Darn

Thought I had done so well with rehoming the redhead but I now have to reserve judgement on that.

She may be back... we will see. (if she is back it will be as it is in her best interests)

Update: Appears things are probably going smoothly again now. Fingers crossed.

Update on the update: I HATE rehoming horses! Especially the special cases. I am not entirely sure what Ali's future now holds but where she is is not the right place for her.

Just for fun - from Kiwiblog

Analyse your blog type

Apparently Kismet farm is:

ESFP - The Performers

The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead - they are always in risk of exhausting themselves.

The enjoy work that makes them able to help other people in a concrete and visible way. They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation - qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions.








Looks just like me :-)

Maybe there is something in it

That males are supposed to keep their brains in their testicles...

In horses geldings are usually amendable and often a little dimwitted. Mares are a bit smarter usually. Calypso the stallion though is pretty darn smart.

The minis are on limited grass (it is a fact of life for them) and every morning they go out onto a grassy patch for a while and are taken off it and put back in a bare paddock after a couple of hours. This isn't necessarily to their liking as it is more fun on the grass if you are a short hungry horse. Anyway this morning Calypso waited until I put his lead rope on and left him to get his two girls. By the time I got back to him he had wandered off and was standing inside the gate of his bare paddock waiting to have his halter off. Now that wouldn't have been his choice of behaviour, but obviously he had decided it was inevitable so he might as well get on with it. The other thing he does is turn round so you can do his cover straps up - I used to tell him off for moving until I realised he was being helpful.

Health update

We have a guy at work who opens his mouth to change feet. His thought processes are unusual to say the least and he never ponders anything before just saying it.

I spent 8 hours in a car with him once and ended up ready to kill him. He would have been horrified if he realised how offensive he is, he doesn't mean it.

The other day he was holding forth in a fairly full room. His second cousin had breast cancer or something. I was 5 metres away talking to someone else when suddenly I was called at the top of his voice "Your cancer is fixed now isn't it?"

All eyes swivelled and there was a momentary silence "I wouldn't say it was fixed" I said cautiously "but I'm okay"

"well it must be fixed then" he said "your hair is really long again, you need a hair cut actually"

People are now looking at me strangely I shrug, say "whatever" and decide my empty coffee cup needs filling.

Anyway it isn't fixed, but it isn't progressing very fast. I am starting a new course of radiation this afternoon and we will see where it goes from there. Apart from the travelling to Hamilton every day I quite like radiation, fast, painless and appears effective.

One thing that was bugging me has changed with the change of government (a coincidence?) Late last year the local medical laboratory introduced a charge for a blood test that is an ovarian cancer marker. At $10 a time it wasn't a large charge but I objected on principle to having to pay anything. It felt as though they had singled out the women this test is important for and decided to hit them up because they are a fairly captive audience. I was so annoyed that I walked out and complained to everyone I could think of including Tony Ryall (National Health Spokesman at that time Minister of Health now). Eventually Tony sent me an email explaining they were allowed to charge for some tests in their contract and there wasn't much that could be done about it. I corrected the misinformation they had given him that they had been charging all along but really wasn't too much to be done except continue to complain to anyone who might be vaguely interested (health professionals mostly). As of this week they dropped the charge (said they just decided they would). I claim the victory as mine :-)

Yearlings playing

I took this video clip off the verandah this afternoon. Unfortunately it isn't really close enough. Storm and Tee are currently grazing the back run which is an L shaped strip of land about 8 metres wide down the side and back of our place. They love it in there under the pine trees as they have a good view of most of the area.

Update on Arnold calf

Arnold appeared to be healing quite well until this afternoon when he split the wound open again. Anyway we will see what happens.

His would be buyer is now spitting tacks and left me bad feedback on Trademe as I blacklisted him. He expressed a great deal of dissatisfaction on the phone that we would not sell him Arnold once he was healed up. I explained in no uncertain terms that I blacklisted him as I was not willing to sell him anything and definitely not a living thing. Had he taken Arnold after he damaged him he would now own him. Oh yes he might be up for potential vet bills instead of us...

Some people are just natural born dropkicks. I consider Arnold had a lucky escape.

As usual nothing goes according to plan

Arnold the steer was supposed to leave home in the weekend - enriching our bank account on the way. That was the plan.

We got him in in the morning and tagged him and gave him a pour on drench at the request of the buyer (who said he would pay for it) and left him until the buyer turned up, which he did with the most disreputable looking stock trailer which appeared to not only be a bad design job in the first place but also long overdue for some maintenance.

This guy raved on that he didn't know much about cattle. He was trying to imply that he was going to keep him for a pet forever but did confess to planning to eat him in due course when I asked whether he would be homekilling him (which may sound a bit callous to city dwellers but really steers have no other logical purpose) so either stupid or thought we were. Anyway Arnold was okay so we prepared to load him. The disreputable stock trailer had a variety of sticky out things so didn't sit right up against the yard fence the way other trailers do so we were left with doing the best we could. Not good enough for Arnold of course who attempted to escape down the side and took a chunk out of his shoulder on a sharp and sticky out bit on the trailer.

The buyer then became a cattle expert - this one was wild, would never load, he'd handled Angus bulls for years so he had seen it all, he was not fit for sale, now he was damaged, sale was off and he was leaving. So he did, no money, no apology, no further interest. Obviously just an a***hole.

So here we are with a steer with a big slice in his shoulder, tossing up. Vet - pretty expensive for a cheap steer and he's unlikely to go back into the race today, he really isn't that keen on the people thing at the best of times but definitely not when his shoulder hurts and he's already had his ears pierced today. Maybe we just call the homekill guy and put him in the freezer before he risks infection... uhh No - there is a 21 day witholding period for the drench he didn't need anyway as he was done a month before - and oh look a***hole hasn't paid for that either! Even less impressed. Not only has he damaged our steer on his crap trailer he requested we render him inedible and didn't pay for it.

In the end poor Arnold got a spray of disinfectant on his shoulder and returned to his mate Amanda.

So far - two days later - the wound looks dry and clean. Hopefully it continues to heal okay. Will then have to redecide his future.

Escape artists

Got up this morning to find a little black cow in with the yearlings. Thought it was probably Arnold Betsy's big bad autumn baby and left 'him' there. Some time later I realised it was Amanda, escaped from the high fences in with the mares.

Further examination shows that it was no small achievement escaping from that paddock, the top of the netting has been pulled away from the top wire and bent over leaving a fence still at least a metre high that the little black biddy had gone over.

By mid afternoon she had got as far as the cows - through two electric fences - and was chasing her mother round intent on suckling despite being weaned five months ago.

So husband came home and we determined that we would separate Amanda and Arnold and put them in the paddock behind the garage which would be handy for Arnold who is leaving home this weekend and while they were both in the general vicinity of the yards we could tag them which is somewhat overdue.

It went exactly to plan (yeah right!) - we put hay out for the cows and started moving the calves out the gate - at which point the calves bolted down the other end of the paddock and the cows all ignored their hay and shot out the gate. Well I guess that separated them. Good thing most of our paddocks have more than one way in and out - with a change of plan we sent the calves in the other direction, chased the cows three or four times round and back through the gate, chased the goats round the garden where they had escaped to and returned them to the paddock before they ate all the fruit trees, and yelled at each other in a heated manner. In the meantime little Gemma came through the fence (she's good at that) to eat the cows hay and had to be returned.

Eventually they all got to where they are supposed to be. But it took ten times as long as it should have.

Ears

Doing her giraffe impersonation.

Roxy games

Play with me or

I'll eat the trees

And run off with the lead rope.

Adios to the redhead

It is so scary rehoming horses! You worry that they may end up in the wrong place.

Ali the redhead is really surplus to requirements. She's come a long way from when she arrived with problems letting anyone walk past her shoulder in case they beat her from behind - these days you can trim her tail even, and fart around standing behind her deciding to exactly what level you will trim it. She even got to the point where the vet could talk to her. (He went "Look I'm patting your mad mare")

Anyway I put her on Trademe, with suit paddockmate or broodmare, explaining that she was nervous, was probably unbroken and had a puffy knee, and that the home was the one non negotiable thing about her rehoming. The price was more or less what the dog tucker people would pay (to disuade anyone thinking they would make a profit from putting her on the truck)

So I got a lot of emails asking if she was suitable for a beginner...
A beginner what? A beginner breeder yes possibly, a beginner rider - ummm hello! what part of 'probably never broken' do you not understand? Does 'nervous (but not dirty), needs consistant kind handling' suggest anything to you? *sigh* obviously not...

Some girl rang up last week "I'll take her, she's cheap enough" A chat revealed that she last had a pony when she was five, so she has decided to get back into riding, she has no grazing, she has no vet, farrier or horsey friends... (possibly she has no brain!). She raves on about trust and riding bareback to become one with the horse. Must have been reading those kids pony stories. I suggest that this isn't the horse she needs at this point and get a curt and sarcastic "well sorry to waste your time" and hung up on.

In the meantime some people we know locally had dropped in and had a look at her. They are Parelli followers and Ali looked them up and down, checked out the savvy string figured it wasn't going to hurt her and decided that she would try her utmost to understand what they wanted. They thought she was reactive but promisingly willing and loved Tee so liked the idea of her as a broodmare. As homes go for the little red mare it was ideal.

So today we dropped her off to them. She didn't say goodbye to us, she was busy checking out her new paddock mate and her new paddock.

while I'm loading photos

Tee on the left and Storm on the right

Little Gemma showing her baby bump (she's due around Christmas)


And Tee - even bum high and gangly and with half a winter coat he's still a pretty baby

horseplay

By the time I got my camera they had stopped, but I took a photo anyway. The little black bovine is Amanda our Dexter heifer. She had her first birthday the other week. The problem was she also came into heat and she is too young to be mated. She is surrounded by our bull on one side and the neighbours bulls on the other (and those characters have no respect for fences). So to keep her from a teenage pregnancy we chucked her into one of the paddocks fenced for big birds - and currently occupied by the mares.

Roxy is entranced with Amanda - she tastes good apparently given the licking she has had and Rox keeps and eye on her most of the time. Amanda is sure that Roxy is the biggest cow in the world so must be herd leader.

The photo I missed tonight was the pair of them playing chase round the paddock. Sometimes Amanda was doing the chasing and sometimes Roxy was.

Waiting for the rain to stop

There are fifteen punnets of bedding plants (cheap from the red shed) sitting out on the front lawn. Garden is dug over and the trowel and gloves are waiting.

I had just got myself organised to add cottage garden colour to the garden in front of the verandah and the rain started.

Yesterday we went out with a few more plants to replace the winter casualties in the shelter belt (and save some from being engulfed in pasture) It rained at that precise moment too.

Think I'll go and read a book.

The long and the short of it.

Spring is in the air and even an old mare thinks about getting herself a stallion.

The problem for Ears (the dark old girl hanging over the gate) is that the only entire male horse in the general area is sort of short. This doesn't mean you can't flirt with him apparently.

Calypso - the short stallion in front of the gate - doesn't realise he is short of course. In fact he knows he is quite tall and also very sexy. He requested that the gate be opened several times.

Now that the three big girls have finished mowing the driveway and are back in their paddock he is standing at the gate calling Ears to come back. She doesn't seem THAT keen.

tanks again

So second plumbing attempts were more successful.

Now instead of one almost full tank we have two half full tanks.

Somehow that feels not quite as good as having an almost full tank, and I am still pondering why I feel like that - some deep childhood trauma must have affected me. Or maybe my grasp of volume mathmatics isn't that good.

Tanks Alot

As many New Zealand rural dwellers do we have a rainwater tank water supply. So the rainwater off the various roofs round the place collects in a rather large rather disreputable looking concrete water tank. And mostly that works just fine. Except back at the end of January when it didn't rain for a while and we ran out. Not too big an issue as it conveniently rained six hours later but irritating none the less.

So at Fieldays we walked up and put the credit card down and ordered a new plastic tank (at a fairly good price too) to add to the water storage facilities.

About two months later they delivered it, and we rolled it round a bit and tied it to the fence so it didn't blow away and rang a couple of plumber/drainlayers about getting it connected. One never showed up and the other showed up about a week after he said he would and said it was no big deal and as soon as we put the tank down on the proscribed base in the selected place he would show up and plumb it up. So we did that and rang him back - no problem he said, he'd be out Monday the next week.

That was a couple of weeks ago. He's failed to return calls or contact us at all since. He can't have gone to the wrong place as he's been here before... we left a phone number a couple of times so doubt he lost that. He's even put leaflets out in mailboxes in the last week promising prompt reliable service. Maybe he doesn't like us. Not sure why, our cheques are as good as anyone else's (and better than some no doubt)

So yesterday we went and discussed the whole thing with the plumbing and irrigation experts in town and bought a whole heap of parts. They agreed with the plumber about how it should work so it seemed relatively straight forward.

Except the plan to fill the new tank from the old tank and run them both in tandem doesn't work. And when we applied ourselves and our memories of high school science lessons to it we could see that it wouldn't work the way they said it would.

We think we have the solution - but now it needs more parts.

the kitchen (almost) finished

Thought it was about time I showed you how the kitchen came out. To the right - past the stove - is a walk in pantry that fills what was previously a blank piece of hallway. Behind me is the old pantry which has been refitted to take the plates and serving dishes and things. It is the most basic kitchen we have ever done but my favourite (so far)

oops - edit

so bored with the rain I have taken to repeating myself it appears. Also bored with the mud.... :-)

so very bored

with the rain.