Farming Weekend

Friday Lilo found out that the water tank was empty. This is the header tank on top of the hill. She filled it up just 2 days before. So the cows must have broken one of the waterlines which go across tracks and paths all over the place. And when she found it she was excited  - NOT!

This is one end of the water line:

But where is the other end? Ohh here it is:
Right under the cow pad. How wonderful. And of course - no water to wash it off. Yuck!
Saturday was a rainy day all day. No work done. The vegetable garden needs fencing off. So the weather changed our plans again. We went to town and went shopping at the Kaitaia market. 

Kaitaia Market on a good day

We spent the rest of the day with reading and feeding the calves in the late afternoon. Then it was off to Ruth's birthday party. Lilo made a Mousse aux Chocolat. Stephan, Ruth's partner created awonderful dinner. A roasted porkleg and a huge variety of vegetables. All topped of with his famous Crème brûlé and Lilo's Chocolate Mousse on the side. We had a brilliant evening and met very nice people. Unfortunately Ruth's birthday present didn't arrive in time so she will have to wait. 

Sunday: Eventually the weather broke and we had a dry-ish day. We got the post hole borer out and finished the posts. Then it was digging holes for the stays. Once that was completed we pulled the wires and Lilo attached the strainers.

 Lilo is so much better than I am with all this fencing stuff. She loves it. I got the job to walk up and down and up and down pulling the wire off the spinning jenny. Then the staples went in and we put tension on. Oh dear, one of the strainer posts came out again. So we decided since it was a corner post to attach the other wires to the other side and then put the tension on. But "Oh dear" again. The other strainer post started twisting. The ground is too wet and too soft. So Lilo decided the post needs a foot. Well we left this job for Monday. 

But I got the battens onto one side of the fence. All by myself. This sounds like "Hey look how proud I am, I did this all by myself" but if you have ever done any fencing you know you usually can't do this job alone. One has to hold the batten and push against it with something heavy (we use a sledge hammer) and the other puts the staples in. 

But we recently bought an nice tool from Strainrite called an Adjustable Batten Clamp. This tool is one of those "What have I done without it?" tools. It works brilliantly. I could easily get all battens on the fence. 

The End result

All of us were working really hard

Molly and Coco