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Here’s a Tip – Keep Your Mouth Shut
26 August 2008
Thursday last week Aaron had a tattoo session. He was staying at Jeff’s for the night, which meant I had to finish work a couple of hours early so I could get home in time for the 4 O’clock feed out.
It was a quiet evening and finally I had the opportunity to watch some rubbish tv. Unfortunately it was so rubbish I didn’t want to watch any of it.
The dogs sleep outside on the verandah every night now and they were active that night. Every time they ran onto the verandah I woke up with a start, worried they were human footsteps. Eventually fatigue must have overcome me because I turned my alarm off in my sleep. I woke at 06:30, confused by the light coming in the door. Then I looked at my clock and realized I was actually supposed to be sitting at my desk at that very moment.
What could I do? Quite frankly nothing. I still had to feed out and get ready and the drive in is 45 minutes. It didn’t matter how much I rushed I was going to be majorly late, so in the end I just tackled my morning routine at the usual pace.
When I did get to work I went straight into the Charge Nurses office to apologise only to discover the cleaners had left my door open that night so everyone thought I was at work anyway.
So clearly the moral of the story here is – admit nothing and you might just get away with it.
We Shall Not Be Moooved
Saturday morning, after the usual tasks we went into Wellsford RD1 to buy some more electric fencing and pig pellets. The dogs enjoyed the journey. As per usual Coppa spent most of it with his head hanging out the window.We came home and moved the cattle to the roadside paddock. We were expecting a storm and some flooding that evening so we wanted them to go straight across the back of the stream to the DoC paddock at the far end. Unfortunately they didn’t want to go and made their feelings known by running around the paddock trying to trample the dogs. We gave up and left them to it.
Problems in the Coop
Saturday after lunch I went into the coop to clean it. That’s when I made the awful discovery that the chickens had all been losing feathers and 2 had bald heads. Unfortunately because I’m currently only seeing the animals in the dark I don’t pick up on abnormalities as quick as I should.
As for Aaron, animal observation is not his strong point, he’d never even realised.
I watched the chooks for a while, they seemed a little unhappy but they weren’t off their food and they were laying just fine.
Frank rang not long after that to say he’d meet us at the back fence. He’s having a tough winter, there’s not enough grass so he’s feeding out more silage than usual.
He’s still working out in the bush during the week and with the winter we’ve been having he’s been wet most of the time. He was full of cold and clearly fed up with this season. However, it had been a beautiful morning so he’d spent it in his boat fishing. We swapped feta for fish.
Frank suggested our chooks problem was lice. I wondered how they’d got them and then realized that bloody rat in the trap under the nesting box must have shaken off its lice.
By this stage the vet and RD1 had closed for the weekend so we couldn’t go buy anything.
I decided to go over to Koanga to see if they had any organic treatment. Unbelievably they’d just sold out.
The only other option was to try Google a treatment on the Internet. And it was as I was doing this that I suddenly remembered that lice are host specific and the only way our chooks could have got lice was if they had come into contact with another bird. But how could that be?
And then the penny dropped. Those sodding little sparrows!
Yes they had found another way in.
Aaron and I went into the coop and attempted to close up every gap we could find. There was no way the little buggers would get in now.I searched the Internet but could not find any treatment that used products we had in the house. The poor chooks would have to wait until Monday when I could drive to the vet.
On Getting Old
Saturday night the stormy weather hit. I got a call from mum to say Joy was in hospital. It appears she’s had a stroke.
It doesn’t matter what hits Joy she always pulls through and gets back on with life but I’m not so sure this time. This will probably mean the end of her independence. I don’t envy the person who has to tell her she has to go into a home. She won’t go willingly. In fact, if she had the ability I’m sure she’d go kicking and screaming.
Do I blame her? No. Do I understand? Yes.
When you finally have to admit you can’t look after yourself it must kill something inside. It must surely be like someone has just extinguished your spirit.
All those years of doing your own thing, making your own decisions, dispensing advice from your repertoire of been there, done that experiences and suddenly it all means sweet F A. It’s not like you’ve earned life credits that you can suddenly cash in now when you most need it.
All that you were is now just a memory, and probably half the time not even yours.
What you are now, who you are now is a shell of your former self. You think, you feel but your body just packs its bags and retires way before you’re ready and suddenly you’re left fearing you’re that burden you’d hoped you’d never be.
You want my honest opinion? If it was me in that situation I’d just give up and die. F*** it. I don’t want be dependent on another person to tell me what to do and when to do it. I don’t want to have to rely on someone else to help me across the room in some shared old person’s facility where you know that once you’ve checked in the only way you’re checking out is in a box.
That’s why I've decided that when I retire I’m moving to a retirement village with an aged care facility attached. I want to go in lively and make it my home. I want it to be my own decision to be there so if the time comes when I can’t make my own decisions there won’t be any major trauma involved in moving home. I want to choose my final home. And to be fair I don’t have kids to make that decision for me so who would? That’s an even scarier thought.
We Consider Building an Ark
Sunday was a write-off. The rain poured and eventually the bottom paddocks disappeared under water. Unbelievable. We were flooding yet again!
In the morning we went to check on the cattle. The stupid bovine had decided not to leave their small paddock and the point of crossing was well under water, not to mention Baby Red’s knees. We yelled out to her to get out of the stream. The problem was it hadn’t been a stream when she’d originally chosen to stand there so she hadn’t figured out she had to move. I was concerned a large branch would float down stream and take her legs out so Aaron went and got her.
We came back down a short while later. The stream had continue to rise and Baby Red was once again in the water. We moved all the cattle up to the ridge by the fenceline. By lunchtime virtually their whole paddock was under water. They cattle had no choice but to sit by the fence and wait it out.
Aaron and I spent most of the day inside.
Makin’ Bacon
We needed to discuss what we were going to do with Belle once she returned from the butcher as portions of meat. Due to her age, which we were told was about 3 or 4 (but we’re thinking it’s more) she will become bacon, mince, sausages and salamis.
There’s a small fortune in equipment to buy – mincer, sausage stuffer, scales, meat slicer, vaccum sealer, mixing and curing containers, salt, curing mix, sausage casings, etc.
But in theory we’ll be using them at the very least every 6 months so we’ll just have to grin and bear it for now.
There’ll be a lot of meat to process and Aaron suggested we have a sausage and salami making weekend or two that we can invite some people to. I thought it was a good idea. It would surely be more fun for people than say a ‘come help me paint my house’ weekend.
Recycling at its Best
We also discussed resowing the pig paddocks. Without mechanical equipment and not wanting to use chemical fertilizers we have our work cut out for us.
Saturday morning we’d watched 'Rural Delivery' on tv and saw an extremely productive dairy farm which only fertilized with effluent. Of course they had hi-tech, expensive systems to mix and spread effluent and our system would have to be extremely low tech with no cost attached, if we were lucky. I tried last year to dump animal manure in barrels of water but it just floats and then spreading it was a pain in the bum because it involved manually throwing buckets of the stuff into the air on a windy air.
I went on the Internet to look for a better method and discovered someone’s blog suggesting that Hessian sacks be used as giant tea bags. What a fabulous idea. Now I just had to get hold of Hessian sacks.
Trade Me was my first port of call but I was reluctant to fork out $4 for a used sack. I kept searching and then I found it –http://www.nothrow.co.nz
Oh my god. What an absolutely brilliant site. It’s basically businesses all around New Zealand that have bulk items of used goods/waste product for collection. All I have to do is email a business if I’m interested and ask if I can collect.
I discovered that Atomic Coffee regularly has Hessian sacks to give away. By Wednesday Troy had collected 20 sacks for me.
I also discovered the Matakana Sawmill wants people to collect their untreated macrocarpa sawdust. I fired off an email on Monday and within 5 minutes got a phone call advising me I could collect anytime during business hours.
The only bad about viewing the website was discovering that several orchards down south want to get rid of their waste fruit. Oh to be a pig farmer in the Tauranga / Katikati area!
A New Home
The other thing we discussed as we sat and watched the lousy weather was rehousing the chickens. We were well overdue building the chicken dome and the chickens need to be able to scratch around on the grass. The dome will take a couple of weekends to build and we need the wire from the current coop for the dome. What to do?...
I suggested we look at building a temporary rabbit hutch type house that we can just move around the back garden until we’re ready to build the dome and the permaculture garden.
Aaron sketched a plan and we worked out a rough costing. I’m guessing it’ll be at least October before we can afford to build it.
Thinking About Belle
Eventually the rain stopped, the sun came out and we went for a walk with the dogs. We decided to extend Belle’s paddock back to the entrance gate. 
We moved the standards, redid the wire and I went and got the secateurs to cut back the flax leaves touching the wire.
Initially I threw all the flax leaves on the ground and then it occurred to me that the cattle love eating flax. I picked up all the leaves and took them over to the cattle. They clearly didn’t know what to do with them as usually they just suck and chew the flax leaves while they’re still attached to the plant. I cut each leaf into small pieces and eventually they figured out how to pick them up and chew them.
Late afternoon Aaron got a call from Alec, the slaughterman. They discussed what to do with Belle. We discovered that a pig that is going to be used for standard meat cuts has to have its skin scalded immediately after the killing. Then we realized that normal household water isn’t nearly hot enough. Our only option with pigs will be to take them to the slaughterman for killing. I’m not keen on the idea but in the end we have no option. However, due to Belle’s age she’ll need to be skinned so scalding isn’t an issue.
Aaron went to bed early and I stayed up for a while. Eventually I put the dogs out and locked up and then it hit me, a massive attack of the guilts. I burst into tears. Suddenly the fate of Belle seemed too awful to comprehend. I got into bed, had a good cry and then went to sleep. I’d had the same issue when Big Red’s time had come but I dealt with it. In the end I just have to release the emotion and then I can move on. The way I want to raise our animals, with a personal touch, means that I will probably always feel some guilt, However, I firmly believe that good tasting meat comes from well treated animals. I have read that food prepared with love tastes better than food prepared as a matter of routine and I like to think that that also applies to the raising of meat.
Brussel Sprouts – a Universally Hated Vegetable
Monday was a beautiful warm, sunny day. How glad I was that I had the day off. I fed out the pigs early. All the troughs contained uneaten brussel sprouts. We had been very lucky to get to get 2 crates of brussel sprouts from the orchard. Unfortunately the pigs hate them. It doesn’t even matter if they’re covered in cheese, the pigs suck them clean and spit them out.
The brussel sprout collection had been building up in the troughs all week so finally I scraped them out and started throwing them into the paddock. Maybe the sheep would eat them or the pigs would discover them and decide, “What the hell, I'll have a snack”. If all else failed perhaps the rabbits would eat them instead of the grass.
I also put some of them back into the feed bucket and rinsed them off in the stream. I took them into where the cattle were and tipped them out. The cattle sniffed them cautiously, then looked at me with a ‘what the hell is this crap?’ look on their faces and turned around and walked away.
Back at the house Coppa ran over to the crate of sprouts and grabbed one and ate it. Good boy! 
He got a couple more and brought them into the house where he devoured them enthusiastically. Somehow I don’t think I’m going to be able to convince him to eat a whole crate’s worth though.
The Downside of Living in the Country
After 9 I grabbed my bag, put the dogs in the car and we drove into Maungaturoto. What a mission! There were 3 stop and go roadworks to get through. The dogs quickly got bored with the 30km speed. It’s not exactly fast enough to really feel the wind whipping through the fur.
I went to the vet and they’d run out of lice powder for chooks. I then went over to RD1 and they no longer stocked it. Unbelievable, it doesn’t matter where I shop in Northland every sodding shop has run out of what I want. Every damn time I shop for something, groceries, hardware, whatever there’s always something I can’t have. Shopping was so much easier in Auckland. I can’t believe how painful it is to shop up north.
We drove home back through the roadworks empty handed. In the end all I managed was to waste 90 minutes of my life and few bucks worth of petrol. Ah well, at least it was sunny.I spent the rest of the day doing housework.
Getting Rid of Lice
Aaron came home with lice powder and we went into the chicken coop. By this stage I’d already discovered that if you pick up a hen Marty will attack. He is extremely protective of his girls and an attacking rooster is not an experience I recommend. If only he was a friendly and laidback as his namesake. Mind you, now that I think about it, if I was man-handling Marty’s girlfriend he’d probably respond in a similar fashion.
Aaron cornered Marty in one section of the garden (I’m talking about the rooster here) and held him at bay with windnetting. We ran around after the hens, eventually catching each one and then did our best to cover the hens in the highly toxic smelling lice powder. (I swear it’s the same stuff we used to use on the guinea pigs when I was a kid). Then it was Marty’s turn. I left the catching up to Aaron. Marty wasn’t going down without a fight. In the end Aaron had to throw windnetting over him. That meant we could only douse his underneath but it was better than nothing and apparently that’s where most of the lice congregate anyway.
In the morning we went to check on the cattle. The stupid bovine had decided not to leave their small paddock and the point of crossing was well under water, not to mention Baby Red’s knees. We yelled out to her to get out of the stream. The problem was it hadn’t been a stream when she’d originally chosen to stand there so she hadn’t figured out she had to move. I was concerned a large branch would float down stream and take her legs out so Aaron went and got her.
We came back down a short while later. The stream had continue to rise and Baby Red was once again in the water. We moved all the cattle up to the ridge by the fenceline. By lunchtime virtually their whole paddock was under water. They cattle had no choice but to sit by the fence and wait it out.
Aaron and I spent most of the day inside.
Makin’ Bacon
We needed to discuss what we were going to do with Belle once she returned from the butcher as portions of meat. Due to her age, which we were told was about 3 or 4 (but we’re thinking it’s more) she will become bacon, mince, sausages and salamis.
There’s a small fortune in equipment to buy – mincer, sausage stuffer, scales, meat slicer, vaccum sealer, mixing and curing containers, salt, curing mix, sausage casings, etc.
But in theory we’ll be using them at the very least every 6 months so we’ll just have to grin and bear it for now.
There’ll be a lot of meat to process and Aaron suggested we have a sausage and salami making weekend or two that we can invite some people to. I thought it was a good idea. It would surely be more fun for people than say a ‘come help me paint my house’ weekend.
Recycling at its Best
We also discussed resowing the pig paddocks. Without mechanical equipment and not wanting to use chemical fertilizers we have our work cut out for us.
Saturday morning we’d watched 'Rural Delivery' on tv and saw an extremely productive dairy farm which only fertilized with effluent. Of course they had hi-tech, expensive systems to mix and spread effluent and our system would have to be extremely low tech with no cost attached, if we were lucky. I tried last year to dump animal manure in barrels of water but it just floats and then spreading it was a pain in the bum because it involved manually throwing buckets of the stuff into the air on a windy air.
I went on the Internet to look for a better method and discovered someone’s blog suggesting that Hessian sacks be used as giant tea bags. What a fabulous idea. Now I just had to get hold of Hessian sacks.
Trade Me was my first port of call but I was reluctant to fork out $4 for a used sack. I kept searching and then I found it –http://www.nothrow.co.nz
Oh my god. What an absolutely brilliant site. It’s basically businesses all around New Zealand that have bulk items of used goods/waste product for collection. All I have to do is email a business if I’m interested and ask if I can collect.
I discovered that Atomic Coffee regularly has Hessian sacks to give away. By Wednesday Troy had collected 20 sacks for me.
I also discovered the Matakana Sawmill wants people to collect their untreated macrocarpa sawdust. I fired off an email on Monday and within 5 minutes got a phone call advising me I could collect anytime during business hours.
The only bad about viewing the website was discovering that several orchards down south want to get rid of their waste fruit. Oh to be a pig farmer in the Tauranga / Katikati area!
A New Home
The other thing we discussed as we sat and watched the lousy weather was rehousing the chickens. We were well overdue building the chicken dome and the chickens need to be able to scratch around on the grass. The dome will take a couple of weekends to build and we need the wire from the current coop for the dome. What to do?...
I suggested we look at building a temporary rabbit hutch type house that we can just move around the back garden until we’re ready to build the dome and the permaculture garden.
Aaron sketched a plan and we worked out a rough costing. I’m guessing it’ll be at least October before we can afford to build it.
Thinking About Belle
Eventually the rain stopped, the sun came out and we went for a walk with the dogs. We decided to extend Belle’s paddock back to the entrance gate. 
We moved the standards, redid the wire and I went and got the secateurs to cut back the flax leaves touching the wire.
Initially I threw all the flax leaves on the ground and then it occurred to me that the cattle love eating flax. I picked up all the leaves and took them over to the cattle. They clearly didn’t know what to do with them as usually they just suck and chew the flax leaves while they’re still attached to the plant. I cut each leaf into small pieces and eventually they figured out how to pick them up and chew them.
Late afternoon Aaron got a call from Alec, the slaughterman. They discussed what to do with Belle. We discovered that a pig that is going to be used for standard meat cuts has to have its skin scalded immediately after the killing. Then we realized that normal household water isn’t nearly hot enough. Our only option with pigs will be to take them to the slaughterman for killing. I’m not keen on the idea but in the end we have no option. However, due to Belle’s age she’ll need to be skinned so scalding isn’t an issue.
Aaron went to bed early and I stayed up for a while. Eventually I put the dogs out and locked up and then it hit me, a massive attack of the guilts. I burst into tears. Suddenly the fate of Belle seemed too awful to comprehend. I got into bed, had a good cry and then went to sleep. I’d had the same issue when Big Red’s time had come but I dealt with it. In the end I just have to release the emotion and then I can move on. The way I want to raise our animals, with a personal touch, means that I will probably always feel some guilt, However, I firmly believe that good tasting meat comes from well treated animals. I have read that food prepared with love tastes better than food prepared as a matter of routine and I like to think that that also applies to the raising of meat.
Brussel Sprouts – a Universally Hated Vegetable
Monday was a beautiful warm, sunny day. How glad I was that I had the day off. I fed out the pigs early. All the troughs contained uneaten brussel sprouts. We had been very lucky to get to get 2 crates of brussel sprouts from the orchard. Unfortunately the pigs hate them. It doesn’t even matter if they’re covered in cheese, the pigs suck them clean and spit them out.
The brussel sprout collection had been building up in the troughs all week so finally I scraped them out and started throwing them into the paddock. Maybe the sheep would eat them or the pigs would discover them and decide, “What the hell, I'll have a snack”. If all else failed perhaps the rabbits would eat them instead of the grass.
I also put some of them back into the feed bucket and rinsed them off in the stream. I took them into where the cattle were and tipped them out. The cattle sniffed them cautiously, then looked at me with a ‘what the hell is this crap?’ look on their faces and turned around and walked away.
Back at the house Coppa ran over to the crate of sprouts and grabbed one and ate it. Good boy! 
He got a couple more and brought them into the house where he devoured them enthusiastically. Somehow I don’t think I’m going to be able to convince him to eat a whole crate’s worth though.
The Downside of Living in the Country
After 9 I grabbed my bag, put the dogs in the car and we drove into Maungaturoto. What a mission! There were 3 stop and go roadworks to get through. The dogs quickly got bored with the 30km speed. It’s not exactly fast enough to really feel the wind whipping through the fur.
I went to the vet and they’d run out of lice powder for chooks. I then went over to RD1 and they no longer stocked it. Unbelievable, it doesn’t matter where I shop in Northland every sodding shop has run out of what I want. Every damn time I shop for something, groceries, hardware, whatever there’s always something I can’t have. Shopping was so much easier in Auckland. I can’t believe how painful it is to shop up north.
We drove home back through the roadworks empty handed. In the end all I managed was to waste 90 minutes of my life and few bucks worth of petrol. Ah well, at least it was sunny.I spent the rest of the day doing housework.
Getting Rid of Lice
Aaron came home with lice powder and we went into the chicken coop. By this stage I’d already discovered that if you pick up a hen Marty will attack. He is extremely protective of his girls and an attacking rooster is not an experience I recommend. If only he was a friendly and laidback as his namesake. Mind you, now that I think about it, if I was man-handling Marty’s girlfriend he’d probably respond in a similar fashion.
Aaron cornered Marty in one section of the garden (I’m talking about the rooster here) and held him at bay with windnetting. We ran around after the hens, eventually catching each one and then did our best to cover the hens in the highly toxic smelling lice powder. (I swear it’s the same stuff we used to use on the guinea pigs when I was a kid). Then it was Marty’s turn. I left the catching up to Aaron. Marty wasn’t going down without a fight. In the end Aaron had to throw windnetting over him. That meant we could only douse his underneath but it was better than nothing and apparently that’s where most of the lice congregate anyway.
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