A long, dry, summer

Well the plum season hasn't been as crazy as I thought it would be - two of the three trees are done. Loads of apples coming on though and the tomatoes are coming on steadily now too. Have frozen quite a few to make into sauces over the winter, and Ben has made a couple of batches of tomato chutney which is yum! Makes a great base on a pizza.

There's been no rain for weeks now - apart from a few sprinkles - and things are extremely dry around here. I have been spending ridiculous amounts of money on hard feed for the horses and using the winter hay supplies already. They are mostly doing ok except for Benhorse who is looking too light for my liking. Just moved all the horses around - poor Choc gets to go into the paddock that Oscar and Benhorse have already cleaned out - and hopefully Benhorse will pick up a bit from that. Not that there is much grass in his new paddock but it's a wee bit better than where he was.

Luckily we still have a reasonable amount of water in the tank - some people I know have had to get two tanker loads in already. Must be hard with a family, living on a tank of water that is the same capacity as ours. Plus we have a bore for the paddock tank so at least the animals are sorted for water.

The latest weather forecast is for some rain for a few days from this weekend on. Fingers, toes, eyes crossed!

Plum-o-rama

4.3kg of plums - jam anyone?

We have three plum trees in the orchard and they have been getting heavier and heavier with fruit. We've had a few plums - varying from puckeringly tart to sweet and juicy - but today the season really began. A mere 7kg.... mostly Black Doris, with a few, um, others (my plum variety knowledge is seriously limited). And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The Black Doris tree isn't hugely loaded with plums but the other two are looking rather bountiful.

We took Peter Gabriel's advice and adopted the "Shaking the Tree" method of picking plums - next time a hard hat might be a good idea too. Managed to shake a few directly into the basket and bags though!

So today is plum jam day, and maybe plum sauce day if I can find an ok sounding recipe. Wondering if I should try and dehydrate some to make prunes as well....

We've also just been trying to horse proof the water pipes in the paddock at the end of the race. The water pipes run along the fence line and there is a row of trees about a metre in from the fence - the perfect spot for a horse to stand in the shade. And stand on the water pipes and pull the connectors apart and empty the tank. For the second time. Just as well there is a bore to pump water up to the tank, would not be impressed if we had to buy a second tank in a month because of a pony deciding to loiter with intent around the water pipes.

So it's now taped off, the bore pump is going and hopefully we won't lose any more water this summer. It is incredibly dry around here, no real rain for a couple of weeks and it's been hot - perfect hay making weather, ironically, since this is the first year in about 6 years we haven't done hay. Do not miss it at all! Rain is forecast for Monday, fingers crossed they are right for once - the ground is like concrete.

Resurrection of a blog

Ok so just over a year since the last post, with its optimistic title of returning to blogging. Let's try again....

Since the last post, we have moved house, away from the 80 acre property and shack we were living on, to a place with just 11 acres but it has a "real" house. Like, one with insulation and windows that open. Quite a novelty. It also has three amazing garden beds. They are amazing because they have this soil that makes things grow like weeds. In actual fact our tomatoes are looking more like trees at the moment. Some more fruit on them would be nice...

Speaking of fruit trees, there is an orchard here too and the three plum trees in it are going hell for leather producing fruit. The Black Doris tree has provided a few ripe plums so far and I suspect it'll be a matter of days until we are inundated with plums to make into jam, preserve, and gorge. There are also apple trees, a pear tree, lemons, limes, guavas, feijoas, passionfruit, tangelos and persimmons.

The vege garden is full, with beetroot, peas, lettuce, tomatoes, potatoes, courgettes, spring onions (that are turning into actual onions because we can't quite keep up...), beans, and broccoli. I love this time of year for having an entire dinner made up of our own vegetables and some homekill meat!

We have also been drinking some fabulous Maltese wine that Ben has been importing. First time ever into New Zealand and it is really very nice. Different to Italian, French or Spanish, it kind of takes the good qualities from all of these. Lots of yummy fruit, and they are real food wines. Amazing the difference food can make to some wines - and vice versa....

The return to blogging

Well it's only been, er, a few months.... so much to catch up on but some brief highlights are:

Benhorse - he is doing great, keeping his weight on nicely over winter. He is clipped (was an absolute twit to clip, especially around his head and neck...) and I did his teeth again just before winter so he's all good to go. Have had a few lessons on him now, which have been great although have shown how stiff he is so he has been started on some pentosan to help his joints.

Oscar - also fat and hairy although I've been trying to clip him for the past few weeks with no success due to the wet weather :-(

Sonny - has been in the wars a bit and disappeared almost 6 weeks ago for a week and turned up with his pelvis in multiple pieces. So he's had a rather expensive visit to the specialist vets which luckily turned out cheaper than it could have since I used to work there. He is almost at the end of his 6 week imprisonment in the dog crate (has to be confined to let things heal up) and is desperate to get outside again. Sheryl is seriously unimpressed that he turned up again.

Georgia - celebrated her first birthday and is still growing! She absolutely loves fetching sticks, and if you ask her to 'find sticky' she'll find you a stick to throw for her. Ben has been taking her out to the forest heaps and she has been having a blast. She's still a bit nervous around the cows (so much for a working dog!!!) but loves hooning around the farm. Especially if the quad bike is around too... Here's a couple of pics of her having fun at Muriwai Beach.

The farm - pretty muddy here already although we have quite a bit of grass as we don't have as many cattle on as we did last winter. We do have a new washing machine though (as of last week) which is fabulous, didn't realise how bad the old one was washing things until now!

We had a good crop of hay this summer - 1230 odd bales this year which is pretty good. Now just in the process of selling it all.

At the end of summer we also had visitors (and blog fans!) from Ireland - Alan and Martina came to stay. Alan and Ben trekked in Nepal together a few years ago and it was great to finally meet the man I'd heard so much about. We had a fabulous dinner up the Sky Tower which I'd never done before and Ben spent the day with them over at Rangitoto - kind of good when you have visitors, you do all these things you wouldn't normally do.

Think that is about it for now - will try and upload some pics soon and try not to be so long between posts...

Benhorse is a new man

Had a fabulous weekend with the horses - forest on Saturday with Oscar (and Spyke & Ellie) and then arena on Monday with Benhorse (and S&E). The forest ride was a bit longer than planned but we found some new trails and that is always good fun.

Benhorse has shoes on now and we had our first decent schooling session on Monday at a lovely arena near Woodhill Sands - it's huge and the surface is good. So it's no problem having two horses working in there at all - must be about 60 x 80m?

Anyway got some good pics from yesterday - and some video of our canter work which was lovely but the transitions need work! He's just so easy to do stuff with, doesn't get silly, just does what you ask. He was a bit pooped after yesterday I think, starting to get a bit muscle tired which is fair enough.

So here's a couple of pics that show how far he's come in the 3 months I've had him:

18 July 2010

25 October 2010

First ride on Benhorse

Took some more update pics of Benhorse today, first in almost 3 weeks, oops... decided to try saddles on him so got him all geared up then did some ground work with him. Ellie arrived and I was feeling brave so I hopped on. Lunged him first - he was a star, the easiest horse I have ever lunged, soooo much easier than Oscar. You could practically stand in the middle and eat your lunch lunging Benhorse. With Oscar, you are more likely to run around chasing him keeping him going and stopping him from trying to run off to his buddies. Bless him.

Anyway, some update pics - and riding pics too :-)

Looking cute all tacked up

And some ridden pics :-) Poor pony he had to be ridden in a black saddle, tan stirrup leathers and a brown bridle. Oh the shame....

I'm soooo excited about the summer!!! Once he's fitter I'll organise some lessons with him too, should be fun.

Spring is attempting to arrive here but it is still really really muddy and wet, just been way too much rain lately. Today was fine and things dried out a bit but we really need a week or so of this to dry out properly.

We sent 9 cows off to sell today, and hopefully will get a few more smaller ones back if they are going for a decent price. So we only have 8 on the property for now after selling a few earlier in the winter too.

The hay paddock is starting to come away really nicely now so should get some good hay this season, fingers crossed we don't have too many weather dramas...

The garden is also starting to do things - my garlic is sprouting really well and I have some seed potatoes that are sprouting so they'll be planted soon too I guess. Not grown potatoes before so we'll see what happens.

Week 6 pics

Benhorse is in full moult, and after looking at him today I'm thinking I might hop on in a few weeks. So will start out leading him off Oscar for a bit. Of course that means I have to ride Oscar which could be interesting given our last sproing at the forest.

Ellie's boys are up here now so there's been a wee reshuffle of paddocks - Tai and Spyke are in the driveway paddock (Benhorse's old paddock), and Benhorse is in a taped off part of one of the cow paddocks with Bert who is having a sleepover for 2 weeks until his new grazing is ready. Everyone seems ok with the new arrangements except that I have to separate Bert and Benhorse otherwise Bert pushes Benhorse away from his feed and Benhorse doesn't even attempt to assert himself over Bert. So Benhorse is currently eating his dinner while Bert gazes at it longingly over the hot tape.

Onto the pics!

He's looking a bit like a broodmare right now with his flabby belly but once we start some work he should tone up a bit. Not that I'm complaining about him having a flabby belly!