Categories: From the Farm This Week
Date: Jan 3, 2013
Title: 3 January 2013
Well I am starting an Avonstour calendar. Those Mayans were hopeless. I will do it myself and I won't run out of paper.
The phone line has been down for a day and a half twice this week so no calls or emailing. I could not get my end of year accounts done and I am so behind with the office work.
Ruth and Beate have been away in Wellington for 4 days. So I have been feeding and sorting the pigs for Beate and Hayley the wwoofer has been filling in for Ruth doing the chooks and milking the goats.
I can tell you I did it far quicker that Beate as I did not pat and sing to them ...... Hayley did Ruth's jobs well.
Ila did some of the cooking and packed for her road trip around the North Island.
After I fed the pigs I spent time dagging and shearing the Bushie and Gotland Ewes. I have decided that every time I get sheep into the woolshed for sorting for killers or dagging or whatever I will shear a few and I may even get them all done ...........Well not sure on that .....Its bonkers really as Paul Avery the world champion shearer does my sheep so the job has gone from the Best in the world to the Best on the farm and I'm only the best as......... THERE IS NO ONE ELSE ........O well spoze I don't need to go to the Gym .. and a few at a time may add up.
The Taranaki Farmers Market was a slow one as all the locals are away and it just poured with rain. Did not even make the fuel bill. O well that's markets. It was Hayleys last day. We got a lot achieved while she was here. After the Market our new wwoofer Siets started on the farm. Siets is a Dutch woman a little older than Hayley who is living in NZ and is a hospitality tutor.
Ben and Naha came out to drop a fallow deer for us to cut up. We went halves and that worked out real well as Ross dropped one off from George and as we have had heaps of visitors and helpers I only had one pack of steak left. Naha cooked a fantastic curry for tea and it was a good get together.
Got all the Donkeys out of the Forest and the 100 acres and have got them close to home so I can start trimming feet as I'd rather not do them while they are heavy in foal. There are quite a few foals now. Anyway I had them strung out along the road and there is 60 of them and a shiny blue car on a sight seeing trip drove slowly past them and stopped, put the window down and a older lady said .......What are you doing with all the Donkeys and I said O its 4 o'clock.......... time for milking .....At that point I just wish I had a camera, she said nothing but the photo of her face would have been something.
Janine, Rod and their two sons came out on the last day of the year we had a good walk around the farm. Its about the only time I stop and actually look at the place. We talked how different our grass is to the next door farms. Avonstour is a mass of red and white clover, lotus major and many other wild herbs and plants.
Well An earthquake early this morning shook the house and Siets who is staying in the Shepherd wagon really felt it - in fact its the first earthquake she has felt in NZ and she has been here 12 years.