New Zealand Life

September 2012

September has come and gone, and Never EVER a dull moment! We had birthdays, new animals, gardening, ear-tagging, vaccinations and more all in this month!

Starting at the beginning of the excitement, we have September 3---Dad’s Birthday! We planned to go on a tree adventure (see http://treeadventures.co.nz/ ); however, it got canceled due to rain. We are still excited to do the adventure and are hoping for the weather to clear up so we can! Dad’s Birthday evening, we had a small celebration with special appetizers and a lemon cake Mom made. The next night, Dad went out to dinner with Mom. They went to the Ribier Restaurant, and had “romantic” dinner together.

A fter Dad’s birthday, we all seemed to kick into hyper-working mode, especially in cleaning up our Webber Road property. One weekend, Mom and I spent 7 to 8 hours (spread over 2 days) cleaning up the shrubs in our back yard. The plants were extremely messy (and big), so Mom and I took the hedge cutters and started snipping away. It was pretty hard work, and Mom took pictures of the “before” and “after” grass-shrubs, so our work could be fully appreciated.

Not long after Mom and I cleaned up the shrubs, we tackled a new job: the hedges. The hedges are located on the house’s left side, and provide a barrier from the wind. We had two rows of these hedges: The row closest to the house was an okay size, and had been trimmed by a gardener we hired once. However, the row in the back hadn’t been trimmed, so Mom and I took on the task. We brought out the big McGregor’s hedge-clippers and went out to the Everest-like hedges. We got bruised, cut, and sore from our effort, but we also had the satisfaction of a level and shapely hedge.

Another thing we did to clean up the 120 Webber Road property, was mow the pastures. Since we have about 5 acres, we needed the large machinery for the job. So we drove the Kubota tractor and Fieldmaster mower (“Vehicles” at www.ever-nz.com) to the Webber Road property. That evening, Mom mowed the whole property, and Dad drove it back to the EVER Estate. A few days later, Mom and I went out with wheelbarrows and collected the big heaps of grass cuttings. We will continue to mow the grass occasionally, so that is will grow back at a consistent and healthy level.

We also went out with 10L backpacks of Conquest weed-killer and sprayed the weeds in the paddocks. We have at least a million (or maybe a Google*) dock and other weeds in the paddock and are very pleased to see them shriveling miserably to their well-deserved death. We repeated the spraying process on the newly sprouted and formerly-missed weeds. We will spray the weeds again a few more times over the next month or two, so we can decimate all the weeds. In order to speed up the weed demolition, we drove the Polaris Ranger (www.ever-nz.com “Vehicles” tab) and the 100L sprayer to the Webber Road property. We sprayed approximately 400L (liters) of herbicide on the dock and other weeds in the pastures. We wanted to do an especially good job on the back paddock, because we’re planning on cutting it for hay later this year.

This month gave birth to my vegetable garden! We got a six-pack of peppers, tomatoes, beetroots, and a combo pack of cabbage, celery, and red cabbage. I planted them all on the 23 , and placed wood stepping stones down the middle of the garden. I also took a few pictures of my garden, so I can see how it grows over time. If you look at the picture, you can see were each of the vegetables are growing. My spring onions are the oldest plants, and seem to be perennial (long-lasting, year-round) plants. My potatoes and onions I planted from store-bought foods. the potatoes will grow a plant, and once the plant dies, the potatoes that had sprouted from the original potatoes will be ready for harvesting. In the picture below, you can see two flourishing pea plants. I planted about 30 pea seeds, and these two are the only happy and healthy survivors from the voracious snails and slugs. My tomato plants are having a rough start in my garden. The three in the front are being eaten by some creature. We’ve tried a eucalyptus spray and a soap/water spray. Unfortunately, neither seems to be working very well. Even ripcord hasn’t kept it from being eaten. The rest of my plants are doing quite well, and are greedily drinking up the surplus rain.

That sums up the work we’ve done on the Webber Road property, so onto the animals! For starters, Jaynee’s birthday is coming up! She will be turning a year old on October 30, 2012. This coming-of-age will be very exciting, because then she will be officially ready to begin her herding-dog training. Now, not only has she had an introduction to our 30 EVER cows, but to Jasmine, Violet, Dahlia, Rose, and Max and Cruise (Mom’s friend’s horses) as well! Mom is already starting to train her, starting with having her help herd Jazz, Violet, Dahlia, and Rose. She was very cute, and very responsive, and with Mom’s help and command to “bring ‘em home”, Jaynee herded all four calves into their stalls.

Next up…my GemStones! My five little feathered birdies are now three. As they were growing up, we noticed that Tanzanite and Japer had larger (and redder) combs and wattles than the other three chicks. We learned that this signified they were roosters. We gave them both away to our fence builder Ian Fletcher, who was impressed by their striking feather designs. The hens, Pearl, Amethyst, and Citron, thank you for your sympathies, which I’m sure you have for their departed loved ones. However, the girls are now quite happy free ranging (and scratching out the flower beds). The GemStones also seem to keep the lambs clean of bugs when they perch and scratch through Ebony’s or Ivory’s wool. The chicks are real cute when they come running after me when ever I go outside, in the hopes of getting a treat! Some of their favorite treats are oatmeal, apples, and grain. I’m also very pleased to say that they have finally been trained to wake up and go to sleep around 6am and pm, respectively.

Ebony and Ivory have had a rather exciting and depressing September. The exciting thing of the month was that Dad built them a lamb house! It is very nice, with a metal roof and an elevated floor made from a palette. They love it very much, and when ever it rains hard enough for them to feel it through their thick wool, they race to their house like rockets, to get out of the weather! The depressing events of the month were 1.) the lambs got their tails cropped and 2.) they were weaned cold-turkey off their milk. Their cropped tails, I think, are actually really cute. Ian Fletcher came by with the gas-powered tail-cutting cropping unit and did the job in a few seconds (once we caught them). Ebony fought Ian and some of her wool caught fire! Their tails (and wool) are now well-healed. As for their weaning, a person would’ve probably thought they were being starved, they cried so loudly and persistently! If they were skinny, we probably would’ve felt sorry for them and continued to feed them. However, they were (and still are) probably the fattest lambs that ever lived in the history of fattest lambs. When they lie down, you see their cute faces and small legs, and then you see this huge balloon belly. It’s insane how fat they are and it would probably be very good for them, if they lost half their weight.

This month, we also added yet two additional furry members to our family. Enter Dahlia and Rose! We got our two new calves on the Sept. 8th, when they were only three days old. While Dahlia, like the others, is completely black, Rosie has a white-tipped tail and a small white spot on her belly. Jasmine and Violet are good older sisters for the two young ones and the quartet are always grazing together. Talking about Jazz and Violet, they have both just been put down to once-a-day feeding. They aren’t very happy about it and moo their protest at the top of their lungs when I feed Dahlia and Rose. Luckily, Jasmine and Violet are eating more pellets and grass now that they aren’t getting so much milk.

It was a very exciting month at our 2215 South Head Road property as well. This month, we organized all the cows and calves. We hired, Terry, a ranch-hand to help us with the job. We herded all of the cows and calves into the back-paddock stockyards and then pushed them into the crush. I maneuvered the head bail and recorded down all the ear tag numbers; Mom vaccinated all the claves; Terri ear-tagged and (if needed) castrated the calves. It took over 4 hours to work with all the ursine calves in the stockyard, and then about another two hours trying to herd 24 of the older calves to the front, so they could be weaned. It was much easier said than done. Some of the calves jumped through the seven wire fence, back to their moms on the other side! We finally managed to herd 13 of the calves to the front (with the help of two mother cows, one of which stayed to babysit the calves).

The same week, we receive our new Angus yearling bull named Centurion. We bought our purebred, registered, Angus bull about a month ago so we would have our own stud to improve the herd. The owners kindly kept him until we were ready to have him at out property. Dad went to the property to receive the bull, while Mom and I stayed at home. Dad came home and told us that he and Nick & Fiona (the bull’s owners), had separated our bulls and steers from the heifers, since the heifers were close to going in season and were too young to be bred. The next morning, when we got to the property, we saw that the bull was with the mother cow, and heifers! Mom was panicked, and we set out to herd him back in with the other boys. We finally got the bull and mother cow into the stock yard, when the bull jumped the fence effortlessly! “I wish I had a horse that talented.” Mom said as the bull then calmly started walking up the driveway. We eventually got the mother cow and new bull into the back with the other cows (and the other bull we leased). Luckily, the bulls seemed to be fine together and weren’t showing any signs of aggression. Later on in the week, we got five more calves to the front, and then the other 13 calves (previously in the front paddock) into a different paddock, with the help of our alpaca-farm neighbor, Chuck. Mom quickly set out to sell our baby bulls, since they were a huge nuisance. They were mounting other cows, going through the wire fencing, and some were still nursing off their moms! On the 24, our stock agent, Kelly Graham, came with his mixed-breed working dog (Zack) and helped us herd the rest of the calves in the far back paddock to the front. Mom and I agreed that Jaynee could probably do a better job than Zack. We did eventually get the calves to the front, however, and only missed one steer. The rest of the calves are now all together in a pasture and the six bulls (along with the leased bull) were transported to their new owner on the 25.

This month we sprayed approximately 600 liters of herbicide (not including the 50L of round-up sprayed in the orchard) on the gazillions of thistle (and various other weeds) in our pastures. It’s really depressing when we look at all the weeds growing happily (especially since mom got the paddocks fertilized). Luckily, we realized that the herbicide was working and we were excited to see the horrid thistle shriveling up. Hopefully, we will get most of the thistle eradicated this year, so that the grass can grow in the areas were weeds had formerly taken over. Unfortunately, this is a really hard job, when it comes to killing the thistle, because when thistles become mother roots, they have a sort-of alarm system. So, if the mother roots are sprayed, they will throw out millions of baby roots before they die. Therefore, it’s an uphill battle trying to demolish the thistle all over our property. We hope to kill about 80% of the current number of thistle, so that next year our paddocks will be happier and healthier.

EVER has been very busy this month, as you can no doubt tell. We’ve celebrated a birthday, got new animals, bought a new bull, killed thousands of weeds, and much more! As we go into summer, we are kicking into hyper-drive so we can prepare for the growing EVER ecosystem. You can see our new animals count on our website (www.ever-nz.com), on the “Animal Count” tab. You can also view the new stories under the “EVER Newsletter” tab.

October will bring a new newsletter with yet another birthday, excitement of visitors, more work done on the farm, and preparation for yet more furry and feathered EVER family members.

~Juli@ ~

*Google: 1 with a million zeros