Welcome home Sheamus, Lucifer and Sheba.

They arrived safely! Sheamus the pig and Little Lucifer & Sheba the goats.

We passed!

Yay, we passed the inspection! Three new furry family members will arrive tomorrow, I'm so excited. Lots of photos to come.

Gearing up for the new arrivals.

Construction of the pig pen is coming along nicely, finishing off the fence tonight and building a gate and a goat house. Picking up wood chip and wood shavings tomorrow. Hope we can get it all done in time for the inspection on Friday. If we pass we'll be picking up two little goats and a pig from the SPCA on Saturday. So excited and nervous.

Ella goes nude.

Ella's new synthetic cover has lasted all of two months before she ripped the arse out of it, so I currently have a very naked and miserable pony.

A seed of possibility was sewn today.

I could have a pig. The SPCA has a few of them and my lovely sister suggested one which looks a little bit big but there is another one on there that might be more suited to us. It got me thinking though....

Sick again!

Well I'm sick, off work for four days and to combat the boredom I'm watching Seasons 1-3 of Downton Abbey. Awesome show. Love it.

I miss my outdoor animals. Hoby is great indoor company though.

Stay tuned for.....Bees!

Today I signed up for a 7 week beekeeping course. I can't wait to start on the 4th September. I also joined the Auckland Beekeeping Club.

Books, where would I be without them?

Something that I’m really enjoying at the moment is ordering my books from the library online. I love being able to search through all the books in all the libraries in Auckland and then select and order the ones I want, to be delivered to the library of my choice to collect. I’m an old fashioned girl, I don’t think reading from a tablet will give me the same sense of excitement as opening a book and smelling the sweet aroma of ink and paper. Also, choosing to read paperback books before bed is more for my own health and safety as I usually nod off and end up bopping myself in the nose with the book, a tablet might do a bit more damage!

Obviously the sleep in yesterday did Hoby a world of good, this morning he did a little dance for his breakfast, I love to see him so excited about his breakfast-biscuits. The horses got their much awaited hard feed and I got to work on time.

First Wednesday back at work.

Work on a Wednesday just seems so ‘against the grain’. It was a bit of a struggle; to start with I had a technological programming malfunction. I tried entering in a repeat alarm in my phone but ended up repeating it for the day before and therefore enjoyed a lengthy sleep in with Hoby when it failed to go off. I got to work only 10 minutes late which isn’t too bad I suppose. As I keep reminding my boss, “you never complain when I stay late so you can’t complain when I show up late!” and I have put in some long hours over the busier times.  

The horses got a feed of hay, not hard feed. The chooks were happy as usual to see me emerge from the Heidi-house.

The weekend is almost over.

I spent a lot of time with my lovely Hoby this weekend, it was just what I needed, I miss him so much during the week days when I'm at work.

Sam and I dug over out new garden bed today. It was littered with gravel so the traditional spade method was abandoned and a fork was used to great effect. The clay was so thick and rank in some areas it smelled of sulphur, not ideal for a vegetable garden. It will have sand and compost added to it soon.

Along the back bed beside the caged garden I added two half drums of rotted down horse poo laden with big, fat, healthy garden worms. I made sure the chooks were locked away as worm don't last long with chooks around. I planted a heap of blue flowered borage plants and a globe artichoke and some lemon balm.

I found a very sad looking rhubarb plant too, I doubt it will survive the chickens love the leaves, odd as they're highly poisonous to humans. 

The weekend is here!

Hoby woke me at 4am this morning. The cold comes up through the floor and he wakes up and craves the warmth of my bed. So much for the $50 sheepskin mat I bought him last week. So, I caved in and let him up, he nestled himself next to me, full length, his little chin resting on my stomach.

I woke at 8.30am giving up my yoga class in exchange for a morning of reading instead. I’m currently reading a book by Gerard Hindmarsh about his swamp home. Mum also gave me Wendyl Nissen’s book called Domestic Goddess on a Budget so I read a few pages of that too.

The horses stayed in the ‘pen’ overnight in anticipation of the storm that weather predictors warned up about. It hasn’t arrived yet.

The chooks were happy to be fed, horses too. Little Jack is sitting on eggs and is quite animated at the moment, her broody clucks and tail fanned out give her a ‘don’t mess with me’ aire. 

I completed the normal Saturday ritual. Put on a load of washing, fed everyone and let the horses out onto the driveway to graze. The tasks of picking up poo and cutting gorse are two of my favourites and I say that without any sarcasm. Both are things that require zero thinking, my body goes into autopilot and for a while I am completely relaxed. Weird isn’t it?

So, Tarka is usually the culprit for tucking himself into obscure parts of the property out of sight of Ella which sends Ella into a panic but this morning it was Ella that decided to squeeze between the fence and washing line which had a full load of clean clothes hanging on it. She decided about half way along that perhaps she’d misjudged the move and then I held my breath (and took a photo) as she completed and equine three point turn through my washing.

The sky was blue this morning, I was so surprised to see this. By the afternoon it was raining a bit. I retreated to my neighbour’s house to return her chicken that had taken a wrong turn and ended up very vulnerable with four roosters eyeing her up. The worst thing was that she’s blind in one eye, the chook not the neighbour and tumbled off the bank and rolled to the bottom and into the drain. I had to hand deliver her home rather than convince her with frantic arm gestures and stompy feet. So at least and hour was spent having a chat and cup of tea and cuddle of her dogs. 

Sam and I tried, and failed, to repair the trailer. The axel seems to be too long and no matter what wheels we try they always extend too far outside the guards of the trailer, shortening the axel will be our only choice.

I sanded the little macrocarpa shelf for above the bench top. It is coming up great, I love the gnarly knots and hollows, there’s still a lot of sanding left to do on the shelf, table, bench-tops and breakfast bar before I can varnish them, it seems like a never ending task and a dusty one too.