Frustration Continued

I promised you the rest of the story. Here it is. While I was madly winding polytape and shooing steers, I was also chasing chickens. This was not new. I was spending about 2 hours a day crouched down waving my arms as I herded the flock back from the forbidden zones.

The problem was that there were way too many of these zones. I had to keep them out of the steers' paddock for fear they would electrocute themselves. I had to keep them out of the farm buildings for the damage they would do. And, most importantly, I had to keep them out of our gardens and the raised beds. To that end, I carefully squeezed myself through the gates to keep them contained in the chicken area.

You can see from the above  picture how well that worked out. They just flapped their (supposedly clipped) wings and hopped over. Now I was forced to keep the garage doors closed so they wouldn't join me for tea in my apartment. Since I provide the chicken feed twice a day, I am Queen of the Hill. They follow me everywhere! I can't move without them. And they're smart. By the time I have raised the garage door, they are lined up there waiting for handouts. So while I am frantically trying to contain the steers, I also have to contend with the chickens.

But that's not all, folks. We now come to the sheep. All 30 sheep were supposed to be getting to know each other in paddock #3. So imagine my excitement when I glance up the hill at #4 and there they are. Thrilled does not begin to cover it.

About 10 of them are strolling happily through #4. This is one of the paddocks which is 'resting'. Dan has an intricate system of grass rotation that kept our stock happy and well-fed even through the worst drought in 50 years. He plans to continue that success this year. But not  if we have errant sheep wandering around.

So in my spare time I hike over and shoo the sheep back into #3. I can't find any gaps in the fencing so I figure one of the neighbor's kids forgot to latch a gate and then latched it on a return trip. I was wrong. Several hours later, the sheep are back again. Only 4 this time but in a way that makes it harder to herd them. A flock with large numbers tends to stay together and a few scattered ones will just run all over the place.

But my big problem is to figure out how they are getting in. It takes a while but I manage to get all 4 of the Suffolk sheep back to #3. Then it dawns on me: the sheep were shorn last Sunday! Aha. Move over Mr. Holmes. Shorn sheep are much smaller than woolly ones. The little suckers were scooting under the gate.

While I am gathering wood to barricade the gate, some of the sheep reappear. This time I herd them while dragging a fair sized log. Strange to say, I manage this feat. Now my solution might not be elegant, but it worked.

Frustration

 

Today was the first day since I got here that I seriously thought of ditching the farming dream and finding something easier to do, such as ditch digging or Formula One racing.

It all started with my final stock check the evening before. Chickens were safely in the coop (after a spirited half hour around the paddock chasing them). The sheep were all gathered safely in their favourite paddock, #3. And the steers, I thought, were bedded down in the new barn paddock. I was half right. They were bedded down, but in the barn itself, not in the grassy paddock.

My dilemma was what to do. They were lots bigger than I, it was almost dark, and the polytape (portable electrified fencing) was down and dragged through the paddock. So I called Dan. The result was that I found a working flashlight (a success in itself) and went out to repair the tape.

But first I had to get the steers out of that nice, warm, dry, hay-filled barn and into the cold, damp paddock. I did it. I won’t tell you how in case some animal activist reads this and reports me. But they left. Unfortunately for me, they like me and wanted to hang around and be chums. So I was constantly shooing them back so they wouldn’t tramp on the tape as I wove my way around the paddock, rewinding the tape; the flashlight in my mouth. My teeth still hurt.

Finally I get the tape reset, unhook the battery, then clamp the yellow lead, re-hook the battery, listen to hear that the gismo is working. I hear nothing but my sinuses are so stopped up I couldn’t hear Pavarotti if he were still around to belt out an aria.

I wake up the next morning in the blissful belief that I solved a major problem last night and that things can now return to normal. Just shows how wrong one person can be.

The polytape is down again. The cows have decimated the hay in the barn and the entire floor is covered with cow dung. This time I can’t even find the yellow lead that electrifies the tape. I shoo out the steers. I am getting quite good at this. Then I start winding up the polytape to keep it out of the muck and mud. I figure I have 2 options. I can try to move the steers to another paddock by myself or I can let them destroy the barn. I’m not particularly thrilled with either option.

But somehow they have managed to pull apart the fencing gismo and there is no way to prevent them getting back into the barn. So I mull over my options as I rewind the tape yet again. And then my miracle happens. As I am about a third of the way through winding, the yellow lead comes up wrapped around the tape.

So I threaten the boys with bodily harm, or grilled steak, and chase them across the entire paddock so I have time to rethread, re-hook and reattach everything. I must have finally done it right because ever since they just sit and look at the gismo, but they don’t touch.

In my next blog, I’ll tell you what else happened to me on my day of frustration. Right now I am just too whipped to write any more. Til next time!

 

I Flunk Yet Again

In this prolonged apprenticeship to farming, I have been subjected to many tests. I have scored poorly on most of them but on Monday (Yes, yet another misspent Monday) I outright flunked.

It all started on Sunday when John came to shear the sheep. The girls and I walked down to watch and I had a chance to vent about only getting 3 lambs this year. I had unwittingly thrown sand in the faces of the farming gods. Naavah got restless so this next part of the story took place after I had walked her back home; I didn’t witness it myself.

John is shearing away, speedily and with great gentleness when out pops a lamb just as he grabbed the mother. This was something of a surprise but Dan and John bedded the new mother and infant down in hay away from the turmoil and finished shearing.

It was almost dinnertime when Dan raced back up to the house (Alessia had long since returned, dropped off on a coffee run). He was as close to distraught as I had ever seen him. The lamb was in distress. So Dan and Yael went down to try to nurse the lamb. They were gone for hours! And hours. Finally they returned, damp eyed and dejected. The lamb wouldn’t eat. The mother wouldn’t cooperate. And the lamb was lying inert on the hay.

Since the next day was Monday and Dan had early meetings, the family had to head down to Auckland that evening. That left me alone on the farm with a dying lamb. My instructions were to go down to the shed in the morning and bury the lamb.

So with a heavy heart and great misgivings, the next morning I finished my morning chores. Then I stalled around a little longer and it almost noon when I finally grab the shovel and head down. As I approached the yard, I see Mama standing near the gate into the paddocks. I decide to get her safely into paddock #2 with the rest of the flock before tackling the funeral. I was a tad leery about how she would view my intrusion.

So I opened the gate and tried to shoo her through #1 and into #2. Fat chance! She bolts off into #1. While I am quietly cursing (I hate trying to round up stock from #1, aka Mt. Everest), I feel a nudging at my pant leg. There is a tiny, tiny lamb butting my knee.

As I bend over to croon to her, Mama lets out a roar of rage and flies down the mountain side and skids to a stop just out of arm’s reach. Lazarus deserts me in a New York minute, races up to Mama and the two sprint for family halfway up #2.

So perhaps I didn’t totally fail. I did get the ewe into paddock #2. But I just couldn’t figure out how to bury a live lamb. Call me an underachiever yet again.

Monday, Monday

Over forty years ago, I was lying on the operating table waiting to have a nerve in my finger reattached. The procedure was going to be to freeze my lower arm, operate while I was awake, and then send me home. Well, they froze my arm all right but forgot to tie off the arm so the freezing stuff didn't go through my body.  I kept saying that something was wrong but they were too busy discussing all the fascinating things they had done over the weekend to pay any attention. They kept reassuring me that it was normal to be apprehensive but everything was all right. I should have known better; kicked up more of a fuss. After all, this is the profession that came up with using the word 'discomfort' for PAIN!

Things weren't all right. They froze my heart and I was clinically dead. I remember hovering above the operating room thinking "this is a really stupid way to die". But then the doctor turned from chatting with his colleagues, saw what was happening, threw himself over my body and ripped out the needle". So I was saved to live to write this blog.

Ever since I have made it a hard and fast rule not to undertake any new venture on a Monday. People are always still half in the mind set of the weekend. Mondays just don't work out well for me. If I make an appointment on a Monday, they call back and reschedule, or cancel or shift me to someone else. If I live dangerously and actually have an appointment on a Monday, it will snow 17 inches (and that includes in August).

So when Dan and Yael came home one Sunday evening with 6 Brown Shaver laying hens and turned care of them over to me the next morning, I knew I was in trouble. This was partially my fault. I had wanted chickens for years. My friend, Marie, had warned me about chickens but I didn't listen. We would have eggs; we would dispose of kitchen scraps; and in the fullness of time, we would have roast chicken. What could go wrong?

After Sunday evening comes Monday and the curse continued. I got the chickens out of the coop and into the hastily wired enclosure. I fed them the correct amount of very, very expensive chicken feed. It seems that kitchen scraps have to be supplemented with proper chicken feed which makes what I spend on my grossly indulged cat seem like, well, chicken feed.

Then I went off to my daily chores. I returned barely an hour later to find that one of these supposedly dumb birds had found a way out of the chicken wire and had invaded the potting shed with the expected chaos. While I was trying to shoo her back to the enclosure, another prisoner made a break for it. This time through the wire and out into the forest beyond. I ran around like a chicken with its head cut off (oops!) trying to round up the escapees. Meanwhile the other 4 were squawking, running, and make their own prison attempts. It took almost an hour but I got them back.

Now, several days later, they have gotten me almost fully trained. I open the coop at 7:30 am, throw out fresh green stuff, clean the coop, rake the shavings, and search vainly for eggs. In the midmorning I again look for eggs. The first 2 days I got 5 each day, I am now down to 2 per day. The chickens roam the forest, the potting shed, just about anywhere they want to. I search everywhere for additional eggs but no luck.

At 6:00 pm, I go back to the coop area, bribe the hens with scraps and yet more chicken feed and literally make little trails of feed back to the entrance to the coop enclosure. Sometimes they humor me and come. Sometimes they don't. If they don't, I get out this long piece of metal and corral them between it and trees, or fence, or whatever and steer them in.

Then I walk all around the house to get into the enclosure and push them into the coop one at a time. I have found a big, fat stick for this so 4 of them go docilely enough but the last 2 fight to the final ditch. It is usually almost 7 pm before I am finished. If you factor in my time, these are pretty darn expensive eggs.

The Last Sunday of the Month

On the last Sunday of the month the tiny hamlet of Puhoi holds its Farmers' Market. Now don't be misled by the 'tiny hamlet' description,  this upper class enclave has a museum, a one-room library, a pub, a hotel and a general store. It also has substantial monies. It is located a good 20 minutes closer to Auckland than my more middle class town of Warkworth and caters to a more upper class resident.

I figured it would be both fun and educational to attend their monthly farmers' market. So Dan and I loaded up the girls and off we went. No, we didn't forget Yael and Jesse. Yael is nursing a whopper of a cold and Jesse always hangs around his food source.

It was a drizzly kind of day and since it is still winter here, there were only a few market stalls open but the variety was there. We had a great olive oil stand with all kinds of olive oil and lime, or nuts or peppers, or whatever. We bought a bottle for Yael which she loved and took back with her to Auckland (probably so I couldn't sneak some).

There was a display of outdoor wood furniture with the carpenter there. He appeared to be doing a roaring business. Dan talked for a long time with a bee keeper who will bring you hives and supply the bees. In return you sign a contract and get part of his proceeds when he harvests the honey. Since bees are always welcome, particularly as we are increasing the plants here on the farm, I think we may sign up.

There were handcrafted quilts and stuffy toys, plants of all sizes, silver jewelry with upscale prices and a soap maker. I couldn't resist this one; I bought a cinnamon soap. It smells great. I'll let you know if it actually cleanses as it seasons me. Perhaps it'll put a little spice in my life. Sorry, I never could resist a pun!

Puhoi wisely places this market next to a playground and various kids of all sizes gravitated there. So did ours. I spent a lot of time pushing swings and watching all the activity. Lots and lots of people brought their dogs. But these were different breeds than those I see up in Warkworth. Here in Warkworth I see lots of working dogs - by which I mean herder dogs. In Puhoi I saw what I can only assume are pure bred animals of breathtaking beauty but bearing little resemblance to working dogs.

Before we left, we visited the library and two lovely ladies oohed and aahed over the girls. One lady showed us a refurbished rocker - child size - and asked Alessia and Naavah to be the first children to sit in it. They were quite honored and I think it was the high point of their visit. No, the high point was definitely their fresh-squeezed orange juice. Squeezed right in front of them. Can't beat that for value.

We had so much fun and learned so much from talking to the stall owners that I hope we can make it a regular part of our monthly schedule. When we got back, we all talked about ways to enlarge our farm operation and we voted unanimously to finally  take the plunge and get some chickens. I'll let you know how that works out in the next blog. Til then!

The Market Garden

 I have spoken before about our massive garden, aka The Market Garden. It has so taken over our lives that we have very little time for anything else. It is a gigantic project and the whole family (except for 6 month old Jesse) is put to work.

 

I have bought a ton of seeds and propagating trays and Dan salvaged a perfect square window which I am using as a cold frame. The first seedlings are in. They are mostly cool weather crops such as spinach, radishes, pumpkins, and peas. While we are awaiting their arrival on the farm, the garden progresses.

 

Dan pictured a large (He sure achieved that!) garden with zones and walkways. He hired someone to put in the poles that will hold up the netting and serve as guides for the planking. The beds will be raised and we already have had 2 deliveries of top soil, mulch, gravel, and compost. All of these are wheel barrowed into place by Dan and now by Yael since Dan’s back went out. Are any of us surprised? Dan works all the time and something had to give.

 

I pretty much smooth out paper and babysit. What paper? Glad you asked. When my household goods were shipped here from the States, everything, and I mean everything including paper clips, was wrapped in white paper. Needless to say, we have a lot of it.

So Dan decided to use it. We smooth out the sheets of paper, cut up the cardboard boxes and spread the boxes and the sheets over the weeds inside the garden. Then we spread hay, then compost and top soil and finish off with the mulch. By the way, I use the royal “we”. I smooth papers; that is my total contribution. But a vital one, I’m sure.

 

The Jumper

Dan has been very busy working on our massive garden plot. One of our neighbors refers to it as The Market Garden. But he took time out to move the steers from paddock #1 aka Mt. Everest and asked my help. I put away all that vital stuff I was doing - cutting quilting squares, eating toast and honey, listening to Rod Stewart - and put my shoulder to the wheel.

Literally. My job was to park my car above the route to the quarantine paddock, rest my shoulder against the car, and wait. The plan was that when Dan rounded up the steers and sent them my way, they would have to turn down toward the correct paddock. And the plan worked. Well, 3/4th of it worked. Three steers moved out smartly and trotted down the hill. The fourth ran straight at the fence into #2 and clambered over it and sprinted away.

I took out after the 3 steers while Dan chased down the jumper. He gave up pretty quickly and joined me in putting the docile bovines into the correct paddock. Then, leaving me to guard the gate so the 3 wouldn't leave while the gate remained open to embrace Mr. Jumper, Dan headed back to paddock #1.

I waited. And I waited. And then I waited some more. Finally Dan arrived. Alone! It appears that the jumper decided he liked the thrill of the chase and jumped another fence. This one into an adjoining farm. We didn't know these people but they have a huge farm and Mr. Jumper could be anywhere.

Dan drove the quad over to the farm to see if he could find our steer but no luck. We got hold of the estate manager who does not live on site and arranged that we would drive the docile three to the neighboring farm, hopefully linking them up with the jumper and then herd all 4 back to the quarantine paddock.

This involved using the main road and was quite a hairy undertaking. Or so I was told. I remained at the house babysitting. Yael said they never could have done it without the aid of the estate manager and his fabulously trained dog. I've got to get me one of those. All I need is about $4,000! Perhaps later.

The end of this story is that the next day, the jumper was picked up and sent to auction. He had always had a wayward spirit as you can see from the above picture, and now he would be going to a larger farm with more stock where, hopefully, he would settle in. Our remaining 3 steers seem quite relieved to have him gone. And so are we.