s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

Of course, you may ask when is it not “crazy time” for us. Perhaps I should have called it “the busy time”.

Shearing all of our alpacas started last week. (12 down, about 40 to go) We will be shearing every free evening and weekend for the next 2 weeks to get them finished. And when that is done, we get to shear almost every other camelid in the Wellington region. Every other shearer who used to work in the area has either moved away, become to busy, or is fully booked with shearing closer to home.

So, basically from now until mid December (at least) every evening and weekend is booked. We are trying to fit in some social stuff in the cracks in the schedule, just to make sure we are extra-exhausted.

Oh, and did I mention that cria are due to start dropping, and we need to start getting matings going again. And delivering animals we have sold. Plus other stuff I am sure I am forgetting right now.

Busy indeed. Crazy even.

Thanks for all of the checking-up emails. :^) The reports we’ve had from our friends down there have so far been that they (and their alpacas and llamas, if applicable) are all fine, but some of them will need new chimneys/their roofs repaired. In the meantime, we’ve been told to send scotch and dancing girls.

The Stuff website has some dramatic photos of the damage, if you’re curious.

We’ll add pics to the latest Georgia post soon — we need to wrap up that trip so we can write about our Double-Birthday Whammy trip to the States.

In other news, we had Weaning Day on Sunday, so now all the cria are following Stephen around hoping he’ll take them back to their mums, and the mothers are hanging at the fence, to make sure their babies are doing okay without them. I feel like such an ogre.

There was a pretty major (~7.4) earthquake about 3 hours ago (~4:30AM), it hit just west of Christchurch.

We are fine. Didn’t feel it. No idea yet how it has affected our friends down there.

Today a Wellington police officer struck me repeatedly in the head with a baton. He was smiling and laughing the whole time.

Later he might take me over to the police college, so they can beat me with batons.

As practice for the Rugby World Cup, of course.

For the last few weeks of April we had 3 alpaca living in the yard around the house. Marlett was the primary reason. She was too thin, so we wanted to supplement her- the grass around the house was best, plus extra food provided in a creep-feed. I also gave her vitamin B (dissolved Berocca tablets) to stimulate appetite and active-culture yoghurt to kick-start her rumen. She was also getting eye drops twice a day, as she had conjunctivitis in both eyes. Boo, her mother, had to be there too of course. We also put Blaze in with them to keep them company. She was a bit lame, and we figured she would be happy to not have to go up and down the back hill on her bendy old legs.

Familiarity breeds, well if not contempt, then at least a very laconic attitude. By the end of the week Boo was merrily (and greedily) eating from our hands, and had a good appetite for both carrot and apple.

Blaze was deeply fascinated by the “monkey house.” There was this big glass door where she could look in and see what we were doing. One evening we had friends over to watch a movie, and in the dark I saw her come up to the slider, look at us, look at the TV, and clearly think “just what are those monkeys doing?”

If it were not for the 2 wobbly wooden steps up into the room, I am sure she would have come in to explore. I saw her test the steps more than once, but with her bad legs she is a bit conservative.

Blaze is a funny animal. I would have loved to see her when she was young and spry, she must have been a real hoot.

It’s been ages since I stepped on a ketchup packet and felt that particular pop and squirt underfoot, but it’s a very distinctive sensation.

The weather is turning colder now, and the mice are trying to come in, and the cats are catching them. Amaya usually eats hers. Except the stomach.

A slightly more timely post. Here is what we did today:

Chilling out back home, after weeding the garden:

Last week contractors came to start work on fixing the bridge- actually the same guys who poured the concrete footing back in January. Conrad, the dude in charge, has the “eye” for engineering. I don’t think he has any degrees, but years of experience has (according to reputation) made him really good at it.

He looked at the bridge, and the “fix” that had been decided upon (dig out broken end of bridge, jack up until level, box and pour in concrete to stabilize) and stated that it was a bad/stupid plan, and that he was not going to do it.
Our bridge is… organic. It seems to have grown bit by bit over the years. The oldest parts probably date back to 1970 or so. This also means it is rather ramshackle. He figured (correctly I feel) that the bridge would probably just disintegrate if they tried to jack up one end. Or if it didn’t fall apart on the day, it would do so within a year. And of course, people would then blame the contractor (him).
His recommendation is to put in a Z-class culvert, which would then be rated to 100 tonnes. While we would lose the cattle-stop (which is convenient), a bridge with effectively no weight limit would be even better. He figures he could probably do the entire job in half a day.
Two problems. First, it would need a resource consent (work on a waterway). Second, he needs to convince people that the new plan is better.
Right now I don’t know what is going to happen. If they try to get new contractors to do the old plan, I will complain (in writing) so we have come-back if it falls apart again soon after. We will keep you updated.

Back in January we had some exciting construction work happen on the farm. We have a *lot* of infrastructure running across the property. Down in the stream paddock we have the water main and gas main for Wellington. We also have lots of power lines. Down front is a 33 / 11 kV line that feeds the valley and Churton park further down (found this out 4 years ago when a tree limb on our place clipped the 33 kV line and blacked out Churton Park). We have two big steel power pylons (a 110 kV and a 66 kV line) on the hill directly behind the house, and then there are a bunch of 33kV lines on wooden poles crossing the place, and way up the back are the wires of a 220kV line- the pylon itself is not on our property, but is very near the boundary fence. All these lines are here because 1.5 km further up the valley is the Takapu substation.

Anyway, the 66kV line pylon needed maintenance. They wanted to pour concrete foots for it, as the steel legs were just stuck into the ground (attached to other steel cross pieces about a meter down). Turns out that pylon was built in the 1920′s!

To get the concrete up to the tower the contractor had custom-build his own tracked concrete mixer. A very cool bit of equipment. A wide piece of equipment. 3 meters wide. Barely-fits-through-the-gate wide.

The guys doing the work were efficient and friendly. They even gave us a bit of “freebie” digger work during cleanup. There was one problem. One of the concrete trucks arrived before the tracked mixer had come back down. The driver tried to be “helpful” and drove across the bridge and up to the house. Unfortunately, 22 tons of “helpful” broke our bridge. We didn’t realize this until after we returned from CF and asked “why does the car bottom out on the street side of the bridge now”? Well, because one corner of the bridge is about 10cm lower than it was before!

They (Transpower/ United Gooder / Allied Concrete) are paying for the bridge to be fixed. There was a possibility that we might get a brand new bridge, but now it looks like they are simply going to repair the existing structure. In theory work should start this coming week. I hope it does, the corner of the bridge is slowly getting lower and lower…

Well, more particularly, I got my Certificate of Massage Therapy in the mail last week. I finished the course back in July, but various timing snafu’s meant that the certificate was delayed in getting to me.

I must say, it was a really good course, held at the Wellington School of Massage Therapy. Quite a lot of training crammed into the 63 hours of course work. I also liked the fact that the instructor (Richard) was not overly pedantic, and was happy to show us lots of stuff beyond the scope of the course, a great way to see what else is possible.

(Though I do admit a certain fraction of the other stuff he showed to us hit my “crytal-sucker-snake-oil” button, but one of the rules of the class was in fact “I will not contest other people’s world-views.” The class participants ranger from the ultra practical rugby sports massage to much more out there ‘alternative therpy’ types.)

The WSMT is not the only school in town. There is also a massage college in Wellington, and a friend is taking courses there. It sounds like it is much more incremental and narrowly subject-focused there. That would have driven me crazy, but I think it suits her very systematic/detail-oriented personality really well. Luckily we both ended up picking the school right for our personalities.

And if you are wondering, yes, proper training kicks it up way beyond a simple “back rub.” Many of my friends have back problems- a life of sitting at computers in stressful jobs will do that. Or leftovers of injuries. Or other physiological issues.

Case in point, at Canterbury Faire I worked on a friends’ neck for 10 minutes a night for 4 consecutive nights. On the fourth night she tilted her head back, and looked at the stars, then said “wow, I haven’t been able to do that for 10 years.”

It’s nice to be able to help. Plus putting a tip jar out at CF earned me a few dollars.

No surprise that many people seem happy to contribute towards me buying a proper massage table of my own.