blog

Learning to Drive

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 23:21:33 -0500

Today I learn to drive and operate the newest vehicle addition to our farm - the tractor.

We picked it up this morning, and hubby drove it for nearly 2 hours to get it home, crusing along at about 30kph. Earmuffs are definitely a requirement!

The tractor arrived home, and while I carried on with the rest of the things I needed to get done, the tractor was busy moving lots of gravel from one end of the property to the track we have around the duck pond. This track was often a mud pit, being lower than the rest of the track and water just pools in it.

After a number of hours, I was interrupted from my computer card game (come on, I mean it is Sunday after all) and asked if I wanted to have a go. Why not? I could always come back to my card game.

I discovered that there are a lot of levers and petals in a tractor. There's 2 hydraulic levers to control the loader and bucket, another 2 to control hydraulics for anything on the back, gearstick, high-low ratio stick, accelerator stick and pedal, clutch, pto clutch, the metal switchy thing that changes which hydraulics are used (plus the random bit of metal pipe to get it back out again), two brake petals and probably some more that I've forgotten about.

The gearbox was definitely interesting and will probably be the most likely to catch me out. I mean, a normal gearbox usually looks like this:

1 3 5
| | |
2 4 R

The tractor however looks like this:

1 2 4
| | |
3 R

Oh well, time to try things out. And I must say I didn't do too bad. I drove up to the other end of the property, let hubby pick up a scoop of rocks because it involved using about 4 levers at once and I was still getting the hang of driving the thing. We backed up, drove back down the property and dumped the rocks in the track. I did this another time and decided that twice was enough, and it was about time that I fed the animals.

Hubby did one more trip and I thought it was about time I grabbed the camera - the photo above was just after we dumped the last load. The tractor is now parked up in it's home for the night and it's dinner time.

Visiting the Neighbours

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 23:34:52 -0500

We thought that seeing we had been in our new place for 2.5 months now, it was high time we got ourselves sorted and threw a house warming party. And of course, that includes inviting our new neighbours.

I hadn't really thought about how many neighbours we actually have, but had noticed that for an empty country road, we do get quite a bit of traffic. It wasn't until we attempted to visit only the neighbours that are on our boundary or very close to it that we realised just how many people live out this way.

Sunday was our starting day for visiting the neighbours. Mother Nature decided that the best idea would be to have the hottest weather that we'd ever had. It got up to 40 degrees Celsius at one point.

Perhaps walking was not the best idea. We did 2 very long driveways - they were about 1km long. We were quite disappointed that the first one only had 1 place at the end and no-one was home. The second had 4 places along it, and we stopped to visit everyone. At the very last house, they offered us a beer - which was accepted with relief. We found out some interesting facts about our property, including what type of well pump we have, as this neighbour was the person who actually installed it!

The worst thing about dying in the heat and drinking beer was you tend to drink it faster than normal, and feeling slightly dehydrated from the long walks, it went straight to my head and we stumbled home. Ok, so I'm over-exaggerating a little but in the heat of the day, anything could have happened.

It was no surprise that we decided to wait out the rest of the afternoon, and take another stab at the visits after dinner. It was still hot enough to cook you, so we took the car - damned if I was going to walk those other long driveways that day!

We visited 6 more people that night and had to decline multiple offers of coffee, otherwise we would never get around everyone. By the time we got home again we had to move the irrigation sprinklers in the dark. Fun.

Tonight we visited another 4 neighbours, moved the sprinklers in the dark again, and only have 2 more to visit tomorrow.

Looks like it's going to be a great day on Saturday, most of our neighbours will pop in at some stage, and hopefully a number of people from our business network groups, townie friends and some clients of mine as well. Let's just hope that the weather is not as hot as yesterday but a lot sunnier than the downpour of rain that hammered us today.

Hedgehog Mischief

Sat, 29 Jan 2011 22:53:52 -0500

It turns out that my hubby accidently created a hedgehog trap when he was digging a hole to fix some pipes. We left it unfilled to check the new join didn't leak, and tonight I found this poor little guy stuck in the hole.

I managed to get him out of the hole without pricking myself. He lay there in the grass for a little while, all curled up in a ball.

Hedgehogs move surprisingly fast. It took him about 4 goes to get off his back, which gave me plently of time to get photos, but every single one of them a moving blur - this one was the best of the lot!

Once he got up, his only thought was to get as far away from the camera lady as possible, so off he went, with me following, clicking away.

At least I got a good closeup (ignore that bit of grass please)

Turkeys and Eggs

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 23:06:03 -0500

I was so pleased when one of our turkeys decided to start laying. Finally at least one of them was earning their keep and not destined for the roasting pan. Now I've just got to work out which one it is that is laying.

Actually 2 of the 3 turkey hens we have are laying now, but we don't always get 2 eggs per day.

Turkey eggs taste pretty much like chicken eggs, they're just bigger. Ours have pale yolks and the membrane under the shell is quite tough to get into, but all in all taste good. We don't eat too many eggs, so 1-2 eggs per day is enough to mean we don't have to buy them at the supermarket anymore and when I eventually get chickens as well I'm going to have to come up with some more recipes that use eggs!

This is a photo of my royal palm tom, he's a big boy which we inherited with the other turkeys. You can just see one of the hens in the background, and either another hen or the white tom. He's all puffed up, showing off for another hen and struting his stuff. They actually look about half this size when they're not puffed up and the long red bit over his nose retracts in as well, which is still something that seems very odd to me because it points up in the air when it's not dangling down his face. It's quite amusing when they try to eat it while it's retracting back in.

My turkey conclusion is that they are really dumb animals. They will stand out in the rain, wet and cold, instead of walking a couple of metres into their coop where it is dry with a nice covering of hay on the floor. At least the hens lay inside now.

The hens are not that smart with their chicks, leaving them out in the cold or just abandoning them completely, so before I start letting the hens get broody, I need to set up a brooder box where I can put them to keep them warm and safe.

The funniest thing about these turkeys is the toms gobble at any noise. They are right next to the duck pen, where the ducks quack at any noise. So they get themselves on the roll, where you'll go outside to hear 'gobble gobble gobble, quack quack quack, gobble gobble gobble, quack quack quack' When the calves were down this end of the property we could add in 'moooooooooooooo' It's just a regular little farm here! Wait until I have a rooster doing his thing.

Our next step for the turkeys is to let them be free range. At the moment, they have a modified hen coop with a 4 metre by 4 metre run. We want to let them out into the duck pen which is quite a bit bigger area with a pond about the size of their current run. The only issue is the turkey hens can fly quite well, so unlike the ducks who can't, would probably hop straight over the standard height fence. Once we get some time to extend the fence up about another foot or so we will be able to let them out.

Lets just add it to the list of never ending work that you get out here!

Rainy Day

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 22:46:57 -0500

Today was great - it rained. The ground was so dry that this downpour of rain was much needed to make the grass grow. Or at least start to recover from the big dry spell that we've been having.

I'm not entirely sure how much rain we had, but it was enough to leave my car sitting in a huge puddle.

It was also enough to flood the entire pig pen in about 3 inches of water! The little guys loved digging around in the mud so much today that they managed to dig out the side of the water race. Because it was raining so much, the race was full and completely overflowed out into their pen. So they probably had a great time. We've fixed it up so hopefully their pen will drain again, and in the meantime, they have their shelter filled with hay to snuggle up in.

The rain seems to be easing off now, but it's dark out so I'm not going out to check. But hopefully it's still raining in the morning - believe me we need it.

Escapee Ducks

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 22:10:36 -0500

It would seem that we are destined to have a different group of animals escape from their pen every week. This week it was the ducks turn. The best part is they didn't go far.

We have rouen ducks, which are the french meat duck. They can't fly and spend most of the day hanging out around the pond, or over near the fence where they get fed. They're getting bigger, and are only 3 months old.

My hubby had been working on the pump which runs off the pond. There's a gap between a shed and the chook house that we put a crate across to stop the ducks getting out. We had moved it to get into the pond.

It did take them 3 days to work out that the crate had moved. And they did only come out because I was mixing up their food. So I had 4 ducks snapping at my ankles as I led them back into their pond pen to feed them. I just wish that all animals were this easy to get back where they were supposed to be and take so long to work out that there's a place for them to get out.

North Canterbury Sunset

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 22:09:13 -0500

As I was walking out tonight to feed the animals and check on the calves and sheep, I got to see the most gorgeous sunset. It really makes you appreciate living out in the country, because although I would have seen this in Christchurch city, it would not have been this beautiful or this peaceful.

And what made it even more amazing was right behind me, the half moon was out and a couple of stars were shining as well.

Realisations of Keeping Pigs

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 21:48:33 -0500

Keeping pigs is something that my Grandad always did, and it never seemed so hard. I thought I would share some of the realisations that I have come across in the last month of keeping my own pigs.

Firstly, this is one of my guys in the photo - I have two pigs, they have a decent size run with a water race flowing through one end, and a loose box at the other. Loose boxes are mostly for horses, but we are finding that they are a good shelter for the pigs and the size of the run in front of them is perfect.

It took the pigs about a week to realise that they could push their way through one of the fences. My hubby went out to feed them one morning and one was 'missing'. I still smile when he told me that he asked the other pig where his mate was - I mean hello, do you really think he was going to answer you? "Oink oink, he's over there" So dear hubby climbed into the pen to see where the other one was, obviously gave it a fright and it sprinted straight through the fence. So we were late leaving for work and a meeting, and had to put more fence wires up that night.

It was probably only a few days after that when hubby was out on the roadside unblocking the irrigation intake when he thought he saw two small black dogs on the roadside. Turns out they were our pigs coming over to say hello. He was just getting ready to catch one of them when I came out, called 'here pig pig pig' and they followed me all the way back into their pen. It was dinner time and they knew it. I'm a little disappointed that all the other times they've got out, they won't follow me back into the pen. They must like being out and about more.

Over the next week, they escaped from their pen at least once a day, more likely 2 or 3 times. We discovered that they had dug up the race more, so they could get under the low wires that we had across. We couldn't get the wires any lower, so started driving waratahs into the race to stop them, but this was a bit of trial and error about how many we would need, which is why it took a week.

Once we had stopped them getting through the race, they started digging out through the dirt, which prompted another electric wire to be added lower down. My two brothers were out helping hubby fix this while I went out to find where they had gone to this time. Earlier in the day they had travelled right up the other end of the farm to hang out with the calves and sheep, so I had just left them up there.

I spent about 30 minutes hunting high and low for them, before returning to the pig pen and asked the guys if anyone had seen them. I'd like to thank my youngest brother for telling my other brother and my hubby where the pigs where, but not actually telling the person who was getting them in. We found them in the hay barn, buried under the loose hay, one of them so far in that I had to pull it out backwards because it couldn't go forward and it couldn't turn around.

The final bit of drama from our pigs so far was to dig under the netting fence yesterday and completely dig up a paddock that hubby had sown with seeds only a few days earlier. No surprises, but he wasn't happy about it. I asked my youngest brother, who is staying with us, to give me a hand to get them back in their pen. Sometimes I think I would have done better on my own, especially as I watched him stand there and just let the pigs run past. After doing this a couple of times, I thought I would let my Uncle's pig pup out to give me a hand. I don't think he's going to make it as a pig dog, because instead of the dog chasing the pigs, the pigs were chasing the dog.

Hopefully the last electric wire has been run in their pen, which was finished last night as it was getting dark. I'm pretty sure they tried eating it after it was put live cause there was a hell of a squeal about 5 minutes later. At this stage they are still in their pen, but it's only been 1 day since they last got out, so we'll see how it goes. Our biggest realisation has been that if there is a gap, they will dig it out, make it larger and fit their round little backsides through it!