My new blog

September 16, 2009, 8:35 am
Filed under: Uncategorized

This is the lucky lamb from last year mentioned.

Welcome to my brand new blog. I don’t know much about these things but think I’ll give it a go. I figure most people reading this know me so I don’t think I’ll go into too much detail that is obvious, but just as a starting point I’ll give a brief summary.

We (me, my wife, 9 sheep, 2 cats and 3 chickens) live on 4 acres at Clarkville, just north of the Waimakariri River from Christchurch. For those tempted to visit it only takes about 5 minutes from the start of the Northern Motorway to our gate.

Our house is about 80 years old and reasonably small, so I think I can get away with describing it as a cottage.

The biggest news in our world is the pending arrival of a baby. We are due on February 19, we have a scan later this month but the current plan is not to find out if it is a boy of a girl.

A summary of the animals, we have 3 ewes, a couple of which have ended up with names but I won’t share as they are a bit embarrassing. I only use them so we know which one we are talking about. The one without a name is normally known as “the other one”. These ewes gave birth to 5 lambs at the end of last month, all of which are boys, which won’t help with us trying to expand our breeding flock! I have applied the necessary 10 rings. I was pretty pleased with our 166% lambing effort. We also have one of last years lambs who avoided a trip to the butcher due to his friendly nature. He also has a name….

We started off with 4 chickens, but one day one went missing. We hope she has found a happy home. The other 3 are all well and have just been lucky to get some Vogels crusts. I have just given them a new water dispenser thing but they appear not to have figured out how it works, more training required. They still have their old trough. They don’t have names.

The 2 cats are fine, although one of them did bring us in a dead bird the other day. They are Ceilidh and Angus.

It is spring time here so heaps to do, the hedges have all been trimmed by those crazy mad max looking machines, so they look very tidy but heaps of trimmings to pick up. Had a big day the other day splitting firewood, that is nearly all stacked and ready for the winter. Heaps to do in the garden, weed and mulch the flower gardens, and then get things into the vege garden. Our big bag of seeds arrived the other day from Kings so will have to get onto planting. Hopefully this summer I can be good at regular plantings to keep a continuous supply of goodies going.

The other thing I am onto is setting up my bee hive. The boxes are all made and painted, I just need to get some frames and then the bees!

That’s enough for a start, time to make dinner for my pregnant wife who will be home soon. Pasta with the last of the pasta sauce I made last Autumn, it has been frozen.

Will get onto getting some photos loaded.