mower, and they now look really good, the grass should come away quite well.
In addition to all that we even moved the big tank off it's stand and onto a dolly so we could redo the stand.
Then today with the tank away from the wall we decided that we should decorate, we went into town, got some test pots (for the stand and the wall), and then proceeded to strip the wallpaper off, we got one wall done!

Also this weekend, I made rubharb chutney (very very yummy), Steph was two lots of devilspawn wool, I've carded four batts of devilspawn (so now just waiting for Steph to make something with it).

I think that's about all this weekend, plenty in my opinion...

Till later.