8th - 21st November 2010

The weather continues to be glorious - in fact I am almost wishing for rain so I have some time to concentrate on the inside projects. But while it is sunny, we just have to be out there and Dave's latest job involved a trip to the nearby sawmill for some free sawdust. And of course as it is free, he got a whole trailer full! The immediate use was for the paths in the veggie patch though no doubt we will find lots of other uses for it.

Alice left after a wonderful few weeks to pursue new opportunities up north and so it was handy that niece Katie fancied a bit of rest and relaxation ... and digging! She planted all the natives I had bought at a recent school fair on the soakfield which is one area that will not need to be constantly watered.


But all the other plants were looking distinctly thirsty and perhaps this led to many of our new fruit trees being attacked by the native bronze beetle. I spent several evenings catching numerous small beetles on the leaves but still the leaves disappeared. Finally I sprayed them with an organic spray and was amazed in the morning to find the trees covered with enormous versions of the insects. Sometimes the whole tree was stripped, like this plum ...


... and sometimes it was just the top leaves above the netting. Either way it was very sad as the trees had looked so healthy.

And after Katie, Paul dropped by and it seemed such a waste not to make use of his muscles so we set him onto the task of edging a bed outside the back of the house before the drive was resurfaced.


Yay, now we just need some pretty shade loving plants.

Meanwhile, the two bald 'Wally's had been growing new feathers and were disappearing into the rest of the group. We received eleven eggs on several days so at least one of them was laying. The whole group seemed quite happy and were learning that scraps and worms were much tastier than mash ...

... but we soon discovered that they didn't always know this as the bed we had planted up on the previous chook dome site was sprouting wheat in a big way!

But with a bit of weeding, it looked respectable again and all the seedlings we had planted were thriving.

On the other side of the veggie patch, the broad beans had just about done their dash and so we stripped them out and managed to collect 3.5 kg of yummy beans.

1st - 7th November 2010

The chooks were now well settled in to their new lifestyle although not without a few teething problems. The formerly bold bald one became very lethargic and stopped eating and we were advised by the vet that this was likely to be due to stress and was quite common in ex-battery hens. She recommended we kill it as they rarely survived but fortunately someone else recommended some 'Rescue Remedy' and this worked a treat. As we thought it would stress her even more to catch her and isolate her, we popped some in the hen's normal water pots and soon we had some very happy hens! In fact the effect on Bold Wally was amazing and soon she was back to full fighting fitness and somehow managed to gain a food pot to herself each time they were fed. They were doing quite a good job of digging the patch for us and seemed to enjoy dustbaths and sunbathing - all new experiences for them

Joanna had a brief stay before disappearing overseas and helped Dave water the natives ...

... and paid particular attention to Michael Jackson tree that she had planted in July last year (when it reached up to her knee).

She was also useful in sorting out the irrigation pipes.


Dave then got distracted and decided to move the gorse roots about - a real example of project creep as he ended up clearing a whole new area of gorse so that he had space to pile up all the roots of the plants he had dug up over the year.

And, yay, he emptied the swamp which had been a bit of a disaster as they were intended to kill the kikuyu grass but had attracted the pukekos. Still they produced a lot of good material for the compost heap.

These two activities were really to free up a site for a glasshouse / grow tunnel that we hope will be levelled off by the drive man when he comes to put the top surface on the drive. The final stage was to cut down all the weeds but unfortunately we were let down by technology and that will have to wait.

The chooks had had their two weeks on their first veggie patch and had done a pretty good job of clearing, digging and fertilising it for us ...

... so we prepared their next site which looked rather exciting. Just a few broad beans to pick first and some supports to remove ...

... and then across they moved. Wow, how much more exciting is this that a battery cage!


And the previous site needed some water ...

... and then a lot of mixed veggie seedlings.

25th - 31st October 2010

Well, now that the chooks were settled in their new home, we moved on to the next major project, irrigation. We had had a bore dug and a pump installed early on but had not added the pipes or taps. After our difficult time with a hired digger for the trench for the electric cable, Dave decided to dig it the old fashioned way and set off with great gusto towards the veggie patch. Fortunately he had a willing and able helper in Alice and soon ...

... it was into the veggie patch and out the other side, with just a wee side shoot for a tap.

Inside, things were getting slightly more civilised with a clock and a newly acquired picture from Grandad on the wall but took a step back when Joanna kindly decided to leave all the contents of her flat with us while she went on her next travels.

We also gained some curtains in our bedroom. Although I had chosen and bought material for three rooms, somehow I could only make this one set of curtains as some of the material had to be ordered, I had ordered two of the rails the wrong size and got the wrong sized fixings.

Anyway, we used these to test out our prototype hidden pelmets. Hmmm, they have possibilities but are not quite right yet.

The highlight of the week was when our hyperactive, never-likely-to-have-the-concentration-to-catch-anything cat, Little Black, came home one evening with a rather large rat in her mouth. Unfortunately she had forgotten to kill it and it ran under the settee and then under the television. Dave managed to get it into the wood basket but it wasn't too keen and started leaping out of that and escaped to the other end of the lounge where it sat and eyeballed our other cat, the big hunter Little Grey. In the end it ran close enough to the ranch slider that we could let it back out into the garden. Go Little Black!!