As things go, I am days late and lines short of a decent Kiwi Quarterly… but what can I say… there just hasn’t been a whole lot going on at the Mello Farm. Besides the Blue Baron rattling our windows for a few days this fall during his fertilizer runs, it’s been pretty quiet around here.
Our favorite fertilizer spreader as seen from our living room.
As much as I’d like to impress with stories of great renovations, alas no great strides have been made! The winter weather seems to have a great effect on us… drab, cloudy, cold days see the least amount of work done. It’s when the sun comes out that there is the best chance of a project getting some attention. The best I can say for the interior house work is that Jim found a small amount of motivation and painted primer onto the walls of the entry hall a few days ago. This in turn forced me into a guilt trip that resulted in me starting to paint the ceiling… so a few steps forward at least. This is more than I can say for the drape project. After 6 months of trying, we have not been able to complete the hanging of the new drapes in the master bedroom and have had to return to square one. There is a new order in the works, but it has had it’s own set of hurdles. Since it would require a sedative to go through the list of problems there, suffice to say that we currently have blankets hanging on the window and only a glimmer of hope in getting anything else in the near future! Who would have thought this would be so difficult?!
A little work on the ceiling.
Beautiful, no?
When last I wrote, New Zealand was in the midst of a record-breaking drought. By now, most areas of the country are well clear of the dreaded dry and we have had a good bit of rain throughout autumn. Things are pretty much back to green around our area and it looks more like good ole NZ again. Further down on the South Island it recently went from famine to feast to near disaster when heavy winter rains turned into record snowfall trapping sheep up in the highlands. Farmers had to call upon teams of volunteers to go snow raking (making tracks in the deep snow for the sheep to follow) to get the animals down to lower elevations for food and to keep them from being buried under the heavy snow. After days of hard work lots of sheep were saved. Luckily, we don’t have that problem in Hawke’s Bay!
The hills around our local fishing hole, Lake Tutira, look fairly green.
South Island sheep head down a cleared path in the snow.
The most significant change or, rather, addition made to the Mello Farm in the past couple of months, is our new goat, Emily. Ever since we moved into our current location about a year ago, we’d seen this little goat chained to her house down the road about a half mile from us. She lived all by herself in her little box with only the traffic to keep her company. We’d see her whenever we made a trip to town and back and, finally, Jim couldn’t stand it anymore and began stopping to visit her and to give her Gingernut cookies. They became friends and after many months Jim found out who her owners were and called to ask if they would like to sell her or adopt her out so that she could live off of the chain and with some other goats. The owner thought about it for a few weeks and called back to say he thought that was a good idea. On the appointed day, Jim walked her from her house all the way to our place… so now Emily, along with her house (minus the chain), resides at the Mello’s. The big surprise was that she is very people-oriented and spends almost as much time with us (in the yard, on the porch, looking in the windows) as with our other two goats in the paddock. She also has very good taste in flowers, as she seems to like the same ones I do… she has pruned back all of my rose bushes to a much smaller size! She is a very sweet girl and follows Jim around like one of the dogs. However, there is one thing: Emily is definitely Jim’s girl and doesn’t like it when I interfere with their time together. Whenever I do, she gives me ‘the can-opener’ treatment and tries to dislodge my kneecaps! We’re going to have to work on that.
Jim walks Emily up the road to our house.
Emily seems to enjoy helping Jim with his work.
Of course, there is always be something to say about the pigeons as they are pretty much a year-round project. Our racing season ended and, by our reckoning, was very successful. We have to wait for August to get the official Club results, but we are fairly confident we came out on top. We’ve had a little over a month with nothing to do, but it is almost time for breeding season to begin for next year’s racers. And, as so often seems to be the case, there are loft modifications to be made; Jim has started with some of the changes he wants to make but there are more to come.
Jim’s work on the pigeon loft is a never-ending project.
Speaking of the pigeons, toward the end of the pigeon racing season, Jim and I were sitting out on the back lawn waiting for the birds to get home one race day when our next-door neighbor dropped by for a visit. This woman, who is a single lady that lives in a shipping container on the property next to ours, came by to ask if we’d watch over her place while she was away for a while. She said she’d come into some money and was going to rent a place in town that had running water and electricity (unlike her container). Jim asks how she managed that and she answers… ‘I won Big Wednesday!’ Not knowing how much that particular Lotto game paid out, Jim asked her how much she won and she said… 3 1/2 million dollars! She seemed to still be in shock at the time judging by her demeanor, which was quite understandable! We were very pleased for her and are looking forward to seeing her permanent house go up in the spring.
So, on through winter we go, curling up with a good book now and then and working on this project or that when it suits us. Here’s hoping that next time I’ll have something a little more interesting to talk about!
Ahh, not having to read alone.