Mad March!

What a day this has been … well, what a few days … what a fortnight …

In 18 days I fly out of New Zealand, back to my Winter Palace, in Yamba NSW, where the sun shine always (nearly) and the waves schlepp around my front doorstep …

 So it has been time to get Gerolstein dressed up for the winter, when Wendy has to cope alone with 35 acres, 13 horses, 30 odd peafowl, 3 kitties, the weather … but not me.

This season’s first buy was a new ride-on mower. From the Stihl shop. But it’s not a Stihl, and it will be in on guarantee if it doesn’t start starting more efficiently.

 But this month the fatidic date is suddenly closer. Time to move!!

The Drive. It has been wrecked into potholes over the years by Mainpower and other Public companies who have dug trenches through it for other folks’ water, electricity, phone lines, and sogged by the water from the adjacent council land. It’s also partly shared with the neighbours. But who pays for the maintenance? We do. Call the irreplaceable Taggarts. $4,000 this week.

Then, the Trees. In spite of the destruction of our forest in the storms of former years, we still have a helluva lot of trees. Mostly shelter belts, which, when we had 30 plus horses were needed. Now we have 13. And just as many trees. We’ve had a few different contractors in (cut only, cut and clean, double act, cut and clean) and we’d sort of settled into a painful routine. The worst days of the farmer’s year. But this year our ‘usual’ couldn’t fit us in … so we went searching for HELP. What? They’ll come tomorrow?

Well, I am here to say that if you want tree-trimming, hedge-cutting, immaculate clean up in North Canterbury, call Steve at Tiger Trim (large hedges) and Mike at Grasshopper (smaller hedges and clean up). They are by Royal Appointment here now!

 Clean-up doesn’t include rubbish disposal. So we were left with two huge heaps of branches … oh well, they’ll be dry and burnable by the spring. At 7am Wendy took out the domestic rubbish . and at 10pm the heap burst into flame

By 5pm it was a little splodge of white ash ..

And by 5pm the season’s final extravagance had arrived. A horse manure vacuum. No more shovelling! Brent and Kelley delivered it from Ashburton. Alas, we couldn’t do a test run because the tow-ball didn’t fit …one more thing!

But by and large that’s it. We’re pretty well in order. I just have to restock the bank account! And here comes the rain ...!

Baby, it's cold outside!