killer rooster

A while back a friend and I swapped roosters , she had 3 hens and a rooster that were brother and siters. I had three hens and rooster that were also brother and sister. All gold lace wyndotte. Made sense to swap so we could still hatch 'purebreed' chicks. I use the term purebreed fairly loosely as our gwd were hatched from eggs we purchased on trademe and our friends gwd's were given to her by a kind chap who works at sheepworld. All went well she hatched out 9 chicks , we never hatched any as Nev decided he doesn't like gwds and wants to breed barnavalders instead. The friend had told me my rooster , the one living at her house had been attacking people and would I like to swap back, no reason not to, she had finished breeding and we were not going to breed anyway. Sunday we swapped roosters. Monday morning the boys and I decided to back some chocolate brownies for kindy, we needed two eggs of to the chicken house we went. We all went through the gate together as we always do 1 min later Charlie runs towards me with a rooster flying onto his back scratching him I give the rooster a good kick and he backs of, we retrive our eggs and head for the gate, at which point rooster flys at Finley to attack him. Needless to say we will not be keeping rooster at our farm and Nev has strict instuctions to bop him on the head when he gets home. The boys were not doing anything to provoke the rooster he is just horrible. The rooster managed to draw blood on both Finley and Charlie.
So thats it bye bye rooster no second chance after that.

The ducks are very happy , just trying to figure out who's a boy and who's a girl at the moment. I'm thinking we have three boys and one girls. The boys quack and the girls squeak and there seems to be a whole lot of quaking going on out there.

Another big change this week  came about after a small accidental purchase on my part. I found an auction on Trademe for 50 fejioa trees for $50, the trees were all around one mtr tall so it was a pretty good deal. The only down side to the auction was the fact that the trees needed to be dug up from the property within two days. Young Nev arrived from his relaxing boys fishing weekend to the news that he had a small job to do. We hired the trailer wednesday night and drove around to my mums place where two of her houseguests had volunteered to help out. The men set of to dig up the trees and the boys and I had a nice relaxing meal at nannas place. We have hedged two sides of our yard with the trees and it looks great. We need to keep them well watered and hopefully they all live. We will finish the hedge with some other trees along the front of the yard, because we really don't need more fejioa trees then we all ready have.

Last update is that we have a green house . My Nanna and grand dad have decided to get rid of their green house so we picked that up on saturday. Very exciting but I imagine we won't get the time to put that up for a while as the project that needs to happen before that is sheep yards so we can shear our sheep again before the get dirty bottoms. The last time they were sheared involved moving them all to another property and was a bit of a nightmare so it will be great to be able to do that at home.

Another eventful week on the farm . I'm sure it will slow down soon, certainly after a few more years we won't have this many things to do all the time , surely. Eventually this farm will start paying us back a bit more .....

back to it

Right new year better start blogging again.

Farm update. Toby the cat is great he still lives outside but will happily smooch around with anybody on the deck, and he is catching mice. Billy the goat has gone as he started escaping and eating gardens. Jean the goat is currently having a holiday at her boyfriends house for the month. Sheep are still sheeping about in the paddock. Chickens are good loads of eggs all healthy and happy. The newest addition the the farm are 4 young runner ducks who are living in the farm around our pond. Vegie beds are all up and running and planter boxes around the deck are going great too.

Family update, Finley is attending kindy mon, tues, wed half days. Charlie is still doing one day a week with his childminder but will change to kindy when her boy starts school in april. Boys are getting along pretty well these days still a bit of fighting but they seem to play together as well so that balances things out a bit.
Neville is still working the two jobs, he is on a health kick at the moment and has just purchased himself a new pair of running shoes good stuff.
Me I am childminding one girl two days a week at the moment. With the boys due to start three days a week at the end of the month. My study is all set for this year either starting sememter one or two due to fee issues.  I'm finishing up the home help as soon as the agency I'm working for can find another carer to help my one and only client.

These blogs are unfortunatley going to be photoless for a little while as I misplaced my camera at the end of the year and haven't replaced it yet, I might just sneak in some recycled photo's until I get myself organised to get a new one.

Current projects on the farm front are a: sheep yards and b: dirt and rocks to finish lawn and drive way.

 Finley looking happy on a tractor

Charlie having a dip

Not a Cat person or a dog person ??

Yep it's true, Izzy the border Collie I loved but she was frankly a pain and didn't listen to a word i said, see untrained no matter how much jolly dog whisperer i watched on the telly . Toby the cat well .... He definatley pee'd in our room at some stage as it smells like cat wee's only I don't know where so I will have to just clean all of the carpet I guess, and now that I have finally booted him outside after a week of hiding under a spare bed he has now spent a week outside hiding under the deck. How is it possible that neither cats nor dogs like me I thought you just automatically got one or the other. In young Tobys defence his previous owner did say he was a pretty independent cat who liked to spend much of his time outdoors and I did find half a mouse on the driveway this morning. Hurrah the farmers got a cat !! look out little mice. Perhaps I'm just a Goat person....

Looking foward to starting work I have my very own name badge and have met the lovely women I will be working for. Fins enjoying kindergarten but we are still having trouble with the whole me leaving part so hopefully he gets over the tears part soon becasue that is certainly not very nice.

Charlie has been sent packing from Fins room, as soon as I wrote he was doing well be promptly started waking up at 3 am to cry or grizzle for a couple of hours a night. Sunday night I was desperate for a good night sleep as I had some training the next day so I took Charlie back to bed with me when he woke. Big mistake for me in the fact that I did not get any sleep at all with Charlie the acrobat in bed but a good thing in the fact that I realised just how much he moves about at night and popped him in the bed in his old room the next night and he promptly slept through again after a week of interrupted nights. So who knows if it was the brother or the cotsides waking him up and frankly who cares I'm just happy to be getting some sleep again.

Young Nev is much the same working hard and very tired.

The house is much the same, did some grubbing this morning which needed doing those horrible thistles just keep coming back even though it's winter and I don't really want to stomp around in paddocks looking for them, Fin and I did the front paddock today and we will do the back paddock tommorrow.

I have made some changes to our diet in that I now only make the 50/50 white flour wholemeal flour bread,  the whole family seems to be used to it, so hopefully that will be healthier for us all and keep little tummies fuller for longer.... although we still eat white rice and ordinary pasta not sure if I'll be ready to trade either of those for the wholemeal versions any time soon. I have also decided to only buy the greek yoghurt yoghurt mix packets as all the flavoured home yoghurt sachets are way to sweet and awful tasting, I'm not sure if the greek yoghurt mix will be that much better for us but at least it doesn't taste as awful.

my 'baby Charlie' where has the time gone how is he old enough to be in a bed now I can i feel like i've barely blinked since taking this picture.

Jobs and stuff

Good week scored a job, only a couple of hours a week for now but that is just perfect to have my finger in a pie at least, it is with a homehelp, cargiving agency. Fin has scored a place in kindy for monday afternoon and wednesday afternoon, might change him to full day wednesday if he loves it. Charlie has a day homeday care with a local mum on the monday so yes that means I get mondays all to myself , apart from the couple of hours work but still I kind of look at cleaning without two kids as 'me time' anyway.  The other great thing about Fins kindy is that it takes children from 2yrs so Charlie will be able to join him next year which leaves me with two days .......to start preparing myself to re enter the work force when the boys start school. I need to be sure what is I want to do next.

Toby the cat has moved in however he hasn't started catching mice yet as he spends all his time hiding under a bed in the rumpus room hopefully he gets a bit more confident and starts exploring soon. He is happy with Fin and I, however still a little weary of young Charlie.

Home progress has kind of stalled at the moment to be honest I think I've been busy with things away from home and I guess with the stink weather I hardly feel motivated to get outside.

Boy roomsharing is going well , still no guests in the other room so that's another thing I need to organise/follow up on.

Fin is good we are still struggling with the 'whinge' if any one knows the answer of how to get a 3 year old to use his words and stop screaming and whinging the instant something doesn't go his way I would love to hear it. For now I will just try to carry on not letting it get under my skin and sending him to his room when I really need to breathe , the advice is always to pick your battle and I dont think I am being unreasonable with choosiong the two battle of not hurting and using your words eg not screaming. Also perhaps these issues will magically resolve when he starts kindy and we have a couple of breaks from each other a week.
Charlie is good however I have noticed he sets Fin of and Fin sets him off so it's either lovely and calm or a dual whingathon in our house .

Wet week

I have found the perfect Cat he is a four year old Tom fixed and vacinated,  who loves hunting mice and sleeping outside at night, he is free to a good home. Perfect he will catch the mice he wont try and sleep inside and upset Nev my dog loving cat hating hubby. 

I had some intrest from a job application this week, unfortunatley the hours were casual which doesn't really suit me as I need to know when I would be needed in order to arrange daycare. It was however a nice confidence boost to attend an interveiw and know that I still appeal to prospective employers. I really do think weekend or evening work is still best for our family as once I am earning our household income comes very close to the childcare subsidy cut off in which case it won't benifit us to have me working for a low wage if we are paying full daycare fee's. I am also in the process of getting our name down with a couple of language schools as the student I had interested a few weeks ago never came through.

The weather has been a bit grim hence no progress has been made with the moving of rocks in the driveway. Also it's a really really boring hard job. I am thinking about placing an advertisement for a helper some one who lives with you and works four hours a day in exchange for board, although I don't know how much intrest I'd have given it is such a stink job. I think it would only take about a week but I guess they couldn't do anything on the days when the weather was bad either ...

Finley has a new trick which no one in the house is to impressed with which involves moving furniture and scaling a bench and climbing down draw handles in order to gain access to the kitchen at 6 am. Where he helps himself to golden syrup, Jam, sugar etc Dad sat him down for a serious talk last night about how this is not acceptable and is punishable by 'time out' and it hasn't happened again today so fingers crossed a stern word will be the end of this new trick. We are also now using a timer for time out to ensure he stays there for the three minutes and this has made life much easier and time out more effective as it makes me follow through.

Charlie is still impressing us all with his speech and impress's me even more with how much he understands. The other day he ran off with a pair of pyjama pants and I asked him to put the pyjama pants in the washing basket which he did. He understands simple instructions now so this is great most of the time. Not so great this morning at playcenter when I asked "Charlie would you like to come inside for morning tea" and he responed with "no".

I finally have some pictures of our sheep . No close ups becasue as I mentioned they are still pretty skitty. Here they are playing sheep games in the evening they get a bit crazy at dusk and start running and jumping our 'pond' in the paddock. Ok that's a sheep photo about 2 minutes after they stopped playing sheepy games because I came outside to take a photo and interupted their sheepy games. Here is a photo through the window of sheepy games

Eggs !!

Very exciting as I sat in my office I peered out the window and spotted a chicken bottom in the goat paddock it wasn't moving , I called Nev to tell him I thought one of the poor old Bantums had accidently gone to bed in a paddock last night and died. He and Finley promptly went outside to investigate and came back with 8 eggs ! That's right she wasn't dead she was laying an egg. The eggs are about a size five at a guess.

Last weeks plan to kick the roosters out didn't quite go to plan, we got the old house out for them aka the playhouse/goat house/chicken house . Grabbed all the roosters and popped them over the fence within about five minutes a few of them had figured out how to walk around the main farm and were just running around in the front yard, by evening 5 of them were back in with the ladies and the other 4 were just sitting in the grass. So this week we need to come up with another plan , one is going to a neighbours as she wants to breed his breed, Gold Laced Wyndotte, They are a lovely looking bird with nice sized eggs. The rest we need to either build a high fenced enclosure to keep them in or get rid of them. Currently they are all back in the main chook pen bar the naughty rooster that was causing all the trouble in the first place, he is free ranging with his girlfriend the old bantum that is laying.

In other exciting news we wont be having any showers for a wee while as Nev mowed a cap of the end of the septic system causing a medium sized water feature to appear in the yard when the shower was used this morning. I haven't experimented with flushing the toilet to see if the same water feature appears ..... 

Charlie is almost well again a bit of a runny nose but no more sick tummy so that's a relief. He is a word machine at the moment with new things popping out all the time dog,cat, chook, goat, truck, boots, all sorts.

Finley has had a really happy weekend as he has caught up with both of his best friends, which means I'd be suprised if he spoke ten words to me all weekend as he was too busy with his mates.Mixing things in the sand pit, puddling around in some clay you name it he's been doing it.

Sick boy

Highly unexciting week in the household. Today started magically with Charlie walking in a circle around the front room whilst vomiting banana and milk. No playgroups for us today.
Charlie bean was a little cuddly yesterday so I should have suspected something was amiss. A day at home is a long day for a young Fin but he is doing OK, admittedly he has had the help of about one million DVDs. Fin does do pretty well at amusing himself but he does hanker for more company than I can provide, when Nev arrives home this evening he will be swamped with a bored wife and a bored three year old.

We are moving the boys out tomorrow , no not our boys the rooster boys. They will just be out in the main farm helping the sheep to keep the grass down and apparently not fighting, I'm under the impression they only fight when they have hens around to fight over so watch this space and see if the theory proves true for us. So that's the major project for tomorrow construct somewhere for the boys to sleep at night and kick them out. Sheep are just sheeping around their not very friendly so haven't really had much of an impact on Fin or Charlie. Charlie who refers to them as goats.

So that's us home projects with dad tomorrow and all going well and no more sick Charlie a catch up with a very special Aunty on Sunday. Weeks seem to fly by, our four year Anniversary was Wednesday we will go out for a coffee or a wine together next weekend while nanny has the boys for a couple of hours.