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The Silly Season Is Upon Us
23 December 2008
Oh My God this is a crazy time of year. I absolutely love Christmas but I am so absolutely exhausted this year that I have not been able to work myself up to feel even vaguely interested.
With oodles of fine weather and everything growing at a suddenly alarming rate we cannot keep up with all that needs to be done outside. The guests are arriving on a regular basis and the cycle of housework and meal preparation seems to stretch endlessly in front of me.
There is much to be grateful for and much to enjoy but this train that is currently my life won’t stop, instead I hurtle towards some unknown destination, missing many wonderful things along the way. I am glad that today is my last day of work for the year as I am close to crashing and burning.
Instead of looking forward to Christmas Day, all I yearn for is Boxing Day when I can sleep in until 7 and then do nothing for the day. As a kid I could never understand why mum thought Christmas was such a hassle, after all, I really enjoyed it. Now I’m an adult and I have a fulltime job and then work fulltime on the block, tiredness overtakes me and I become numb to partying and celebrating. I hate feeling this way. Where the hell’s my Christmas spirit??
The beloved Christmas tree that symbolizes everything that’s wonderful about Christmas in my home has sat outside in a bucket of water for 3 days. Just the thought of bringing it inside and decorating it saps my mental energy.
It’s an awful thing to say. It’s an absolutely beautiful tree, picked out lovingly by my sister just a couple of months ago. Aaron and I drove down to Albany on Saturday to collect it. We had just left the in-laws Christmas lunch and I was dressed up and in heels. We discovered our tree was in some back paddock of the Christmas tree plantation and we had to chop it down and drag it back to the car. I wobbled my way along the dirt path and up the hill.
Then we saw the tree for the first time.
It was enormous. It towered over Aaron’s tall frame. Expletives were uttered as we both struggled to comprehend how we would ever manage to get it into our house.
We chopped it down and haltingly staggered back to the car. It weighed a ton and I lost balance and fell over more than once. Back at the shop the book said it had been paid for. “That can’t be right” I said “You’ve made a mistake”. I paid for it and left.
The next day Jo rang “Did you pick up your tree?”
“Yes”
There was pause “Did you pay for it?”
“Yes”
“But I’d already paid for it. It was a gift from us to you”
Oh crap!
How lousy did I feel? The surprise gift ended up falling flat on its face and being a hassle for Jo to sort out the next day.
Now it sits forlornly on the corner of the verandah looking abandoned and unloved.
Our First Couchsurfers Arrive
It was one hell of a weekend. Sometimes there is just too much excitement in my life.
Friday night Sebastian and Claudia arrived. A young French couple, cycling and Couchsurfing around the world chose our home for a 2-day break. They were late arriving so I told Aaron I would drive into town to see if I could locate them. I put the dogs in the car and turned my car around and then I spotted them walking up the drive. Having cycled from Kaukapakapa that morning they were exhausted and only managed to get their bike as far as the shed. I drove my car down and they loaded it up with all their gear and I drove it back up the hill.
Saturday morning they slept well. We told them they would. Our guests always do.
The Pigs Get A New Bed
While they slept we had a truckload of chip dropped off in front of the stockyards.
Aaron removed the pallet and plywood flooring from the pig shed and after shovelling out the old hay and dirt we then covered the floor in a very thick layer of woodchip. Phyllis and Arthur seemed concerned. They were very vocal, grunting constantly at us and sniffing and tasting each pile of chip as we emptied bucket after bucket of the stuff onto the floor.
Joy was even less impressed. In her heavily pregnant state she too is suffering from exhaustion and having the house redecorated was a little too much for her to deal with. She wandered off to the corner of the yard in front of the shed and lay down for a sleep.
One of Aaron’s colleagues and her family arrived to meet the pigs as they are considering buying one of Joy’s piglets in 2 months time. They met the 3 pigs and checked out their home and then Aaron took them up the drive to meet Spotty and Stanley. Meanwhile I carried on shoveling chip. I had to constantly walk in and out of the gate and at some stage Arthur decided to walk out the gate and go for a wander. Despite strongly encouraging him to return to his paddock he wasn’t interested. I fully expected the girls to follow suit but luckily they stayed where they were. After several minutes of fruitless coaxing I let him wander over to the pond and then raced up the hill to the shed.
“Aaron! Help!”
I grabbed a bucket of cheese and ran back down the hill. Arthur was still sniffing around the pond. However, he was soon following the trail of cheese back through the gate to his paddock.
Phyllis and Arthur wandered up the back and over to the wallow. Joy refused to move. Standing was clearly all too much effort.
We said goodbye to the visitors and carried on shoveling chip.
We had intended for the chip to be from our willow trees as it has great health qualities. However, despite booking 2 weeks in advance the tree feller decided he would be unable to work on our block until the New Year and we were left with no choice but to buy chip off him.
I was a little concerned about the fact that we had no idea what trees were in the chip but I did recognise macrocarpa, blackwood and lemon. I know eating macrocarpa can make cows abort so I just had to hope neither Joy or Phyllis would decide to eat any of it.
As for the smell, wow, talk about fragrant. It’s a heady brew of lemony, spicy scents. I hoped the smell would be more restful than stimulating otherwise the pigs would probably go outside to sleep.
Day Trip
Late morning we left our guests to fend for themselves and headed to Christmas lunch with Aaron’s family. We arrived about 40 minutes late and then had to leave less than 3 hours later.
We had a Christmas tree to collect, cheese to pick up from Puhoi and then we had to drop off cheese and pick up a couple of piglets from Muriwai Valley Farm.
We arrived at Bev’s and she was having a Christmas lunch with friends. We were invited to join them and so we sat and chatted for maybe an hour. Bev served dessert and then went and got changed.
We wandered back down to the drive and as we waited I wandered over to see Phyllis and Joy’s brother. His partner is a very striking silver coloured wild sow that wandered down from the bush a few weeks ago. Obviously keen to find a suitable mate she found the boar and Bev opened the gate and let her in.
Bev’s young daughter came over to warn me that the wild sow would bite me if I wasn’t careful. I explained that I had the boar’s 2 sisters at my house.
“You have Charlotte don’t you?”
“No, we just have Phyllis and Joy”
“No, Charlotte went to live with you”
“Nooo…” and then I suddenly remembered Aaron telling me that Charlotte’s constant escape antics had led to her demise.
Crap. Despite trying to back track, kids are not stupid and I suspect she cottoned on that all was not as it seemed.
Damn…damn, damn, damn.
Arthur's Boys
Bev came down from the house and we drove over to the stockyards. There peering through the railing was a line of about a dozen baby snouts. It was the absolutely perfect photo opportunity and so unbelievably cute I couldn’t help but laugh.
There they were, Arthur’s 8 week old progeny. They were all just absolutely beautiful. I had to stop myself from jumping in and playing with them.
Bev managed to grab 2 boys and with much squealing and wriggling Aaron managed to get them into the cage in the back of the car. Our hay man wanted 2 piglets and Aaron had arranged to swap them for 2 years hay. Unfortunately he wasn’t ready to take them so we had piglet babysitting duty for 2 nights.
Back at home we placed the cage at the entrance of Coppa’s run and the piglets got to spend the first night and day running around in there. Coppa, while slightly taken aback that his run had been taken over by piglets was very good about the whole thing and showed no sign of annoyance.
It was a late one Saturday night as we chatted to our guests. Eventually I fell asleep on the sofa.
Baby Red Learns To Swim
Sunday morning it was my turn for a sleep in. I desperately needed it but the pig breakfasts had not been made and there was much to do in the way of chores. I got up with Aaron.
As we walked down the drive to feed Phyllis and co I looked over to the cattle standing by the stream edge. I counted 4 heads. With grass still long and the willows hanging over the paddocks I assumed one of them was lying down and hidden from sight.
“Can you see Baby Red?”
“No” we looked around the paddock “You better go check”
Aaron went off to feed the pigs and I walked over to the cattle. Baby Red didn’t appear. My heart jumped as I looked over the bank into the water below.
“Aaron! Aaron! Baby Red’s drowning!”
Baby Red was swimming frantically in the water below. Having fallen into a particularly deep part of the stream she had clearly been treading water for some time. There were many gouge marks in the bank where she had tried to find some purchase with her hooves.
There was a flat piece of ground leading to the water’s edge. “Baby Red, over here”. She swam over but with no ground beneath her feet she had no way of hauling herself out. She panicked and turned around, swimming back up stream.
Aaron raced across the paddock and ran over the log blocking the upper portion of stream. On the other side he started pulling at the blanket of alligator weed covering the back of the stream. I crossed over and joined in. We frantically cleared away a section of weed and Aaron called Baby Red. She swam over. Unbelievably she found some ground beneath her feet. I wrapped my arms around her neck and with much struggling on her part and virtually useless hauling on mine she eventually managed to crawl out on her knees. It took her a good 30 seconds before she could stand and then she stood shaking and panting for a couple of minutes before trotting off behind the stream.
Instead of trying to get a distressed Baby Red back to her paddock Aaron decided we should take the other cattle around the drive and into where Baby Red was. Easier said than done. Baby Red was bellowing in the trees somewhere and 51 was clearly upset his girlfriend was alone. Being moved across the paddock away from her did not impress him. He shook his head madly at me and stood his ground. I had visions of my being hurled into the stream by 600kg of angry steer. I calmly waved my arms and told him to move. Eventually he turned and ran out the paddock with the other cattle. Within the minute all 5 cattle were back together and calm returned.
Aaron and I trudged back up the hill. I tried not to think about the fact that all our cattle paddocks border the stream and there are places in the stream from which it would currently be impossible to extricate an animal. Until we can clear the stream of willow it remains a potential death trap for careless animals.
While we provide a trough to drink from the cattle frequently ignore it in favour of the constant flowing stream water.
Of course in New Zealand we’re not supposed to let our animals near streams in case of effluent contamination. So far we haven’t seen this as being a problem as there isn’t really anywhere for the cattle to cross. We have in the past spent much time setting up electric fences along the stream boundary but as this is time consuming and prevents the animals accessing much of the willow we eventually flagged that task.
So now we will have to reconsider how we contain our animals. Had Baby Red drowned we would have lost a very large sum of money.
Our Guests Leave and the Fun and Games Continue
Late Sunday afternoon Sebastian and Claudia packed up their tandem and headed off to their next couchsurfing experience in Ruawai. I got the impression they would have liked to have stayed another night but the timing was bad. I had much to do before Christmas Day.
Sunday night we had to move the piglets from the dog run to the chicken coop. Monday we would both be at work and Coppa would need his run back. The move was easy. We encouraged the piglets into the steel cage at the entrance then picked them up and carried them over to the coop.
It seemed the perfect solution. The chickens spend all their time on the raised garden beds so the piglets could have the floor. I threw in a couple of crates of leaf mulch for them to snuffle through and we set up their steel crate bed at the entrance to allow the chickens in and out of the door but not the piglets. Happy with the arrangement we turned to leave the coop and just at that moment the piglets leapt off the floor onto one of the raised beds. They ran straight to us. It didn’t seem possible that the piglets could jump that high but it turns out they can. Now we had to build a wall across the centre of the coop so the chickens could have the front half and the piglets the back. We used sheets of metal, pot plants, wood, sticks and windnetting. An ugly, messy combination but it only had to last less than 24 hours.
We left the piglets to explore their new home and kept the door to the coop open for when the chickens wanted to return. Aaron went to bed and I carried on with baking Christmas presents. About 15 minutes later Aaron appeared on the verandah.
“Honey. There’s some pigs out here”
I looked out the kitchen window. Sure enough, 2 little piglets were snuffling around in front of the verandah area.
I grabbed their breakfast off the kitchen bench and took it outside and waved it under their snouts. They followed me back into the coop. We dismantled part of the wall to let them back in and then looked for the escape route. It was hard to find but then I saw a small piece of loose windnetting leading into the parsley garden.
“I think I may have found it” and sure enough the little piglets appeared around the corner, ran over to where I was then launched themselves at the windnetting. They literally broke a hole in it there and then, darted over to the opposite side and broke through the windnetting again.
It was impossible not to giggle. We herded the boys back through and then set to rebuilding that part of the fence. Convinced we had it sussed Aaron went back to bed and I back to baking. Whisky and Coppa set up camp on a picnic table outside the coop and sat and watched and waited.
Ten minutes later I could hear the sound of grunting below the kitchen window. I looked out and there were the 2 piglets again, snuffling in the post peelings. Coppa was behind them giving them a good sniff, and Whisky just looked up at me with a concerned “Should these be out here mum?” expression on his face.
I woke Aaron up and once again we herded them back in. This time they had pulled the pot plants away from a section of propped up lattice willow fencing and then pulled down the fencing. Hey presto, instant doorway.
We fixed the fencing then enticed the chickens into the coop with some pellets. We shut the door to the coop this time.
“Do you think they’ll get out again?”
“Hopefully not”
Friday night Sebastian and Claudia arrived. A young French couple, cycling and Couchsurfing around the world chose our home for a 2-day break. They were late arriving so I told Aaron I would drive into town to see if I could locate them. I put the dogs in the car and turned my car around and then I spotted them walking up the drive. Having cycled from Kaukapakapa that morning they were exhausted and only managed to get their bike as far as the shed. I drove my car down and they loaded it up with all their gear and I drove it back up the hill.
Saturday morning they slept well. We told them they would. Our guests always do.
The Pigs Get A New Bed
While they slept we had a truckload of chip dropped off in front of the stockyards.
Aaron removed the pallet and plywood flooring from the pig shed and after shovelling out the old hay and dirt we then covered the floor in a very thick layer of woodchip. Phyllis and Arthur seemed concerned. They were very vocal, grunting constantly at us and sniffing and tasting each pile of chip as we emptied bucket after bucket of the stuff onto the floor.
Joy was even less impressed. In her heavily pregnant state she too is suffering from exhaustion and having the house redecorated was a little too much for her to deal with. She wandered off to the corner of the yard in front of the shed and lay down for a sleep.
One of Aaron’s colleagues and her family arrived to meet the pigs as they are considering buying one of Joy’s piglets in 2 months time. They met the 3 pigs and checked out their home and then Aaron took them up the drive to meet Spotty and Stanley. Meanwhile I carried on shoveling chip. I had to constantly walk in and out of the gate and at some stage Arthur decided to walk out the gate and go for a wander. Despite strongly encouraging him to return to his paddock he wasn’t interested. I fully expected the girls to follow suit but luckily they stayed where they were. After several minutes of fruitless coaxing I let him wander over to the pond and then raced up the hill to the shed.
“Aaron! Help!”
I grabbed a bucket of cheese and ran back down the hill. Arthur was still sniffing around the pond. However, he was soon following the trail of cheese back through the gate to his paddock.
Phyllis and Arthur wandered up the back and over to the wallow. Joy refused to move. Standing was clearly all too much effort.
We said goodbye to the visitors and carried on shoveling chip.
We had intended for the chip to be from our willow trees as it has great health qualities. However, despite booking 2 weeks in advance the tree feller decided he would be unable to work on our block until the New Year and we were left with no choice but to buy chip off him.
I was a little concerned about the fact that we had no idea what trees were in the chip but I did recognise macrocarpa, blackwood and lemon. I know eating macrocarpa can make cows abort so I just had to hope neither Joy or Phyllis would decide to eat any of it.
As for the smell, wow, talk about fragrant. It’s a heady brew of lemony, spicy scents. I hoped the smell would be more restful than stimulating otherwise the pigs would probably go outside to sleep.
Day Trip
Late morning we left our guests to fend for themselves and headed to Christmas lunch with Aaron’s family. We arrived about 40 minutes late and then had to leave less than 3 hours later.
We had a Christmas tree to collect, cheese to pick up from Puhoi and then we had to drop off cheese and pick up a couple of piglets from Muriwai Valley Farm.
We arrived at Bev’s and she was having a Christmas lunch with friends. We were invited to join them and so we sat and chatted for maybe an hour. Bev served dessert and then went and got changed.
We wandered back down to the drive and as we waited I wandered over to see Phyllis and Joy’s brother. His partner is a very striking silver coloured wild sow that wandered down from the bush a few weeks ago. Obviously keen to find a suitable mate she found the boar and Bev opened the gate and let her in.
Bev’s young daughter came over to warn me that the wild sow would bite me if I wasn’t careful. I explained that I had the boar’s 2 sisters at my house.
“You have Charlotte don’t you?”
“No, we just have Phyllis and Joy”
“No, Charlotte went to live with you”
“Nooo…” and then I suddenly remembered Aaron telling me that Charlotte’s constant escape antics had led to her demise.
Crap. Despite trying to back track, kids are not stupid and I suspect she cottoned on that all was not as it seemed.
Damn…damn, damn, damn.
Arthur's Boys
Bev came down from the house and we drove over to the stockyards. There peering through the railing was a line of about a dozen baby snouts. It was the absolutely perfect photo opportunity and so unbelievably cute I couldn’t help but laugh.
There they were, Arthur’s 8 week old progeny. They were all just absolutely beautiful. I had to stop myself from jumping in and playing with them.
Bev managed to grab 2 boys and with much squealing and wriggling Aaron managed to get them into the cage in the back of the car. Our hay man wanted 2 piglets and Aaron had arranged to swap them for 2 years hay. Unfortunately he wasn’t ready to take them so we had piglet babysitting duty for 2 nights.
Back at home we placed the cage at the entrance of Coppa’s run and the piglets got to spend the first night and day running around in there. Coppa, while slightly taken aback that his run had been taken over by piglets was very good about the whole thing and showed no sign of annoyance.
It was a late one Saturday night as we chatted to our guests. Eventually I fell asleep on the sofa.
Baby Red Learns To Swim
Sunday morning it was my turn for a sleep in. I desperately needed it but the pig breakfasts had not been made and there was much to do in the way of chores. I got up with Aaron.
As we walked down the drive to feed Phyllis and co I looked over to the cattle standing by the stream edge. I counted 4 heads. With grass still long and the willows hanging over the paddocks I assumed one of them was lying down and hidden from sight.
“Can you see Baby Red?”
“No” we looked around the paddock “You better go check”
Aaron went off to feed the pigs and I walked over to the cattle. Baby Red didn’t appear. My heart jumped as I looked over the bank into the water below.
“Aaron! Aaron! Baby Red’s drowning!”
Baby Red was swimming frantically in the water below. Having fallen into a particularly deep part of the stream she had clearly been treading water for some time. There were many gouge marks in the bank where she had tried to find some purchase with her hooves.
There was a flat piece of ground leading to the water’s edge. “Baby Red, over here”. She swam over but with no ground beneath her feet she had no way of hauling herself out. She panicked and turned around, swimming back up stream.
Aaron raced across the paddock and ran over the log blocking the upper portion of stream. On the other side he started pulling at the blanket of alligator weed covering the back of the stream. I crossed over and joined in. We frantically cleared away a section of weed and Aaron called Baby Red. She swam over. Unbelievably she found some ground beneath her feet. I wrapped my arms around her neck and with much struggling on her part and virtually useless hauling on mine she eventually managed to crawl out on her knees. It took her a good 30 seconds before she could stand and then she stood shaking and panting for a couple of minutes before trotting off behind the stream.
Instead of trying to get a distressed Baby Red back to her paddock Aaron decided we should take the other cattle around the drive and into where Baby Red was. Easier said than done. Baby Red was bellowing in the trees somewhere and 51 was clearly upset his girlfriend was alone. Being moved across the paddock away from her did not impress him. He shook his head madly at me and stood his ground. I had visions of my being hurled into the stream by 600kg of angry steer. I calmly waved my arms and told him to move. Eventually he turned and ran out the paddock with the other cattle. Within the minute all 5 cattle were back together and calm returned.
Aaron and I trudged back up the hill. I tried not to think about the fact that all our cattle paddocks border the stream and there are places in the stream from which it would currently be impossible to extricate an animal. Until we can clear the stream of willow it remains a potential death trap for careless animals.
While we provide a trough to drink from the cattle frequently ignore it in favour of the constant flowing stream water.
Of course in New Zealand we’re not supposed to let our animals near streams in case of effluent contamination. So far we haven’t seen this as being a problem as there isn’t really anywhere for the cattle to cross. We have in the past spent much time setting up electric fences along the stream boundary but as this is time consuming and prevents the animals accessing much of the willow we eventually flagged that task.
So now we will have to reconsider how we contain our animals. Had Baby Red drowned we would have lost a very large sum of money.
Our Guests Leave and the Fun and Games Continue
Late Sunday afternoon Sebastian and Claudia packed up their tandem and headed off to their next couchsurfing experience in Ruawai. I got the impression they would have liked to have stayed another night but the timing was bad. I had much to do before Christmas Day.
Sunday night we had to move the piglets from the dog run to the chicken coop. Monday we would both be at work and Coppa would need his run back. The move was easy. We encouraged the piglets into the steel cage at the entrance then picked them up and carried them over to the coop.
It seemed the perfect solution. The chickens spend all their time on the raised garden beds so the piglets could have the floor. I threw in a couple of crates of leaf mulch for them to snuffle through and we set up their steel crate bed at the entrance to allow the chickens in and out of the door but not the piglets. Happy with the arrangement we turned to leave the coop and just at that moment the piglets leapt off the floor onto one of the raised beds. They ran straight to us. It didn’t seem possible that the piglets could jump that high but it turns out they can. Now we had to build a wall across the centre of the coop so the chickens could have the front half and the piglets the back. We used sheets of metal, pot plants, wood, sticks and windnetting. An ugly, messy combination but it only had to last less than 24 hours.
We left the piglets to explore their new home and kept the door to the coop open for when the chickens wanted to return. Aaron went to bed and I carried on with baking Christmas presents. About 15 minutes later Aaron appeared on the verandah.
“Honey. There’s some pigs out here”
I looked out the kitchen window. Sure enough, 2 little piglets were snuffling around in front of the verandah area.
I grabbed their breakfast off the kitchen bench and took it outside and waved it under their snouts. They followed me back into the coop. We dismantled part of the wall to let them back in and then looked for the escape route. It was hard to find but then I saw a small piece of loose windnetting leading into the parsley garden.
“I think I may have found it” and sure enough the little piglets appeared around the corner, ran over to where I was then launched themselves at the windnetting. They literally broke a hole in it there and then, darted over to the opposite side and broke through the windnetting again.
It was impossible not to giggle. We herded the boys back through and then set to rebuilding that part of the fence. Convinced we had it sussed Aaron went back to bed and I back to baking. Whisky and Coppa set up camp on a picnic table outside the coop and sat and watched and waited.
Ten minutes later I could hear the sound of grunting below the kitchen window. I looked out and there were the 2 piglets again, snuffling in the post peelings. Coppa was behind them giving them a good sniff, and Whisky just looked up at me with a concerned “Should these be out here mum?” expression on his face.
I woke Aaron up and once again we herded them back in. This time they had pulled the pot plants away from a section of propped up lattice willow fencing and then pulled down the fencing. Hey presto, instant doorway.
We fixed the fencing then enticed the chickens into the coop with some pellets. We shut the door to the coop this time.
“Do you think they’ll get out again?”
“Hopefully not”
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