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The two chicks are growing fast. As predicted, the light coloured one is getting dark feathers, and the dark one is getting light ones. They spend the night in a box in the old laundry, and the day time in the rabbit hutch. That's about the limits of their existence so far!
Two new calves to add to the existing three. We don't tend to name the ones raised in the paddock, so currently they're referred to as 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Sam went out every day to check up on them. I understand they're a viral hit in Taiwan...
Sam's now off in Whitianga, just in time for the tsunami. She's fine. Her iPhone got a bit wet. I don't think it was tsunami related - she was just too busy collecting shellfish.
It's getting warm at last. Soon it'll be summer. Then we'll be back in the cold again for Christmas!
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( 3 / 1747 )Sam (or Cao Sha, also known as Shazza or Kitten Girl) from Taiwan has been here for a week and a half. She's a big kid. She's actually been married for quite a while. Her husband worries that if they have two children, then he will have three to look after. She's been feeding the lambs and going over daily to check for any new calves. Three so far. Three more soon, but we've been warned that the mothers can be aggressive, so we've had to observe from the fence.
We've currently got two lambs in the back garden. Sarah's lamb Leia is in training for the agricultural day, but still isn't too keen on walking with a leash. Cousin Cooper wanted a lamb, but we only had one surviving orphan on the farm, so they got another from a different farm. Angus is crazy. He does this weird strangled bleat which we've all practised imitating. Unfortunately it was too much for Cooper's neighbours, who insisted that the lamb went. So Angus and Leia are now in our back garden. We've put up quite a barricade across, but he can still climb a three foot fence, so we'll probably have to make it higher. Or slipperier.
Sarah named her chicks along the Princess theme to go with Princess Leia. So we've got Jasmin and Sophia. Jasmin is the brown headed one, to go with the one in Aladdin. Unfortunately she's now growing all white feathers, so it will probably reverse later!
Bronwyn's been working four days a week for the last fortnight. Three days next week. Plus she was off to a Baptist Women's conference on Friday. She's also been working hard to put her teaching materials together for the registration, and a pile of song folders for the old folks home roster. Meanwhile, I haven't had a lot to do at work, so (apart from stressing about future income) I've been the one who hasn't had a lot to do. But I'm told that we have a semi major job about to start on Monday, so my unplanned holiday could be coming to an end.
Went to the hot pools last night. Got a family ticket. Two adults, three children. Sam got counted as a child. Technically she's not, but practically speaking she hasn't quite crossed 18 yet. I don't think the girl on the desk believed she was 30!
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( 3.1 / 1748 )For those of you in the northern hemisphere, we'll be bringing you some things around Christmas time. Flu will be one of them. It's been quite bad this year; two people that I know have been in hospital. Bronwyn had bronchitis and all of us have had coughs and sore throats, including the Belgians and Singaporeans. But we've all pretty much recovered now.
Michael and Coralie left today. Coralie has a job in a Belgian cafe in the city. There can't be that many Belgian Cafes in New Zealand. On the other hand, there can't be many Belgians. Meanwhile, Kitten Girl will be here on Tuesday. Unfortunately for her, we've only got one lamb to bottle feed. It's been a good year; we've got another 90 in the paddock.
And two chicks. Sarah brought them home on Friday. One has a yellow head, and the other one has brown with a couple of stripes. They haven't got names yet, so I've just called them Brown and Yellow. They'll completely change their colour once the feathers come out. They're in the shed under a heat lamp at the moment. Should have eggs coming on line by Christmas.
I'll need to finish the second chicken shed. The plywood I bought was obviously designed for a dry indoors. It's already begun peeling at one corner. So we put it up in the loft for storage (and somewhere to put storage on!) and we'll get another sheet. Meanwhile I've done two shelves and a shoe cupboard. Michael has been very useful with carpentry, and Coralie has done the impossible. Sarah's room is tidy.
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( 2.9 / 1751 )Most of the lambs were born within a week or two of the first one. This is unusual. We put in one ram early, as a 'teaser', to um, warm the ewes up a bit. We put in Pip this year, one of the the lambs from two years ago. Obviously he was working hard, because he must have done most of them before we put the rest of the rams in!
We've had two lambs in for feeding. One was found in the ditch, and recovered a bit, but then died a few days later. Another got separated from her mother in the confusion, but she's doing extremely well. We've already had to build a substantial barricade to keep her in the garden. Leia (as in Princess) can jump four feet with ease, and runs at nutcase speed. Sarah's pleased. She's planning on entering a lamb again for Ag day. Plus another two chickens.
One of last year's lambs has had a lamb. This is also unusual. Must be something in the water.
We've had a couple to stay from Singapore, and they're planning to meet up with us when we're there in December. We've now got a couple from Brussels, and after them, a girl from Taiwan. You've heard of the Cat Lady. Well, this is Kitten Girl. She's really looking forward to the visit with all the lambs around!
We've been making the most of the extra help. They've been mounting patrols around the sheep, cleaning the house and doing the washing up. I've been to get some wood and we've been making shelves and a shoe rack (plus the lamb barricade!), and finishing off the second chicken shed. I'm hoping to build a couple of nesting boxes, and then we'll be set up for Sarah's new chicks.
Rachael's tired. She went on a hike up The Pinnacles. I did tell her about my experiences earlier in the year. Sounds like it all went well, apart from a cloud right at the top. But she's been doing very little today!
Work has become a little tricky. My colleague Dave is currently on honeymoon in Cuba. The internet there is almost non-existent. So we've been communicating in short bursts whenever he can get some connection in a noisy cafe across town. We've also got Daniel in Romania. So it's been very tricky organising meetings. There have been some rather expensive phone calls. But we seem to be getting on top of it somehow!
Apparently the church is on two phases, and used to have a couple of ancient fuses on the power pole. These worked fine for years, and would cope with a short surge to 75 amps, even though they were rated at 60 amps. Now they've been replaced by modern fuses. This is the cause of the power cuts every time we switch on the heaters! So now we're doing our best to be careful. Roll on the new building. We've now got plans to build a joint facility with a Maori school on a block of land that we've owned for years. If all goes well, work should start next year.
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( 3.1 / 1859 )Rachael has been practising with her bow and arrows. It's a compound bow; quite a fearsome looking thing with a pulley system that lets you put a lot of force into the arrow with little effort. We've got a large round bale set up in the paddock with a target painted on it. It's a wrapped bale, so it's quite compressed and solid. I tried one shot and it went in six inches. The arrows go so fast it's hard to see them. Fortunately we're on good terms with Rachael.
Nearly lambing season. We've been patrolling the paddock daily checking up on the ewes. They can sometimes wind up upside down or suffering from exhaustion. One of them looks like she's having triplets. She's absolutely huge, so we've nicknamed her 'Wide load following'.
Dave, my colleague, has gone off on honeymoon. On his own. His wife went a month or two ago, and has been touring the US with her girlfriends. Now they've met up and gone to Nicaragua in order to start the honeymoon properly. It's getting tricky having our weekly Skype meetings with with people in three different time zones.
Chaos in the church this morning. The musicians were all set up and ready. A couple of minutes before the start, the power went. A large contingent of blokes huddled round the ancient power board (warped and mouldy hardboard with only three screws) trying to work out the problem. Meanwhile, they grabbed another acoustic guitar and continued regardless. Funny that one of the songs was 'When the music fades'. I then realised that the lights were still on, and went round looking for a working power socket and a long extension cable. All the sound equipment, the amplifiers, the speakers, the two computers (and I later discovered, the coffee grinder next door) come off one rather overloaded plug. I connected it to the cable and sat back, waiting for it to go pop when they played a loud note. Fortunately it didn't.
I reckon one of the phases has gone. The same cable is now in the kitchen, routing power to the fridge and freezer from another socket in the room next door.
Meanwhile, Bronwyn tried the heat lamp this afternoon. We've got it set up in the outhouse for any orphaned lambs. The trip switch went. And refused to go back in. Bronwyn's dad came round. He couldn't reset it either, and in the process took out the farm pump as well. By the look of them, they're probably all full of years of grime. Fortunately he found a couple of spares. The heat lamp still overloads the circuit though. Probably too much organic material in the socket making it's home for the winter...
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