PREPARING FOR WINTER.

PREPARING FOR WINTER 2024.

We've been here just over 3 years.  We left for all sorts of reasons.  Maybe escaping the ravages of Covid, maybe moving to a patch of paradise from an inner city 3 roomed 3rd floor flat, maybe for an adventure,  maybe there was still a veil of grief after the death of my Dad, maybe to leave his house sale which had become laborious and from which I was excluded after family feuds, maybe after some serious prolonged workplace bullying from an -ologist had finally taken its toll.  It all came just at the time when retirement was looming.  Why not take the chance and go for the adventure?  Anyway, I just feel that I have got to a stage in life where are can't be bothered with shi*te and rubbish from others, just as I'm sure they cant be bothered with it from me.

As the northern hemisphere races towards longer days and higher temperatures, we are going in the opposite direction.  We've had a couple of frosts, sunrise is at about7.00am and sunset about 5.35.  There has been 2 big deluges of rain, one about 50mm in 24 hours and today's about 40mm in 24 hours.

The sheeps have all put their winter coats on and so far haven't complained about being cold, even if they do get a bit wet.  We have purposefully not filled the wood shed with wood to keep dry, so that they can keep dry, but a lot of the time they aren't interested.  Wet wood for us is such a sacrifice

As for wood for the winter fires, we have had 6 trees chopped down and then Ali and I cut them into the right sized rings.  After around 9 hours at the log splitter it is now all split into fire size logs.  All we have to do now is stack it.  We wont be stacking it in the same beautiful and meticulous way our friend does!

The induction hob has been put away as has the electric oven.  During the winter months we make greater efforts not to use high energy using devices.  The gas hob, oven and the oven heated by one of our fires are now in use.

The winter highlight so far has been a weekend of hazy blue petrol odour filled fun aka the Ruakokopatuna Enduro motor bike ride.

The weather was perfect.  The rain had stopped, the sky cloudless and the wind was gone.

Martinborough-ians will have noticed a fleet of utes, white vans and cars with trailers all loaded with full fuel cans, spares wheels and motor bikes.  They were heading for the annual international Enduro at the world famous in New Zealand circuit in Ruakokopatuna.  International? Yes, the event hosted the biggest smiling Chinese entrant with whom all communication was via a translating app.  His last comment before departure was “I am happy to be alive”!!

At 9.30 on Saturday 8 July about 70 mighty 250 cc engines roared into an exhaust smoking, wheel spinning roar.

Saturday saw 3 shorter loops in 3 different locations.  Each rider rode each loop 3 times after which the timekeepers, course marshals and event organiser fed times, positions and points into a computer which in turn churned out a result.

Then they moved onto the next circuit.

In a modest way the starter quietly said ‘Go’.  The stopwatch started.  The revs went up.  It was any wonder anyone heard the command.  The back wheel spun and mud splattered everyone within 25 metres.  The roar was deafening and the rider, in the style of Evil Kneival, front wheel raised flew off faster than Concorde at take-off, to disappear into the rolling paddocks(!) for about 15 kms.

For a few minutes the air was its usual peaceful Wairarapa best and suddenly the front runners were almost flying back.  Bouncing over troughs and crests, right leg out to turn a sharp hairpin and open up the throttle to power up a near vertical rutted rocky slope.  A couple mis judged the amount of roar that was needed and halfway up took a gentle tumble.  The simple solution was to free wheel back to the bottom open the throttle even more and like an apollo rocket launch up the hill.  Success!!

The resident sheep looked on with bemusement.

Sunday saw 101 enthusiasts, from ‘experts’ to ‘intermediates’ rumble up the Ruakokopatuna valley for a different challenge.  Sunday was about 90 kms with stages and time trials enroute.  River crossings, through woodland, paddocks, over rocks and no doubt 4 hours of fun and excitement with a refuelling stop at the halfway stage.

By 2.00pm the barbeque was hot and string after string of sausages were being fried to be made into delicious sandwiches accompanied by fried onions and red, brown or yellow squirty stuff.  By 3.00pm the sausages were running out and so out came the venison.  The tables were filled with cakes, cakes and more cakes made by the great local valley folks.  The air was filled with laughs and stories, of tumbles, broken sprockets and losing the route.  Again, all the various numbers and times were fed into the computer and produced a spread sheet of numbers and percentages aka results, but no one was all that bothered.  All that mattered was that everyone had had a blinkin good time.

Parents glowed with pride, mates ribbed mates and the event Doctor, despite being prepared with suturing equipment, splints and an AED surprisingly had nothing more to do than apply an ice pack to a sore knee.  The miracle of Ibuprofen had the lad back on his bike on Sunday with fixed front brakes after having (legally) butchered a few bikes from a local barn. 

At one point the question was asked “what is the requirement for safety attire”, “you must wear a helmet and boots, otherwise you can ride naked”.  But no one did.

Ali was the resident Dr who expected to be growling around up hill and down dale on a side by side with splints, drugs and the AED, but none of it.  All she needed was an ibuprofen and an ice pack.  She didn't even need the phone to call the helicopter.

 

The Dr leaving in the 'ambulance'.        Medical treatment on the field couch.

I was the chief sausage fryer, on the basis that there probably wasn't much meat in them; I was suddenly indisposed and had to leave when the recently killed deer appeared.

By sunset the previously full paddock was empty of vehicles as people headed back to Auckland, Dunedin, Feilding, Marlborough and Ruakokopatuna.  The latest round of the annual national enduro championships was over and declared a roaring success.  Peace and quiet filled the valleys again.

It was all good fun, and no one was adversely affected.  What’s not to like?

Is it a bit odd that an old man gets so excited by the smallest of things.  After an egg drought of about 3 months, I lifted the lid to the chicken house and there was a solitary egg.  I was so excited!!

                                                    EXCITEMENT!!!!

Just down the road was a big pine tree plantation, which are euphemistically called 'exotics', which to me seems a bit odd considering there are so many much more exotic trees perversely referred to as 'natives'.  That reminds me too much of the ravages of the colonialist past so I call them indigenous trees.  Anyway, I digress, they were all chopped down leaving a massive pile of 'slash'  Slash is one of the causes of land slips, blocked rivers and floods. These pine trees were no doubt a part of the 'carbon credits' scheme which operates here.  We were driving home one day and discovered the way to get rid of the slash was to put a match to it. Three weeks later it is still smoking and smouldering.  Why do I have a sense of irony?  The fire was unattended through out!

We continue to wave our flags for Gaza, and we continue to get weekly abuse.  'V' signs, a few colourful 'f's' shouted at us as they drive past, but last week it hit a new low.  Only a mere spit at us.  But we persevere and on the 1 August we are arranging a fund raising concert.  The local string quartet will perform a concert, some one will sing songs, and 4 people who have been to the Illegally Occupied West Bank or Gaza will describe what they have seen.  You can't argue with them.  Of course there will be a raffle for which we have some good prizes, not least watermelon thundies from a local undies manufacturer, meal vouchers, chocolate, meat, soap, and much much more.  It just seems wrong that killing tens of thousands, many of whom were innocent men, women and children can be considered to be 'ok'.  BTW it didn't start on October 7.  It all started decades ago.

 

As you do, on a Friday evening, you have a blind Bollinger tasting.  The hypothesis is that Bollinger bought in UK is different from that bought in NZ which is different to that bought in Australia.  Let's put it to the test.  The reason for the possible difference is that Bollinger shipped from Europe gets bounced across the oceans, sits dockside in Dubai in containers, the insides of which the temperatures reach destructive heights.  That of the UK remains all pretty constant, from France.  One NZ bottle as a 'control'.  You will also notice that all bottles have been opened using the old technique of sabrage - look it up, You Tube it!  Anyway, it was conclusive that when you have 3 bottles side by side to taste, the Sainsbury's bottle of Bollinger was the best.  The conclusion: no more Bollinger from Sydney duty free.

The annual olive harvest along with energy giving wonderful cake has been and gone.  This year was a very different harvest to previous years.  The crop, world wide has been smaller than previous years.  This year we had about a third of what we had last year.  However, last year we had an oil return on weight of 9%, which everyone said was very low.  This year it was 16%.  So even with a lot less olives, we still got a reasonable amount of oil.  No complaints.

All our warmth is provided by fires and in the winter our hot water is also provided by fire.  Preparing to keep warm starts in early summer, when we go into the woods and chop up 3 or 4 pine trees that have been cut down for us.  It's left to dry and in about April we hire a big, noisy, grunty log splitter and split it all into fire size logs.  I think we'll have enough, that splitting took about 2 days.  The valley operates a great friendship of help and bartering.  Our friend from down the road helped with the log splitting and in return drove away with a trailer of firewood.  Thanks David!

  

 

Our great friend suggested that a good way of getting brilliant tomatoes was to put an egg in the bottom of the hole when I planted it.  What she didn't tell me was that I needed to break the egg first, so when I was digging the soil over  ..... this is what I dug up!

One lawn mower - lots of effort

Seven lawn mowers - no effort at all.

At the football, when the ref messed up or someone was a nano gram overweight we'd sing "you fat b*st*rd", and for some reason we thought it was quite funny.

We were told how good the northern and southern lights were and were shown a million amazing photos.  I was lucky enough to see them in Iceland and knew it was another 'once in a lifetime' opportunity, so I drove 40 minutes down to see the unhindered horizon by the sea, I sat there for 2 hours and came home.  These  are what I saw. Stunninggggggg.

ITU.  Curtain for dignity and privacy.

 

                                                                                   Applying sun cream

There has been illness.  Loppy, named after his over heavy ears quite quickly became lethargic and then his ears became swollen and then his whole face.  It was pretty worrying.  Apparently he had facial eczema, but some of our local farmer friends said it wasn't possible.  But he showed all the signs.  It's a lack of zinc and leads to serious photosensitivity.  Sun cream was plastered onto his face and ears and when not outside he was locked in the wood shed aka ITU.  Not long ago Lamborghini resembled a sluggish Datsun with a puncture.  He was limping. And spending a long time sitting around, He was administered a pedicure, nails trimmed and then sprayed with Vetadine, nails sprayed blue with tetra vet, and then his foot put in a plastic bag with a wadge of gauze soaked in Manuka honey.  He walked around with his foot in a plastic bag for 2 days.  After limping for 2 days he got 8mls of penicillin.  Lets see what happens.  What I am sure of is that all the farmers who have 3000 sheeps put sun cream on them and give their limping sheep a manuka honey poultice.  We had the lovliest guests visit, a relative from Canada, she thought it was pretty bizarre but rather nice to apply sun cream to Loppy. 

Then we went up to the glow worm caves, which they loved, and so do I!

      

  

About 2 kms up the road on our wonderful neighbour farmers have glow worm caves and the are amazing.  Under the open sky we see the best stars; in the caves we see the 'alternative' milky way.

It is all perfectly normal that when you arrive home in the car and open the door a sheep jumps in.  Of course it is!  Loppy jumped in, into the foot well and under the steering wheel and got well and truly stuck.  It was actually quite difficult to get him out!

At the pretty amazing ?? can't remember exhibition at the National Gallery, Sydney 

    

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We've had another productive year from the garden.  You can see the quality of the maize and the abundance of bhindi/okra that we have had.  Sweet potato wasn't bad but feijoas and peaches were fantastic.  Along with them we've had good beetroot, leeks and the rest of the usual.

After a gorgeous bike ride I chanced up this winery , looking over the vines, a stunning view, I really really enjoyed a yummy pizza.

Tennis still goes well and is a lot of fun.  My ball to racquet connection wasn't good so I bought some new racquets.

 

I was once told that people who wear glasses

appear 68% more intelligent than they actually are.

                                                           Just relaxing with my feet up

  I've got my eye on you

I do hope you all get the result to the election that you want, not forgetting partying, PPE contracts, overt racism, eat out to spread it about, austerity, Nick Clegg, Rwanda, condoning bombing to death thousands, including thousands of innocent your children, 12% pay increase but a whole lot less for everyone else, Barnard Castle, sewage in the rivers and the rest.

In these difficult times for so many people I wonder if some chocolate is one of our best hopes to     "BE HAPPY".

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I'm pleased that my musings are getting read by a few people.

It's lovely that some of you email, as a reply to them.  I love to hear from you.

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There is an opportunity for people to comment directly to the edition you are reading on the blog page.

It's lovely that some of you do.

Here is the request: 

It comes through as a 'no reply' email address, and if you post as 'anonymous' of course I don't know who has sent it and then I can't reply.  It displays as 'unknown' on the comments page.

The last 'unknown simply said "Thanks for the update. I hope you both stay well and warm!"

Please can you NOT reply as anonymous.

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Hahaha, I used to do it on a message board and my Dad identified me and told me off!!  I was told that if I was going to make comment I should have the 'balls' to take ownership.

Thanks!