Dream For Three

The new year is here and now is the time to take stock of the old and reflect on what may or may not need changing.

First the unavoidable, the schoolwork. We managed to finish up all our themes from last year and so will be starting a new theme when we start up again later in January. We will be doing the Sea and Sky Theme, from WinterPromise. It will be on science and history of the sea and sky. We like these programs as they give us a lot of choices in how we learn and provide us with lots of good books and  fun activities. Although sadly this may be the last year we use them, depending on what new programs they bring out.

On the craft front, I probably spend way too much time in front of my sewing machine, but I did achieve several quilts, some gifts and started on the gift bags, that we want ot be using from now on.

We have enough chickens at the moment, so we are not planning anymore chicks this year. Maybe next year, but we will see. They have started to get out of the orchard so we will have to upgrade the fencing quite a bit to keep them all where they are suppose to be, before they start finding the garden.

And on the subject of gardening, now that I have put the sewing machine away for a while, I am finally starting to tidy up the weeds. Production is down, due to my own neglect, but it is also picking up as well. I really like the whole chicken dome idea, and it seems to be working quite well.

The kikuya is a bit more of an issue, as the chickens managed to kill it off, but did not dig the roots up at all, so that is something that I will have to work on for some time yet.

They left us with a lovely cleared, fertilised and mulched area that was all ready for planting.

These photos were taken at the beginning of spring and shows the gardens just starting out.

This was the first circle planted, and many of the plants are due for replacement. In saying that, it provided us with fresh peas and salad greens for christmas, and is now producing cherry tomatoes beetroot, and some very beautiful cabbages right now.  I have just added some more tomatoes and spring onions but will put more in over the next couple of weeks.

This was the next circle, we have had an almost endless supply of pumpkin plants out of it, which is not so bad since most of my seeds failed to germinate this year. The pumpkins have mostly been transplanted, and I have lots of tomato plants going crazy in there. We have a few green tomatoes on them, but mostly they are just starting to flower.

We have had several meals of broccoli, and there is celery hiding under the broccoli leaves. I seems to like it under there and is doing very well. We are already eating the outer stalks while the plant is continuing  to keep us supplied with celery. The lettuces again need replacing (will probably happen today) as they are all going to seed with the hot weather.

This poor circle has sat neglected for all this time. I didn’t even get around to putting the edging on it. Yesterday I planted some bean seeds, and I have some more started in trays to go in here. I also have some more broccoli plants and well as few other things that are waiting to go in. Good to start getting some production going in here.

On a more positive note, I did get around to planting corn on the other side of the house, and it is doing really well.

It is just starting to form its top flowers so I am looking forward to getting lots of corn of it this summer.

The sheep are still here, they were shorn again at the end of last year and are running in the orchard out of the way. I haven’t decided if I will do lambs this year or not, that will have to be decided closer to march when the ram goes out.

The cows have consumed the most time this year, and also have brought us lots of pleasure and some sadness.

Liquorice is still at the neighbours after being weaned at 10 months, he is looking very good and is very settled there for now. Poor old sweetie did not take kindly to Ollie, when she lost her own calf.

We milked her up until three days ago but now we are drying her off.

Little Ollie seems to only be loved by Murray, but is doing well sneeking feeds from Daisy while Murray is feeding.

He is still much smaller, but is certainly not hungry at all. We will continue to have Daisy feed both the calves for another few months before we wean them off. If she starts to lose too much weight we may take Ollie off sooner, but again to be decided later.

Daisy loves being a mum to her own baby, but will only tolerate Ollie. She has slimmed down quite a lot now that she is making milk, and sometimes I feel that she could do with a rest before she has another calf. We did not intend to have her feeding two calves, it just ended up working out that way.

Neither Daisy or Sweetie Pye are in calf at the moment. We could detect the heat cycles the whole time the AI techs were working, and of course the week after we could get them any more, the both came into heat on after the other. Very frustrating.

This is Sneezy. She was one the calves we got in as week old, late born babies last year. She was always very friendly and seemed to want to be a house cow, by the way she kept coming to see us, for a scratch, and would lick me if I let her. As a last gasp effort, week after the AI techs officially stopped working, she came into heat, so I rang the tech, and he agreed to come an AI her.  At this stage it is looking like she has held, and so she could well be our house cow next year. She was just 15 months old when we had her inseminated, and although we would have liked to wait a bit longer, none of the other cows were coming to the party.

The weather is very dry here at the moment. We had a very wet winter, not much of a spring flush, and now we are going into drought conditions. This is not good for our grass situation, and we are hoping of a few days of rain soon. At least we sold two of our yearlings, so that has eases things slightly.

Overall we have had quite a good year. The biggest high was Daisys baby being born, the biggest low was Sweetie Pye slipping her calf. We are hoping for another good year and not too much excitment, just more chugging on and getting on with life.

About 4 weeks ago we got our new batch of pigs. Two Large Black male weaners whom we named Laurel and Hardy.

How lovely for me yesterday, Bevan got up and did all the morning chores, while I just lingered in bed and read a book. Can’t remember the last time that happened.

Later I had a call from the local vets telling us that two of our sheep had run across the road in front of a car and were now in the neighbours bobby calf pen.  Very odd considering that the sheep were way up in the orchard, but I went and checked them anyway, and sure enough all of ours were present and accounted for. I rang the vet back and then thought nothing more about it.

After lunch we popped up the road briefly and on the way home we noticed that the gate to the pig paddock was open. No sign of the pigs anywhere.

My new vege garden is right by the pig gate, but not a vege was touched, nor was there any sign of there passing. The neighbours hadn’t seen them, and they were not around the road anywhere. We started to worry that someone might of taken them while we were out. To the point that Bevan decided to ring the police and report them stolen. He could reach them so he left them a message.

About 2 hours later, we started to wonder if the found sheep were in fact our missing pigs – but then surely country people could tell the difference between pigs and sheep.

Anyway, Bevan wandered over to check the bobby calf pen across the road, and sure enough there were our two little piggies. I took the car down but the naughtly little things would not go into the boot, so they had to come up in the back seat. Finally they were back where they belong.

Now even after scrubbing the seats down the car still smells like a pig, not a good thing on a hot summer day.

This year I decided to spend money to save in the long run. So instead of buying rolls and rolls of wrapping to just be thrown out after christmas, I decided to start making gift bags.

I started out making just a couple for Bevans birthday, and went on to make some for christmas as well. The plan is to make some each year until we have enough not to need paper wrapping at all.

One of the big advantages is that they can be made according to the size we need, and I am enjoying putting the pictures on them.

They are like a reusable extention of the christmas stocking that I made for lots of kids for christmas this year, as part of our homemade christmas gift ideas.

Here are three of the type of stocking that I made, they are all quilted and so should last the test of time without falling apart. Some of them even had the childs name embroidered on the top. I made puppets, bathbombs, soft toys and of course stockings for the different children.

With all the rain we got over Winter it was painfully obvious that we needed a floor on the milking bay.  This would solve at least two problems – the cows would no longer be knee deep in mud while we (ie. Sharon) were trying to milk, and they would (hopefully) be less hesitant to actually go into the milking bay.  Oh, one more thing, there would be significantly less chance of getting the milk bucket covered in mud.

The frame was relatively easy to put together, although there were a few basic mistakes due to things I had overlooked.  I nailed the outside rails to the posts, only to realise that it was then going to be a little more difficult to put the inside rails on.  However, because of the non-exact nature of the milking bay, I didn’t want to risk building the frame in its entirety only to find that it didn’t fit between the posts.

The next step was to put the floor boards on top.

You will notice that we now have chains and a head bail in place – these were specifically for Daisy, but they have proved quite useful for other things as well.

I must say, this has to be the best job I’ve done in a long time!

I can’t remember when this happened exactly, but I ended up getting one of the neighbours to help me put the shed up.  However, before that could happen I had to build the floor.  We picked a spot in a paddock next to the house (for easy access) and I proceeded to manually dig the holes for the corner posts (having prepared the basic frame to start with).  In case I haven’t mentioned this before, I really hate digging holes (for posts or animals!)

So with the four corner holes dug, I then moved on to another four holes in the centre of each side.  Next came several more holes in the middle section to help provide additional support.  In the end I think it was a total of 12 holes.  I then had a crash course in securing in the posts (using concrete) and managed to get the frame attached to the posts and (mostly) level.

Next was the floor itself – two sheets of 19mm ply wood and another one cut up to fit in the “extra” spaces.  All in all I must say that it was a reasonable job.

Our neighbour then helped with putting up the shed – this turned out to be a lot harder than I expected, especially since the pieces didn’t seem to fit together as well as they probably should have.  Again, in hindsight, this may have been related to how the floor was prepared and the frame setup.  Then again, perhaps it was just the type of shed.

So, with the floor, walls, and roof in place, we now have a fully functional shed for extra storage.  Needless to say, it stayed that way for a few weeks before anything really got put in there.  By then the rain had started and I discovered that the shed perhaps wasn’t as water proof (or the floor as level) as I had hoped.  I thought that the rain was coming in the roof and dripping on to the floor, but careful inspection revealed that it was in fact running down the side of the shed and then leaking inwards!

In my infinite wisdom I went out and purchased some stuff to fill in the gaps and promptly applied it all around on the floor – on the outside!  Another few rainy days later and I realised the fault in my thinking – I now provided even more reasons for the water to run down the side of the wall and overflow inside the shed!  It was then that I came to understand why the plans had suggested a concrete floor and showed the outside 50mm (or so) sunken below the inner section – I’m not quite sure how I would do a wooden floor differently now, but I can see how easy it is homes to become leaky.

Ok, so the next attempt, and apparently more successful than the last, was to drill the holes in the lower wall guttering (they were already there, but now blocked underneath by the no more gaps stuff), through the gap stopper, into the plywood, and then chisel out part of the plywood so that the water can easily run away.  There’s still a bit of a leak in heavy rain, but I can live with that.

Ok, you might think that it’s all over now, but given that there is still a bit of a leak, I decided that we needed shelves in the shed.  I tried resurrecting an old free-standing bookshelf that was falling apart – it worked fine until I put one thing too many on it, then it all fell apart again.

Now we have the free-standing kitset ones which are available from Mitre 10 or Bunnings.  These appear to be working well enough for the moment – reasonably easy and quick to assemble, and they hold a lot.  My only problem with them is that they are a bit narrow.

I’m not sure when (or even if) there will be another shed installed.  Next time I will definitely be doing a number of things differently – not the least of which is going for a different manufacturer!

Yesterday morning we took Liquorice over to the neighbours, where there is more grass than we have for now, and I must say that he is not very impressed. Even though there are eight other steers in the same large paddock, he is being a baby and missing his mum, but at 10 months old he is well and truely ready to go it alone.

At 4 o’clock Ollie arrived.

He is straight off his mum and is only a day old. He looked pretty sad when he arrived, probably having a bit of motion sickness from the trip.

We let him settle abit and then put Sweetie Pye into the milking bay and let him have a small feed. He didn’t take alot of convincing, only a small squirt of milk onto his tongue and he was away. Sweetie Pye of course is not so happy and would gladly kick him off, but that will pass in a few days.

This morning Ollie was a lot more lively, but was very hungry, so I let him have another feed.

I have to put Sweetie Pye in the milking bail and tie her leg so allow him to have a feed, but so far it is working quite well, and it is only a matter of time before she will accept him and they can be lft in peace.

So this was our answer to the lost baby. Now we have two calves and two empty cows. Not quite what we had planned for but we will move forward from here again.

We have started slowly the process of weaning Liquorice and drying off Sweetie Pye before she has her next calf in January. She didn’t need to be dry until november, but with Daisy having calved we didn’t need the milk so decided to just take it slowly and dry her off slowly.

All was going well, until this morning. I went to do the daily check on everyone, and there at the side of the paddock, was an almost perfectly formed but very early and small calf. Sweetie Pye had got into the macrocarpa and slipped her calf as a result.

I feel so sad, but now we also have to do the right thing by her, we just have to work out which way to go. The biggest problem will be getting her to clean out properly and not get an infection so we will be watching her closely. We also have to decide whether to continue to dry her off or not.

Today it is three years since we moved here!

It is a beautiful spring morning, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, all those spring things are happening.

Looking back, we have come along way in the preceeding three years. We love this lifestyle, something that many can’t cope with, but for us it is, now, the only way to live.

So to take stock. We did not do lambs this year, after such an awful year last year, don’t know about next year  yet. We have been getting our own milk for the last 10 months, and I would rather go out and milk the cow in the rain, than get our milk out of a bottle again. It is just that much better.

The side shoot of having a house cow of course is getting a calf to raise for the freezer. It doubles as a back up milker, ensures that the cow is properly stripped out several times a day, keeps the milk supply up, as well as feeding us in the end. Too many advantages not to do it.

This year we have some of the chickens in a chicken dome, so they are doubling as garden labour right now, as well as the eggs. This has to work out as a good thing since it saves us work. The chickens seem really happy and are due for there first move in the dome.

All in all a very good three years, and we look forward to many more to come.

Sharon has been doing a great job with the gardens.  For some time now she has been talking about chicken domes and the benefits of them.  She eventually found a set of plans for building a chicken dome and I went out to gather up all the bits and pieces we needed (well, apart from the pipe, which we had delivered).

The first step, of course, was the frame – this turned out to be a little cumbersome to build, but with a bit of effort from both Sharon and myself, we managed to put this together.

The next step was to put some sort of bracing in place so that this frame doesn’t fall to pieces!  We managed to do this with the baling twine we had from the hay we got at the start of Winter.

Finally, we used a tarp that my brother left up here before he moved to Christchurch at the end of last year.  This has been placed over the top of the dome to provide the chooks with some protection from the wind and rain.

The tarp is secured to the surrounding ground with tent pegs and to some of the trees by cord.

It was a long wait and with much excitment that we awaited the arrival of Daisys’ first calf.

She was due on the 20th of August and we were told that she would go up to 10 days early. Well the powers to be were wrong and she kept us waitingfor the full term and over.

On the morning of the 21st I noticed she was off her food a little, and then all of a sudden she took off under the trees where I couldn’t see her for the house.

I finished all the other chores and then went to investigate, and sure enough labour had started. I saw the water bag break fairly soon after I went ot check on her, so I hung around for a bit  to be sure all went well.

Daisy was very calm about having me there and even came over for a back scratch in between contractions.

It took a long time between the feet coming and seeing the nose arriving. I guess because it was her first calf that it took a while for everything to stretch and relax enough. Daisy was showing signs of getting tired so a got her a bucket of warm water with some molasses in it, which she downed pretty quickly follwed closely by most of a second bucket.

After that things moved alot quicker and within about ten minutes we had a little grey bull calf whom we called Murray.

It took close on 45 minutes to stand but after that he found the milk bar really quickly