Thursday 5th May

It is certainly getting into winter here, well, ok, late autumn. We’ve had a week of rain, and a few mornings down to –2*C, all the leaves are yellowing off and dropping on the grapevines and wisteria.

Garth and Chris called in for a few days on their tour of the South Island, they have been a year or so travelling with their caravan and 4wd everywhere. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t the best for them here, although the one fine day we had they managed to do the Farewell Spit Tour, and a bit of sightseeing along the Aorere and Takaka Valley.

Chris cooked dinner, and I made Turkish pide bread, which Garth decided he loved, and couldn't get enough of, especially cheese and garlic pide.

I’m still doing morning milking, a few early early starts this week, 5am, as we had work being done on the milking shed, installing a new barley feeder, and the cows needed to be out of the way before the installation crew could start. The only problem has been with trying to get the cows out of the bails now, they get an extra ½ kilo of barley with the new feeder, and several of them, including the usual 3 or four, refuse to leave the bail and continue eating as much as they can.