Sun at last

We had a lovely clear sunny day with clear blue sky and no wind today at last. It was so nice. It was warm in the sun (not so warm out of it since it was a Southerly air), but we spent alot of time outside. George clipped up all the wires to the fence energizer, and also routed the remaining post and rail fence so I can paint it.

I have been annoying anyone that will listen - I have been wearing these Refractive Therapy contact lenses just at night while I sleep since Friday and now I can see 20/20. So I spend the whole day going "Now I can see there are sheep over there in that paddock, and I can see that house way over there on the hill, etc". I'll only need to wear them 2-3 times a week after Friday.

Amazing.

Swimming with the ducks still

Yes, still raining - we have the odd bit of sunshine and this morning a rainbow even....but it hasn't stopped completely. Hoping tomorrow will be better...

George finished the architraves in the bathroom today and sealed the ceiling with sealer paint. Soon we will be able to have really long showers to use up some of the water that's currently overflowing from the tank into the paddocks.

I'll leave you with a couple of photos...

2 months, 1 week

It's been 10 weeks since we moved from our house to here. It's gone so fast!

3 weeks were in a campervan, and now we have been 7 weeks in the barn, slowly making it better and more finished week by week as we have time and money.

We have had gale force winds, torrential rain, thunder & lightening, and of course lots of sun too.

I nearly have all the fence painting done, and we have the living area of the barn lined. George is doing great on the plastering in the bathroom.

Picked up the House Contracts today and we take them to the lawyer to sign on Monday.

It will be interesting to see how quickly the majority of the soil dries out when we do get a break in the rain (none forecast for Monday or Tuesday at this stage).

Well I will tell you one thing - once we get into our house we will look back at all the challenges that we have been through and think wow - did we really do that?!

Mud... aaaarrrgggh

I hate mud - always have. With horses you always have things that are annoying with each season... in summer it's bot eggs and bot flies and ticks and in winter- it's just MUD.

With about a week or more of rain now - and some of the downpours have been really heavy - with thunder and lightening - and lots and lots of rain - not just showers.... well this is a before and after paddock photos... the first picture was taken in April and the latter two today.




Roll on Spring!!

We have lots of challenges in our first year here - all the recently moved/laid topsoil never had a chance to have grass established before winter, we had loads of drainage and trenches dug so that left clay exposed, with no grass.

So - this winter will be the worst - just as well we have yards for the horses so they can give the paddocks a rest for half the day (night time).

Oh -did I mention more rain and gale force winds due tonight and tomorrow??

The hay shed cover is holding up well - all still intact through all the wind the last few days - there was a tornado in Kumeu last night! Thats only 15 minutes from here.

Last night we could hear the waves at Muriwai roaring - it was so loud - we could hear it inside...

Loan for house all approved so we can get the plans into council now.

Bring it on I say!!

Good day for ducks

More rain again today - when I got up to let the boys out of the yards it was raining again - and there was a Paradise Duck in the paddock - quacking!

We get quite a lot of water from the end of the right of way, under our gate, down the drive and past the barn and it all ends up in the paddock.

Here's a piccy.

Once we get the drive reformed and the house finished we will be able to put some drainage novaflow in I guess.

I have spoken with some friends who have sloped well draining soil and they are under water too, so definitely not just us.

Wet

It rained quite a bit last night and this morning turning most of the paddock into a puddle.
You should have seen the amount of water running down from the top of the driveway, down our Pete trench which leads to the middle of the property ultimately.

Just as well the soil drains well here. A few days of sun and wind and it should be a bit better.

Shortest day hit the dust yesterday so on the downhill slope now to more daylight, more sunshine...longer days!

Yay.

Check out this situation map - can you even see NZ??

Stable progress

I am starting to get the stable wash bay/tie up area organised. I have added a couple of shelves to the wall and still have to find homes for other things but until we can open the door to the tack room and feed room with out the cats getting out then alot of stuff just needs to stay outside for easy access. I got these really cool hooks for the halters and lead ropes - they are made of rubber I think so they flex if the horse happens to run into them or bump their head on them.


The paddocks are holding up really well since I have been yarding them at night -I took these photos tonight just after 5pm.

You can see Helensville quite clearly in the sunset light.

And what a great sunset it was too!

Stash It

I got this canvas hay shed cover made by a lady called Helen at Stash It. It is so cool - I love the colour and she has thought of everything - it has a clip to clip the right hand side open and fasteners down the side.

She could not have picked a better colour!!
It has a sleeve at the top where George put a piece of wood to screw the whole thing up - and a sleeve along the bottom for a chain to weight it down. I have yet to buy the chain. She even put a cord through the bottom sleeve to pull the chain through.

Very cool huh.
Saw a mouse jump out of the hay today.... so mouse traps go out tomorrow.

Here is the picture of Blue that I got done before we moved - he is overlooking the feed room.

The ceiling gib is all up now in the bathroom so we can have showers without worrying about all the steam going up intp the rest of the barn. George is going to plaster it all now - his favourite job.

Rain

It's been raining since about 5am and hasn't stopped all day - it's 7.30pm now.

Here's the latest radar....

The poor paddocks have taken a bit of a drenching and haven't had a breather yet.

And I think the tank is nearly full. !!

The boys are in

As humans we like to anthropomorphise when it comes to horses (and pets in general I guess). That is - put our human feelings on to the horse as if they were human or thinking like humans. So as a horse owner I try not too - but - it is a nice feeling knowing that in a stormy night the horses are in out of the wind and out of the rain (if they choose to stay under the covered area of the yard), and not getting cold and wet.

So tonight they are in for the first night in their new yards and I have the TV on mute and I am listening to make sure all is well. I am not worried about the two old yards hands Garbo & Scribble but Maraschino hasn't been in a yard for more than about 30 minutes (while eating dinner)... and last night the yards became a bit scary because the goats next door popped their heads over the fence and started bleating right at dinner time. Maraschino and Scribble were not very sure if they were horse eating goats or not!

Not sure if it was a good idea to choose a stormy night as the inaugral night but it's done now... and it's 7pm and all is fine so far. Just as well we have thin walls - I can listen for any problems.

Put it this way - if they get through tonight without any dramas I will not need to worry from here on in.

The trees

This is where three of the 'easement' trees ended up. Next to the caboodle at the end of the barn. Luckily they are hardy trees and don't mind being moved.


We put some sand in the caboodle and the cats just love it. Think we will have to get some more!



We moved the olive trees away from the fence as the horses were munching on them....
and the palm....

George attached the solar fence energiser to the post I painted. Another job done.


This is the house paddock now the horses have 'mowed' it for us.

Yards are done

Yay the yards are finished finally. George shovelled (well forked actually) post peelings into a wheelbarrow and I tipped and raked.

Here's Garbo checking out his.

Tried putting them all in there for feeding tonight but the goats from next door showed up across the fence and freaked Scribble and Maraschino out a bit.

Cats in caboodle

We hooked up the caboodle and there had not been a huge interest from the pussycats but today they both went in there, in the daylight and looked pretty relaxed. Cino (and Dante at one point) were eating grass most of the time.

More painting

Same story different day - it rained most of the night and was still showering this morning when I gave the boys some hay but it wasn't long before it started to clear so I started on the one of two remaining post and rail fences.

The boys decided they were in racing mode last night (maybe trying to keep warm) and had mud all over them this morning and the track was a bog in the areas that have recently been dug up for drains etc.

This is Garbo having dinner in the house paddock, with the barn and yards in the background and the boggy track (a little dried out from today thank goodness) to the right.

So I moved all three of them to the house paddock (the paddock the house will eventually be in) and this was them having a snooze when I was painting (after much eating first).


So now the yards and all but one post and rail off the yards is all painted. The southerly wind today was freezing but the wind has eased up a bit thank goodness. The barrels had blown into the track last night it was so windy.

It's so nice sitting on these blue chairs (there is a table too but George is using that as a saw bench currently) and having coffee or breakfast in the sun, facing north these yards are so sunny and warm and really sheltered from the southerly.

Painting

Since I bought some more paint last week I hoped I would be able to finish painting the yards this weekend. Last night they predicted rain for today but when I got up it was a beautiful blue sky so I had some breakfast, gave the boys some hay, and then went out to start painting. Took the horses covers off since it was so nice. Then it clouded over and I thought - oh the rain is coming after all. Put the covers back on. But it didn't rain - so I just started painting and would start on the uncovered area and move to the covered area when it looked like rain - but I managed to get the whole lot painted without any rain.


Oh - and we have rats in the hay shed. There are two tunnel holes from Maraschinos yard into the hayshed - spot the tunnels. Yikes!

Cat cubes

We bought these cubes from plastic box, and George put three of them up on the wall like steps so that the pussy cats can climb up to the roof rafters. We have put ply up there so they can sleep and wander around. They LOVE it!!

Drive to work

Thought I should post a piccy of the drive to work. It's really pretty at the moment with all the autumn leaves.

While I would rather not have to leave home to go to work - but can't really complain about this drive. Better than a packed motorway! This morning I was following a horse float.

To do list updated

Ok - so the things to do are;

• Finish the lining - partly completed
  

• Finish the ceiling in the bathroom (aqualine so needs plastering which is not George's favourite job)

• Get the float park entrance dug out

• Dig a trench for the the power in the float park so the temporary line can be removed from under our roller door so we can close it!

• Add sandstone to float park

• Paint the yards and new post and rail – partly completed

• Catch up on picking up poos! - partly completed

• Varnish the ply and battons in yards

• Wheel barrow sandstone into yards - then post peelings – partly completed

• Add rails to missing part of post and rail between yards and post and rail

• Remove the nails from the posts (plumb line nails from builders)

• Buy some cube shelves for the wall so the cats can get on top of the tack room/feed room

• Clean out the workshop (mud and dust)

• Get something to cook on - well we have a crock pot!
  

• Get the rest of our stuff from storage

Tack room

We put two saddle racks up today and the cover racks were already up so the tack room is looking pretty good.


We also moved the fridge in to the feed room from the workshop so now we don't have to go out to the workshop each time we need to get food prepared or cook or make a coffee/tea, or get to the fridge.
Then we set up the kitchen unit thingy we bought today for $249 - it has a chopping board on the top and a sliding shelf underneath as well as two other shelves plus hooks for utensils and towels etc.

So - all good progress.