Cowboy Boots & Broken Fingers

Oma Rapiti!

August 29, 2016chrissyb 13 Comments

Look what we found in the study this morning. How it got into the house is a complete mystery (surely not the cat door?), but its presence certainly explains why Maisie was so restless at 3am.

Stu poses with several other ingredients.

I think it’s just a baby. Forbearing Husband has named it Stu (he has a bit of a warped sense of humor). I think he’s quietly hoping we might keep it (he’s a sucker for baby animals, remember). And I’m not so sure I want it going back to the rabbit friends and relations to report on the location of an abundant veggie garden. We are considering the possibilities. A very un-farmer-like pet? Or perhaps the start of a meat breeding programme? Hmmm. What would you do?

For non-NZ readers confused by the title; ‘Oma Rapiti’ is the Maori version of the nursery rhyme ‘Run Rabbit’. Pretty much every NZ child learns it at kindy.

Breakfast of Champions

August 28, 2016chrissyb 9 Comments

This is what we have for breakfast on the farm. Because Darling Daughter and I first ate it at Auntie Jean’s house, it has become known in our family as AntiGene Muesli.

AntiGene Muesli

And, since lots of visitors who eat it ask, here is the recipe:

Darling Daughter changed the recipe title.

I use about 1 tbsp of honey to a double size batch of this recipe. I like my muesli a bit toasted, so I extend the baking time to something more like an hour, stirring every 20 mins or so.

You can play with the ingredients to your heart’s content. I add almonds, brazils, cashews, and hazelnuts (depending on what is in the pantry at the time), also pumpkin seeds, LSA, buckwheat, and chopped prune instead of cranberries. My friend Mars adds chia seeds. Christine F adds treacle. If the Forbearing Husband made muesli he’d probably add chocolate.

What do you like in your muesli? Or if you don’t eat muesli, what’s your favorite breakfast food?

Bee Happy

August 24, 2016chrissyb 7 Comments

Yesterday was so warm and sunny here that it felt like spring. I was out working in the veggie garden, and so were the bees.

One of the girls sampling the calendula

It’s the first time I’ve seen them this far from the bee tree since the beginning of winter. They were working the heartsease and rocket flowers as well, but I wasn’t fast enough to get photos. I’m very happy to to see them out and about. Go the bees!

Young Adventurer

August 21, 2016chrissyb 16 Comments

While his dad and I were pulling apart and reworking the living room walls the Young Adventurer was doing his own share of planning and scheming. Here for your entertainment, and to record for posterity the workings of a 6 year old mind, is his To-Do list from Saturday of that week.

An organized life begins young.

If you have trouble decoding this, recall that 6yo spelling, in the tradition of Chaucer’s Middle English, is mostly phonetic. Keep trying, you’ll feel great when you figure it out.* The last item is the trickiest, so I’ll help you. It refers to our after-dinner ritual during the Young Adventurer’s visit, of opening the door to the wood-burner and toasting marshmallows on sticks. The careful selection (pink or white?) and cooking of those marshmallows (a few for himself, but mostly to offer around) became became a highlight of his day.

‘Play with the rope’ and ‘Tie up David’ (yes, I thought you’d be curious) refer to a Houdini-esque game which we (Forbearing Husband, Favorite Stepson, DIY Guy, Young Adventurer and I) invented while sitting in the local tavern waiting for our meals. It involves players taking turns to tie each other up, whereupon the restrained person then attempts to free themselves in the shortest possible time. Amazingly no-one in the pub looked at us twice, or (as far as we know) reported us to CYFS. Rural folks, you see, they know the value of teaching your kid how to tie a few decent knots.

Thanks for visiting us, Young Adventurer and DIY Guy. We loved having you to stay. Come back soon and we’ll tie you up.

* Since Young Adventurer is bi-lingual, and did his first year of schooling in a non-English speaking country, it amazes me that he is managing English spelling at all. I mean, hell, I would barely manage it myself if it wasn’t for spell-check and an occasional proof reading correction from the Forbearing Husband.

A Quiet Week?

August 14, 2016chrissyb 13 Comments

Not so long ago we had a visit from our friend DIY Guy and his lad, Young Adventurer. They came to stay for a week during the school holidays, and I had thought they might like to have a bit of a quiet time pottering around the property and getting out and about in Whangarei. Instead we somehow ended up balancing atop ladders doing this:

Taking apart and reconstructing walls.

As previously mentioned, we have rather a lot of pine in the farmlet house. The match-lined ceilings are a lovely feature, but for some reason whoever built the place also added tongue and groove pine cladding over the top part of all the walls. It was an odd choice since it obscures the lovely lines of the raked ceilings and visually lowers the height of the room by a couple of feet. I guess we’ll just file it under the heading ‘decor crimes of the eighties’. Anyway, I’ve been keen to get rid of that cladding since we moved in, and it turned out that DIY Guy was a willing accomplice.

It has a certain charm, but was pulling the ceiling hight down.

BEFORE: No. Just no!

We started removing the paneling in the northern wing of the living room. (This house started as a much smaller building which was extended in the mid 1980’s. The living room finished up as an odd L shaped space. It’s hard to describe, but here’s a floor plan for you). Anyhow, it was the work of only 40 minutes or so to demolish the pine on the top of the first wall we tackled (you can just see that to the left in this photo). The remaining three were a decidedly bigger challenge, and required some serious effort from DIY Guy while I swanned off to work in the early part of the week. Please note, I would rather have been tearing walls apart, but feeding ponies and teenage boys requires dollars.

In a pleasant surprise we found during the deconstruction that the exterior walls here are insulated. In a less pleasant surprise we found several ancient rat skeletons embedded in the pink batts. Awesome! Never have I been so glad that our current rat populations have decided to make their home under the chicken house. It might lose us some eggs, but at least they are no longer living (or more to the point, dying) in our walls.

On Thursday morning, with demolition in the kitchen end of the living area complete, and rat remains having been removed, we were at Bunnings buying wallboard. It’s not the first time DIY Guy and I have helped each other out on gib-fixing projects at one or other of our homes (actually I owe him a few DIY hours), and once we got back to the farmlet we quickly fell into the familiar routine of measuring, scoring, snapping, and attaching gib to framing timbers. By the end of the week the walls looked like this, and I was so excited I had to keep walking into the room to admire them.

AFTER: Ready for gib finishing and painting.

DIY Guy put on the first layer of plaster, and now it’s my turn. I’ve only ever done a couple of small sections of plastering and don’t have much skill in that department, so it may be some time before I can blog about any painting. Ah well, I suppose I’ll never get better if I don’t practice.

What do you think? Would you have kept the paneling, or are you with me in unveiling the top part of the walls? And, because I can’t wait to think about paint, what colours do you suggest?

Meantime, should anyone have a hankering to build a sauna there are oodles and oodles of tongue and groove planks in the barn!

Living room expenditure to date:

Light fittings $39.95 x 4 (Mitre 10): $159.40
Dimmer switch (Bunnings): $28
Gib (4 x 3.6m sheets) = $171.04
Tradeset 90 (plaster) = $15.82
10kg tub of Plus-4 (jointing compound) = $39.20
Gib screws = $22.15
Help from a friend = priceless (and he brought cake too).
Total so far = $435.61

Food Bowl Malfunction

August 7, 2016chrissyb 4 Comments

This is Kitty-Pop.

Kitty-pop supervises while I move the electric fencing.

This is Kitty-Pop’s bowl.

Yes, and she has her own bread maker. Just in case she feels like doing something useful of an afternoon.

It is a requirement in Kitty-Pop world that her food bowl be kept full to the brim At All TIMES. When Kitty-pop’s food bowl develops a malfunction, like this:

‘That place where I can see the bottom of the bowl through the food is UNACCEPTABLE, slave.’

Here’s what happens next*:

We are cat slaves. This is a true story.

* Cartoon sourced by Darling Daughter when she lived at home and Kitty-Pop would wake her in the night to refill the food bowl. Since then it has been blue-tacked to the wall near kitty’s feeding station in both houses. Kitty-Pop says it’s not funny.

Good morning!

August 3, 2016chrissyb 6 Comments

It’s pretty hard leaving home to drive to Auckland when this is the view from your bedroom window.

Good morning. Fancy seeing you here.

Oh well, I’ll be back again tomorrow night. See you soon ponies.

If You Didn’t Have Your Gumboots…

August 1, 2016chrissyb 10 Comments

Down on the farm gumboots are essential equipment. At a pinch, in summer, one might substitute crocs in the area close to the house, but any time you are striding across paddocks the added protection of gummies is most desirable.

All sorts of sizes and colours. Mud splatter denotes recent use.

In winter there is mud and wet grass to contend with. During summer those of you who insist on skimpier footwear will get biddy-bids and seeds get caught between your toes and stuck in your socks. Our paddocks are resplendent with good manure all year round, and the girls who create that manure are heavy if they happen to stand on your foot. No surprises that once you live on a farm you develop that unmistakable marker of rural living: the gumboot tan line.

We like to ensure no guest suffers misfortune, so we keep a variety of gumboot styles and sizes handy to the back door. The abundance is partly due to a goodly range of boots that travelled with us from West Auckland (once renowned for it’s wonderful clay resource, and now for the mud that same clay creates), partly to boots left by our townie visitors. I’m always thrilled when people say ‘I think I might just leave these here for next time I come up’. It’s a promise to return.

Nurse Jenny picks oranges in pink spotted boots.

Nurse Jenny picks oranges in her beautiful spotted boots on her last visit to the farmlet (photo by Jenny).

Awesomely, if you pop into Whangarei for a bit of shopping you can continue to wear your gumboots. Today I walked around Mitre 10 in stretched out fleece pants, a far-too-big brushed cotton shirt smelling strongly of horse, and my blue gummies. There was no fear of looking out of place. A chap in the next aisle over was sporting white gumboots and stubbies. Just try that at Sylvia Park Shopping Centre, people.

Formal wear.

Oh, and for really formal occasions, such as visiting Auckland, us rural folk have cowboy boots. Bloody oath!

One Year!

July 18, 2016chrissyb 13 Comments

One year ago today we moved onto the farmlet.

Ours now!

Last night, us residents celebrated with fish and chips. The Forbearing Husband suggested this meal. He sold it as commemorating the pioneering spirit of those who left the city, knowing not what quality of takeaway food they might encounter. He does have a tendency toward the melodramatic.

Fortunately for all concerned the local chippy puts on a good show. All but for the potato fritters, which are sad reconstituted packet versions. Never mind, the overall F&C quality is consistently fabulous.

Thank goodness, otherwise it’s possible the Forbearing Husband would have trucked himself straight back to Auckland.

Here’s to the start of Year Two.

Unhinged

July 15, 2016chrissyb 6 Comments

You know how I said about our kitchen cupboard doors being a bit dodgy? Well, this happened.

That door is missing because the hinges came apart.

Now when you tell a friend that things came unhinged in your kitchen, and then a few days later you get this in the letterbox:

Beware of the dogs (haha!)

Which contains these:

Assorted kitchen cupboard hinges.

Well, then you know you have a good friend. Coz good friends send hardware.

Thank you (you know who you are).