Death Notice

One baby duckling died. Sad, but not as bad as I expected. On Saturday Pip became more and more moribund as the day wore on. We could tell she was trying to coax the ducklings out of the kennel, so we built a little ramp so they’d be able to get in and out, and I noticed she was very quiet when we were working around her. Too quiet. When I picked her up and examined her, she’d lost a huge patch of feathers from her breast. Then I examined my hands – mites all over me! Mites look like moving pinpricks on your hands and once you spot them, you start scratching all over. Luckily I still had some mite powder from Smitty’s ‘ride from hell’ down in the horse truck from Auckland, so Colin gave her a good dusting and we put her back with the ducklings. But a few hours later she was still not good. I noticed her drinking copious amounts of water and breathing really heavily, then not long before it was dark she’d gathered the ducklings under her and gone  to sleep with her face slumped down in her food. I didn’t think she’d live through the night, and worried how I’d raise three baby ducklings.

But, next morning she was perky as ever, but with only two live ducklings. One was pushed out into the cold, and dead. Maybe she did this on purpose. Maybe she calculated that one duckling had to be sacrificed to save herself and the two other ducklings, otherwise they would all perish. Animals do this. We were so delighted to see our beautiful Pip alive and well we got her out of that kennel into the sunshine and on to the grass. She loved that, and relished being free again after patiently sitting on those eggs for four long weeks. Now she’s in a new run, with a wooden wine box for a house, covered and protected by Smitty’s winter cover, and really mothering her two ducklings.

Meanwhile, I trekked up to see the two equine members who are shedding their winter coats, and Smitty as usual looks like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. His old coat gets a bit tangled but I don’t comb it off because it offers some warmth as we creep into spring, and yet the weather is too hot for him to wear his heavy winter cover (and, being the gentleman he is, he’s loaned it to Pip).

The horses are as fat as butter, up there in Farmer John’s hill paddock, all 110 acres of it, because the clover’s growing faster than Smitty, Lily or the ewes and lambs can eat it. Most of Farmer John’s lambs are Dorset Down cross, hence the smudgy-black markings. Note how big this lamb is, and it hasn’t even been weaned yet. You hear so-called gourmet “experts’ moaning about how New Zealand lamb is not really lamb because it’s too big to be lamb. Well, what would they have us do? Rip lambs from their mothers’ breasts and send them to slaughter?

I love the way the ewes and lambs watch Taja and me so suspiciously as we walk up over the brow of the hill:

Then scarper when we get too close for comfort.

As if dear old Taja would hurt them anyway. I can trust her with anything – I bet she’d pick up one of the ducklings in her gentle mouth without harming it.

 

The New Baby

And here’s the new baby:

 

Desperately Seeking Friends

Pip and Squeak (not their real names) are reproducing. Pip went clucky and because I’d been taking all her eggs, she was sitting on air. Then my friend Jacquie gave me some ducks’ eggs – three – so now Pip is patiently trying to hatch out three Peking ducklings.

Which has left Squeak very lonely. At first he tried to single out one of the hens but Winston didn’t like that at all. There was no way he was going to give up one of his harem to a mere – ahem – pip squeak bantam rooster like Squeak (which of course isn’t his real name at all anyway) and they had some massive fights. Actually, Winston came off second best even though he is bigger. For all his preening and showing off, the bantam rooster is tougher. It was fascinating watching them fight. CCQC couldn’t stand it one morning when we woke up, and streaked across the front lawn, stark naked, bare-footed, trying to break them up, (sorry – the photo was all blurry) but all he achieved was two feet full of thistles which I had to dig out.

Anyway, they soon grew tired of fighting, and when even the chooks repelled Squeak’s advances, he took to hanging around Taja and because she is the most patient, the kindest dog in the world, she tolerates him. Mind you, I overheard her telling him the relationship is strictly platonic. In the morning, we see Squeak accompanying Taja on her rounds, then he sits out front with her, waiting for me to feed her.

He hangs around while she’s eating, eyeing those cat biscuits (yes, it’s a treat for the old dog to have cat chow for brekky), hoping she won’t notice if he pokes his beak in and sneaks a few.

But her tolerance definitely does not extend to sharing her breakfast, and despite the fact she’s 16 years old, she still knows how to scare a bantam rooster away from her dinner bowl.

I just can’t wait to see Squeak’s ego deflate when three ducklings are waddling along behind him calling out “Dad! Dad! Dad!”

 

Pigs or Archaeologists?

Pigs are known to be smart but these two Wessex Saddlebacks of ours, Bratwurst and Crackling, purchased from Rose in the enchanting little town of Eketahuna, are trying to convince me that their destiny in life is not to be bacon and pork, but to be archaeologists. Some weeks back, Builder Bruce and his lovely daughter Charlotte helped me put wire rings in the pigs’ noses so they wouldn’t root up the ground. What a performance! Pigs squeal when you just pick them up, let along poke a sharpened piece of wire through their snouts. I won’t say it doesn’t hurt them, because it does, but no more than oh, if you’re a man over the age of 40 reading this, than when you were circumcised, and can you remember that? No. And I bet you squealed like billyo. The pigs lay down in the shade for an hour or so, and looked at me balefully, but soon they were up and about, their tails curly once more, especially when I went back down there with a bucket full of nicely cooked barley. But it hasn’t really stopped them rooting:

So far they have uncovered a muesli bar wrapper (bet they were brassed off to find nothing inside it), an empty potato chip bag, masses of rocks and stones but no heart-shaped ones, plastic wire and some polystyrene chips. There’s a tale behind the polystyrene chips. This site is extremely windy. In August 2006 when Holmes Construction began building our house, they brought out a Port-o-Com, which is a portable office made like a shipping container, and wired it in site, and also a big pile of polystyrene slabs for the foundations. Next day they returned to find the wind had picked up the Port-a-Com and dumped it five rows into the vineyard, whilst the polystyrene had been broken into millions of small pieces and scattered over about five hectares of vines.

Sorry pigs, nice try, but you are not put on this earth to be noted archaeologists. Don’t be offended. There is nothing wrong with ending up a nicely roasted midloin, with crisp crackling and apple sauce made from Mum’s braeburns. And what sweet pork it will be, now that I’ve got them to eat their peas. The first day I dished up peas for them, they went for me! Pigs are meant to eat anything, but they turned their noses up, snuffled around in the bucket and when they found peas was all there was for breakfast they chased after me and bit me on the backs of my jeans. I had to swing around and lash out with my gumboots, wag my finger and warn them the bacon man would be coming sooner rather than later if this behaviour continued. That’s all there is on the menu, I said. By end of day, they had, disconsolately, eaten their peas. Sigh. It’s like having children all over again, except we don’t eat our children do we.

 

Holy Cow

Farmer John received the biggest April Fool’s joke of all on Wednesday morning. He was bringing his cows in off the hill for pregnancy testing and one of them was very reluctant to shift. She alone knew she didn’t need testing, in fact, she gave birth that morning:

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I was coming home from singing practice. I saw this lone cow in the holding paddock, screetched to a halt, and there was this little calf tottering around beside her. Is it an early calf, or a late calf? That is the question we are all asking. And it doesn’t pay to inquire about the sire – possibly a very close relative. Hopefully the rest of the girls won’t produce until July, but it looks like this mother will have a relatively easy winter from now on, as it doesn’t pay to let a bull calf like this run rampant through a herd.

And on another bad news, sad news note, Farmer Pete’s huntaway bitch had her puppies but they all died soon after they were born. Despite rushing mother and puppies to the vet, none survived. Such a shame, as we were so excited about the thought of a new arrival here at Redbank. We’ve put the word out, though, that we’re on the hunt for a good pup. It’s dog trials in Martinborough this weekend so we’ll see what turns up.

As Farmer John chuckled, at the moment his farm seems to produce live offspring when they’re not wanted, and dead offspring when they’re very much wanted. That’s farming.

 

Pip and Squeak

Look at these two.

I bought them a few weeks back, along with three pheasants which have since flown the coop (though I’ve found one living in the Pinot Noir). They are Silkie Bantams and they are very shy. So shy, in fact, that they don’t want their names made public, so we’ll just call them Pip and Squeak. Pip is the female, very bossy (why are we not surprised?):

And Squeak is the male, more reticent but starting to flap his wings and act like a rooster should:

They’ve begun to follow me around like little dogs and aren’t nearly as pushy as the chooks. The chooks! The chooks keep me occupied chasing them off the verandahs all afternoon. Even after I’ve hosed off all the kaka, they deliberately march up on the boards and drop their squishy calling cards. But they won’t do this for long. I’m getting a huntaway pup soon, and I’m going to train him/her to chase the chooks off the verandahs.

Meanwhile, back to my little poultry version of a bichon frise. Isn’t she cute, with her little blue earrings? Beats a Kelburn/Remuera ankle biter any day:

 

Naughty Little Piggies

Meet Bratwurst and Crackling. They are two months old, and we got them two weeks ago from a delightful pig lady called Rose in Eketahuna. She breeds pigs, and all sorts of chooks and bantams, and like me, she loves pigs. I found them on TradeMe, and put them in sacks in the back of the car to bring home. You can see the lovely pig-pen that Colin built for them, and I’ve had to put a hotwire around the inside to stop them escaping into the vineyard. They did that when I first brought them home, and it was the funniest thing, seeing my daughter from London sprinting after this little pig with his ears flapping, looking over his shoulder, to see if she was getting closer. You can’t catch a pig – you just have to tempt them back into their house with food.

That’s Crackling in front. He’s the friendliest, but probably Bratwurst (Brattie) is the smartest. They are Wessex Saddlebacks, which is why they are black, but this is better for free-range, outdoor pigs because they don’t get sunburned in our heat. They are both boars, and cousins.

As you can see, they have heaps of lovely long grass to root around in, eat, and generally get lost in. Pigs are such clean animals. For the first week I kept them in the small enclosure around their lovely house, and they always did their kaka and mimi in the far corner away from their food and water. Always in the same place, which made it very easy for me to clean out and store as manure for the rambling roses I planted around the perimeter of their pen yesterday. Lovely old roses, with strong perfumes – Alberic Barbier and Vita Sackville West’s favourite rose – Blanc Double de Coubert.

In this photo you can see the white saddleback on Brattie, which for some reason, Crackling missed out on:

Here’s their snug house, which we bought ready-made from East Taratahi Timbers in Carterton. It’s filled with pea straw inside and at night they cuddle up together with their noses buried in the straw. Happy as pigs in, well, straw!

Here’s the QC feeding the pigs, and the little piggies eating up their dinner. I know what you’re thinking, I’ll get too attached to them and won’t be able to turn them into roast pork, sausages, bacon, and ham but I’ll have to because they are boars and you can’t keep boars – they get too vicious and unmanageable. That’s why I’ll never get sows. And at least they will have a happy life before they die. What we all wish for, really.

 

Cock-a-doodle-doo and cackle cackle cackle

Here are the chooks. Six hens and a rooster. The hens are Rhode Island Red crossed with brown leghorns, and the rooster, no relation to the chooks (thankfully, otherwise there would be a lot of incest going on in the vineyard) is Brown Leghorn.

Winston, the rooster, is a very smart cookie. He proudly leads his harem around the place, and every time they bend over to peck at something he…well, he does what a rooster is supposed to do. At least he tries, but the hens skip away if they see him coming. He’s the boss, no question. He sometimes separates off two hens and takes them under the verandah of the shearers’ quarters. I hate to think what they get up to under there; no good, I’ll be bound.

They have a lovely, snug chookhouse, with five nesting boxes, and at the moment I’m getting three pullet eggs a day. It means I no longer buy eggs (though my friend Jacquie has ducks, and she’s been giving me duck eggs, so I’ve been doing lots of baking). One problem, is they all pile into the nests at night to roost, and do their kaka in there, so in the morning I have enough manure to grow a market garden of strawberries. To save me using up all my lovely pea straw too soon, I’ve today devised a netting cover which I will draw down at night over the boxes, and I’ve added a natural perch in the chookhouse – the dead Christmas tree minus the needles. I don’t think they like the skinny wooden built-in perch. We’ll see what happens.

But yesterday the funniest thing happened. I went out for lunch, and Colin was at home working. He went down to the pigsty for a while, and left the front door open. When he came back he saw Winston and a hen on the front verandah peering in the window of the French doors. He shooed them away, then thought he saw a hen inside. When he came in, sure enough, a red hen was in the lounge, and what’s more, she’d laid an egg on the floor of the lounge and it was still warm! I couldn’t stop laughing when I came home and he told me what had happened, particularly since animals inside is strictly verboten.

But I find it fascinating the way these chooks interact. They are really mean to Dusty, the one hen which has thrown back to the brown leghorn. She is different so she’s the bottom of the pecking order. Even Winston is mean to her, so I’ll have to keep an eye on her otherwise they’ll kill her. I called her Dusty because she’s so pretty, and was the first to have a dust bath.

Most of the time they stick together, wandering through the vines, singing to each other happily. Winston will flap his wings, stretch his wings out, and crow at some imaginary threat, like Kete, who is absolutely terrified of these bird-monsters.

At night they go into a sort of trance, and I can go into the chookhouse and move them off the nests, stroke them, and they just sort of cluck softly. Last Friday I had to get up at 4am to go to Wellington to catch a plane, and so I fed them at 4.30am before I left, and there was great consternation. It was still dark! Winston hadn’t even started crowing!

I love my chooks.

 

Lily

We now have two horses. Lily arrived two weeks ago, and has already settled in to her new home – 110 acres of hill paddock with lush grass, a stream to splash about in, and big, shady trees where she can escape the heat.

She’s bossy, ill-mannered, big with hooves like soup plates, and adorable:

She was bred in Gisborne, has much Clydesdale in her and some thoroughbred, but essentially she’s a Jigsaw puzzle horse – a bit of this and a bit of that. She’s already pushing Smitty around but he doesn’t seem to mind, he’s just so happy to have a friend who, unlike me, stays with him all night.

Lily’s an appalling guts – when I feed them I have to keep their boxes well apart because she tries to put her snout into her box, then backs around to threaten Smitty with her kicking back legs if he wants to eat his food. Poor Smitty, but he’s so love-struck he just lets her get away with anything! Smitty, Smitty, Smitty – you must assert yourself and not be so mare-whipped.

 

Trixie

It’s becoming quite a regular occasion, riding down at the Whangamona coast with Jacquie, Ineke, Heather, and Dawn. I don’t take Smitty because I don’t have a horsefloat and even if I did, old horses don’t travel too well behind a vehicle – they find it hard to keep their balance.

So I ride Trixie, the minxiest little grey Arab mare I have ever met. She’s about 18 years old and has an outstanding personality. Her shoulders are a little stiff from arthritis, so she doesn’t like trotting or going downhill. When we start going down a slope, Trixie starts pig-jumping (some people call this pig-rooting – it’s a mild form of bucking). She doesn’t get me off, but it’s a bit disconcerting.

She really likes being out in front of all the other horses, with her ears pricked, striding out, and she loves the sound of her shod feet going clip-clop, clip-clop on the tarseal road. When we go through a narrow pass in the valleys, or round the side of a hill which looks a bit steep and spooky, and the other horses shy and be silly, Trixie pushes her way through and insists there’s nothing to be woosy about. “Make way, make way,” she seems to say. “Get out of my way, and stop being silly babies. See, there’s nothing to it.”

Once when we let the horses go, and Jacquie’s donkey stallion was bothering Holly, trying to climb on, Trixie rushed over and chased him away, “We’ll have none of that nonsense in MY paddock. Go and find someone your own age, size, and breed for heaven’s sake. Jacquie doesn’t want any mules.”

She’s incredibly sure-footed, and very careful where she puts her feet. You can totally trust her to take you where the ground is safest. But there’s one thing she absolutely, unreservedly hates, and that’s Heather’s horse Dawn. Dawn is beautiful – a black, glossy mare with a lovely head – and if she gets near Trixie, the little trick will lay her ears back and, if I’m not concentrating, go for Dawn and bite her or kick her. She even kicked out at her friend Holly on Tuesday, when she got too close, just because she was feeling a little crowded.

But I love her to bits. How could you not, when you see her darling face:

She really belongs to Donald McIlraith, the neighbouring farmer, who gave her to Jacquie to ride. I know I’m getting too fond of her and it has got to stop. This always happens with me and animals – I bond with them too tightly.

But meanwhile, I’ll enjoy Trixie while I can, along with her dear paddock-mate Holly, seen here with Ineke (caught trying to put her foot in the stirrup) up top:

And here’s me on Trixie, posing: