Categories: From the Farm This Week
      Date: Apr 18, 2012
     Title: 18 April 2012
A marathon week!

Fantastic that Beate and Ann Marie were here as Ruth would have been totally bogged down and i have been on the road. With Ila home on holiday, Ann Marie and her got heaps done - hedges cut, gardens dug, cooking together, Ann Marie is great helping Ruth feeding and with Beate looking after the pigs it meant i could do the road trip to the far North. I say road trip, road marathon more like.

WAIPU Goat trip
4.30 Thursday morning i was up and packed to pick up Ross at 5.15am as Ross is doing some photographic work for the Rarebreeds Conservation Society for posters and point of sale promotions etc. So we were on the way to Inger's and Grant's farm just this side of Russell in the Bay of Islands. As we left so early, with a short stop for a feed, we managed to get to Ingers at about three in the afternoon, nine and a half hours on the road. As we were short of cash and did not want to take the ferry, I totally recommend the back way. Looked as if there were many hunters and fishers, people living off the land. Ross was chomping at the bit "man there is a heap of things to learn here".  With an overshoot to Russell (but worth to see where the treaty was signed) we drove onto Inger's and Grant's rarebreed farm and got straight into the grand tour. Their stock was all fat and well, lots of grass. The farm has a good proportion of bush, very different to our bush, native trees that are rare here are common there.

Grant's solar water pumping system is something else, keeping the house, farm and lease in water, lifting a huge amount of head, not sure but maybe close to 150 metres in 40 mm pipe all with the sun's power. And then the View from the top of the farm, the bush, the bays, the swamps, the islands. THE BAY OF ISLANDS seen all from this spot. This is the place only lady GaGa could afford to buy and build.

A great meal of Dexter eye fillet and then a sort up of the Waipu goat printout of genetics. 7.30 start the next morning and on the road over on the ferry and on to Grants at Waipu. Now i do tolerate Ruth's Nubian goats but find goats a bit pathetic and Angoras the softest. The Waipu goats are the purest Angoras you can get, the only thing is they have been wild yet unadulterated for 110 years. The whole job left me cold until i saw them, Wow these goats were not pathetic and soft, they are alert and strong (well have to be after 110 years). I am really impressed. So we spent some time sorting them up for their new owners who are going to keep them going. Ross took plenty of photos but was not completely happy so we all went back to the house and Ross got to work. I know he did as when he came in he had goat poo marks on his tee shirt from lying in the grass for the best shots. Loaded goats up and off to some new homes for them and back home after 10 and a half hours on the road home.

Great weather for the Farmers Market Sunday. When i got home we had to catch and load ducks for the abattoirs in Whanganui. Christine and Christof came out with their ducks for the trip too.
So with a fully loaded Ute and trailer on Monday Ila and I took them down, dropped them off and we went fishing, Yes that's right fishing haven't done that for years. We got 12 fish, I got the biggest Yay,
Ila got the rest.

So I am doing this tonight as we have been sorting rams we are going to take to Hamilton in the morning along with other jobs.
Tell you about it next week.