work ??

Neville is just completing his fourth chicken house building ! Goodness me he will be able to start his own business soon. We have just put the teenage chickens in with the first lot of chickens and it is going really well. Mum the old Bantam is beating anyone who comes anywhere near any of her babies so they should all be fine. We wont be purchasing any more fertilised Eggs from the Internet now just breeding our own. Although in saying that I'm not sure how old a rooster needs to be before he can fertilise an egg .. maybe I will double check that before I make any commitments. The first bunch of chicks we will try and hatch will be bantams because they are such good little mums and go broody every five minutes, some for us and some for the folk further north.
Even though none of our chooks are laying at the moment I am really enjoying having chickens. Even if I ever have to move back to the burbs I will make sure to have a couple of chickens in the back yard they make lovely pets and are the best little waste disposal units for kitchen scraps.

I'm currently on the search for part time work and did some CV dropping last week just shop work a couple of nights a week and a day of the weekend. I hope I hear back from somebody . I'm really looking forward to having somewhere to be a few days a week and bringing in a little bit of cash of my own even if it's only a little it will be nice to be bringing home some bacon of my own. I am really enjoying spending the little bacon I do on locally grown produce at the moment at a honesty box type arrangement up the road. My silver beet is on the table most nights and pumpkin is making a fairly regular appearance on the menu too.

Finley is well, the brother bashing has all but ended and the whinging is on the decrease. The new sneaky trick is to squash the brother or hold onto an arm or a leg so we will need to get tough on these too.

Charlie has reached an age of trying to be fussy. I'm doing my best to ignore this in the hope that he gets over it when he figures out he is still hungry and he's not going to get anything else just because he is silly enough to spit the food offered back out. Fin is the opposite at the moment eating a ridiculous amount of food , he started his day with four weetbix this morning just to give you an idea of the portions this small man is consuming.

I've also got to say I'm really enjoying not having a dog at the moment. Dogs are kind of messy , and they require quite a bit of time .....  but ....... wasn't she lovely

Gardens gardens gardens

As the title suggests it's gardening time. My beautiful triangle is beautiful but I have decided I want a nice little garden under the front window and to start shelter belting. My under window garden progress so far has involved digging up some rocks (metal) what ever you want to call it. I now need to get Nev to help me move up some logs from the wood pile to use as framing and then start filling it in from the ready compost that has accumulated in the same pile (that must be why we haven't done anything about that pile of logs for the last three years). My shelter belt preparation so far has involved instructing Nev to leave his grass clipping piles next to the fence line. Granddad will be bringing the plum tree cuttings some time in the autumn perfect time to plant. I will then need to source some bark to scatter underneath to avoid needing to weed or needing to keep bother Nev about where to put his grass clippings. I also really really need to start killing the grass on the wrong side of my triangle garden as this really should be driveway and looks very scruffy.

Big money projects coming up in order are sheep, planter boxes. The sheep will arrive next month wowee 10 sheep. Four to fatten and 6 to start a heard from. Luckily we have a good neighbour who is pointing us in the right direction along the lines of what our acerage can support etc etc.

Planter boxes will be a biggie in smartening the place up as the will cover up the final clay spaces !! and we will trellis the back of the one on the side of the house to block out the veiw  of our working area, septic system, water tanks, chicken housing, compost bin, incenerator. All the ugly stuff that you need. Will photograph ugly area's for you next week but I assure you the whole lot just looks a bit scruffy.

On the note of spending all this money, I am still searching for part time work here is my advertisement on a local website . I also need to get my bottom down to this puhoi playgroup I keep blabbing on about and put up a little add there too. I am still looking through trademe and seek from time to time but there really doesn't seem to be much that interests me. I'm looking to either start doing more home based childcare or maybe a part time job say one evening and one weekend day. I guess I'm being quite fussy but I really have no interest in paying someone else my intire wage to look after my children so that I can go and work in a dead end job.

Quick family update. Fin is good our current big battle is the whinge , we have decided to adopt a no tolerance policy either stop that noise or go to your room because nobody wants to hear it. Hopefully it works better than the previous approach which was todays pc parenting advice of ignore the negative behaivour, (translation ignore it for as long as you possibly can before your head finally explodes due to listening to someone whinge and whine and generally make much unpleasant noise for 99.9% of their waking hours and then you shout at them and have a little tantrum all of your own to add to the atmosphere of the household.)

Charlie is still mainly crawling with the occasional few steps when he's certain he has an audience. He also applauds himself and says wow over and over every time he does this.

Nev is well a little stressed about money or rather lack of money.

missing marble

We're back. After the madness that was Fins big day we decided it might be nice to escape for the rest of the week. We ventured even further north . To visit family and friends. At the start of ninety mile beach is a fantastic spot we might as well have been in Rarotonga the humid air the banana trees and the quiet quiet streets, yes we were lucky enough to miss all the Christmas new year holiday crowds. Finley had his first driving lesson. Yes with dad not me steering an ATV on the sand. Not something I would even think to show Fin to do but he understood what was going on and did a great job, ah the joys of boys. Charlie was his usual self at the beach and crawled as fast as he could in which ever direction took his fancy not one to be deterred by a little something called a surf beach.

opse looks like I didn't get a shot of Fin driving exciting that he fell asleep he found it so exciting that he fell asleep


Then our surprise visit to the family farm where progress has been great the gardens put my garden to shame and make me want to get digging and planting,  when I see the vast nirvana's that have been created in such a short time by my industrious relatives. My fathers orchids which could feed the local school over summer, the happy chickens the bonny pigs. Ahhh the good life in the real north our queen street farmer eyes were green with envy. Upon questioning on our return Fin revealed his favourite part of his holiday was 'grandma glens house' upon further questioning 'what did you do there' the response was 'eating coco puffs' hmmmmmm I'm sure that wasn't really his highlight of the holiday but there you are apparently it was memorable . He was most impressed by young Dash a dog whom actually returns the ball when you throw it, he was also very interested feeding the fish in the pond oh boy I think we need a pond. Young Charlie decided to show us all his first steps on the last evening of the visit. Charlie also snuck home a little souvenir from grandads house revealed on our first evening home a blue marble in the nappy.

Project for this week include weeding my garden and putting down a band of something around the inside of fence in preparation for shelter belt planting probably just some cardboard and tarpaulin just to kill all the grass and weeds it will have to be a rather wide band as I don't want to plant to close to the fence as otherwise sheep or cows or horses or whoever happens to be munching the grass in the paddocks might help themselves to a little of what ever I plant.

Nevs projects are still fly screen construction and chicken house building. How ever the lack of funds will mean he will have to be very creative and use what ever we have around the home, more fun that way I say.

My brain is a little tired this morning after the late night arrival home on Saturday and the preformance that was Fin's sleep last night. I think he quite enjoyed sharing a bed with dad on holiday as last night he woke from 2 till 4 just lying on the floor whinging I'm not one to do night service to children unless it's life or death so needless to say I was not happy . Only to wake this morning and find all the coffee drank. Luckily for me I like to take home all the coffee teas and soaps from hotels. I had one packet of instant coffee left and have since had three decafs. I love my sleep and I love my coffee so feeling hopeful about an afternoon nap today and my dariling husband bringing home some more coffee for me.