Balls, and lots of them

Swimming Lessons

Shearing day

Here's some photos of the goats, before and after

And Gloria

Is this my new bath Mummy?

Some Connor Photos.

Ah, an early easter and a nice long weekend.

What a pleasant weekend, what with Friday and Monday, 4 days off work...yee-hah. So what did Steph, Connor and I get up to in our four days off. Well, on Friday, Amy and Nigel came up from Wellington for the day, and the original plan was to head out to a beach, but due to the train being delayed, we didn't really have time, so instead we took the dogs and Connor down to the river to play, and then in the afternoon, whilst Connor was asleep (as was Steph), Amy, Nigel and I just sat around chatting and drinking coffee/tea. In the evening, Steph and I had our first night out since just before he was born, this time we went to Tulloch lodge in Masterton, good food, good service, and reasonable price. In all we had a very nice relaxing evening, and it just so happened that Connor was falling asleep as we pulled into the driveway. The car prompted a chorus of Gandalf and Strider barking, which promptly woke Connor up! Oh well.
Saturday morning we were up early so as to get Amy and Nigel back to the train in time, and then Steph and I fixed a fence that the strainer post had rotated on. That was really tiring, and after that, we decided that cleaning up the back lawn seemed like a good idea...anyway, that's all now tidier.
As for Sunday, the first mission of the day was to find 10kg of salt, basically impossible on Easter Sunday, in the end we bought it from a bakers, they were a bit surprised by the request, but thankfully managed to fullfill it. The reason we needed so much salt was that I wanted to do the next stage of the tanning of the deer hide (it needs to sit in a brine acid pickle for at least 3 days.
Apart from that, can't really remember what else we did!
On Monday, Andy and I went for a goat hunt at Tora (a beach about 1 hours drive away), it was a lovely day, lots of walking, and for our troubles we scored two goats (with two shots).


We did hear a stag roaring which was pretty cool, but after the .308 roared at the goats, not much else was heard in the basin.

Some photos and a few words

Another weekend, and this time, there's actually a blog entry to go with. On Saturday morning I cleaned up a rose bush that was creeping into the driveway, and then after that, I sprayed out a paddock (only 150L of weedspray!). In the afternoon (after getting back from town), we planted out the vege garden. Also on Saturday evening, I made some venison pate, very yummy!

On Sunday we had a lazy day (Steph played with Markissa, whilst I looked after Connor and did the housework), and in the afternoon we went round to a neighbors place.

As you can see, not much, but this post is more about the photos, so here goes.

My First Solo deer

Went out looking for deer this evening, and finally got one, a young (this year's fawn) spiker. The wind was totally against me, and I had almost given up, and decided to shelter in a rocky outcrop for a few minutes, at which point I saw the deer, and it was frolicking around in the dip below me, after waiting for a good shot (side on), I aimed, took a breath and let the rifle do it's job. The shot went straight across the top of the heart, causing the deer to run about 50m, and then drop. I quickly went over and administered the coup de grace (which hurt my ears!). Here's some photos.



Photo of heart

Deer

On Tuesday evening I headed back up to the bush to try and claim that stag, whilst up there I did not see 1 deer, but 4, 3 hinds and the stag, I took the shot and missed. So last night I went up with the video camera instead..here's the result.

Sleep, what's that

Well for a few days now, Connor hasn't been sleeping very well (infact for about 3 weeks), he's been waking around midnight for his feed, and then not going back down, as you can imagine, both Steph and I are a bit like zombies at the moment! He's got a cold still, and his teeth are still cutting, once he gets over all this he's being weened from his midnight feed so we might start to get some full night's sleep (fingers crossed).

This weekend was a bit hectic, Saturday morning I managed to cull 2 does and a mutton, and then in the afternoon I started cleaning up the driveway 'cause it was a mess.

On Sunday morning, I went for a bunny hunt, didn't see anything, but I decided to go for a walk through a small block of bush on the farm, and whilst stalking through, I heard a strange noise so I stopped, and about 20m in front of me walked a stag, probably a few years old, still in velvet. What an awesome sight, the sun was playing on his coat, making it a bright red, head held high. Didn't shoot it as I didn't have permission, just watched it for a while. When I got back home I phoned the farmer and told him about it, and he then gave me permission to shoot it! So that evening I was back up, didn't find it though, just some poo!
On Sunday afternoon we went to a BBQ with the antenatal group, it was planned that we would do some water skiing but the river was in flood, so we just played on the jet boat until the intake got choked with leaves etc from the river. Bloody good fun all the same!

Hopefully this weekend I'll get back up to the bush and have another look for that stag! But the list of jobs around this place is starting to increase again, we've got shearing coming up soon for the goats, some fences need repairing, the lawns (esp the back one) needs a lot of work done on it, and the vege bed isn't finished yet either. Nor is the dog deck fixed from when we emptied the septic tank. We'll get there..just slowly, problem at the moment is any free time, we're both soo knackered we don't really want to do anything.

Oh well, that's life..at least I've only got 1 mutton, and 2 kids left to cull (and maybe 1 hogget).

Till later.

Connor and tube

Connor's teeth

On Wednesday, Connor had another checkup at the dentist, and being a little one, they couldn't really explain "Open wide", "don't stick out your tongue" etc, so at the moment, they are not doing anything, and will check them again in 6 months.

We've done another lamb last night, and only 7 to go (2 does for salami's, 2 kids for chops, 1 mutton for roasts, 1 mutton for more sausages, and a hogget (not sure what we're doing with her). Saturday morning is when I intend dealing to the mutton and does. Then hopefully we'll be set for meat.

Sausages

Things are never quite normal around here, take this for example, our bathroom at the moment:

Hm, unpleasant side of farming

Well, we're down to 1 paddock with grass, and too much stock. We were hoping to use the driveway to tide us through a bit longer, but the neighboring farmer beat us to it (first come first serve basis).
Oh well this evening I have two mutton and a lamb to cull, then tomorrow, it will probably be a few more goats (for salamis).

Such is farming, at least we're only doing it for fun, not our income.. (at the moment)

A bit of a catch up

Well, it seems my blogging is becoming a bit more erratic...Not sure why, but it might have something to do with the fact that by the end of Sunday now we're both completely knackered. Connor has discovered the joys of moving (with great speed), and has also mastered the art of throwing tantrums.

So a quick catch up, on what's been happening around here. At the moment we're in the grips of a bad drought (we knew it was coming since winter 'cause we didn't get much rain then), but at the moment we've got too much stock, so I'm busy culling off any ewes and goats we don't want and turning them into roasts, sausages etc. I culled a kid yesterday, and was going to do our last lamb today, but my cold has developed and I don't think I'll be up to slaughtering this afternoon as it takes quite a bit out of you.

Our new vege bed is coming along steadily but slowly, the fencing is done, 3 beds are made and 2 are lined with stones for drainage, so hopefully it won't be too long until we have some compost in and start our autumn veges growing, hopefully photos soon.

One thing that has happened (on Friday), was I spent the morning in casualty with Connor. Around 9am I came up to the house (Connor was at a friends place being looked after for the day), when I got a phone call from the friend saying that Connor had got his teeth and chin stuck in a chair, and that the ambulance had been called, and do I want to meet them at the hospital. As you can imagine, I got to the hospital reasonably rapidly (infact beat the ambulance by about 20 minutes!). By the time the ambulance had got to Masterton, Connor had calmed down (so much so, he slept in the back of the ambulance). All that had happened is that his bottom 2 teeth had been pulled forward to an angle of about 45 degrees, and being the mouth, there was LOTS of blood. The teeth are still sticking forward, but he has another dentist appointment on Wednesday to see how they are going (at least it's only milk teeth). But needless to say, that coupled with teething 4 teeth at the same time (bringing it to a total of 8), has made for a restless week!

Oh the other news is that Steph finally let me get a new computer, our old one kept crashing and occasionally wouldn't read the HD our photos were stored on, as this was quite worrying (around 20Gb of photos), we got a new computer, a new shiney 20" aluminum iMac. It is such a breath of fresh air for computer, things mainly just work, the camera is great (Skype works so much better), and it's rekindled a bit of fun for me in developement, I had got to the stage ere software development was just a job, but with a different platform and a few other geeky factors, I've started writing another personal application, which is proving to be quite fun and challenging.

In other news, the hunting is still going strong, mainly hares at the moment, normally for cat food, but the other day I decided to make 4 hares into 5 salamis. It will take about a month before they have matured enough for eating..Just hope I can wait!

Till later.

It's been a while

OK, I know it's been awhile (not since the big goat hunt), but heres a quick catch up, the weekend after the hunt was my birthday, which was quite a good day, Connor gave me a book on Red Deer hunting in NZ, and a fire starting tool (based on magnesium and flint), and a pouch, Steph got me a nice gerber knife , gut hook and a bore snake, and Steph's parents gave me a kite to replace the one that was left at Lake Ferry a while ago.

The weekend after we had a BBQ with some friends from work, and went on a hunt with Matt, he shot 3 hares, and they were good shots too.  Then it's this weekend....more later.

A Weekend hunting

This weekend for a change, I headed into the bush with a group of 8 other hunters whom I met on a hunting forum.
The purpose of the hunt was primarily a goat cull, but with the chance of also seeing some deer too.

After several weeks of preparation, and sighting in the rifle and improving my technique so that I could hit what I aimed at, I was ready on Friday evening finally. With the truck loaded, and the bike on the trailer, I was ready and poised for the early start on Saturday morning.
At 3am on Saturday morning, the alarm went off and we were all go. After a quick breakfast and a quick drink, we were off (I was taking another forum member up too). 4 hours later we met the other guys in Ratehi. After quick introductions, we were back on the road for another hour to the start of the track to the "Bridge to nowhere".
Once at the bottom of the track, the quads were unloaded, and the trailers rehitched to the bikes and loaded back up, and we headed off up the track.
Around 1 hour later (about 9.2kms) we finally got to the clearings where we were to camp.
We all set up camp, and had a bite to eat, then made plans for the afternoon. From the maps given to us, carrying on down the track seemed like a good idea. With two others on the back of the bike, we headed down the track, and after about another hour of bouncing around on the quad, we finally reached a clearing that looked like it the track might start deteriorating quite quickly. At this point a lie down sounded like a good idea. Whilst we were sitting around, we heard a few bleats up in the bush above up, so myself and another headed up to try and locate the goat. We did a few bleats to try and call the goat in, but to no avail, and we headed back to the bike. After that I decided I would carrying on walking down the track, whereas the other two would head up the gully where we were.

Whilst walking I didn't find anything, but I bumped into 2 other members (7mmWSM and Yammies) of the group, and since they were heading in the same direction, I tagged along. After awhile we bumped into another forum member (igrnz) and we stood around talking for awhile, and then we say a goat on the other side of the ravine.
Igrnz had an attempt at the billy but missed, and then 7mmwsm and I headed further down the track, and it wasn't long until we met a couple of goats on the track. I quickly brought my rifle up, and fired at the billy, and he headed off quick smart, leaving my thinking "How the hell did I miss that!", and 7mmWSM came forward and shot at a young billy. Whilst I was taking the a hind quarter off the young billy for a spot of curry, 7mmWSM headed further down the track and located my billy, who had a reasonable ugly gut shot (my bad!), he quickly administered a killing shot. Learnt and important lession here, if you think there was a chance you hit it, and it gets away, check! But since the billy had horns, I removed the head and took it back with us.
That was it for goats on Saturday so we started heading back to where we left the bikes. The trip back up the track this time was a bit better, I only had igrnz on the back. Once or twice there were a few hairy moments, due to my driving skills, we quite often had the front wheels off the ground, and at one stage I even managed to throw igrnz from the bike into the bank. Apparently very funny to watch from behind!
On the track up, Pennyless and Dave (son) had left 2 back legs on the track, hopefully the quad we saw at the bottom hadn't drove over it!. We picked them up and stashed them on the front of the quad, and at one point on the track, one of the legs jumped off, and I drove over it! Oh well, tenderized meat!.
Upon getting back to camp, I proceeded to make dinner, yep, goat curry, and it tasted bloody terrific, meat was a little chewy, but very tasty!.

After a reasonable (but freezing) night's sleep, the next morning at a reasonable hour, Pennyless's son and I headed off down towards (and past) the private block of land. On the way down, we did encounter one whiff of Billy, but we only got a glimpse as they ran deeper into the bush. After driving through some really nice large clearings, and then realizing that that penned up sheep and the house probably meant we shouldn't be shooting around here, we consulted the map and chose somewhere else to hunt; there was a large stream a few ks up the track with what looked like clearings on the topo map. On the tramp up, we encountered a Nanny and it's kid, Dave took the Nanny and I shot the kid (bringing my tally to 2). Then we headed off the track and up into the bush to sidle above the stream overlooking the clearings on the other side. 10 or so minutes in, we came to a good size clearing on the other side so we crossed and had a quick explorer. We basically stumbled across two goats, and a few shots later, Dave had another as did I, the head was close to the one the day before, and had real thick horns, so I removed it and left it down by the stream for collection on the way back. The rest of the tramp to the fork was reasonably uneventful, except for a very deep gorge that needed crossing by the means of a tree the goats had been using, and then a very small ledge on a high drop which was hand's and knees material, all good fun!
We never did get to the fork in the stream, the last creek was too deep to cross, and as it turned out, the Google earth imagery doesn't show a clearing anyway!
On the way back, with the temperature rising, we my water getting low, we had a break to listen for goats (or just simply have a rest!) I headed down the bank to the stream, and made the last 6 foot a bit quicker than anticipated (ie, the bank gave way on me!), but when I got back up, both Dave and I heard a got bleat from the clearing on the other side. I had the rifle ready in an instant, and Dave started bleating to keep it occupied whilst I found a better place to shoot from. At this stage we still couldn't see the damn thing, so I tried bleating. Having goats at home, the bleat that really seems to get other goats attention was the bleat of the kids, high pitched, panicky and very loud, so I tried that. Lo and behold the billy responded with a bleat, and it didn't take long for the "kid" to entice the billy out of the cover. From the bush, I saw this black shape under the tree, and a quick look through the scope confirmed the goat. Cool I thought, a slightly more calculated shot, I lent up against a punga, and almost headed down the bank again as it was not quite stable, and a slight change in pose and I was ready for the shot. Click went the trigger.....Shit, I forgot to load! Quickly chambering a round and taking sight again, BOOOM, then all you heard was "F*?k, I hit it!" The goat dropped like the proverbial sack of spuds!.
We quickly crossed the stream and on inspection it wasn't surprising it dropped, I got it straight through the skull, exiting just beside the ear. Thankfully the horns were still intact as they were better than either of the other two heads I had.
After a few photos, I removed the top half of the head, and we started heading back, picking up the other head on the way (it made it much easier to carry the messy head as I taped the two heads together to contain the bits from the one missing the bottom half!).

The other highlight of the walk on Sunday was two bush robins that showed great interest in us, and stayed flitting around us whilst we got lots of photos..

As we were on the track back up to camp, we drove around a corner, and stumbled upon 2 kids, a few minutes later, and another Booom echo'ed around I had my 5 and final kill. Unfortunately this was a very messy shot, I caught the kid in the back end, smashed both legs, and gutted it at the same time, and to make matters worse, the poor blighter was still alive. I shot again, and missed, so I quickly scrambled across and administered last rites with a knife.
Monday morning was significantly warmer, and around 6:390 I headed back towards the private land, trying to get to a clearing further up the valley which we had gone right past the day before. I found a hunter's track that led straight down to it, and upon getting there I found some fresh sign, and tracks in the grass leading into the bush. After some time watching and listening, I started heading back up the track, and once more during the frequent pausing for breath I head a mew. Not knowing what it was, I mewed back, and for about 30 minutes there was a constant dialogue between me and the mewer. God knows what I was saying, but I kept it's interest up at least. I never did find what it was, and at one point I thought I might have even gone past it. Upon getting back to camp, I described the noise and informed that it might have been a hind or fawn. It was fun all the same talking to the animals, and I wouldn't have shot a fawn or hind anyway.
After getting to camp, we headed back to the car, and the trip home.

All in all it was a fantastic trip.

Second goat

Second head worth taking

The head that won the junior head

A little bush robin that graced us with it's presence

Close up of my winning head

Connor Crawling

That's Christmas for another year

Ok, another Christmas over. It was a very quiet Christmas, and not like your traditional one either. Christmas morning Connor slept in (which Steph and I appreciated), and after getting up, feeding pigs, checking goats, and feeding all the other animals we had breakfast (the family tradition of a variety pack continues over here too). After a spot of housework, we started opening presents around 9am-ish, maybe later.  We tried to let Connor open as much as he could, but he tried eating the wrapping paper more than once.

By lunch time, we still had a few to go, so we had a bite to eat, and then continued on with the presents.  About 3pm, we started on the spitroast, with removing the trotters, the shoulders (from the 8th rib) and the head.  Once we got it on the spit and the BBQ started, things were on their way.. Many hours later, and a sore thumb from a accident with a hacksaw, the pork was ready (took around 6 hours all up to cook, but the spit worked a treat).

The meat was pretty fantastic, and we had it with a salad and bread rolls, not your traditional Christmas dinner.

Just after dinner, Monkey gave birth to the first kid, and the other followed about 45 minutes later.

What a hacksaw does to a thumb!