Christophers Comment

Posted by Christopher on 27 August 2015 | 1 Comments

CHRISTOPHERS COMMENT AUGUST 2015

Upon re-reading my last comment in April we seem to have had a very quiet Autumn/Winter.

We have done some more work at the villa namely digging out the area where the herb garden is and filling up with sand and a gravel by the name of matangi chip. The skill of the job came in putting a timber border around the whole area and getting all that level. It was a challenge but now its done it looks very professional! We also hired our builder Marcus to help us lay a border of pavers around our front lawn. Un fortunately by the time we got all that done and I re-topsoiled the area and levelled it all off it was really to late to sow grass seed. Of course I did anyway not once but twice and it still looks very sparse. In fact as my beloved pointed out “the old lawn looked much better”.....? I shall attempt next month to re-sow the area and see what happens. Some of the problem was it has been very wet and the grass seed kept washing off.

Talking of wet we have had a lot of rain over the winter. It seems wetter than usual 160mm in May,

80mm in June, and 130 in July. I think we will have caught up with regard to the water tables. Coupled with the rain we have also had some of our heaviest frosts for years. Water troughs iced over and frost right up to the top of the farm; I dont think frosts are a bad thing - as well as killing bugs there is a school of thought that the spring, springs much better if the plants have gone through a dormant period. We shall see. Hopefully soon.

Lambing is in full swing at the moment. We scanned 187% which included 200+ sets of triplets which wont make it easy. And already Hugh tells me we have had 4 sets of quads. All this reflects on what a great Autumn we had for flushing the ewes. However all these Quads and triplets will keep Amy very busy with her role in rearing and off loading orphan lambs to children for their school Ag days. Not all ewes can satisfactorally rear triplets let alone Quads. For some unaccountable reason our dry ewe numbers creep up each year and this year they total nearly 7%. Far too high and a problem that we have now handed over to our vet to try and solve.

We changed over all our dairy heifers in the week around the 1^st May. Rising 2year old in-calf heifers return to their owners and we take their rising one year calves for the year. Hugh has had to feed out quite a lot of baleage over the latter part of the winter as the frost took its toll on grass growth. But the heifers are doing pretty well and as I said earlier hopefully spring is close.

We use the winter time to catch up an maintenance. We have fixed up fences, yards and numerous gates and rails and although we try to get as much as we can done now its really an ongoing job.

Stock break things; its what they do.

In spite of my hope that by now the sheep industry would have a bit of a shake up before the next processing season it has not occurred as yet. But its not for lack of passionate sheep people trying to make it happen. A group by the name of Meat Industry Excellence is the driving force behind change so we'll keep our fingers crossed they can achieve something.

Whether we wanted it or not ( not! ) we have had quite a lot of publicity with the villa. Our designer Aaron Guerin entered and won the renovation section of the Waikato Regional Architectural Designers NZ awards with our home. He now goes on to the New Zealand final in October. Many congratulaions to Aaron and his team at LAD. We were also one of the ten homes in the NZ House and Garden Cambridge tour; the proceeds of which went to support Breast Cancer. We estimated we had over 1000 people through the home that day and although it was quite frightening seeing the queues waiting to go through the villa, our saving grace was that it was all for a very worthy cause.

Then to cap it off we featured in the August issue of the NZ House and Garden magazine. I was referred to in the article as a semi retired farmer which has caused a bit of mirth amongst our friends but all in all it was a very good article.

At this stage we have no major walks planned before next year. Then we are hoping to walk Waikaremoana as well as kayaking the Whanganui River. These are the last couple of great walks we need to achieve as part of our bucket list; that will be the nine great walks completed. Then we will start a new challenge. Undecided as yet. Possibly something overseas....?

31^st July was our 44^th wedding anniversary. We had a superb day. We drove to Beachlands where our best man Charles Peake lives with his wife Mary. From there the four of us caught the ferry from Pine Harbour (which is very close to where they live in a lovely home overlooking the Waitemata Harbour direct views to Rangitoto and Waiheke Islands) and disembarked in downtown Auckland. From there we walked to the Skytower where we had booked lunch in the 360 restaurant at the top. It was just fabulous. The weather behaved itself and it was so nice to catch up again with CJ and Mary; nothing much had changed in forty four years. After returnig to Beachlands (these Supergold cards are handy) we drove to Whangamata for the rest of the weekend. Thank you both for a memorable day. Now we have to think about our 45^th next year.

Family birthdays and there are many. Kate on the 27^th February. Harry on the 11^th June, Alex on the 18^th June,Tom on the 8^th July and Charlotte on the 16^th July. And of course their Grandma on the 1^st May. Happy birthday once again to you all.

Take care everyone. If you have a moment please place a comment on this page especially the overseas contingent. Its always nice to get some feedback.

Happy |Days.

CMG

27^th August 2015