Pirate, Pinocchio and Pinky

Pirate

In a previous post I outlined a very dramatic episode with one of our young heifers, newly arrived on the farm. NO 43 had contracted pink eye and it was so bad, she had to have her eye removed. Since then she has recovered completely, is one of the healthier looking animals in our small herd and has had a name change to Pirate. It has become a tradition to give any animals that stand out for whatever reason a special name, some always retain their ear tag number and some get named " You know, the one with horns" (although horns are not allowed these days as they tend to damage other animals, especially in transit on the back of a cattle truck and you get docked $50.)

Pinocchio

I have to apologise in advance if some of the names are not obviously Female Friesian cross names, Pinocchio has a very long nose, Pirate has one eye (no patch or parrot) Pinky had a pinkeye condition that took months to fade and Goggles has two black eyes on a white face. In the past we have had a Red (she ran like a racehorse and jumped fences) a Friendly (she was obviously a calf club animal and loved being patted) Tiny (she was an IHC donated calf who was very small) a 

 Blondie (VERY white face) Big Tiny (who was small even after being with us for two seasons). Many have been called "Hamburger" after some misbehaviour, and others have been called all sorts of names, not able to be mentioned here. I used to smile when my Grandchildren Samantha and Kyle were visiting from the city as they would talk about names they had given to various animals. I tried to explain that these names would only last for as long as their visit, but they didn't seem to mind and I continued using the names we had given them. One year we had a herd of "Murray Grey" animals who all looked like Bambi and that's where it stayed. Pirate may need some personal feeding as the rest of the heard are starting to barge her around, which is typical of some animals. They seem to pick on the weakest in a herd and give them a hard time and I have noticed that Pirate tends to hang back from the rest.

Wet Autumn

The weather up to last week has been very kind to us and Autumn had arrived quite gently. The Heifers were  barely coping with all the long grass and we won't need to feed out hay until Winter really arrives. Some of the heifers have started to develop their Winter coats and the evenings are starting to get darker earlier, well until daylight saving ends on the 1st April. One Liquid Amber has started to gain it's lovely colours, but all the Oaks, Willows and Maples are still endowed with leaves. That was until Monday! We have just endured three days of torrential rain and high winds and the paddocks are flooded and everything outside is absolutely sodden. We also had a temporary lack of power when a transformer developed problems, but we were planning on having a cold dinner, so it wasn't too dramatic. Of course we needed hard boiled eggs and cooked potatoes with our salad, so I decided to experiment with our portable gas cooker, given as a present some years ago, but never used. What a little beauty! It was a cinch to put assemble and we had cooked eggs and potatoes in no time at all. It was my intention to take this handy gadget with us on a "day off trip" when we were supposed to drive to a small beach on the Whangarei Heads, lay out our portable chairs and picnic basket and cook up some bacon & eggs on our cooker. WE JUST HAVEN'T HAD TIME! Now that I have observed how easy it is to use I can't wait to try it out on the beach and when the weather settles down again we will "grab the moment" and go for a picnic.

Sunflower Seed containers

Another victim of the recent rainfall has been the flower plants, many of which have lost their petals or in some cases fallen over completely, such as the sunflowers. I managed to gather two very large heads and remove them for drying so that we could save the seed for next year, but I might have acted too quickly as I have read that they need to go dark brown on the reverse of the heads. I will have to cover some of the heads that are left, or our dear friendly birds will eat the lot! Our Macadamia trees have dropped quite a large number of nuts and of course these were covered in water as well, although once they have dried out, they should be ok. Fortunately we were able to collect our meager crop of pumpkins and squash and  most of the late crop of spuds are in the pack house. Our pumpkin crop is much smaller than previous years and I blame the wet Summer. Living in a rural lifestyle has many rewards and it doesn't take long to realise that "Mother Nature Rules OK"! But when the rain has stopped and the sun returns and everything has that fresh washed look, it isn't so bad after all.

Pumpkins & Squash

Now I just might have time to pick some fresh grapes and passion fruit before it gets dark, grab a lemon to have with the fish and cut some parsley and spring onions for the side dishes.
Tomorrow (weather permitting) we are back to chopping firewood, trimming bamboo, pruning roses, mowing lawns (battery permitting) and maybe a bit of a read in the afternoon or a test drive in the Lazy Boy Chair!