We have a garden!

Aint it pretty? Finally, we have a garden infront of our house and it looks so good. I can't wait till it all grows and looks a little less structured - it's gonna be gorgeous next Spring!

Spring is here and so are the lambs!

We have two orphan lambs and they're so cute. A coopworth ewe called Met and a coopworth suffolk X ram called Code, they littlies (only a week and a half old) and are having four feeds a day. They've settled in and are happy with their new home, well so it seems anyway. For now they have a temporary fenced off area around the woodshed, which is where they sleep at night. Once they're big enough not to get through the wires into the horses, where they would probably get trampled by all the silly colts, we can let them have the wole house paddock. When we're outside with them they're let out in the house paddock but pretty much hang with us and follow us inside whenever we go in.

My strange water saving tactics are now habit, though with summer being on it's way we're getting scared about water! I've measured the amount of water our washing machine uses for a full load on medium water level and it's a terrifying 100 litres!!! That's just fucking shocking! So what I've been doing is bucketing the last load of water which is used in the final rinse, rather than letting it go down the drain, then I put all that back into the washing machine for the first wash cycle of the next load. So I'm using 50 litres of water per load - which still gives me the shits!!! LOL So needless to say, whenever it's raining I do washing cause I feel ok about it, but of course this means it doesn't dry for a while cause it's raining! LOL Though I do still hang it up and just leave it there till it's dry. Better than letting it sit, waiting and eventually getting yuck smelling and having to wash it again huh?!?!

We now have eight ponies and miniature horses and two thoroughbreds and two lambs. Sooooo water will be scary in summer alright!

With winter and toodler :) we haven't been able to get much done. But that will all change now, hopefully!

Here's that photo of the post and rail fence we did ages ago. The bit of frame in the edge of the photo is for Caelan's plane swing, I'll post a photo of that once it's up too, at this stage it's just a frame.

Bbrrrrr!

Well we haven't been gobbled up and spat out by the tornadoes so that's a good thing! Whoda thought we'd have this problem here?!?! Not me that's for sure. We've had some amazing frosts which have put us in a white winter wonderland, nothing could warm us inside on those days. It's freezing and wet, and although it's dampened everything else, it hasn't managed to reach our spirits and we're still loving it. Horrah! The tank's full and so is, it seems, the septic tank - joy. The toilet is nearly blocked, I say nearly cause it isn't quite [yet] thank fuck. Really gotta check it all out this weekend and see what the problem is. Along with knocking off some more items from our "Fucking Long List of Jobs To Do" (that's it's official name I'll have you know).

So far we've done the vegetable garden and the frost has kindly killed just about every thing in it. We've wedded the front garden and found the path infront of it! hehe That was a mission - it's certainly altered the look of the house having that done. We've done some more fencing - have taken down the make-shift fence we did when we first got here to keep the horses in the big paddock and it now has a fancy new 4 wire post and batten fence. Yes indeed - that was our first "real" fence and boy oh boy we're proud. :) We don't have any fencing tools so it was done the old fashioned way without post hole borers, it was a good old spade each for Chris and I and lots of man noises thank you very much. So after some heaving, grunting and sweating we had some post holes - tis hard work but we completed our first fence and gate. Since then we've taken down the highly attractive fence that was put up around the house paddock during the Crazy Cloudy episode and there we have a very sexy 3 rail and post fence. VERY, VERY PROUD OF THIS ONE!!! So thanks to Trademe and lots of scavenging around the property and taking rails of other fences not needed at the moment we got the materials needed and have nearly finished this. Unfortunately we didn't have enough rails to go all the way around the house. That was a long, hard weekend in the rain getting it done and for the last 3 hours of the second day it really felt like work. We were grumpy as fuck and had really had enough of it all. But we did it and although we didn't finish on the high of the first day - we were still happy (through the frowns and swearing) with what we'd accomplished.

The house paddock is nearly dog-proof, hopefully this weekend we'll finish that. Got some more materials from Trademe and will be able to get it done. We'll have to finish it with rails when we get the money for more. At this stage it'll be rails and wire behind the house. It'll be so good when Toa can go outside and we know he can't get out anywhere and wander.

We've replaced the fireplace as well, the one in here didn't give off any heat at all. Chris got a year old fancy thing from work (we love them!) and took the old one out and put the new one in. LOVELY jubbly and very warm thanks very much. Ohhhh and the batts have been put above Caelan's room which definitely makes a difference. So it's slowly happening here.

The horses - Cloudy in the back, Maddy's arse, Gold on the right and Star in the front.


The garden.


Front of the house no longer has rubble and LOOK!!! a path.


Sunrise on a frosty morning.


White paddocks - bbrrrrrrr!


The lovely new fence.


No getting out now huh you guys?


Hanging out under the trees next to our fancy fence along the back boundry ;) Note the space-age tensions in place...


My pretty Maddy.


Chris taking down the eyesore before we did the new post and rail fence (which I will get around to taking a photo of and posting).

Photos

We love it!!!!

I was lying on the couch reading and put the book down to look outside - I felt so incredibly lucky. This is the view from lying on our couch. Who wouldn't want this?!?!?

It's so amazingly wonderful living here! We absolutely love it! Though it's FREEZING at night - the house is uninsulated and has many holes so yep we're absolutely freezing. Caelan has a bad cold due to getting used to it all - even though we constantly have a dehumidifier going in his room during the day and heater all night (whew the power bill is gonna gimme a heart attack!). So the poor boy is sick, which of course means I am too. But I wouldn't trade our new life for anything. We're soooo happy here - it's wonderful. We haven't been able to get onto anymore of the painting though - hell, we've only just finished unpacking!! LOL Well actually a week ago - lordy, lordy is hard to do that sort of stuff with a baby. And because the house is so small and noisy we can't even do it when he's asleep. So we've had to wait till Chris' parents have been able to watch him in the weekend for us and horray - that happened last weekend and we now have a house! We did Caelan's room immediately and then the kitchen was done, then the lounge and finally our room and the front entrance and hallway - which all were dumping grounds.

Ohhhhh and speaking of dumping grounds... this used to be a gang house and there were a kabillion [stolen] cars on the property when we last saw it (when my old horse used to graze here). But when we first started looking into moving here they were gone so we assumed the landlord had them moved. We have since found out from the farmer behind us that the gang buried all the stolen cars in our back paddock!!!! What the fuck?!?! He showed us where the dug 3 huge holes and buried around 200 cars - fucking mongrels. So we can't use that paddock in the winter cause if it's wet our horses could really hurt themselves as nice farmer man told us they wouldn't be very deep. GREAT. Just as well the farm is so big - we'll be fine not using that one paddock.

We've had countless dead, rotting, maggot infested mice and rats since moving in. A family rotting inside the back of the oven - nice!!!! Silly buggers were living there and got fried when the power was turned on. Of course we didn't find them till after the stench was just about killing us! Chris went in the ceiling and didn't find the rot, then under the house and didn't find the rot - though found the biggest rat carcasses that we've ever seen. But too old to be the rotting we were smelling - then after pulling the fridge out and apart and the oven out for a fourth time, took the back off and voila - rotting, maggoty mouse family. Ugh. Frank has killed about 12 since we moved in - good boy! Not that I like murderation of any creature but these dirty buggers want to walk all over the plates and spoons our boy eats off - no thank you! They were all over everything in the kitchen every night - all through the pantry and eating everything, and shitting in absolutely everything. Enough is enough! Oh and we squished one with boxes in our room and didn't find it till about a week later when it was full of maggots and very stinky. Welcome to the country huh? LOL

So what have we done since moving in... that's what I'd like to know!!!! Everywhere we look there's so much to do. On Saturday we sawed off a couple of branches of a tree that had gone a little crazy (we have many of these!) and took down a horrible old rotten treehouse. It's starting to look a little tidier in places, but then we're piling up the rubbish from these things in different places. Argh! We've pulled all the planks off one fence that was useless and half broken and started building the house fence (which will eventually contain Toa - dogs MUST NOT wander in the country, wandering dogs WILL BE shot - this is what I keep telling him). We had a big day on Saturday, building the fence at the front of the house and putting in poles for the back. Though we need to buy wire and battens to close up the gaps in the farm fences that he can go through. Ah it's a big expensive job. But we'll get there.

We now have two miniature horses, not ours but we're looking after them for my mother and my sister's given me one of her horses that she doesn't have time for. Maddy's a lovely chestnut 4 year old ex-racehorse - she arrived on Saturday (just gone). When we were buying them some feed on Saturday I saw a notice for a horse wanting to finding a good home in our area. Called the girlie and he sounded perfect, I told her we wanted a paddock mate for Maddy and ideally one quiet enough for a beginner and he'd be Chris' horse. She said he'd be brilliant, we went to see Cloudy and he's a lovley big old grey 20 year old boy. She said he's really quiet and great in the paddock with others, she told us she'd shown quiet a few people but just wanted it to be right and told us not to be offended if she said it wouldn't work. She said he's incredibly quiet, never been a problem, totally bomb proof and great in the paddock with all other horses and ponies - sounded great. Anyway after being there for 15 mins and asking all about him, checking him out she said we could have him. HORRAY!! And as we were not far away she said we could take him then. WAHOO! I walked him home - which took just under an hour I think. Then the drama begins... we introduced him to Maddy and the mini's Star and Gold, all was fine. After about 5 minutes or so we put him in the paddock with them, he went off to a corner by himself and stayed there. Then he ventured out to check out his new home, he was having a nice slow canter around looking at it all and went through a fence, fell over and freaked then bolted. The grass is long and he just didn't even see the fence, poor boy cut up his legs and galloped to the front gate. I went and got him, calmed him down and tied white indicator strips of material on the top wire all around the whole paddock, while leading him beside me so he'd know where the fence was. Chris was fixing the fence at this time - one of the few fences that was good bugger it. It had broken in about 4 places and took about an hour to fix and tie on the strips. I then let him go, all was good, the others came up to him and they were all saying hello. He then decided that he hated the miniature horses and had better just kill one of them! He bloody well tried anyway - so the four horses all galloping madly around a far too big paddock (should be four good sized ones and will be once we've got the wire and battons), he was biting and kicking the smallest and youngest one. Picking it up and throwing it to the ground, or behaps it was just falling over when he bit - not sure but it was horrible and very savage. So much for this quiet gelding! Luckily just before it all happened his old owner turned up to drop off his cover and feed - she couldn't believe her eyes. So four of us were in there trying to cut him off and catch him - it was madness. Silly boy, luckily Maddy was protecting them and trying to get inbetween them and kicking him. All a bit fullon though. He just must have freaked at their size and not known what the hell they were. Anyway all of that resulted in a makeshift fence being put up in the dark for the mini's, but Maddy wouldn't let them be anywhere without her, she was threatening to go through a fence to get to them. There was no way we were risking another fence having to be fixed so she was in the house paddock with the mini's over night. Silly horses. Chris and his Dad finished building the fences at 9pm and I sat in the paddock holding Maddy and the mini's for 3 hours. Not too good for the cold I tell ya! LOL All's ok though - we're gonna put Maddy in with Cloudy this afternoon, hopefully she'll be fine without the mini's now that it's not directly after that drama. She's strangely protective over them, considering she only just arrived on Saturday, so only had a day together. But it's as if they're her foals, if they go too far away from her she gets shitty with them and makes them come back. She wont let Toa near them and he's been their good friend for 2-3 weeks now. Funny girl.

We still don't have any water going to the paddocks, but the troughs have some in thanks to the rain and if need be we'll just fill them from our tank. The landlord put a new tank in just before we moved, like days before, which of course meant it was empty. He was going to leave it like that too and we told him that there's no way we can move in without water. So he filled it about a quarter of the way - soooooo we're doing the country thing and praying for rain. We've checked out the old bore and it's rusted and looks like it's been completely pulled out of the ground. And our plan B has backfired - we knew that a previous tenant who had water used to pay a neighbouring farmer for water as he was on town supply but we've found out that he's not happy to do this anymore as it slows down his supply too much. Damn so no plan B, we've now come up with another which is to buy another tank for the paddocks - we'll put spouting on the sheds to collect all the rain for that. But it's all money huh - so we're just doing what we can for now until we actually need the tank. We'll focus on the house, clearing out all the rubbish, getting our vege garden under way, fixing fences and then we'll suss the water.

The farm

We move in two sleeps!!!! Hurrah! It's a horrid little rundown 2 bedroom shack on an awfully overgrown 22 acre farm - but we're soooooo excited. There's heaps of work to be done but we can't wait to get into it all and be there. To be out of the suburbs and living there is going to be heaven. Horray, no more loud neighbours hoiking constantly, no shouting (we currently have the loudest family in the world next door), no street-cats (with the most cats in the world!), no parties, no cars zooming down the road, no police helicopters and sirens. HORRAY! Just birds, horses and other animals, oh and the sweet sound of small planes overhead! haha Well you can't have everything right?! LOL We're not far from a small plane airport so we'll have to get used to the planes, Chris quite likes it and I'm sure Caelan will love looking up at them too. It'll just take some getting used to. Especially in the way of Caelan's sleeps! I don't mind them either, I'd rather have them than live in Panmure any day!

Yesterday Chris' Dad and Grandad went out there and painted the kitchen and lounge while we stayed in the ghetto and packed. I can't wait to see it - it'll look beautiful! They're wonderful and that was a huge help - you guys rock! Thanks so much. We're really looking forward to getting in and finishing the rest of the house!

Here are some photos taken last Saturday before the working bee on Caelan's room - thanks to the two Scott's and CJ!!!! You guys are wonderful :) Your help was soooo great, and CJ - thanks for the food, beer, wine, music and deodorant - all vital ingredients to hard work. Unfortuntely I didn't take many photos of inside as we were just too busy to be stuffin' around taking photos! The last one is a closeup of a section of the lounge wall, AFTER VIGOROUS SCRUBBING!!! And that's not even a bad part, there aren't any holes or anything in that part! hehe The whole inside is the most disgusting I've ever seen anything and took a whole lot of scrubbing - to not look much different after all that hard work and sweat (thanks CJ again!). But after painting Caelan's room it looks amazing - it didn't look like it should have been in that house.