A Week Of It

22 January 2011

Well that’s been my first ‘working at home’ week for the year.

It’s been a pretty full on, very productive week. The fact that it has drizzled its way through much of the week has helped immensely. It’s so much easier to work in cool, slightly damp weather.

As Aaron has been getting up at the usual 4am I decided to do the same. However, instead of feeding out straight away I have done housework until dawn breaks and then fed out.

My focus this week has been mainly about woodchip. Having scored 120 cubic metres of free woodchip we’re determined to use it. If we’d bought it we’d have paid close to $3K so I’m not about to waste it! So this week I’ve filled numerous crates of the stuff and moved it to various destinations.

This week I weeded and refilled a section of the raised vege gardens. Last year’s potato patch needed a stack load more soil but without the money to buy in any we’re making our own. I layered in crates of vege scraps, buckets of pig manure, lime and Rok Solid, leaves and 24 crates of woodchip. It’s several months away from being useable but we’re in no rush.

Last week I had spent several days removing several inches of weeds and soil out of the garden paths in the raised vege garden. This week I took a day to weedmat and woodchip the paths. To fill the paths up again took 40 vege crates of woodchip and it will need more once the woodchip settles.

On Wednesday morning Aaron and I started woodchipping the feed area of Mabel’s maternity paddock. One of the woodchip mounds is straight across the drive so it was just a matter of filling crates and carrying them over to the paddock. I started by carrying them across and putting them inside the gate for Aaron to pick up and empty but I could only do one load (about 20 crates). The bottom step is long gone so it means a big step up and after one load I just couldn’t get my leg up and lift the crate with me.

Aaron had to do the fetch and carry of the next 2 loads and by then both our backs were too sore to carry on.

It doesn’t help with wet woodchip either. It’s amazing how heavy that stuff is when it’s wet!

On Wednesday and Thursday I scrubcut and weeded a section of the back orchard and then weedmatted and woodchipped.

Seriously, there are days when I dream about owning my own digger!

The woodchip’s at the bottom of the driveway and I can only get about 20 crates in the back of the Caldina. I fill the crates, then fill the car, then drive them up to the top of the drive and unload. From there it’s a wheelbarrow trip, 3 crates at a time, around the house and out to the garden.

This week I also finally decided to tackle to tomato plant jungle in the back garden.

We planted them several months ago and then just left them as other things took priority. Aaron had at one stage put up some garden stakes but they were well past being effective. We’d not pinched any of the laterals and most of the tomato plants were now a heaped, blighted mass. It seemed such a waste to just let them rot so I decided to be absolutely brutal in the hope we might get even half a dozen tomatoes off them.

Firstly I removed all the stakes and then lay the tomato stems out on the ground. I swear I’ve never seen tomatoes grow this big! There was only one thing for it. I just started at one end and worked my way along, brutally cutting back branches, removing numerous leaves, and pinching out any remaining laterals.

I erected rough climbing frames out of gardening stakes and then bit by bit tied up all the remaining branches.

3 hours later it looked like a massacre had taken place. I swear there was more tomato plant in the compost heap than on the plants themselves. However, what I have now is a lot of green tomatoes, a lot of air flow, and a much tidier structure.

Part of me wondered if perhaps I’d been too brutal but we’re now at the end of the week and the tomatoes are not only ripening but the plants themselves also seem to be doing okay.

Tuesday and Friday were pig meal days. We can only make 6 meal lots at a time as that is either a) how much fruit and vege we have, or b) how much room in the coolstore we have.

At the moment I make them early in the morning when piglet is having a post-breakfast snooze.

I don’t know how heavy piglet is now, somewhere between 50 and 60kg I’m guessing, and he’s becoming a nightmare to deal with. He can launch himself with remarkable ease upwards so his front legs rest on the food prep tables. From there he can (and does!) grab food with ease. He sends crates flying, topples buckets and grabs and refuses to let go of cheese bags.

He’s so used to spending a lot of time with us that he pays no heed to paddock fences, wire or electric. While it was delightful to have him around as a weaner we realize now we’ve created a monster. He now believes he’s part of the family and refuses to behave like a pig.

He is only weeks away from slaughter and I am having very mixed feelings about it. On the one hand we are struggling to cope with his insistence on going where he likes and when he likes, on the other, he makes me smile because he is all personality and is clearly as fond of me as I of him.

The Problem With Pests

On Thursday morning I fed out and then continued along the drive to walk the dogs and check on the cows.

When I got to the end of the driveway I was very surprised to see one of our instant-kill cat traps in the middle of the drive. Unbelievably, not only had the 2 nails holding it onto the post been wrenched out but the trap was empty.

There was no blood or dead cat anywhere. In fact there was only a bit of cat fur to indicate what had been caught.

Not only was I disappointed that there was no dead cat but I also felt quite sick at what the caught cat had had to endure to escape. Clearly, instead of sticking its head in the trap it had stuck its paw in. The steel bar had then been released, trapping its leg. As the trap was nailed to the top of the fence post I can only imagine that the cat must have been knocked off balance and then thrown itself wildly around until the trap was wrenched from the post. It had then dragged the trap to the middle of the driveway before eventually managing to free itself.

While I despise wild cats and I do not wish for any of them to suffer. What we have now is an injured cat roaming the property and no doubt it’s a bit trap weary. It’s going to struggle to catch game and feed itself. I can only hope this will make it desperate to try the trap again.

The rat traps have not worked at all this week. The rats are constantly setting them off but nothing ever gets caught.

The stoat traps remain empty and quite frankly my frustration levels as far as trapping goes are at an all time high.

The Scraps

The rest of my week seemed to be a series of small let downs.

I start the week with 4 ducklings left and as of yesterday only 1 remains.

Wild chook still had 3 chicks last weekend and then she disappeared, only turning up again yesterday with only 2.

Birds knocked our entire crop off the plum tree out the back. 8 plums? I managed to salvage 6. I think I can safely say that the smell of sun-warmed, fresh plums is something quite beautiful.

The walnut tree appears to have suddenly died. After looking incredibly healthy for so long it’s suddenly curled up its toes and now looks very dead. While not as attached to the walnut tree as perhaps the plum or the nectarine I’m feeling somewhat upset. How dare it! That’s $35 wasted. That’s $35 we don’t just have sitting in the bank to buy a replacement.

While the prognosis is grim we’ve decided to give it 6 months to see if it recovers. Sarah’s avocado had needed that to claw it’s way back from what was almost certainly a fatal attack from a possum so anything’s possible.

We watched ‘Dirt: the movie’ and ‘The Age of Stupid’ this week. Both of them quite scary but also inspiring in their own ways.

I had almost convinced myself global warming was a myth but after watching ‘The Age of Stupid’ I’m having my doubts.

ENRAGED!!!

Thursday, 13 January 2011

Angry doesn’t even come close to what I am feeling today. In fact anger could be seen as a mild, almost calm type of emotional response compared to how I feel.

I have had enough, absolutely had a gutsful and the cauldron of rage churning inside of me is enough to make me explode.

2 days ago the duck that has been nesting in the Whiskey’s old kennel suddenly emerged with 9 adorable, yellow fuzzballs with bright orange feet. She is the last of our fowl to have gone broody and we so desperately want her babies to survive.

“It’s not going to happen” I said with a pessimistic sigh.
“We’ll put up a temporary fence around the kennel right now” Aaron wasn’t going to be defeated

And so we herded the duck and her babies into the kennel and quickly erected chainlink fence and filled 3 water troughs of varying sizes. It’s a decent sized area right outside our bedroom window. I was so glad she’d nested in the kennel as it would be the safest area for her in the duck paddock.

Yesterday all 9 ducklings happily played outside.
“Isn’t wonderful to actually see the same amount of babies the next day” I said happily

This morning I was up at 4am to feed out. At about 5am I returned to the house and mother duck and ducklings were outside the kennel. I counted.

No. No. No!

“Where are they? Where are your babies darling?!” I scanned the small area, peered inside the house “Oh my god. What took them???”

Four. Four gone. Somewhere in a burrow close by 4 small, furry stomachs have been satiated and I cannot do anything. I stand and stare at the mother duck and her 5 remaining babies and I am useless. I cannot stop this slaughter because I don’t know what or where my enemy is. Of all the ducks she is such a good mother, while the others seem not to notice if their babies are not around this one keeps them close, keeps them safe and now this.

Have you ever been this angry? Have you ever felt so much frustration and rage that you want to attack? To kill? I want blood on my hands. I want something to pay!

I’m not interested in suffering, instant kill suits me just fine, but kill is what I want. I am sick of the pests. Sick of the cats, the stoats, the rats, the possums. All of them hunters, destroyers, wreakers of havoc. They constantly take and give nothing in return.

I want them dead. It is not their fault that they live but damnit, I want it to be my fault they are dead!

I want a stinking rotten pile of pests in my back yard. I want war. I want revenge. I want control and victory over all things feral on my property!

I can understand now why the victors of war would impale the severed heads of their enemies on pikes. There is part of me that wants to nail the bodies of these creatures to my fences. I want the flesh to rot off so that all I am left with is the sun-parched skeletal remains of my enemies.

I want the God of feral creatures to look down on my victims and understand that this is personal, that this is war, that I’ve had enough!

Damnit! Damnit!! Damnit!!! Stop taking my babies you bastards!

A Small Win

Saturday, 8 January 2011

Thursday morning I checked our traps with great anticipation, only to discover them all empty. I was gutted.

However, that changed in the afternoon. In the process of feeding out the pigs, Coppa showed great interest in the stoat trap on the driveway by the bantam run. Lo and behold a dead stoat!

Our first dead stoat. A nice healthy, adult as well, with its head well and truly crushed in our DOC2000 stoat trap. I whooped with joy and gave Coppa a big hug.

We hadn’t had any rabbit meat to bait the trap with so I wasn’t feeling hopeful, however, it turns out a piece of blade steak is just as tempting a morsel.

The trap’s a vicious thing and requires 2 people to reset it so I waited for Aaron to come home.

I recall reading somewhere that once you catch your first stoat you need to run its anal scent glands in and around the trap to attract further stoats. I donned a pair of gloves and while Aaron lifted the trap plate I removed the stoat. It was absolutely crawling with fleas. Undeterred I proceeded to rub the arse of the still soft and warm stoat in and around the 2 stoat traps. The stoat’s insides gurgled as I held onto it.

It was quite frankly a somewhat unpleasant and surrreal task but if it means more dead stoats then I will willingly wipe my traps with the arse of every stoat we catch.

This morning the traps were empty again, except for one of the rat traps. The rat was still alive unfortunately so I shoved the trap under Coppa’s nose. He grabbed the rat and with a few quick chomps it was all over.

So that’s 2 dead pests in less than 48 hours but I’m still not happy.

I really want to catch that wild cat that’s been hanging around the gate at the bottom of our drive.

Everybody Needs Good Neighbours

Our neighbours G & D have just returned to Australia after their 2 week annual summer holiday in NZ.

Although nice, friendly people, they are worlds apart from us in interests, intellect and property ideas. I can enjoy their company in small doses but they always arrive on the doorstep with alcohol and cigarettes, and as the alcohol consumption increases so does the smoking and the lack of meaningful conversation.

Usually we only catch up once or twice during their visits but this year their water tank had been completely drained by our other neighbour. We had told them we would fill their tank with our water pump but the pump got drenched in a heavy rain shower and blew the ignition component.

I had the week before Christmas to take it in for repair but I had other things to deal with and I figured our neighbour would have a go at fixing the water pipe to his tank. So the upshot is I didn’t take the pump in for repair until the end of the week, by which time it was too late to get a part ordered in and while our neighbour did spend 4 hours clearing his water pipe it was not the one to his house!

Instead he decided the best option was to make sure the water pipe to his goldfish pond was working and for the 2 of them to use our bathroom while they were here. That meant they visited every 2nd day and each time stayed for a drink and a chat.

We had of course said it was okay for them to do so. How could we not? Because of the drought the water in our tank has been pumped out of the creek on their property.

It also meant they could get their daily supply of meat; payment for grazing their land. Not that the meat really costs us anything but with only a bbq to cook on they only want the convenient cuts – steak, chops, sausages and bacon. By the end of their visit our own supply of meat is now down to stewing steak and roasts – not what I feel like cooking or eating in these consistently 30° summer temperatures.

They wanted eggs as well but our girls haven’t been laying consistently.

They also asked to come around for dinner a couple of times to catch up. They don’t have the ability to entertain us at their place with their lack of water and lack of electricity so I understand why they want to come to ours. What is a little annoying though is that when served dinner, one of them usually doesn’t feel like eating.

They only visit for 2 weeks every 6 months so I should just learn to deal with it but the fact is they’re our neighbours, not our buddies. I don’t have a problem being neighbourly but this summer was neighbour overload.

Having said all this I can’t deny that we are incredibly lucky to have such good neighbours up our drive. With one absent most of the time we get to utilise the land for livestock and dog walking. Not to mention dreaming of what we would do with the place if we could afford to buy it.

Our other neighbour is also absent most of the time, seemingly only coming home to sleep. Subsequently both blocks are overgrown and wild but also very quiet.

G has hinted in the past that he hopes to return to live on his block soon but this summer the story was quite different. His income has dropped a lot in the recession and D’s health problems are such that I doubt she will ever be able to live over here. She’s close to being wheelchair-bound and this summer, apart from day trips in the car, has been almost completely house-bound.

She said she wouldn’t be back here next summer so I suspect we may never see her again.

The Poison Man

Last summer when G came home from Aussie he moaned about how high the grass was growing on the side of his driveway.
“I’ll poison it with the most toxic weed spray I can find” he said.
We tried to talk him out of it but he said he had no choice, so spray he did. Through autumn and winter his driveway was devoid of vegetation but then spring hit and it was payback time. Having made the soil sick, mother nature was forced to grow weeds with long taproots – the only things able to draw essential nutrients.

By the time our neighbour arrived back in the country his driveway was absolutely infested with 5 foot high thistles.

Our sympathy levels were low; we’d warned him. He was annoyed but undeterred. There was only one thing for it – go out and spend several hundred dollars again on poisons. He started referring to himself as the Poison Man

For the first week he was home it drizzled a bit every day and we crossed our fingers that this good fortune would continue. But alas, the last 3 days of his trip it was still and sunny and he went hard out.

He was feeling generous and offered to do our side of the driveway as well. Aaron was adamant he was to do no such thing.

And so, he has gone once again and as we walk the dogs up the driveway the smell of dying vegetation permeates the air. But worst of all, knowing they’re going to die the weeds have gone into reproduction mode, hastily setting seed. Next summer our neighbour’s weed problem will be tenfold.

More Money Than Sense

With his water tank inadvertently drained by neighbour K, G went and talked to K and told him he was not to use his water. G was convinced K had done it maliciously. We tried to explain that K has no water collecting facility of his own and probably thought G’s water tank was constantly being filled by mother nature.

“I’m going to have it out with him” G said. It was his call, not our argument, so we left him to it.

When G next paid us a visit he had surprising news. K is planning to put his property on the market soon. He has only been here 18 months and in that time he has let his property grow wild and has used it as a rubbish dumping ground. He’s a nice enough, friendly guy but clearly K doesn’t feel a lot of love for his south-facing block with its complete lack of amenities.

G is stoked. He’s told K he wants to buy the block.

That would be great for us. We would then have no neighbours for nearly the entire year and a bit more grazing to boot. The catch though is that K paid the same money for his 2 acres as we did for our 10. For some crazy reason he paid twice the market value. We told G that K was unlikely to take much less than what he paid for it and with rural property prices down he’s unlikely to sell it anytime soon.

G said he’d happily pay the $120K to own it. Not because he actually wants the land but because he’s paranoid about getting ripped off by neighbours. The water incident helping to confirm his suspicions.
"That’s crazy” we said
“It’s worth it”
“That’s way too much money for that shitty block of land”
“It’s worth it to me”

We shut up at that point. We’re not stupid. If that shitty little 2 acres off our driveway sells for $120K twice in a short time, and in a recession, then that should push the value of our own property up.

G is mad, absolutely insane if he considers it. The only people who really stand to benefit from such a transaction are me and Aaron. We can only hope that G goes ahead with it.