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!!

18th - 24th October

Now that the veggie patch fence was finished, we could turn our attention to populating it. It is intended to be based on permaculture principles which, our book assures us, is a no-dig approach using a local resident workforce so we needed to make their quarters. This involved more geometry, lots of pipe and the ubiquitous white shoe laces.

Then add wire and a roost ...

... and get it into the veggie patch (ah, could have done that before we put the fence up).

Then, great excitement, get some occupants. We considered we were 'rescuing' these from the local battery farm and opted for 9 new entrants and 3 soon to be graduates (or worse!).

We let the geriatrics out first just in case there was any case of establishing a pecking order and, poor things, they looked rather exposed without any feathers.


Then out came the youngsters and all seemed good.


We decided the baldies needed some help and fitted them for the latest in hen fashion ...

... and soon they had some trendy new clothes.


And we invented a new version of 'Where's Wally?'

And we had some eggs.

We even tried to get some of the feathered ones to use the roost but perhaps that was a bit much to expect.

Then we left them to it while Dave prepared a pond and a strawberry bed - the latter very much non permaculture but we like strawberries and lots of them.


And finally we planted some new natives over the soak field.

4th - 18th October 2010

Once the builder had gone, we decided to turn our attention from the final finishing off in the house, to the garden and the veggie patch in particular. The weather was warming up and it was prime planting season. We had to sort out the hares, bunnies and pukekos before we had a chance of growing anything for us and so the next plan of attack was a fence. Yes, we know pukekos can fly but they fly very clumsily and usually only to escape so just perhaps this will keep them out. It was a three part affair with some part buried excess roofing iron to stop burrowing animals and plants (the kikuyu grass) ...

... and fortunately Alice was home to lend a hand ...

... then some complicated geometry and posts and wire ...

... and then chicken wire and windnetting. A lot of work and we're still not sure it will keep out all-comers.

We bought a washing line which of course had to be set in concrete ...

... and was awesome on its first outing but then collapsed on its second!! Fortunately it had a 10 year guarantee.

And in between, we made some more progress inside with the pantry, yay ...

... and a specially designed spice rack for the drawer under the hob. The prototype didn't quite work as, Dave explained, 'The bottles were the wrong shape', but the finished article was just perfect. I have a slight suspicion that this not so essential item appeared as Alice had just brought back news of Uncle Tony's amazing spice rack.

20th September - 3rd October 2010

So much to do, no time to take photos or write blogs!!

After the family gathering last week, all the various outstanding odds and ends were quickly remedied and soon we had a working solar water heater (the plumbers had in fact installed the solar panel without the control unit which caused it to blow the pump), some shower walls, tv and internet and a working septic tank.

We then had a week to move in properly and clear and clean our rental house. This all went according to plan, and we shifted all but the largest items to the new house ourselves. This just left a few big and heavy items for the 'professionals' to move for us and the nerves were stretched a bit we saw the team of movers consisted of a strapping young man and a very weedy very old mate. He proceeded to drop 3 of the 8 items but not too much was broken and fortunately the piano arrived intact.

The cats had been very upset by their move to the rental house so we tried to make this easier for them. We shut them in the garage the first night and struggled to find them in the morning ...

and then lost them again the next day as they did not like the noisy builders.

Neil completed the architraves and moved on to shelves in cupboards ('happy thought indeed', to quote our favourite family saying from Pride and Prejudice) ...

... and then to shelves in the pantry.

He finished these on Friday 1st October, so thank you so much, Neil, for a great job done.

And we were left to fill the nail holes in the architraves before applying a last coat of polyurethane (best estimate = 600m of architrave and about 3-4000 nail holes to fill), the pantry shelves to polyurethane, and a house full of boxes to unpack and tidy away.

We had a spell of atrocious weather to add to the fun and at one stage our garden (and much of the surrounding countryside) turned into a series of ponds ...



... and the cat was rather sad and sorry.