Categories: From the Farm This Week
Date: May 23, 2012
Title: 23 May 2012
The interview with Jody went real well for his radio show. Sorry i got the times mixed up, may pay to go on the net and see the show times - Access Radio 104.4 small farm show with Jodi Roebuck. I think its Friday this week as well.
So with white frosty starts this week the pipes have been frozen but the sun comes out early to get the water flowing, just fantastic days. We are getting a few more Dorset Horn lambs, even a black one as we did mate some ewes to the black Dorset horn ram. The Damaras are starting to spring down and they won't be far off now.
The black crack and golden willows have lost all of their leaves as have the ash, oak, grapes. The larches and ambers are in great autumn colour. But the poplars and chestnuts are holding green, not for long i think. The feijoas have just about finished dropping, came in a short flush this year.
Picked up the dressed pigs from the abattoir, spent a day with the butcher cutting them up and making sausage the following day. Ruth, Beate and myself doing deliveries - Ruth and Beate going north and i went south. They called in on Bruce and looked at his free range pig farm. Those two (especially Beate) will do anything to look at pigs.
Ila has exams and is not in good humour, I don't think she likes em and she really wants to do well. Glad she has been riding her pony to take it out on.
Samuel is full time living in Stratford now so it makes it easy to drive to work. His apprenticeship is all signed up and he came out to talk - he wants to buy a house instead of paying rent or board. He went to the bank and yes he has saved enough to get a loan. So he is looking. Blooming heck it was only last i was changing his nappies and he was just on solids.
The Farmers Market was a real good one, I think it was the fact Rex was on Country Calendar this week. It was a good show and portrayed Rex really well and it was great to see his partner involved with her crafts and the Raised Eyebrow. Anyway the extra take sure helped the overdraft. And yes the market is a great place to meet like minded people. Janine dropped in, good to see her and talk.
The other day i was on the road home and there was Manfred the Canterbury blue boar trotting down the road with a red Labrador dog both quite happy, but Manfred was a long way from home so i drove him home and Beate locked him away saying he had been getting out of the paddock a lot, but did not want to say anything as i can't handle pigs that wander and i'm prone to turn them into bacon as i can't be bothered with the hassle. But Manfred is the only pure blue boar as yet in the North Island so he has a stay at the moment so Beate can breathe easy.
But later that night the red Labrador turned up and as we are lambing and got lots of ducks around and it looked as if it had come off a duck shooter ute or something, we tied it up and put large signs on the road that he was here and safe. Phoned the pet line radio but they don't put it on there anymore. So after 3 days we called the council and the dog man came and got him. I just can't work it out, nice dog but no owner no calls nothing. If my dog was missing for half an hour i would be on the phone everywhere. Nothing stranger than folks.
Monday we had Laura call in from the Straight Furrow paper to do an interview about Avonstour for about 4 hours. I enjoyed her visit as she is also involved in the sustainable movement in the Fielding area and we talked the same language. I will keep ya posted on that as well.