Another day, and another set of trials

Yikes, this holiday isn't really turning up to be very relaxing, but, saying that today's blog does end on a good note (for a change).

This morning I fed the bunnies, no kit's yet, but she isn't due to tonight anyway, so that wasn't a surprise. After doing a bit of house work, Steph and I trundled into town to pick up a few bits, and the scoria for the flower beds. Whilst we were in town, we also picked up a thicknesser for the workshop so that I can try and do something with the rimu boarding I aquired last year.
Once we got home, we spread the scoria out on the flower beds (in the rain), and then I went down to the workshop to play with the thicknesser, whoops, I mean work with the thicknesser...
It's so cool, crappy timber goes in, you let go and it spits out really nice boards...it has taken place as my second favorite tool (compound cross cut saw still being #1).
Anyway, I started on a project (no details till it finished).

Then as it started getting colder (and after Markissa had had her hooves trimmed by the farrier, I came inside, and Steph finished of a few things outside, including the bunnies, this is were the day went pear shaped, Snowwhite (the one due tonight) was missing!!!!! I mustn't of closed the door properly this morning, after a quick hunt around and a few naughty words, I found her in the wood shed, cold and wet. She had tried escaping from the wood shed, but thankfully it has a gravel base course that she couldn't dig through.

So now, we're sitting down to a nice cuppa and a blazing fire..
Till tomorrow (last day of our holiday).

Oh, here's the photo of the manager

  

Bad News

Unfortunalty yesterday, Devil Spawn had got worse, she was unable to reposition her self, and was not showing any signs of improving, so I phoned John (one of our neighbours), and he came over and shot her for us. After which I promptly skinned her, and did a very rough autopsy and she had intensive rotting about a hand lengths in, not pleasant....Oh well in the end we did the right thing, oh the other thing I noticed was her pelvis was very very tiny, In retrospect and with the knowledge of her pelvis size, maybe breeding her was a mistake.
After skinning, fleshing the hide (which is probably the best fleshing I've done), and digging the hole (and putting her head somewhere separate so we can get the horns!) we had lunch, and then I started on the job I was intending to do, which was set up the fish tank. After cleaning 240kg of river pebbles, and heaving a massive bit of driftwood in and about a dozen big boulders, the tank is looking really murky (I was intending typing "cool", but it's not yet, give it a day or to with the filter for that, and then I'll start heating it and thinking about planting it out.
Today I will hopefully get down into the workshop and cleanup after making the manger (photos are now on the camera, so they are getting closer), and I'm going to start pickling the lambs hides (first you dry them out with salt, rehydrate them in brine solution, pickle them in acid, and then tan them in another really salty solution with something else added), Devil Spawn will probably go in the pickle in about a week's time.
Anyway, time for a nice cup of tea.

Devil Spawn

Devil Spawn is still alive, this morning her temperature had dropped from 40.9 to 39.9, which is heading in the right direction. There is still a really nasty discharge from her bits, tomorrow I think we'll flush it with warm water and maybe explore a bit. We're keeping her dosed up on Calpro, and we've got more intracillin for Sunday (if she is still alive).
I managed to build the nursary rabbit run, unfortunatly I had one minor design flaw, it was 5mm too long to fit in the shed, so a quick mod and made it 2" shorter. Now SnowWhite has residence and hopefully she'll start nesting in the next few days. Hollywood finally realised she needed to build a nest and this morning was frantically building a nest in her feed bowl! Hopefully next time she'll get the birthing and nest building the other way around.
This afternoon whilst out (we went to the sales to see what was around, nothing of note), we picked up 530Kg of red scoria, and 320Kg of 6mm river pebbles, the scoria is for the flower beds, it looks REALLY good, photos tomorrow, and the pebbles are for the fish tank, I've decided not to do the whole sculpting thing, I just don't have the time, instead I'll just do a aquascaped tank, but still with many plants and the CO2 injector.
Anyway, this evening Steph and I are off to a french restuarant for dinner.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll have some good news about DevilSpawn.

Not a good start to our holiday

Well, Steph and I were intending taking a week off, and having a very restfull week, but this morning things didn't go according to plan, Hollywood gave birth over night to 10 kits, but she never bothered building a nest, so they all died!, and then when I went to check DS, she was not in a good state. We've brought her up to a compound near the house so we can keep a closer eye on her, and we've put 6ml of Intracillin and 200ml (over 6 hours) of Calpro (vitamins and glucose etc). Her temperature is pretty high, but it did drop over the last 2 hours (down to 40.6 from 40.9). I guess we now just see what happens tomorrow and if she is still around, we'll get another dose of antibiotics for her.
In an attempt to be a bit more successfull with the rabbits, I'm building a big nursing cage, 2m long, hopefully I'll have it ready for the weekend when Snowwhite is to drop.

On a plus note, we did manage to round up the sheep (which escaped yesterday!), and the other lambs are still doing fine.

Still going

I caught DevilSpawn this morning, and her back end was still quite swollen, but Steph had a look this afternoon and she thinks it looks just like a big hemotoma. One thing I didn't mention yesterday, was that one of the lambs when I skinned it had a massive hemmorage around the throat internally, which makes me think it was first out, and was presented incorrectly, and was killed during birth, and then the one behind suffocated whilst she was struggling with the first. Oh well, anyway today we moved the alpacas across to Julia's (our new neighbour) paddock, we have absolutly no grass left except for the lambing paddock and the lamb raising paddock (which has trees that need fencing off). So as to make the management of the alpacas easier, I made a manger, photos on Thursday (I forgot).
This morning whilst I was feeding the bunnies, Ruben bit me, I had handled the girls (Hollywood is due on Tuesday), and then him, I think he thought my hand was a girl and sunk his teeth in!

Bad news

This morning when I went down to check Devil Spawn around 6am, she was still alive, but no lambs, so I did some cleaning in the barn, and then when Steph got out of bed we went into town to pick up some fence posts (another 40). By the time we got back there still wasn't any lambs, and she was still walking funny!
Later on in the morning I bumbed into Rex, and whilst we were chatting I mentioned Devil Spawn, and he offered to have a look. Once he finished with his flock, he came over and we caught her, and he had a feel inside, didn't like the feel of it as it was very tight, he couldn't get his hand past the pelvis. I tried as I have slightly smaller hands; I got past the pelvis, but couldn't find anything! We then wondered if she had dropped the lambs already, so I did a quick scout around the paddock, and unfortunalty I found two dead lambs.
 

Normally you put your lambs out for the dead lamb man...but because they were so small they weren't worth anything, so I skinned them and they are now in the garage being salted. The really sucky thing is we wanted two black ewes, and that's what they were! Shit happens.

Hopefully the other ewe will do better... 

Devil Spawn Spawning

This evening when we got home, Devil spawn was in the process of getting ready to birth, we checked her again at 8:30, and she was still moving around, but not very comfortable.
This is the first time we've been around for a birth, and hopefully we haven't disturbed her too much, I guess we find out tomorrow morning we check her first thing.
Her bits were a bit red, engorged and VERY loose, we're hoping everything is OK and doesn't need intervention.
Will post the outcome tomorrow, and if it's good, photos too.

Fingers crossed.

Tree Hugging.

Another really good weekend. Yesterday we planted the last poplar poles, and started building 2mx2m "compounds" for each of the silver birch, plane and oak trees (so as to stop the goats destroying them). With each tree needing 4 holes (to about 800mm deep), and another 5 holes for the poplars, that's alot of dirt needing moving, about 35 lineal metres! Armed with such a daunting number we hired a post hole borer, and got up really early so that we would have lots of time to do them as we had friends coming around at 2. Amazingly enough we had all the holes dug in less than an hour. There is a good side to having so much rain, but then there is always a down side, most of the holes filled with water by the time we went to ram them. Oh well, a job for another day. The posts are in the holes all ready, just keeping our fingers crossed for a few more days/weeks of pleasant weather (ie spring, albeit just past mid winter at the moment).
After giving up with the post ramming, I decided to finish (well start) the post and rail fence behind the water tanks which I started last september (see http://littlebush.blogspot.com/2005/09/sunday-day-of-rest-yeah-right.html), I don't think it's too bad, a post and rail fence inside a year!

And today, we moved the sheep from one neighbours place, to the others (I say we, I should really say Rex (the local farmer) did it with his dog, ours today were useless. The only other thing of note today was that I did a bit of pruning in the paddocks with the chainsaw, just removing low branches so I don't get hit in the head whilst driving around on the tractor.

Anyway, that's enough for today.. Next weekend we'll hopefully ram a few posts and have more photos of more lambs. Also this week coming I think Hollywood should drop her babies, so fingers crossed.

Enjoy the photos.


 
 
  

Lambs

Lamb update

Just a quicky, we checked the new lamb this morning on the way to work, and he's still alive and with Mum, so things are looking good for him. Obviously photos on the weekend.

And another

It's so much better not having to drag out the modem cable etc...anyway back on to the subject, we got another lamb, no photos yet as it was dark when we got home, but a big boy with black point ears. Only one, and when we got home he was on the road side of the fence and had been away from mum for a while (not sure how long), but Mum took him back OK and hopefully he'll get a feed and be OK, find out tomorrow I guess...

On to tea...

Fash Internet and Lambs

This weekend a fair bit happen, first on Saturday, Steph and I went for a swim at our local pool and I then went and got some timber and the remaining 13 trees.
After getting home we planted the 4 plane trees and 3 of the poplars, despite the surface being like slurry,underneath is quite diggable which made for a slighty more plesant job.



Once lunch was out of the way we mounted a wifi aerial on the outside of the barn, as broadband was going to be installed on sunday.

Sunday morning I got up nice and early and finished building the firewall ready for when the dish was put up, and then I went for a stroll down to the lambing paddock as it was a nice morning and I was hoping that we would have some lambs, which we did...




Then soon after the guy came around to install the dish, and after about two hours we had a dish and a broadband connection:

Anyway, there was more, but I'll write it later..

Hopefully this evening we'll find more lambs.

Lambs on the way

No photos this weekend, all that there is really to photograph is masses of mud, and pregnant ewes. After losing the lamb the other week, we decided to vacinate the lambs with 5-in-1. Since the protection is passed on to new lambs if the mother has been vaccinated within a month, we checked the ewes and wee going to hold out vaccinating them until they bag up and relax in the back quarters (see last years photos!). Two of the big ewes had already bagged up, the black faced girl was looking very "relaxed" and ready. We've moved them all into a paddock we've been keeping aside for lambing, hopefully this year we'll get 7 lambs, 2 from each of the big girls and 1 from devilspawn (who is pregnant to winston, she's also bagged up and is starting to look more ready. We intend putting the lambs and ewes into the newly sown paddock once things dry up a little bit, just to top the grass to make it grow a bit stronger. But before we do that, we're going to need to protect a few trees we planted this weekend. We've put in several scarlet oaks, down either side of the race to make a kind of avenue. also behind the large mound we plant some silver birch (which should shoot away pretty well). Next weekend, hoefully, we'll we planting some plane trees to offset the oaks, and and bunch of poplars to provide shelter.
Then we've got to build the goat proof tree protectors.

It now looks like my trip to the UK has been put off to the end of october, hopefully, things will warm up and dry out in time for me to sow the paddocks before I go.

Yesterday(Tuesday) we had some guys out trying to install broadband for us, we have to go with a satalite system, and it ended up having to go on the end of the barn, so that means 80m of cabling to be dug into the ground! So it's not there yet...

Very Wet

For the last few days, both Steph and I have been working from home. On Wednesday we drove into town (in the honda civic), and several times on the way, we thought "hmm, it's pretty wet, hopefully the roads are open". The roads were open, although several times we encountered police making sure that drivers noticed the big puddles on the road. Once we got into work, we started keeping an eye on the river levels, and it started getting higher and higher, at which point I phoned our local council and found out that things were worse over here, so we both decided that heading home was the best thing. Three hours and a very long route home as we wanted to avoid certain roads, turned out to be the right thing as there were some huge puddles/fordings that I would not have been happy crossing at around 10pm at night.
On Thursday morning, I checked the river levels and the weather warnings, at which point we went back to bed, and then spent the day working from home with the occasional rescue of sheep, fixing drainage issues with Tom on the neighbours place, and making sure all the animals had enough hay to keep them warm.
This morning though, we got up, decided the Safari was the best bet, and started driving to the train station. At the top of our road, we found several big slips, and by the time we got to the other end (all 6Kms away) we discovered that the road there was closed...So we turned around and now working from home.
Around 10am, the clouds parted and blue sky was visible, now (1pm), it's sunny and warm and another weekend is near.

A not quite so farmy weekend.

Another weekend, and unfortunatly another dead sheep. Two of the lambs have now died,
probably due to clostridal disease. We're now going to move the lambs on very promptly
so I'm going to organise that for this weekend hopefully. We'll move on the 10 largest
and then try to fatten the other 8 up a bit more for an extra week or two.
Anyway, the weekend was pretty busy, on Saturday we had a Mid Winter Christmas Party with
Steph's work, it was fancy dress, and the theme was farming. Really easy for us, I threw on
my gum boots,my wax jacket, and my leather hat, and I was set. Steph went as a hunter, all in camo
gear, with a hunting horn I made out of one of Winston's horns, and a big pink unicorn strapped to her back!
That basically took all Saturday, and Sunday was spent doing shopping etc, then we had a visit from one of Steph's
friends through work. Admittedly we didn't get a great deal done, such as measuring out for our tree planting or
installing the shields between the hutches in the rabbit house, but we'll just do that next weekend.
Just before we were going to head out to the pub for dinner, Steph called me on the radio and told me about the
dead ewe, so I quickly dug a hole and threw her in....I'm getting reasonably speedy at digging big holes.

I did manage to take a few photos this weekend, so here they are (none of the dead sheep of course!)

Another weekend, and this time I now I have something to write about because my shoulders ache, I have some cuts on my hands and we’re both knackered.
Saturday morning was reasonable normal, with a trip into Masterton to do the shopping etc, but whilst we were there we paid a trip to Arakura nursery (a local council operated tree nursery), after chatting with the guy we came away with ideas on what to plant this year. We’re hoping to turn the paddocks into a park like area, and he suggested silver birches, plane trees, oaks and ash to name a few. So once we work out how many we need, we’ll head back an get some to plant. We’re hoping to have that done before I head off to the UK.
Once we got home, we decided to move the sheep from Jenny’s paddock to another neighbors paddock. Unfortunately there was no easy way to get them across so we used the stock crate. First though we crutched and drenched them, hoping the drench would give them a better chance at gaining the last few kg’s they need before slaughter. Whilst we had them all in, we checked our ewes that should be pregnant. They are huge, still a while off, but they were massive (one might be a bit obese even, how I have no idea as they haven’t had that much feed).
We caught the first 12 and threw them in the crate and then ferried them over to the other paddock (using the bike), there was 1 lamb though that needed to be put in another paddock as we’re slaughtering it for the freezer next weekend or the one after. Once the 11 lambs were out of the crate, I started the bike again to take that one lamb back to our paddock, it spluttered and died. After several minutes hard pulling I found out that the tank was empty, so I switched to reserve (or so I thought), and gave it a few more pulls. One pull was a tad too hard as I snapped the pull cord! In the end I went and got Tom, put the bike on the cargo tray and the trailer on the tow ball, and took the bike back to the workshop (hoping I could repair it), and then the lamb down to the race. Getting back out of the paddock was hit or miss, it’s been very wet this winter, and what with the paddocks already all churned up by the rotavator in autumn, they are like two large mud pits. With the extra drag of the trailer, the tractor tyres were spinning and we weren’t going anywhere fast, but moving…just. Patience was a virtue here as I just sat tight and waited till the ground got a bit firmer and then managed to turn around the gate and head back out to the other 13 lambs. On inspection the next day the ruts I left were over 12 inches deep. Looks like I’ve got some serious rotavating and harrowing to do come spring.
By the time we had move the last 13 lambs across, it was getting dark and I decided to start repairing the bike.
Removing the cover for the pull cord showed the problem (as if we didn’t guess), the cord had snapped inside the housing. So after pulling that out etc, and then working out how it was put togther and disassembling it, I worked what to do, unfortunately I forgot to thread the rope through one of the holes first! Then the spring wasn’t sprung enough to rewind the rope, so I took the center casing out…whoops…the tightly wound metal string became desprung. This was really annoying because initially I had no idea on how to respring it. But with two nails, lots of cable ties and several attempts I managed to respring it by hand, holding the spring together with cable ties. Once it was tightly coiled, I put it back in the case, and started snipping the cable ties, letting the coil expand. That’s where I called it a day, and headed back inside for a nice coffee and a shower.
Sunday started out with finishing fixing the bike, which with Steph’s help only took a few minutes, we presprung the rewinding mech and then feed and tied off the pull rope. Once the bike was complete, I cleaned up all the dead branches that has been sitting around our property for several months, and moved all the other wood debris into a fire pile.

As I was pretty puffed from moving all the wood around, I decided to walk over and check the sheep and goats. Whilst over there I had a chat with the guy who was chopping down some trees for them, and he mentioned that there were some logs around the back of the property that might be good for turning etc, and that I should have a look. It was at that point Steph realized that the alpacas were having fun in the front garden. I had built a temporary fence across the back garden so that they could have some more grass, but they had knocked that over and gone for a walk around the garden, but the main problem was that all the gates were open, and Steph was still on Markissa’s back! After a few minutes of chasing alpacas around the paddocks, we managed to get them back into their paddock and fix the fence so they couldn’t get out again.

Finally it was lunch time….After lunch I took the bike and trailer over to look at the timber, and after an hour or so I came back with two rounds (about 3 foot in diameter), and a slab about 6 foot long and 2 maybe 3 foot wide. Heavy is about the only description that I can think of….One of the rounds had a nasty split right down the middle that I thought might be fixable, but upon picking it up and putting it in the shed for drying, it split right down the middle into two parts, “Bugger” I thought, but then I realized that it would make 2 tables that fit together and that could be quite cool.

After that I decided that I would start making the next couple of bunny hutches, so I spent a few hours in the workshop cutting and ripping timber down into preset lengths and then assembling one hutch. So Snowwhite and Hollywood are now both in the house, I hope to start Rubin’s hutch this evening…

Next week when the light is better I will take photos of the hutches, but by the time I was finished, it was all dark.

Oh, other photos I need to upload is the white lamb’s rug and the finished Winston.

Till later…

Catchup

Ah, once more I've been very lazy about blogging, in my defense we've only just got the projector back (hence blogging from the lounge on a Sunday afternoon can continue), and what with it being winter, not a great deal is happening. But to fill in a few blanks with what we've been up to recently. Firstly all the animals are fine, one of our sheep died a few weeks ago, not sure why, du if you have livestock, at some point, you always have deadstock!. The weekend following I buried it in the paddock where I've been tilling it over ready for spring, well I dug a big hole, threw it in and then started filling it back in. I decided that it would probably be easy using the tractor and the FEL to push the dirt back in - dumb idea. It was fine until I also thought that going over the top with the rotavator was a good idea. The soil was ofcourse uncompacted and the front of the tractor fell into the hole and it took a fair bit of jiggling around to get the tractor out...Later that weekend I had to use the tractor to drag the neighbours ute out of a paddock 'cause he also got stuck, the boys had a great time running around rounding up the cows and Gandalf was espcially pleased when he found an entire sheep carcase...so many bones just for him! He wasn't too impressed when I called him away from it.
We've sent another two lambs off the the big freezer in the sky, and we should be getting them back on Wednesday, along with the hides. Oh, I finished tanning Winston, and he made quite a nice rug, and I also tanned the lamb we used for suasages, the leather came out really even, but not quite supple enough, maybe I didn't use enough leather lube. The only downside with the tanning method at the moment is that it uses chrominum as it's main thing, and it stains the fleece slightly blue, the next hide I'm going to try washing/soaking in sulphuric acid for a day to try and remove the chrome color.

Hopefully on Wednesday or Thursday Snowwhite and Hollywood will have babies, during the weekend I made two nesting boxes out of plywood and now it's just a case of seeing if they drop!

Hm, what else...we've moved the goats onto a neighbours paddock as it's hiller and dryer, which is better for their feet. Hopefully they'll do well over there, and we're going to move the rest of the lambs overthere next weekend, we need to get a little bit more weight on them before we move them on permanantly, and Jenny (our nieghbour) where they have been grazing has finally sold and has 4 weeks.

On the tank front, the Co2 controller has some hardware issues, and I need to rebuild it. I'm going to design a PCB for it, and hope that sovles some of the issues. I've yet to do anything regarding getting the internal glasswork ready either, ah, time is short....

That reminds me this Wednesday is special to Steph and I, it's the shortest day of the year, so it means it only gets better from then on....(and of course, happy birthday to Sophie (if I remember correctly)).

Well that basically fills in all the blanks....

Till next time (hopefully this weekend if something exciting (like baby rabbits) happens).

Hopefully normal bloggin resumes next week

For the last few weeks I've been without the projector, hence unable to use the computer in the lounge (and thus blogging has been erratic).
There isn't much to report at the moment, I've finished tanning Winston, and his rug is now in the lounge, and I have a strip for a wrist support at work. Steph's rabbit is currently being tanned. All the animals are fine and dandy. For those who haven't heard, I'm headeding back to the UK next month(ish). Other than that, there isn't much real news.

Hopefully next week I get the projector, so things should continue as before with weekly blogs and photos.

The last week

Well, after the last 6 days, I'm completely knackered, what with some nasty dentistry on Tuesday, Wednesday off due to pain, Mum's graduation on Thursday, Friday was reasonably relaxed, Saturday we drove to Hawkes Bay for Mothers Day, and then driving back to Littlebush on Sunday. And to top it off, last night we had torrental rain, and we were up arund 1am with the noise (and this morning my jaw still hurts!). Grump Grump
Later on when I get the photos organised, I'll upload a few of the graduation, and Colin going for a flight in a Tiger Moth.

Must get on with work...

Till later.

No Photos this week

Once more a reasonable good weekend, Saturday was spent clearing the drive of leaves etc, and Steph hemmed the new curtains as they were a bit on the long side. Other than that, I can't really remember what else we did! The only other thing I can think of is that we did a bit of spraying with the new boom I made (and it worked), and I finished of the CO2 solenoid controller microcomputer I've been making (and it worked).
Sunday (being a bit more recent), I can remember what we did a bit better, we started off the morning cleaning Monty's backend as he was quite daggy, and then we caught the sheep which we're having on Saturday for dinner. Whilst Steph was out taking the lamb to the meat works, I did the house work, and played around getting the CO2 bubbles to the correct rate.
Once Steph came home, and we had cleaned the trailer, we realised that we had a big 4x4 and a muddy paddock that I was soon to till over and resow. After a few minutes of doing donuts and basically making a real mess (I managed a 720 degree donut in the safari whilst it was in 4wd mode!). I'm not looking forward to cleaning it though. Later in the day I took Winston's hide out of the bucket of tanning solution, and gave it a good wash and pegged it out to dry, this was made much easier with a compressed air nail gun... Meanwhile Steph was hemming the last curtain. Then to round the evening off we watched the orginal KingKong until the projector died.

Once it comes back, I'll post some photos..

The weekend

A little bit late, but such is life. Since it was quite a while ago, here are the highlights. On Sunday we started trying to till the last two paddocks, but whilst we were doing that, we noted that there was grass coming back through already - which was hindering the tilling. So on Sunday we borrowed our neighbours 100L sprayer and using a wand sprayer sprayed out best we could, in addition to this I've also been building a boom attachment for the trailer so we can do the next paddock much easier. On Saturday we brought the fish tank stand up from the shed and put the tank back on it, now just for the sides and the internal features and we can start filling it.
On Friday I collected the sausages from the butcher, and we got about 480 sausages, as you can see, it's a fair few.
On Monday (our wedding anniversary), we went to Palmerston North and spent a pleasant day there, followed up by a nice meal in Martinborough.

Other things that happened was I managed to finally get my CO2 bottle for the fish tank, now to make a quick CO2 contrller until the eQuarium is ready.

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.