Saturday 9th April

If anyone has any idea on how to get plaster to stick to walls please let me know. I’ve spent most of the week arguing with it upstairs on the outside wall. I’m starting to think it is the sunlight hitting the wall on that side of the house in the afternoon, and causing the interior wall to heat up and bubble the plaster. I’ve sanded the walls so they have a rough surface, put thin coats of plaster on to try and give some base, put plasterers mesh on, it still bubbles. I may just give up and sand it smooth and paint over, at least the grooves in the panels are gone this time.

The veg garden outside is slowly progressing, I keep running out of horse manure to dig in, so it is a case of driving to Rockville, grabbing whatever bags Frankes have got out, then digging a bit more. At least the horse manure is cheap, $1.50 - $2 a bag. I’ve got silverbeet, cabbage, brocolli planted already in the first bed, and leeks, cauliflower, more silverbeet, brocolli in seed boxes in the tunnel house to plant out in a few weeks.

The timber for the shelving in the tunnel houses is mostly here, the 50 x 25 arrived, but not the 100 x 100 for the uprights. Hopefully it will be here Friday of next week. Thank God for 2 years in the Solomons, I can cope easily with slow deliveries now.

I let Shukita and Will at the store know I would be in Takaka with the trailer next week, if they needed anything bought back out, so it looks like I’m picking up their washing machine from the repair shop.

Took a morning off on Thursday and went for a drive up to the end of the Aorere Valley, to the start of the Heaphy Track. http://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/tracks-and-walks/nelson-tasman/golden-bay/heaphy-track/

I’d like to walk it some time, 4 – 6 days depending on weather and fitness, make that 8 – 10 days for me then.

Salisbury Falls Aorere Valley

Aorere Valley/Heaphy Track

The country starts to get a bit rugged up that end of the valley, you can see the snow levels on the bare mountain tops, and the nature of the forest gets very heavy with lowland beech on this side of the divide.

I’ve got on the list at one of the kiwifruit orchards for May/June pruning season, I know I’m too old to go picking, well, old maybe not, but certainly not fit or agile enough to keep up with the usual picking gangs.

Mark with the dairy farm around me, 1250 cows, called in tonight. I’m on the list with them to do morning milking in a week or so, depending on when the new herd he has bought, another 700, arrive. They are only milking once a day at the moment, about 3 – 4 hours, 4.30am to about 8.30/9am. Which suits me, I’ll still have most of the day to keep pottering around with the nursery.

He asked me what I intended growing, and pushed hard for me to get more native trees etc underway. So the demand is there, all I have to do is get it all working. Plus the veg and ornamentals that everyone wants as well.

We had a bit of a wind earlier on in the week, I got woken up with an incessant banging from outside. Went out to check, and one corner of the roof had started to lift, so I was up the ladder banging in nails at 3 am, holding onto the spouting to keep steady in the wind, and getting frozen with the rain. Not one of those things you want to do repeatedly. Went back up to check in the daylight and secured it all down a bit better so hopefully it won’t lift again. The tunnel houses never moved at all.