Mustering

Just another day on the farm, mustering the sheep, horses checking out cows and little piggy's having a nice drink of milk and munch on food scraps.

Tuateawa, Coromandel.

Just before school started in 2008 we managed to sneak away for a quick holiday on the Coromandel at Tuateawa. The weather was spectacular most of the time, and enjoyed the heat with lots of swimming and boogie boarding at Little Bay and Waikawau Bay. We also enjoyed the bush walks behind our section, and discovered the most wonderful view at the top of the hill.

Family Visit Dec 2007

Mum, Dad, Rach & Owen came down for a quick visit at the end of 2007.

We had beautiful weather (the start of the draught) and nice days on the farm.

Mum helped out with the mornings milking (getting back to her childhood roots) and everybody met fugly, the cow with the twisted nose. There were some lovely walks on the farm, and the animals all looking lovely, note the picture with the horses and the cute little pigs in the background. Graeme the book man also came to stay and went all day with the chainsaw working on the pine. We will not run out of firewood next winter.

Three & a half weeks old!!

My beautiful foal Regen is now three and a half weeks old and already grown so much. She has become quite confident and like to try and chew everything, including the farm bike and dogs. I love to watch both mum and baby frolicing around and here is a couple of photos to show how much she has grown and of me 'horsing around'.

Sunset @ Waitetuna

A beautiful sunset in the Waitetuna Valley, what a sight!

Regen is Born!

Very early in the morning of the 5th of November, the night it flooded, our mare Amba gave birth to her foal, a thoroughbred clydesdale cross. We named her Regentanz (Regen for short) which is German for Rain Dance, as we thought this name appropriate as she survived being born on a night with lots of rain (137mls to be precise). She is very cute and is becoming more and more confident every day. Both Amba and Regen love to have scratches, and Amba is so proud of her foal she will bring her over for anyone to have a look.

Tonka Toys!

After the milling of the big pine the digger came in to do some heavy lifting work. One of his jobs was to roll the rather large pine logs down the hill so that Jono could mill them on the flat. This was a bit nerve racking to watch as at times as the logs were being rolled down the hill the digger looked as though it was going to tip over, however they all got safely down to the bottom of the hill. The other job the digger came to do was to help us make our rock wall at the edge of our lawn to keep the sheep out, the rock wall was being put in to upgrade a bit from having a boring old fence. First of all he had to dig out a space to put the rocks, and then carefully placed the huge rocks along the edge, each rock probably weighing on average half a tonne. Rob made this job look easy, picking up these heavy rocks as though they were as light as feathers. Very excited about the rock wall, and now comes the job of levelling out the lawn and growing some grass.