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Sheep Shearing

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We’ve just enjoyed a three-week visit with my in-laws and a nephew from America.  I’ll try to share some of the highlights of our activities while they were here.

Their first Sunday, we took them to the aquarium in Kaikoura, then up to the overlook on the water tank on top of the Peninsula.  After that, we all went up the Blue Duck Valley to visit friends there.  The highlight was when we were given a demonstration of sheep dogs working, and sheep shearing.  Of our group, only our nephew and I had ever seen a sheep sheared.

Sorting sheep in the the wool shed.

Our friend with his dogs.

The view from the top of the water tank–Kaikoura on the right.

Exciting Birthday!

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Today is my birthday, and I had a wonderful birthday present–my cow calved this morning!  She was nearly a week late, so we’ve been keeping a close eye on her.  Last night she looked like she was very close, so we moved her into a paddock (we had her beside the road) so the calf wouldn’t end up on the road.  When I went out at 6:30 this morning to check on her, it was apparent that she was in labor, but she also had milk fever and couldn’t get up.  Of course, Gayle was at work, so I called our landlord, who knows a lot about cows, and asked him if he would be able to come over and give her some calcium.  He very kindly came over soon, and instead of giving her the oral calcium that I had, he gave her two bags under her skin.  He tried to hit a vein, but missed both times.  It still works, just not quite as fast.  We continued to watch her closely, and around 9:00 I felt inside to see if the calf was in the right position.  It was, and half an hour later the feet started showing.  Around 10:00 she finally stood up!  The feet and nose disappeared back inside, and she took a break for awhile, eating some grass and hay.  By 11:00, though, the calf was born–a healthy little bull.  The children all got to watch.  They had been hoping for that.  They’ve had quite the education–they witnessed the breeding and now the birth.

And here’s a funny:  This is Chestnut’s third calf, and all three have been born on a Thursday.  We’ve had four different goats kid here, and three have kidded on a Thursday.  What are the odds of that happening?

Just born!

Everyone wants to meet the new baby!

Worn out.

This afternoon, the two oldest boys went to help a local man “tail” lambs.  Of course, lambs are born with long tails, but if you leave the tails on, poo builds up on them and then flies lay eggs…. I’ll spare you the details, but it’s kinder to cut off the tails.  At the same time, they notch the ears for identification, and “ring” the males.  This farm has around 2,000 ewes, so there are 3-4,000 lambs.  The farm is in the hills directly east of Cheviot.  We were able to drive the van to the back of the farm where they were working, since we have 4-wheel drive in it.  We were going up and down some mighty steep hills!  I have been looking at those particular hills, and the farm road we went up, since we moved here, wishing I could go up them!  What a day for my wish to come true–my birthday!  The views from the top were awesome.  Snow-capped peaks in one direction; the sea in the other.

Ever since we moved to Cheviot I’ve wanted to go to the top of this hill. The tailing operation.

On the way back down, we stopped on the hill at the base of the cell tower (we were higher than the tower when we were back where they were tailing!). We live at the edge of the worked ground in the middle of the picture–just beyond Cheviot.

View to the north from the cell tower.  You can vaguely see the Kaikoura mountains here; in reality they were quite clear.

Look how steep this hill is!

See the cows along the top of the ridge across the valley?

The road we drove on to get to the back of the farm, viewed from the other side of Cheviot. That’s the road I’ve been eyeing for nearly three years!

Cows

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We’ve had some interesting experiences with cows the last two months.  First, some background information.  Here in New Zealand, dairying is seasonal.  Cows are all dried off in May and they calve in August, for the most part.  During their dry period, in the winter, they are generally trucked to an area away from their home farm, to give the paddocks there a rest.  Our landlord boards dairy cows from a couple of farms near Culverden, and he says it’s very good pay.  He had 700-800 cows on his home farm, and around 100 on this farm.  The beginning of July, one of the cows at his place “slipped her calf”–it was born dead about a month early.  She bagged up, so he brought her over here for us to milk.  She was here for three weeks, and we had a few circuses with her (she wasn’t used to being handled), but she was tame as a kitten compared with a couple of others we tried to milk!

The second week of August, one of the cows here calved.  She had an enormous udder, so he said we could milk her.  We spent two hours one Sunday afternoon, trying to tie her up!  She jumped three fences before we could get a rope around her neck, and then it still took an hour to tie her tight enough to milk.  During that time, she sent me flying once with her head, and by the end of that ordeal she was charging anyone who came close, and pawing hay up over her back like a bull when anyone so much as looked at her!  She stayed tied up in a shed here for nearly a week till our landlord’s son was able to figure out how to untie her and get her back out with the mob.

Several days after that circus, our landlord asked me if I’d like to come over to their place to milk a cow whose calf had died.  He has a headgate there, so we figured it wouldn’t be too hard to milk her.  He put a rope on her hind foot so she couldn’t kick–but she did anyway! Soon, she was seemingly trying to kill herself and us!  They put a strap around her belly to hold her up to the side of the chute she was in, but she laid down anyway.  So much for that cow–after I left and the landlord let her go she was charging at him!

By now, I’ve had it with Friesiens.  I’ve really been enjoying my sweet, gentle Jersey!  I can walk up to her and lead her around by her halter anywhere I want to and she can be tied with a light string and stay put!

Yesterday, our landlord offered us another cow.  This one has been in a paddock by herself close to his house for three months, ever since she hurt her foot on the truck coming over here from the dairy farm. Her leg is in such bad shape that when the last of the cows were loaded up and sent back yesterday her owner said to shoot her.  She had calved the day before and had so much milk that our landlord decided to keep her, and kept back another bull calf that had been born there to put on her.  He offered her to us to milk, and brought her and two calves over today.  Her leg was so bad that she couldn’t get on the horse float, so they used this makeshift platform to bring her.  She fell down on the way here, and I’m guessing she hurt her udder; there is blood in the milk. Hope that clears up soon.

End of Wheat Harvest

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After the wheat was harvested, the straw was baled–they got 251 BIG bales off the three paddocks (50 acres) here.


Then, they lined the bales up along the road and at the edge of one of the paddocks,mowed down the stubble for about 10 feet around the inside of each paddock, and raked that stubble into the standing stubble.  The next step was to plow a firebreak all around where they had mowed stubble,and then burn off the paddocks.  To burn them, they used a drag to pull a pile of stubble together, lit it, and drove around the paddock through the raked stubble.  As they drove, the stubble caught on fire and soon the entire paddock was ablaze. 
Within a very short time, it was all over and all that was left was black.

Today’s Family Fun!

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Our family fun activity today was electric- and halter-breaking our two calves!  It was quite the rodeo, with one calf collapsing and rolling over into the mud, then deciding he would never willingly stand up again.  The other was scared nearly out of his skin.  We did accomplish our purpose (we hope), at least as far as electric-breaking, and got both calves out in the big paddock with the cows.

Charley decides he will not be moving anywhere, ever.

Meatball doesn’t want to move, either.

Daddy’s home! Reinforcements for our side. Poor Charley had no options left.

Meanwhile, the little boys were playing by themselves.

Calves are stuck in tiny enclosures of electric wire to learn what to respect.

Mom is excitedly waiting for her son to arrive!

Investigating each other!

Now they have lots of room to roam.

Mom says, “School Holiday Today!”

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I was getting behind on my work, so I declared today to be a school holiday.  Would you believe, no one objected!  I was able to get a lot of things off my list:  The beans Esther picked Monday got snapped (while I read to the boys, so we did do some school). The cabbage the boys picked for me Monday got turned into sourkraut. We had a freezer go out this week, so I cooked up a pile of bags of plums from last year.  One big pot turned into jam (didn’t follow the recipe, so I’m not sure yet if it set or not–it will be syrup if not!). Another big pot has had the pits picked out and has been pureed, but I’m bringing it to a boil tonight so it will be safe to leave till morning.  The last big pot (yes, I have a lot of big pots–love them!) is also coming to a boil and I’ll decide tomorrow what to do with it.

And, we got in a field trip of sorts this afternoon and evening.  Our landlord started combining wheat around 4:30, and the children have been watching intently!  He’s running his own combine and having someone else run their Klaas combine to get the job done quicker.  The combines are harvesting faster than the trucks and tractors can haul it away! They are getting about 180 bushels to the acre.  One truck that’s being used must be from the ’50s or early ’60s, and frequently backfires–“Mom, what makes a truck backfire?”  “I don’t know, ask your dad.  I just know that’s what that noise is!”

Our landlord’s combine.

 

Finding a Bull

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What a day we had yesterday!  It started out peacefully enough.  I got up a little after 6:30 (Gayle had the day off, as the day after Christmas is also a national holiday), and had my quiet time.  Seth showed up in the living room at 7:15, so he went out with me to milk.  Our first hint of trouble was when I saw that the gate to where the cows were was–OPEN!  Oops.  Last night I moved their fence, then came to the house a different way, and forgot to latch the gate shut.  They obviously shoved it open and went off exploring.  They were nowhere in sight; they had all night to wander whereever they wanted to go.  We quickly checked, and no, they were not near the calves.  Uh-oh, now what?  I got my keys, told Gayle what was going on, and we got in the van.  Which way to go?  No tracks anywhere to be seen.  I had a hunch that they might go north; we’ve pastured them in a neighbor’s paddock in that direction and they know the cow there.  We went that way, checking for tracks in the driveways we passed.  No clues till we got beside the paddock they wintered in.  Finally, we found tracks in the dust on the road, going the way we were going.  Thank God, we were on the right track!  We went on; at the end of our road is a paved road and I knew we wouldn’t be seeing tracks there!  Well, Lord, which way do we go now?  Right towards Cheviot, left on Munro Road towards the railroad track, left and then right to Sinclair Road, another gravel road, or right and then left onto Factory Road?  I decided to check out Sinclair, turned that way–and we saw them!  They had found a herd of beef cattle and were visiting with them over the fence!  Thank you, God!  We drove around them, and Seth got them moving–but they went the wrong way on Munro Road!  He stayed at the end of Sinclair while I went around them and got them going the right way again.  They fairly willingly turned onto Homeview Road and headed for home, but while we were following them home, I saw something I was not happy about.  We were thinking that both cows were pregnant, but on the way home Chessie was very definitely showing signs of being in heat.  We thought she was six weeks pregnant, but by the time we were home it was pretty obvious that she was not.
After we got the cows home and Chessie milked, I started making phone calls.  First I called the man who AI’d the cows, and as I thought, he no longer had the gear to do it; mating season is over here.  So, I called the other man in Cheviot who does it; he’ll have the gear again in 3-4 days–otherwise no one is closer than Culverden.  Neither one had any suggestions of a bull to use.  We called a number of other people, and the boys and I went to the neighbors who had the Belted Galloway cows and bull, but she sold the bull.  We did get to meet her husband, and that was quite interesting.  He is a deep-sea fisherman, working near Heard Island, halfway between Australia and Africa and way south.  He goes out for six months at a time, catching Patagonian Toothfish–in South America they are called Black Cod.  The ship takes all supplies needed for six months, and freezes the catch onboard; they are not resupplied the whole time.  Next time he goes out he’s going with a different company, on a ship that only carries enough fuel for three months, so that’s how long he’ll be out then.  These islands are volcanic, but totally covered with ice except for a little spit that has a tiny bit of vegetation.  The only time they were inhabited was about a hundred years ago when some sealers lived in holes in the ground for five  years, catching elephant seals and putting the blubber in barrels.  Very interesting–I was glad the boys got to learn about it.  They couldn’t help us with a bull, but gave us a phone number of someone else to try.
I made more calls, and finally about 1:00 the man whose number the neighbor gave us called back and said he did have a bull we could use, a Belted Galloway, out at Manuka Bay.  Manuka is two bays south of Gore Bay, a few miles.  It’s probably 10 or 15 miles from here.  Too far to walk the cow!  We needed to find a horse float, now.  Well, the neighbor who lets us use her paddocks has a horse float, right?  Gayle was in Cheviot, so I called on his cell phone and asked him to stop by and talk to them, since their number is not in the phone book.  Just before he got home, a friend and her daughter stopped by for milk, and I asked if they would happen to have a horse float–no.  Gayle got home with the report that the neighbors sold theirs, but had a truck–but were using it today.  Our friend called about that time to say that they had a trailer that might possibly work.  Gayle talked to her about it, and she talked to her husband.  She called back to say that their trailer would not work, but she  had talked to someone else and they had a horse float we could use!  Finally, everything was lined up:  bull located, and horse float organized.
Gayle picked up the horse float after finishing the project he was working on.  Finally, at 4:30 we were ready to go.  We had decided to take both vehicles so we could all take the cow to the bull, thinking that we could spend some time in the water while we were there.  We found the paddock the bull was supposed to be in with no trouble, but no bull in sight!  We followed Chessie up the hill, and gates opened into two paddocks, one sort of open; the other thick bush.  A couple of boys went into the bush to search for the bull, and Gayle and some other children went up the other way.  I stayed near Chessie and followed her as she wandered up the hill, grazing.  It took an hour and a half of searching through a maze of paddocks and cow trails over hills, through thistles and springs and deep bush, to locate the bull!  In the paddock Chessie spent most of her time in, there were tall hummocks everywhere, and they were quite soft.  We figured out that it was many year’s accumulation of dead grass–each year the grass dies and falls down, and then more grass grows up through–as well as thistles!  There are thistles everywhere in that paddock, too–and springs of water flowing across and down the hill.  The view from that hill was absolutely gorgeous; quite a view of the ocean, and we could even hear the waves breaking.  Lovely place to spend a summer afternoon!  Finally they got him down to the first paddock, which was wide open, however, and we directed Chessie down there as well, then all sat back and watched to see what would happen.  It took about half an hour, but the job got done.  Then, we got to separate Chessie and her new boyfriend to take her home!  Even a Belted Galloway bull is massive, and that was a bit nerve-wracking.  He quickly realized we were trying to get her to the gate, and kept himself between her and the gate!  It took 10 minutes or so, but we finally got them separated enough to get her through the gate and lock him in.  Sure hope this works!  We’re praying for a Galloway/Jersey calf about the first of October.  Quite the adventure–but as I told Esther, our life here has seemed like a long series of adventures.

There were several definite blessings yesterday. #1:  This is THE week I really wanted Chessie bred, as if she takes from this time, which we’re praying for, she’ll go dry the week Chrissie calves and we won’t be without milk.  #2:  Gayle was home yesterday; he rarely has a day off, and I could not have done the job myself.  #3:  The calf should be a good dual-purpose calf, good for meat if a bull and milk if a heifer.  Wonder what a black-and-white Belted Galloway/brown Jersey cross calf will look like?

Looking south from Cathedrals Road, on the way to Manuka Bay, towards the Hurunui River.

Looking north or west from Cathedrals Road. The views from this road are spectacular!

The gorgeous fellow we went to such trouble to locate!

Moving Hay and Flopped Bread

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Gayle has been hauling our year’s supply of hay today.  Some dear friends of ours here got their hay baled today, and Gayle brought home ten big bales–each one is about a ton!  He brought them one at a time on our little truck, then stacked them in a small shed here.  Hopefully this will be enough for all the animals for the year!

I made bread today–but forgot all about it.  By the time I found it this afternoon, it had overraised and there wasn’t enough time left to raise it and bake it today, anyway.  So, I rolled it out and made pita bread–of sorts.  Some pieces are more like crackers.  Yummy!

Moving the Cow

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“Hurry up, I’m hungry!”

The cow needed fresh grass yesterday, so I had my trusty helpers move her.  Boys thrive on jobs like that!  The cow was very happy when the job was finished.


By the way, all these pictures are zoomed in a long way; the neighbor’s house is not actually very close! My photographer didn’t want to distract her brothers.