Puppy!!!!

We have a new addition to the family - Georgia the Huntaway x Heading bitch. She is 9 weeks old and we'll have had her for 2 weeks tomorrow. She is super cute (most of the time) although it has been 2 weeks of broken sleep, and mopping up the odd puddle. She is getting heaps better with toileting outside now though and is growing like a weed!

Pics :-)
5 weeks old - when we first saw her

7 weeks old - first day at home


9 weeks old

She has settled in really well - happy to run alongside the quad bike, barks at the cows (who just look at her stupidly), and is mostly good with the horses although hasn't had much to do with them yet. Her and Sonny seem to get on okay, but Sheryl won't have a bar of her! Not surprising really... Problem is that Georgia just wants to bounce around and play but Sheryl isn't that keen.

The rain has started up now - grass is growing a bit, and we have a bit of mud. The quad bike has most of the farm's mud on it I think.... We still have 31 cattle, will probably get rid of 10 in a couple of weeks, probably won't get any more until spring and then get some weaners.

Still picking beetroot, and got some more to plant. Planted some more rocket and also harvested our first cabbage yesterday, yummmmmm! Had it with some venison killed by a friend of Ben's. Very tasty. The venison, not Ben's friend.

The slacker blogger returns

So, it's been a while!

Brief updates: We ended up swapping the pregnant heifer for two weaner heifers with the dairy farmer up the road. We got two cute red and white heifers that are known as "the bambis" and tend to stick together in the herd. The pregnant heifer ended up losing her calf - apparently it was a fairly big heifer calf and sounds like it got a bit stuck. She is ok though and making her contribution to society as part of Paul's milking herd.

The garden has been going great guns, since Ben installed a couple of raised beds. We realised that the reason we weren't getting very far very fast with our vegs was because of the rubbish soil. So we now have two raised beds and have planted zucchinis, cabbages, broccoli, spring onions, carrots, beetroot, rocket, lettuce and capsicum. Come to think of it I haven't seen the capsicum plant lately... I wonder if it's been consumed by the cabbages?

I also harvested our first ever garlic in late January, and got one full plait of garlic out of it. Will be planting more this June, beware any vampires!!!

We had a few pumpkins this year too - completely unplanned. They emerged from the compost heap and we ended up with 8 good sized pumpkins. Have had one batch of pumpkin soup so far, yummmm. Also spent what seemed to be days in the kitchen bottling crab apples. Brigid (Ben's sister) gave us a pile of crab apples and I went straight to Google to figure out what to do with the things. So I made about 20 jars of crab apple jelly, and also have some crab apple schnaaps brewing. Not entirely sure how the latter will work out...



The last of the tomatoes ended up being made into green tomato relish too, very yummy. Feeling like the real farm wife now what with all this preserving!

We are getting some more piglets in a few weeks, just waiting until they are fully weaned. We're getting three this year (god help the horses) and will keep one for us, swap one for a hogget and probably sell the other one.

We're also just about to get a puppy!!! We pick her up tomorrow morning - still haven't chosen a name for her though.

And some other gratuitous animal pics:

Still no calf...

Well 117 still hasn't had her calf although she has just been doing what might be contractions... not sure what cow contractions really look like but she was huffing and her tummy was pushing a bit so maybe that's what cow contractions look like? Her vulva is more swollen and udder looks much the same as before. Poor girl has a bit of hay stuck to her girlie bits - can't get close enough to pull it off - no dignity when you're preggers!

She is holding her tail off to the side more as well, not sure if that is a sign either?

Anyway onto the photos!

The hay is all in now, although took until 3am in the morning, argh. What a night. Ended up with 1120 bales, not bad from my estimate of 1200 bales. Had to get it in that night though as there was rain coming the next morning - and it did hose down so was just as well we stayed up all night to shift it.

Udder update

Heifer 117 still has her legs crossed although her udder is getting bigger by the day. She is a bit restless this afternoon, and looks quite wobbly behind so must be pretty close.

On to what everyone wants, here are the pics....

This first one was taken yesterday:

These other two were taken today:

She is just in on her own now - we tried to leave a buddy in there with her but the buddy had other ideas and was just running around bellowing, with 117 following along. So we got rid of the buddy and 117 is quite happy hanging out on her own in her maternity suite. Although is probably a bit over being peered at every hour or so...

The hay got turned today and will be baled tomorrow. Some weather forecasts are for a few showers late tomorrow, but I am ignoring those and only reading the ones that say it's going to rain on Monday and just be overcast tomorrow. I hope they're right.

Udder Watch II

We moved the smaller mob of 6 heifers up to the yards this afternoon as Heifer 30 (Harry's mum) is off to meet the homekill guy tomorrow. Heifer 30 is looking great and it'll be interesting to see what weight she is.

Another interesting observation - one of the black and white heifers we bought in April has developed a rather good sized udder!! Ben noticed a small one about a week ago so my bet is she isn't far off. She has a round belly too so looks like we'll have another Harry (or Harriette) sometime very soon.

In the spirit of Udder Watch, some pics - just from my phone so not super duper quality:

We are also due to get the hay cut in the next day or two, and I had a wander through it this morning. It's very thick so we will hopefully get around 1500 bales from it.

Stay tuned for more udder watch pics!

Busy day

Have had a very productive day here so far. Ben shifted more hay from last season's crop down to the old shearing shed, we've got about 70 bales down there now for our cattle next winter and still some up in the big shed, which would be good to sell but will see how that goes. We have told the contractor we want the hay cut in the first week of January - we got mucked around a bit last season so have said that's our deadline, if you can't do it (aside from weather) we'll get someone else! We put fertiliser down at the beginning of November so we should get more than last season's 800 bales.

Today we also fixed up the main doors on the big shed - one had been hanging off it's hinges for a while and was being propped up which was a huge pain to open and shut. So that's all sorted.

And also the other small door into my feed room, which came off it's hinges over the winter I think it was.

A cow got in there last week:


So good to get the door back on!!

We just need to sort out the door going from the sunroom to the patio now, have measured it up so hopefully will find something on Trademe soon that fits.

Yesterday we did a bit of work in the garden - which is not doing that well this year. The peas - well I don't really know what happened to the peas but they didn't really grow :-( The tomatoes are also going very slowly but have started to fruit so that's something.


My garlic is about ready to pick soon - first time I've ever grown garlic so hopefully it has worked ok.


And we've also got some broccoli planted, slightly overdue! They were in the seedling trays so long one started to grow a head of broccoli. Oops.


Oscar has been going well, although had a wee bit of a break from jumping as he got a bit sore in his front legs - the ground is pretty hard right now. We entered the Te Atatu ODE a few weeks ago but pulled out after the dressage. He did a nice wee test though. And best of all he was very grown up about being away from Bert - we even rode past Sarah and Bert with them going in the other direction and Oscar didn't even try and follow him. Very happy! He was great with all the goings on - the Te Atatu ODE is reasonably big, must have been about 80-90 horses entered and there were the usual PC kids galloping around flat stick (one of which almost got booted by Oscar who took exception to how close they came!). On the whole he was very relaxed about it all which was fantastic.

Looking very cute tied up at the truck

And doing his Spanish horse impression

He just wasn't jumping like normal in our warm up and was putting in little stops and cat leaps and I ended up coming off. It just didn't feel right (or safe) and sure enough he was sore.


Gave him 2.5 weeks off and the next ride was great - he was quite forward (for him!!) which was really nice. I am going to send him off to Lisa Coupe for a bit of schooling in the new year, am really looking forward to that. He still is quite green with some things and I think it'll be easier/better for him in the long run to get stuff sorted out properly early on. Mostly canter work, he is not very balanced and still has trouble with left canter although not as much, but still finds it hard to bend. He felt stiffer than usual on the last ride but then he had done bugger all before that so fair enough!

I had been riding Em a bit while Oscar was off, and we even entered the WRC Showmanship day that involved some jumping, was hilarious.

The next thing planned for Oscar is the WRC mini ODE at the end of January, should be a fun day!

More jumping...!

Oscar and I went along to a jumping clinic on Sunday, organised by the fantastic Waitemata Riding Club, with Lisa Coupe as the instructor. She was fantastic, even with us in the baby heights class, pretty good really for someone who usually jumps 1.20m+ heights. Oscar had lots of fun and me too once I got over the nerves a bit. Sarah and Bert, and Ellie and Spyke were there too, in the higher class that was on before ours. Spyke was a bit of a toad and did two fairly decent sized rears (no idea why) and then put in a stop at the scary jump that most horses had a thing about, and Ellie hit the ground. He did settle down after that and did a few lovely jumps but never seemed to be happy with the scary jump!

Oscar didn't much like that one either but it was good for me to have to ride him forward into it. Our last two rounds (over the same course) were fab, and it really clicked in my head that it feels so much better when I actually ride him forward.

So last night I went down to Ellie's place with her and Sarah, and we did more jumping and worked on some 2 point canter. It was sooo much fun! Oscar is a wee star and very kind over the jumps. He was being pretty lazy, so we didn't really have heaps of forward-ness but he did all I asked him to so pretty good really. Was great having Ellie and Sarah there to yell at me (in a nice way!)

Anyway - some pics from the clinic: