It's a bird's life

One thing about living out here that continually amazes me is the huge variety of bird life. Now we are just half an hour (or so, depending on the lead content of the foot) out of a city that is full of tuis and other native birds.  But time after time, I turn around and there's a bird I haven't seen in years.
The first "Now I haven't heard that since I was a kid", was the morepork, or ruru. This tiny (as owls go)  native owl is probably my favourite of all our birds. It's soft call of the same sound as its name always sees me stopping with my head cocked to find out where the noise came from. The big stand of Douglas firs on our boundary is home to these nocturnal birds, although quite often you will hear them during the day too.

We have a territorial harrier hawk, or kahu, who can be seen riding the thermals effortlessly for hours on end in search of food, although the one pictured belongs to churchmousenz's collection. Like all hawks, which differ from our native falcons, they have their own version of a Truckstop   (roadkill) something they so often end up themselves because they can't get away quick enough. Our hawk is noticeably different because one of his/her legs dangles as he circles - probably proof that in the past, he/she was injured. I'll be looking out come June for the courtship sky dances these birds are renowned for. But having said that, I'll also make sure the chicken coop has netting and I do watch out for Ellie, our wee Maltese cross. She is just small enough to look like an albino rabbit!
This next photo is from projectkereru.co.nz, as I wasn't quick enough to have my camera on me a couple of weeks ago.

What really shocked Mum and I was the distinctive slow whapping noise the great wings of the wood pigeon, kereru, make as one flew right over our heads. I love these birds and while they were a great source of food for Maori early on, there are so few of them now in the overall scheme of things that they are justifiably protected. They are lovers of the berries of a few of our native trees, in particular the puriri tree and can get, according to some reports, quite drunk on them. They also love tree lucerne I am told, so I'll be looking out for this and planting it - just to entice them in to stay.

The one odd bird that we see a lot of around here is one I am waiting on a DOC member to identify for me. It looks like an egret, flies like one - but the colours are not like anything I have seen. They aren't interested in the cattle or their droppings as much as a cattle egret is, but something certainly catches their attention in the remnants of the grass in the early morning sunshine, which is the only time we see them. Very gregarious lot though, they seem to do everything together. Hopefully I will have an answer back from DOC in the next few days and when I do, I'll make sure I put it up. In the meantime, if any of you know what it is, I'd love to know!
Just yesterday I saw a bird I have not seen since I was a child - the kingfisher. I always wondered with that great beak of theirs whether or not they were a dwarf relative of Aussies kookaburra.  Their vivid blue and yellow colours seemed to be everywhere when I was kid, but these days, like so many others, they are rarely seen.
Then of course there are the wee ones like the quail, which are plentiful here and the ever present magpies; a bird I respect in much the same way horse lovers respect Shetland ponies. Because they'll get you if you don't.

I had to laugh a couple of days ago. The sprinkler was on and a flock of sparrows were having a ball flying under the water, probably to have a bit of a bath and also a drink, although I do make sure that the birdbath is always full of water. Not that they use it much, as Rowan, our young German Shepherd believes she was given a license at birth to chase birds. She saw the sparrows having fun, chased them off and then decided they were onto a good thing...

Minister of de-fence..

I should have known better, but when Ken announced one of his long ago school mates was going to come and help fence a new boundary, it seemed at the time like a good idea. I won't say there weren't some lonely brain cells that were trying to jump up and down and catch my attention when same friend and Ken had put in the main entrance gate (new) off one of the two massive (also new) strainers we had put in and even Ken had to admit a day or two later that the gate tended go point heavenward at the end of it.
But on the appointed day, all my brain cells were chorusing in unison when at 8.30 in the morning, the friend staggered, quite literally, up the driveway with a chainsaw over one shoulder and a mate carrying another saw right beside him.
I didn't need to go to the house gate for an olfactory experience to realise the fencer was as drunk as a skunk. My heart sinking, I rang Ken who was busy painting one of our truly lovely neighbour's home. He really thought I was joking.
But it became obvious by the time Ken got home that I hadn't been. Our new boundary fence had more waves than a royal salute. It wasn't expected to be finished till the following day, but I was the first person to be concerned that the new boundary line had three simple number one posts where there should have been strainers. Especially considering there were two right angled turns to the new boundary lines.

Let me digress for a moment to tell you how we got a new boundary line, (the old one which is shown above) - it does have bearing on the story and had I known at the time, friend or not, I'd have contacted the local fencing contractor long before Ken could agree to his mate's offer of doing it.
I had seen the aerial view of the property and I had also seen Google map's view. And while each matched  the other as far as the southeastern boundary went on paper, neither matched what the actual reality was. In fact, the fence line veered in completely the opposite direction and looked to be chopping off nearly half an acre. (Which of course matters greatly when you only have five).
So I contacted the local surveyors to come out and reassess the boundary and sure enough, we were owed some land. For the life of us, we couldn't understand how it had happened, till a neighbour told us that years ago, the fencer employed to put the boundary fence up, along with others, had lost his job because of turning up to work the worse for wear. No chocolate fish prizes for guessing who the fencer had been... the pic below shows the beginning of the divergence, with the real boundary heading away on the left.
So, back to the story.

Well, yes it was wavy. And the seven wire strand did have very large gaps under some of it where the land dipped away and where it had been set too high. And set too high because, you guessed it, the posts were too far apart, nor were they set in places were the land dipped deeply enough, which presented the problem of gaps large enough for a sheep to get under.
Well, we hoped it would hold up until Ken could get his mate back to fix it, although I'll admit to strong reservations about that at the time.
About a week or two later, as the drought progressed and the neighbours young steers were really looking for something to eat, I happened to be looking out the window and realised one of them was using its horns to hook the wire out of the way. Just as I shouted to Ken, the boundary post-which-was-not-a-strainer gave way and the whole wire set came down with it. Which of course delighted the steers no end.
Ken went out and chased the steers away and I swear the air was somewhat blue in his immediate vicinity as he wrenched the post back up again and hammered it in before he realised the stay wasn't going to sit where it was meant to; it had been so badly seated it could not have stayed there if you had superglued it in - and of course, the post which should have been strainer-sized, had no anchor footing whatsoever underneath it. In free-draining sandy - and extremely dry - soil, what was going to happen? You guessed it, it had less chance of staying upright than a drunken sailor.
Thanking every farm god that might have been in listening area for the fact that we hadn't yet pulled down the old boundary fence, which would have let the cows into the orchard, I raced down to the cow's owners place and asked them to try and sort it - as they had also broken down a very temporary rotten old wooden gate being used as a boundary fence up past the new area.

It was not happening. They were settling in for the nightly few drinks with friends and it would have to wait till  the following day.
Gob-smacked, back I went to try and help Ken get the fence back up as best we could.
The following day, the cow's owner's wife turned up, along with her father-in-law and they tried to put up an electric fence. Unfortunately, they had nowhere near enough electric tape, so Ken gave them some old stuff we had been given years before we even thought about a lifestyle block. But... he didn't know that several lengths of it had been broken clean in half and while knotted up, no current would go through it once it reached the first knot. So you guessed it, the cows had that down in four hours.
The next day Ken went to get some new posts and while I emphasised they had to be strainers, back he came with slightly larger posts - but strainers they were not. However, being a mere female, my point of view was brushed off and off he went swearing he could do a better job.
For a whole day he slaved his way out in the blistering sun - and it was hot; some 35C - and dug in the new posts, put the stays back in and tightened the wires. Coming back, he was very pleased with himself, until I mentioned, somewhat diffidently bearing in mind that his male pride was at stake, that the stays needed to be positioned to bear the brunt of the force of the wires being pushed in. Not to either side. He then proudly mentioned it didn't matter, as he had put all the wires on the inside of the posts. Hang on a minute...
"Please, please don't tell me you stapled the wires to the inside of both those right angled posts..."
Yep, he had. And what's more, thought it was a very fine job, that it would work - and that it would have to because he didn't have enough wire through increasing the size of the posts.
Sigh.
Thankfully, the neighbour's Dad knows about fencing. He mentioned to Ken the following day when they dismantled the electric fence, that yes, one did need strainers. Yes, they do need anchoring footings and yes they do need stays in the opposite direction to where the force of wires being pushed against the strainer will help it stay upright. Oh and most definitely, they do not get stapled inside of the posts...
And that he will come and show him what to do later this week.

Power to the people, sort of

We had sorted out the problem of waste management via a clever coupling from 400l bus tank to a septic tank we got installed very early on in the piece. Thank heavens for that, because the bus decidedly was not going anywhere in a hurry, or in fact, anywhere at all again, so emptying it would have been... interesting.
But while we had two 80 watt solar panels for lighting and for running the water pump when the bus didn't have the water hose attached to the ajax valve, there wasn't enough power to do anything else. So while I had the blessed relief of no Coro St for nearly a month, it also meant that all clothes washing had to be done up at Mum's.
Initially, we decided we were going to be as much off the grid as possible, so we did look very closely at solar and turbine combinations, because we wanted to run a number of electrical appliances, including a freezer and the brand new washing machine. I also like to bake my own bread and because the oven was not for usual heavy use that my kitchen antics require owing to it having no temperature settings other than low medium and hot, I also needed power for the frypan and the trusty old Breville bench oven.

However, it was going to cost us around $15,000 for the privilege of having to turn every other electrical appliance off to run one. That wasn't going to work with the freezer needing to be on 24/7. The small gas run fridge freezer inside was fine for what it was - but we had run a generator almost 24/7 for the first month to cover Christmas and New Year and my birthday with the big electrical fridge freezer in one of the containers.
So as much as we didn't want to, it meant we needed to look at the option of electricity. And oh for the benefit of hindsight.
Initially I was told only Contact Energy was able to install a major electrical connection to the property. I wish I could remember who it was exactly who adamantly told me this, because boy, were they wrong. I rang CE in Hastings, who told me it was out of their area. But, they said, Horizon Energy was the one to contact. Were they the only ones? Yes, I was assured. And, like the Waikato-based and Rotorua based quarry contractors who adamantly told me I could not get Ryalite locally, (I assume because it meant I would not be using their services because other contractors had the mortgage on locally sourced Ryalite)  I was bullshitted into the bargain.
I contacted Horizon Energy and sure, they could give me a quote! Almost 10k to string the power across (but under) the road and about 55 metres or so up the driveway and behind the containers. The power box would have at least one attachment for the housebus use, but there needed to be other outlets for the container where the freezer would go and where Ken's tools needed power that out trusty 2800 watt generator couldn't provide.
So, 10 days after the 30 day quote (which included Christmas and New Year) ran out, we accepted the quote. Only to be told that it was going to go up by $250 because  of "increased contractor costs". Not that we were ever told what they were. I was gobsmacked. Ken has been in business for many years and upping a quote after such a short time had never happened. It wasn't good business practice. But, still believing they had the monopoly, we very grudgingly accepted the change provided any additional costs were signed for via a variation order before being done. Great! we were told. We'll start work week after next.
To cut a long story short, almost two weeks after the promised start date, the crew finally arrived, dug up a channel all the way from the road to the beginning of the pad. And then work stopped. Because, it appeared, the person who organised the job hadn't listened to my explicit instructions and instead of 'getting the local to inspect the site" (at first) and then inspecting the site himself (second), it turned out that all he had done was used Google Maps and put our driveway which didn't exist at the time of the mapping into entirely the wrong place. When the network then decided we had to take out power from the transformer at the top of the road and NOT cross the road because, they said, of a spiking issue from the lesser wiring found there. Hmmm. Which the crew then discovered was not going to work because of the wrong placement of the driveway. Back to the drawing board (and Whakatane) they went, but not before they filled in the channel.
Granted we did get a profuse apology from the person responsible for the cock-up. Several times. Because it was almost another week before they were back. And up the driveway on the other side they came. What were they up to this time??
The line, they said, had to come from the boundary and so it was best that it came up the boundary side. Oh and because it was going to cost the network much more money to go from the transformer on the main road to where our driveway really was, they had miraculously discovered the spiking 'problem' wasn't an issue after all and it would, in fact, go under the road as originally agreed and attached to the existing power pole. Plus it also meant they did not have to cross under the council's area of the driveway and, as it turned out, they would not have to diagonally cut across the parking area. And it was hugely interesting that it took soooo many to do the job!! You can only see half of the nine vehicles it took to do this!

Ken was by this time getting irate, but could see the point, so ahead they went. BUT...
When the contracting electrician turned up with the power box, there was one lonely caravan connection inside it. Just one. Nothing to go the containers, nothing to plug in a commercial lead if necessary... nothing. At that, Ken blew his stack. The upshot of this was that we called in our own electrician, who told us that the original info was wrong anyway - that we had not had to use Horizon Energy and that the cost would have been considerably less if we hadn't. Too late now, however, although ken has spent considerable time remonstrating with my lack of research into this one thing. Never to mind... for his time is coming. In the meantime, if you are ever in the process of looking to put power on where there was none before in a rural setting, believe me, it pays to do your homework. There is no such thing as a monopoly.
But at least my new washing machine finally got to wash our clothes!

The driest summer on record

Because I love gardens, we'd bought about four trailer loads of plants with us much to poor Ken's exasperation. I think he thought I had accidentally bought out one of the local garden centres; I do know Bunnings had a very good Christmas via my bank card!
Everything from mountain pawpaws to hydrangeas, roses to passion fruit vines. And of course, as those who know me know that vegetable gardens are my passion, so for some weeks before hand, all that could be grown in a container was!

Those who live on lifestyle blocks also know that the list of things today's "To-Do" runs to an exercise book rather than a page. We had to build a fence around the bus to ensure our dogs were kept securely in (and, after seeing my young lettuces mowed down in one night, the rabbits out!); Ken was out in business on his own and finding that he was being called in to do jobs here there and everywhere from the first week on.
And of course, as mentioned in an earlier post, we had only just discovered how much work the soil needed to get it up to full production.
To that end, I decided I wanted to set up potager gardens of the old fashioned variety, but as summer was starting to get going in earnest, I needed to do it a little differently than we have in the past.
Ken, by this time had discovered a long abandoned and rather large mulch pile just 'a bit down the road', made from a combination of pine and ponga bark which had rotted down almost to soil. So, we put in cardboard on the grass with lawnclippings, then saturated that before putting in over five trailerloads of this black magic. On top of that went potting mix, garden mix, some sheep pellets - and because potting mix and mulch inevitably need more nitrogen, some nitrophoska and some of Tui's excellent vio tech, which my trees also got every fortnight or so during the summer.

Oh and I also used verrmicast, which I got off Graeme Reid in Pongakawa who makes the stuff - brilliant as it is.
The water line had been split into two, one for the housebus and one for the orchard. But as summer rolled on and January turned into the driest month on record with just 8mm of the average 77mm of rain fall and February looking to follow suit with just half a day's rain to date, the water tank in the bus was being filled and the other hose used for the garden almost full time. In trying to keep the gardens and the trees in the orchard as moist as they needed to be it brought in stark relief just how dire the circumstances are for farmers at the moment. While we are on unmetered town supply, most farmers are not and the crisp, crackling grass that snaps off under your feet is similar to what I used to see in Australian droughts 20 years ago. These pictures are of our neighbours land, which has brought a few problems for us, as he isn't a farmer - and the land has not been looked after for a number of years now. On the other hand, our land is green - and his dozen beef two year olds are becoming insistent as to which side of the fence they want to be on!

Shifting in

Lady Luck was still with us when we sold our home. It was originally one we had bought at mortgagee sale, a lovely big home with huge garage and workshop areas and plenty of room for the gardens and fruit trees I had planted. The new owners couldn't move in straight away, so we stayed an extra 10 days after the sale had been finalised. Which suited us fine. We had to get the big containers for all our gear on site at Fantail Farm and also had get the driveway put in and organise the pad for those and bus at the same time. Once again, Fortune smiled on us and the two completely different shipping and moving outfits rang us and said they could both shift the containers on and move the bus out on the same day. Now that was interesting...
Especially as one of the container trucks was driven by a very old friend of mine lol - He navigated that orchard as if it wasn't there, a fact for which we are both still thankful!
The first thing my workaholic husband did was paint both the bus and the bright orange containers. Not just for our own sense of trying to blend in well with the local environment, but also for the sake of those who had to travel past the sight on the main road.

While that was happening, we were also both out there and getting the land back up to scratch again. That meant spraying the blackberry with Tordon - a job neither of us liked, but at the end of the day, this is such a truly invasive plant out here that there simply is no other choice. We also had to dig up the dock, get rid of the small gorse bushes so kindly supplied by a neighbours out of control problem and in general, get rid of the knee high weeds along the fencelines. In addition, because we were mowing the paddocks, we had to go over every inch to remove any small rocks (thankfully, very few), broken wire (more than we liked) and any other bits of rubbish that was lying around. The upshot of all this was, that by the time summer arrived in earnest, Fantail Farm was looking very good indeed.

She's all ours, mate!

It was the dead of winter when we finalised the sale of Fantail Farm - which, it has to be said, we got for far more than the proverbial song. Indeed we got told several times we should have been arrested for what had to be the steal of the century. The flat to slight rolling five acres, split into four paddocks of two large and two medium sized, had been offered via council tender as surplus to their requirements. Originally, I'd been looking at a section when I found this, recognised it as land we had thought about leasing two years previously and said to Ken "Why don't we throw an offer of $10k on the table and see what happens?" No, that was not a spelling mistake. It really was an offer of just $10,000. And yes, it was laughable. Nowhere in New Zealand should we have been able to buy that kind of land for that price, let alone just half an hour out of the city of Rotorua.

But... we were still in the middle of the Depression (not recession, it has lasted long enough to earn the title of the worst thing since the Great Depression of the early 20th century) and for most people, money was a little tight. And the land, at the time, wasn't in the greatest of conditions either. But still..
You could have knocked us over with a feather when we got a call from the council to let us know we had won the tender.
The second visit out there was - different. We took our small mobile home and the dogs and parked up in the paddock for the weekend, walking around and really inspecting what needed doing and what we were going to do with it. The boundary fences were, for the most, in reasonably good condition. Enough to hold in the two horses that were currently in there and whose owner had had no idea until that week that it was going to be sold, let alone had been. For the rest, it was simply a blank canvas waiting for someone to put a brush to it.
The big thing for me was getting an orchard started. We'd picked the biggest of the paddocks, which happened to be at the rear of the property as being the one we would live on eventually and more than half of that was to be handed over to a good sized home orchard from which we could sell to locals a wide variety of fruit. Winter/spring being the best time to plant, the next three months would see me planting out more than 45 fruit trees of almost every available variety that would grow in the climate we had - and even a couple that, as I write, may not.

The interesting thing is that from a geological viewpoint, we had about 30cms of topsoil, underneath which was about 60-80cms of pumice, volcanic ash and sand that had been rained on the region during the eruption of Mount Tarawera in 1886. Under that was around a metre of topsoil from what had been there before the eruption. So what we had was extremely free-draining soil in a climate known to be perfect for stonefruit; very cold winters and very hot summers. It is also great for berries of all kinds as well as grapes, being an alkaline soil.
The downside was and is that you do have to work organic materials into it on a frequent and ongoing basis - but we had a great find to help us with that (more on that later).
The original plan had been that we would plant the trees, remove the horses and perhaps resow all the paddocks. But we were told that spring wouldn't be a good time for this, as the summers are arduously hot here and likely to kill off new grass growth; so what we did was mowed the paddocks down every few weeks and allowed what was cut to compost back into land with the help of the spring rains. This is a natural way of fertilising the land and one which we were happy to do until the autumn rains in March meant we could fertilise and resow. We had no plans of putting any stock on the land for at least a year.

We planned to live off the grid; using a large housebus and two 40 foot containers for garages, but felt that we would need to wait a couple of years before we did this, needing to tidy up some loose ends and sell out property. At that time, I was in the middle of getting the first series of the TV programme The Garden Pantry underway and weekends were the only time I had to do anything on the land. In addition. Ken had full time work as a painter and decorator and he also only had time at the weekends.
But life changes, as it does, and decisions we made in late winter, early spring had to be revised. My mother needed to move from where she was and came to stay with us - and at about the same time, we discovered that of the two homes that backed onto our property, one was empty and could be purchased from an absentee landlord who lived in Auckland, for $35,000. It was terribly run down from a cosmetic viewpoint, but as both Ken and I have renovated many homes over the years, we were able to look past it and see what could be done. So we purchased it and over a two month period, got it fit for Mum to live in (it truly wasn't before that!) by repainting it completely inside and out, putting in new flooring, a new stove and benchtop and everything else it needed to get its good bones back up and looking like the lovely home it had once originally been.
Having Mum out here also made us decide it was time to rethink the timeframe of getting ourselves out here. Ken decided he wanted to move lock stock and barrel out here as soon as we could sell out home. I had an offer made on the company I owned which was responsible for producing tv programmes and it was one I was happy with. As soon as we made that decision, a number of siginificant things happened - we decided to buy a large housebus and within a couple of weeks, someone contacted us wanting to do a swap with the one we had for an 11 and a half metre housebus which has been beautifully done up inside for permanent living. An offer came for our house that we couldn't refuse and within a matter of weeks of having made the decision to go much earlier... we were on our way before Christmas.

The beginnings..

Today marks two months since we moved onto Fantail Farm, a five acre block of bare land that had once been a council reserve; land put away and zoned as residential for the day when Murupara would need it. And back in the 1960's, when the reserve was created, there was every indication it might be a much needed future housing subdivision. Murupara, a bustling forestry town, already had less than a kilometer away its own wee suburb in Kuranui Village. But with the throwing in of the towel of an Amercian/Canadian owned forestry company back in the late 1970's, it also was the beginning of the end of further growth for the town. In fact these days, you would never know unless you had once lived here that Kiorenui Village had even existed; the road to it is long gone, all the houses have been taken away or have fallen into the ground and covering everything is the dreaded blackberry. Which isn't surprising. The council who runs the area and takes our rates is situated 86 kilometres away and only ever really takes the rates  from locals, putting very little back into the area.
Unloved and unused except for a valiant 50 year old Gravenstein apple tree, the reserve simply sat behind the houses and existing sections -  and the infamous old Stagger Inn Takeaways, which also had, over the years, housed such luminary businesses as the movie theatre, the bakery (the old brick ovens survive to this day), a skating rink and eventually an automotive pit. But those days were long gone with the death of local eccentric character Harry Reid who had owned the place and then been unable to keep it up.
When we bought it, the boundary fences were a little run down, a couple of bush horses were  trying to gain some sustenance from grass that had long since disappeared under the weight of weeds and in particular, blackberry and broom. Although it has to be said, this was more on the boundary from canes that were stifled for space in sections that had long been abandoned on the main road, rather than any interior overgrowth of the dreadful plants..
But for us, it was and still is, a special piece of land. For my husband Ken, he has come home to a place he was born and raised just 30 minutes out of a city, a place where his family still live, where many are buried; a place where he left as a late teenager following the city lights - and work - but has always called home.
The view is to die for, 180 degree views of the Te Urewera rainforest on one side, then the tall majestic reaches of the big pine trees that mark just a small portion of the boundaries of the country's largest man-made forest of  Kaingaroa.
100 yards as the crow flies, marking a natural boundary between the forest and us are the lazy, but deep and cold waters of the Rangitaiki River. Less than a kilometre away, the much warmer and therefore much more popular Whirinaki River, upon which the rapids and the trout fishing are tourists delight, is also to be found.
When we heard the news that our tender had secured the land, we were totally chuffed and once it was paid for, headed straight out to walk the boundaries. Which story also happens to be how it got its name. As we walked the perimeter fences, two chattering fantails followed us everywhere, ducking and diving and swooping - and talking fit to bust the whole time. If there had been an avian history, I'm sure we heard it 25 times. They had a ball - and let's face it, fantails know perfectly well they can't be caught and therefore will come in very close, a these two did. So in the dead of winter, Fantail Farm got its name - and its new owners. Next up,  The Plan...