Is That A Flock?

Today our flock of 3 Arapawa Sheep has grown to 15 sheep. We've purchased another 6 adults sheep, along with their 6 baby lambs. Was a fantastic day for life down Wattle Lane.

We missed out on some great photo opportunities while collecting the sheep, we had the adults on the trailer and the babies in the back of the car. Very cute and adorable... but we will try to add some better photos soon.

2016 Spring Babies

My neighbour's One Eye'd chicken often comes over to visit when I am feeding my 3 girls, but today she brought over her 3 babies to say hello. Very cute, but I'm feeling when my girl's get broody next I will purchase some fertile eggs, as it is about time to expand my flock of chickens.

Hoofing Around!

We've just had another beautiful weekend in paradise, a little windy on Saturday, but a perfect 10 out of 10 on Sunday. To score a perfect 10, for me the perfect day is when the is sky is blue with puffy white clouds with little to no wind, and warm enough to be outside in shorts and t shirt. I really couldn't have asked for a better day, very satisfying.

But there was no time to be sitting around, as always there is lots to do on the block.

First thing Saturday morning, well after a cooked breakfast, thank you Gary, I hitched up the trailer to the car and headed off to Carter's in Mangawhai for some timber followed by a trip to the quarry for some gravel.

My main goal for the weekend was to build a pen so we can round up the sheep, so I am able to check up on them from time to time, keeping a close on their health and wellbeing.  

We had some help on Saturday with Geoff popping up to help out.  So with Gary preparing lunch and afternoon tea... including a beautiful sponge cake, and Geoff's extra pair of hands, we had the pen built in one day.

Sunday morning I played Shepherd and rounded up the three girls into the pen. Then with my new sheep hoof trimmers I started giving my three girls a pedicure, their hoofs were well overgrown and curled inwards... I must say bloody hard work, and glad we only have three sheep to start with, but I hope they appreciate the trim, and most were patient with me. The white faced sheep in the second photo below, was very good, she tends to be the braver sheep of the three.

  

In a couple weeks I will try to tidy up their crutch area... I'll give the girls a break after their big pedicure this weekend. I don't want to freak them out too much.

Thank you Geoff & Gary for your help... we really achieved a lot this weekend, it's very satisfying come Sunday evening to see how much was completed in two days.

Arapawa Sheep... Just Awesome!

A beautiful day in paradise... and I think our sheep are now enjoying themselves too.

Over the last couple evenings, I've been racing home after work, trying to get home before the sun sets, as I've been building a little shelter to protect the sheep from the elements. 

Below the sheep have taken an interest in my little project too, chasing each other around the walls of the shelter that I've been building, such fun! If only they would let me join in too. I have a little video clip, but I couldn't upload from here, so I will try via facebook.

 
They're now eating the sheep pellets, but not from my hand, they're still very skittish and wont come near me... but I'll keep trying, I just want them to be a little friendlier so it becomes a little easier to move and handle them.

POP OPEN THE GOOD STUFF....

We're finally the proud owners of 3 beautiful young ladies... 3 Arapawa Sheep!

It's taken some time to get to this point... but we've got there. I'm really over the moon! It's been the best day!

My handy man skills below... a crate that I made for our trailer.... ended up being a little higher than it needed to be... but it did the job.

You May Call It Progress In August 2016

This post will be a picture post... photos of our progress this month, I will add to it as the month progresses, I've set many goals... so we will see how we go:

One of my first projects was to tidy up the end of the fence with new posts and a new gate:

Progress is a tad on the slow side... I've taken a week off from work, so I can spend more time on the land, but the weather has been, well just like winter actually, very wet and cold.

It's been raining pretty much consistently for the last 24 hours, so I popped on my rain coat & gumboots and headed down the hill to see how high the creek water level has become...

Above is normal water level & below same creek in flood....

So there hasn't been too much that I can do given it is so wet, but I did manage to sow some of the seeds, but I still have some more to do, as I ran out of the seed raising mix, but a good start.

I've also done a little concreting... added a step to the garage side door, this was to be included with the concrete pad, but the contractor didn't complete the job or forgot.

Update... seedlings!

31 More Day's To Spring!

Not that I'm counting, but we have 1 more month of winter, then it's official we are in spring!  

I wonder why NZ doesn't celebrate spring, as other parts of the world have great big celebrations, but not so much here, I wonder why? An excellent reason for a public holiday if you ask me, and a great way to see out winter. 

Knowing that spring is just around the corner I am busy getting myself organised, I want to double my efforts this year with the goal of creating the most bountiful garden to date. Last year was a bit disappointing as I was so busy with other projects and the vegetable garden was neglected, however 2016/17 will be the year of great growth!  

So I've scheduled in a week off work this month, so I can get my preparations underway.  Living in Kaipara we have a very mild winter, so spring really is already upon us I feel.

Last weekend I spent a day building my little seed raising glass house.  Small but it should do the job. I purchased some old windows off trademe for $10, and then with left over timber from other various projects I built the below, although I just need to do some painting to seal the windows better, but overall, not too bad if I do say so myself...

Now that I have my little seed raising house, I just need to decide on what to grow.  Every year I purchase a few more packets of seeds, and well after a couple of years, you end up with a mass of seed packets, although there are a couple new plants I want to try growing this year, so I see a few more packets being added to the collection before the month is out. Long term, I really need to get into the art of collecting my own seeds... maybe at the end of this growing season I'll give it a go.

Tip: Get yourself an Egmont Seeds or King Seeds catalogue, or if a little greedy like myself, both! Awesome selection of seeds to choose from, a great deal more than what you will find in store. You can order online, or they tend to send out a new seed catalogue each season after a few purchases. Very handy, with some useful information, new ideas and inspiration each year. 

Over the next couple of weeks, I need to:

1. Start sowing seeds,
2. Create another new garden bed, which involves boxing and moving soil.
3. Prepare the existing garden beds, which mainly involves weeding and turning the soil a few times.  
4. Make the garden fence a little more pest proof, mainly from the chickens and turkeys.
5. Also I have another new 20m fence and gate to instal next to the garden.

Part of the new fence is to allow for an extension of the garden, but also part of the fence is a new sheep pen/yard, which is on the other side of the same fence, so when we do get a few of our own sheep, we will have a little yard for shearing etc.  

But do you hear that sound... whenever I mention fence, you can hear the sound of sobbing in the background... do you hear that?  Well that's my credit card sobbing, whenever it hears the word fence or timber, my poor old credit card knows its about to get a hammering, poor old credit card, I do hope to put you into retirement soon.  Timber isn't the cheapest of materials, but the only way for us to keep the costs down is if we do all the labour ourselves.

If I can get all the jobs done before end of August, I will be a happy little camper.  Doesn't look too difficult, but working the above in between your normal daily chores, weeding, & mowing lawns your time slips away pretty quickly. So chop chop!

Winter 2016... Wet Wet Wet

My last post was way back in mid summer, and it's now mid winter... I know I've been slack with updates on our adventures, but it's not as if I've been sitting around doing nothing! Living on a lifestyle block there is always something to do, so I will briefly recap the last few months.

Well as I mentioned it is winter, and it's been a very wet winter, the ground is very water logged, you just can't go anywhere without gumboots on.  So far we have only had 2 frosts, and daylight is currently gaining by about 1 minute each day... I can just feel spring is around the corner.  Even the chickens have started laying eggs again, after about a 6 week break during June.  Also a wild duck was walking her chickens through the paddock the other day. Bring it on! Spring & Summer, I Can't Wait!

Poplar Trees: 

Our boundary line runs along the neighbours drive, and we own about 100m of very tall poplars, I would say 25 metres plus tall, they've been there for a very long time.  I think they are a beautiful asset adding to the rural view and outlook of the property, also the stock love their leaves, and they provide shelter and soak up a lot of the excess water from the paddock.  

Well, one of our neighbours, Barbara thinks differently, and she very verbally abusive on one particular day, and complained to me about the trees, as they overhang their driveway. I got my back up a little about that, I mean the trees are well over 20 years old, and we didn't plant them, and we only just moved here, and from what I understand she has lived here for 10 plus years.  I told her she is welcome to prune the trees on her side, I have no issues with that. I had to bite my tongue a few times, to keep the peace.

I'm a little bit of a greenie at times, and believe we need more trees in the world, so I'm not in the mind of removing them, but I will prune them as required, but in my own time, not because Barbara demands it, "I must remember, bite my tongue, bite it!

Well mother nature jumped the gun, and during autumn we had an awful storm, even the house was vibrating with howling winds, it was the biggest storm to date that I have experienced. It was a little scary in the middle of the night, I got out of bed a few times to make sure the garage and chicken house were still standing.  Not that I could have done anything in the middle of the night if all hell had been let lose, but I grabbed Max our cat, and locked ourselves in the bedroom.  

Come morning, I could see the damage from my window, the storm tore off many branches, and pretty much covered the entire neighbours 100m drive. So at 7am with chainsaw in hand, I started the clean up with help from the  other neighbours.   The next weekend I hired a cherry picker, which could stretch to 11 metres high, and we pruned about half the trees along the drive, so they were not overhanging as much as they were.  I don't like these sort of heights, I get the shakes in my legs, which doesn't help when you are on a wobbling cherry picker 10 meters up with a chainsaw in hand... the entire thing just shakes that much more.  But I told myself, just put on my "big boy pants" and get on with it. Thankfully some of the neighbours helped. About 4 properties share that boundary line, so I appreciated the help from Steve & Bob, thanks guys!

One of the branches snapped in the middle.

We will have to do some more pruning, it will be an ongoing thing, but I do like them. Big Beautiful Trees.

Fences:

Essentially when we purchased the property, it was all just one big paddock. There were two internal fences at some point of time in history, but now there is not much remaining other than a few posts, nothing to keep anything in our out.

So the last few months we have been working on the fences, we just keep chugging away at it a little bit at a time.  The first task was to make the house/garden area sheep proof, which we have now completed.  Then we will work on splitting up the remaining paddocks.

First take down old fence and cut back grass (above),

Then below the new fence... there are now two bottom wires

and a electric wire on the other side of the fence.

Max showing off on the new fence.

Water Trough:

We need to put in a couple water trough's so I purchased one to start with, and I didn't go too big as I had to man handle the thing on my own. So I was having to get a little creative to get the darn thing off the trailer, and into it's final location.

The final resting place was midway down the hill, from the top of the drive, so at the top of the hill I unhitched the trailer from the car, and basically slid down the hill as I stood on the trailer tow bar, before jumping off and throwing a chunk of wood under the wheels when I needed to stop.  Then tilting the trailer, I could slide the water trough off the trailer, and using that old technique of round roller posts under the trough to move it along the ground.

Connecting it up wasn't too difficult, but the entire setup cost around $200, trough and fittings.

We put some gravel under/around it, but we need a whole heap more, we've recently had some little ponies from my neighbour grazing the paddock and drinking from the trough, but it's still getting a little messy around the trough.

Max... Living The Dream:
We've come to the realisation that the only one in our household who is truly living the rural lifestyle dream is Max. Gary lives in the city during the working week, dealing with a rather stressful job, and I commute 130kms a day to my job, which too has become very stressful of late, and just seems to be taking up more and more of my time outside of work.

But here is Max, just owning the place... while Gary and I, are a slave to the man Cat! Right now as I type this, since I had dinner at 6pm, Max has been lying in front of the log burner, and its now 8.45pm. 

I'm actually jealous of Max, as he gets to spend his entire day here in Paradise, spending his days sleeping, eating and wandering around the property just enjoying himself. It's about time he went and got a job and started contributing to the household!

Up & Coming:
In addition to lawnmowing, gardening, we've also added some steps to the deck, so we truly have indoor & outdoor flow now from the deck to the lawn. We just need to stain it, once the weather sort's itself out, and then I will add some additional photos. 

Again, subject to the weather, this weekend hopefully, I will be building my little glass house box to raise my seedlings in. I will start sowing seeds at the start of August. Our vegetable garden will be awesome this year! I'm going to be much more organised this time round.

Also soon, hopefully, we will be purchasing some Arapawa sheep/lambs. If I have any money left!

But that's all for now, a rather long update this time, but I will try to be more regular with shorter updates :)

Summer 2015/2016

I can't believe we are nearly half way through February, the last month of Summer.  This summer surely has flown by, even the daylight hours are reducing by about 2 minutes a day now.  So I'm really focused on enjoying every moment as if it was my last summer, life doesn't get much better!

So far it's been a hot sticky summer, last summer was very dry, this summer it's been very humid, but don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. This time of year my plants are at their best, I'm really enjoying being outside working in my garden, feeling the warm sunshine on my skin, enjoying a refreshing swim at the beach or just picking a warm cherry tomato straight off the vine and enjoying the taste explosion in my mouth.

Although if I was to complain, it's been perfect grass growing weather, and I'm so over mowing the lawns! It currently requires a weekly mow, and my lawns are far to big for a weekly mow, especially just being down to a push mower at the moment.

If I was asked to pick just three great memories of summer 2015-2016 it would be spending time with my family over Christmas here on the block, swimming with Gary at Te Aria beach and eating my first lot of Cape Gooseberries.

This summer we had my sister Kelly, her partner Ryan, my nephew Justin (8) & niece Katie (6) visit, along with Mum & Rex. It was great to have them up for a week over Christmas, many wonderful memories and it was great to see the kids and how quickly they are growing.  Watching Kelly my little sister be a great Mum to the kids, and seeing how cute the kids are, especially watching them putting cookies and milk out for Santa on Christmas Eve. Adorable! It was a fantastic week for me, it really had been a long time since we had all been together, so a great time.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love Cape Gooseberries! I love, really love Cape Gooseberries, they bring back many happy memories as a child on the farm in Ohangai.  They used to only ever grow below some trees down at the bottom of a sheltered valley at the back of the farm. During the summer holidays when dad was moving the sheep, when ever we ventured near to where they were growing we would wonder off to pick/eat some. So with these happy memories in mind, I had raised my plants from seed last year, and was eagerly waiting for the fruit to ripen, carefully tearing the little cases open just to have little peak inside to see how the fruit was coming along.  Then that day finally arrived, I discovered they were ready... I was like the cookie monster... I was devouring them with great enthusiasm! Not one made if out of the berry patch!

Below are some pics of this years summer harvest....

Passion Fruit,

Cape Gooseberries, so Yummy!

I think it's a rock Melon or Honey Dew Melon (I lost the label),

An Apple,

Another Apple... hopefully more next year, 

Gary's Chillies are doing well,

A variety of Tomatoes... more than I can eat... so I made some sauce:

I was also kindly given some peaches... which I stewed...

Below my hard work... 2.5 bottle sauce, and 4 jars peaches...

And finally below... my last two evening meals...

Cherry Tomato, Cape Gooseberry & Passion fruit for Dessert :)

Should I have any Cape Gooseberries left over, I want to turn some into jam. I remember Nana used to make Cape Gooseberry Jam, Nana was big into making conserves, and we were always was given many jars of jam and fruit, but we were only ever given 1 jar of the Cape Gooseberry Jam at a time, so it was treasured, as there was never enough of it to go around. I just need to find a good recipe.  

I will double or triple my production of Cape Gooseberries for the next season as they have really grown so well here.

.. (note to self add more pics of fruit coming along, Cranberry, Blackberry, Nectarines, Feijoa, Citrus)

It's A Busy Life Down Wattle Lane...

I've been a bit slack lately updating our posts, but it's been a rather busy time, and even with the longer days with daylight savings, there is just not enough hours in a day.

We've started and now nearly completed building the garage.  With the help of our neighbour, who is a builder, (to which I can highly recommend his services), the garage is about 90% complete, with just a few finishing touches to do.  

I must say the kitset instructions are not very clear and lacking detail, and it has taken twice as long as I thought it would take us to build the garage, and I'm not sure how I ever dreamed I could do this all on my own.

Building the double garage door, took about half of the entire time we've spent building the garage. Kitset means kitset. Everything is kitset.  Overall it has taken about 5 full days of work to get it up.

In addition to work, building the garage, mowing lawns which is taking about 5-6 hours to do the lot, we've been trying to keep on top of maintaining the garden.  We're kept busy with weeding and feeding and watering. 

The weeds are growing so quickly, by the time you weed around the base of every plant, you have to start again, right back at the start, and start the process of weeding again.

However the plants are looking good, but October 2015 has been very dry, we've had less than half the average rainfall.  So we've now started putting in some irrigation lines, not sure what I'm really doing with that, but I have a seeping hose in the vege garden, and I've managed to put in drip lines around the grapes, and it all works.  So we need to continue this along to the citrus trees, and berry fruit. 

We're using water from the garden shed water tank, but when this runs out, we intend to pump water from the pond into this tank... again, this is something else that I need to work out how I am actually going to achieve that. I'm thinking of a little windmill water pump??

But the rewards of our hard labour are starting to show, we've had our first few raspberries.

The passionfruit are doing extremely well. I think the passionfruit will be the major success story this summer! More fruit than I can count!!

But also showing signs of fruit are the blueberries, plums, feijoa, nectarines, all have some baby fruit starting to show, even the cranberries are showing signs of fruit.

We're very happy, and loving every day down here at Wattle Lane. We would love to share this experience with anyone who wants to come and help weed the weeds! haha.