Friday 3rd June

Good lord, a week and a half, time may go slowly but it still vanishes quickly here.

We spent last weekend drying off the herd, all 1250 of them, about 300 per day from Friday onwards, and finished the last of them Monday morning. It took us 5 hours each time, starting at 5am, finishing at 10am. Get the milking cows through, then the drafted ones for drying off, milk them out, give them a shot of Drychlor in each quarter, and finish washing the shed and yard down.

I ended up running a cold/flu/fever by Wednesday, with the last lot on Monday, it was put 80 cows into the bails, then stop, go round them all with the drychlor, then draft them out, then the next 80, etc, It was the stop/go/stop/go and being cold to start with, by Wednesday I was not fit for anything.

I’m still slowly working my way through the garden clean up job. All the roses are pruned back, the gardens have been dug over, etc, now it is the bigger trees and shrubs to look at. One of the Camellias has a bad infestation of scale, so as soon as I know we have 2 – 3 days of dry weather I’ll spray for them. It’s only one tree affected, despite it being in the middle of the rest the scale haven’t spread, so I think it is just the variety that is susceptible to scale. It needs doing soon, all the leaves are literally covered in scale, and starting to yellow and look wilted.

I’ve mentioned about my fireplace, trying to get parts for it etc. Went to Nelson today, which I really hate, 3 hours drive, and by the time I get there and in amongst the traffic, I feel like turning around and coming home. The fireplace shop had some of the parts, but not the back panel, which is now obsolete, so there goes any hope of repairing the one I have. I was thinking it is going to be a long cold winter, but then the guy said he had a second hand one, only a few years old that didn’t meet the new regulations for Nelson, but was ok for out here. I could have it for $100, was I interested? Hell yes was the answer, so for less than the parts for the old one, I ended up with a fairly new, slightly smaller, fireplace.

Old one

New one, well second hand new

It’s a heavy little beast, I backed the Pajero up to the back porch, slid it out of the Pajero, manhandled it into the lounge, then dismantled the old one, dropped the flue, had to get up onto the roof and release the holding wires, then shove the new one into place, lift the flue, settle it in, back onto the roof, retie everything down.

Then got a fire going again!! So far I haven’t smoked myself out, or noticed any fires in the roof, which is always a good start.

It’s slowly getting colder, but no real frosts yet, which is holding back the kiwifruit pruning. We can’t start until the leaves drop, which needs 2 or 3 really good frosts to cause the die back. The La Nina this year has caused a run of warmer weather for the last month, despite the rain and westerly winds, it has been warmer than usual, with most of the winds coming down from the tropics, rather than up from Antarctica. But that is changing. Still no snow on the top of the ranges as yet.

Here is our local Community Hall, out in the paddocks, it is used quite a lot for various functions, birthdays/weddings/general meetings.

Milking starts back about August, it looks like I’ll be doing morning and evening milking, so that suits me. More hours, more pay. And the middle of the day for my stuff.