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...
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Saturday, April 01, 2006
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.
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.
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.
Sunday, March 26, 2006
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.
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.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
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.
Apart from that, the field day was good, and Steph got off to Horse Of The Year for two days.
Monday, March 13, 2006
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.
Anyway, this evening I think we're trimming the goat's feet, and then I'll be working again on the tank stand.
Sunday, March 05, 2006
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.
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.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
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.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
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.
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.
Friday, February 24, 2006
A bit lax
Well, as Amy pointed out I've been a bit lax on the old blog, last
weekend Steph and I went to Tauaranga for a 80th birthday party which
was good. We got to catch up with both Steph's parents and mine.
This weekend we intend seperating our sheep for breeding, and starting
to goat proof some of our trees (hopefully it's not too late).
The turkey is still sitting on eggs in the driveway!
We'll see how I go this weekend on the blogging.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Previous few weekends
Well, I haven't posted anything for a while, things have been pretty busy around here. After getting back from Melbourne, that weekend we had to shear 23 lambs, plus help with our neighbour with his. Unfortunatly we discovered that we had a little bit of flystrike (this is where fly land on the poopy backsides and lay eggs hence maggots!). The shearer removed the maggots on the lambs, and I treated the area with flystrick powder, and that was that. We decided to check the rest of the flock (our old ewes and their lambs), once more there was a little bit of flystrike starting, but on our neighbours ewe whom we grazing here at the moment, there was heaps, and she is a VERY big ewe. We ended up we me sitting on her whilst she was laid out on her side, whilst Steph did the deed around her backend. This is one of the more unpleasant jobs.
Oh and on Saturday we also got the goats shorn. Once more they are funny looking things!
That basically wraps up all the stock work, but other things of note are that we currently have a turkey hen sitting on some eggs beside our driveway. We found her when Strider pounced on her!!! Thankfully she was a bit too big for him to kill with one bite like he does with chooks!
Hmm, what else is happening..The big tank is all empty, and I'm starting to get the bits together to create the dolly to move it (so we can decorate that end of the room).
Hm, thats about all at the moment. I'm considering getting broadband soon, if that happens, then expect to see more photos!.
Till Later
Matthew
Oh and on Saturday we also got the goats shorn. Once more they are funny looking things!
That basically wraps up all the stock work, but other things of note are that we currently have a turkey hen sitting on some eggs beside our driveway. We found her when Strider pounced on her!!! Thankfully she was a bit too big for him to kill with one bite like he does with chooks!
Hmm, what else is happening..The big tank is all empty, and I'm starting to get the bits together to create the dolly to move it (so we can decorate that end of the room).
Hm, thats about all at the moment. I'm considering getting broadband soon, if that happens, then expect to see more photos!.
Till Later
Matthew
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)