Wgtn Anniversary, January 2003

The long weekend (Wgtn Anniversary) - a chance to chill out & check on the sheep for the first time in two weeks. And what glorious weather!

The paddocks are surprisingly dried out, and lo, the sheep have made considerable progress with theirs. And we rejoiced. So much progress actually, I'm thinking I may well have to learn some herding skills & move them into another paddock to work their magic there. More on herding sheep later....

Spent the Saturday rehanging the gate to the street. So it is straight now & doesn't drag along the ground when closing & opening. It's not the greatest, or most attractive gate, but at least it doesn't look ramshackle now. I'll have to get onto the letterbox one day. It is so munted, it is comprised of 3 rotting pieces of plywood. A base, front & a roof. Junk mail just cascades into the garden behind it.

On Sunday, we did the Levin AP&I show. Which was disappointingly smaller & less interesting than the one we attended a couple of years ago. There as a dearth of entertainment - we heard Seamus, the illusionist & juggler being announced a couple of times, but the stage was empty whenever we passed by... two years ago, there was pretty much constant live music from Dalvanius Prime & a couple of chicks.... OK, sadly, Dalvanius was unable to make it this year on account of he's dead, but what happened to the girls?

We watched the miniature horse judging - some were little bigger than labradors. I was interested to note that if you own or show thse horses, it is de rigeur to wear black, sequin & rhinestone emblazoned cowboy outfits. Hilarious.

The cow judging was a much different experience. No dinky cowboy outfits here. I was impressed that one woman, holding onto the biggest cow I have ever seen in my life, and pressing against her to make her stand in the best position, was dressed completely in pristine white. Such confidence!

We sat in & watched the sheep shearing too. Decided we don't ever need to try that ourselves....

Oh... and we had a really tasty corn on the cob with salt, pepper, butter & chili seasoning. Yum. And one of the nicest pork sausages wrapped in bread (from some local organic pork sausage maker) I have had the pleasure of tasting ever.

Monday was spent visiting the Te Horo plant shop (closed), and a new Otaki Cafe (last left turn before Otaki Bridge if you're heading North) called the Apple Core (also closed). But we visited a little place selling plants just across the road from it, bought a bunch of stuff & got a fright from the woman there who shared with us all the things we need to do with sheep (like catch them every two weeks & check them for foot rot & flystrike & crutching & toenails & stuff), which we've never done.

Then we pretty much waited until 10pm for one of our cats to come home (bastard) & headed back into town.

This weekend, my task was to fix up the animal pen (which I'd partly dismantled to replace the fence) & we thought we'd have a try at herding the beasts in there for closer inspection. Saturday saw a flying visit to the other (aside from Farmlands) local farming supply store called AllFarms. And a ton of stuff was purchased - hand shears for crutching, hoof clippers, flystrike & footrot spray - just in case. And most fun of all, a big sack of sheep "nuts" which is what they give you at Staglands to feed their animals.

The rest of Saturday saw me hammering the pen back together & lining it with sheep netting. I also dragged a spare gate out of the shed & came up with a cunning plan to hang it so the pen can be two sizes. All this wasn't ready until about 3pm the following day, because I needed to find someplace open on Sunday that sold new gate hinges.

And then it was time to get the sheep in.

So with T luring them over with sheep nuts, and M & I carefully circling around the back, the idea being I'd swing the gate triumphantly shut when they were all in there.

Sadly, they weren't having any of this. They were nervous at the arrival of a new gate. And they clearly didn't like getting in the pen with people standing round behind them. Every time I sidled in, there'd be a thunder of little hooves as they headed for the plains.

We had several goes at this, and then gave up, they were too spooked. Of course, once we'd all retreated out of site, they crowded into the pen to eat the nuts.

I went & sprayed large tracts of the other paddocks with noxious chemicals to kill off convulvulus instead. We'll regroup next week, and maybe try closing the gate from in front of them with a rope. We'll see. If that doesn't work, there'll have to be a redesign, it might be the gap in there is too big. Maybe it should be a long, thin race so they can't turn around once they're in there.

All very challenging, and we haven't even got close enough to tip them on their backs & inspect them yet!