Why Hello There...

I'm going to do a few photo posts since I have been busy with my camera now that Spring is starting to show through. I went to visit my cousin a few weekends ago as she always has an interesting mix of animals and I wasn't dissapointed.

On her front lawn she had this little pen set up with these two cuties in. They even had cute little coats on!

What a little poser huh? Not that lambs need to pose, they are always cute.

I guess I tired this fella out with all my photo taking.

Spots! I love piglets! My cousin has two sows that gave birth within 3 days of each other and now share the litters, feeding any piglet as if it were her own.

The black ones are from a smaller sow so they look younger alot younger than the pinks but they just started smaller.

These little explorers got lost while we were watching the mothers eat. they went round and round in circles but couldn't seem to remember where the entry to the sty was.

This spotty one is everyones favourite at the moment. Apparently everyone who visits reckons they want to take this one home.

Everyone jumps in at feed time. This pic also shows the size difference between the pinks and the coloured.

Day 13 - Fantasy Land

I've been having a bit of a hard time lately finding things to write about as I find winter a bit of a miserable time and I don't want to fill this space with negative thoughts. The other day at work though my imagination ran away with me and I planned out a whole future career idea for myself so I'll write a bit about that instead. I apologise in advance if I goon too long. My fantasy lives interest me far more than my real one!

So my idea was to start a petting zoo! Wanganui doesn't currently have one and I always find this strange since the people here love animals and I know quite a few people who have crazy little collections. Perhaps they just don't want to share them. I personally dislike children so a petting zoo is perhaps an bad idea for me too since the majority of the custom would be people with children. I think I could perhaps tolerate them though if they were there to appreciate my animals.
So what would I have?
Sheep of course. Llamas/Alpacas (even though they scare me), goats, pigs, rabbits, chickens, ducks, geese, guinea pigs, cows, donkeys, lizards etc etc etc

I even planned out admission fees and money making ventures. I thought entry should be cheap, $5 for an adult $2 for a child. That way on the brochure it would look really enticing with lots of bang for your buck. The catch of course would be to offer loads of pay for extras that the kids would pester their parents to pay for. Pony rides for $2. Little bags of pellets for feeding the animals $1. Pig races, where the kids and parents can both be involved $2 for a ticket, choose which pig you think will win and if you're correct you win a bag of lollies to share.

Another idea I had was lamb feeding of course. I think this would have to be free though and just a first in first serve basis, 4 feeds a day and what ever lambs I can scrounge from neighbouring farmers. I could offer to raise them as a free service and then return them to them afterwards. Win win for both parties as the farmers get a hassle free orphan at no expense and I would get a good supply of adorable babies to draw in the punters without having a surplus of adult sheep that aren't required.
There would have to be a few adult sheep kept around though. I reckon I could harness train a few and put them in front of a little carriage. $5 a ride for two kids or one kid and one adult. It would have to be a minimum of 2 sheep pulling the cart but 4 all harnessed up would look impressive.
The milk from the lambs could be sourced from the cows. After all most dairy breeds produce far too much for just one calf so in theory I could have lambs and a calf all being supplied by one cow. Milking could be another demonstration for the public or perhaps even another pay to have a go at thing.

There would be set times for holding rabbit and guinea pigs in a controlled area. A comfy chair to set the kid in with a towel on it's knee and then add the animals. Safe for the rodents and no mess for the humans. In theory!
I would love a reptile room too with large tanks containing whatever types of lizards or snakes that are permitted in this country and special handling times for these too. Also feeding times at some point during the day as an extra little event for the customers.

I would also love for it to have a large herb and vegetable garden for people to wander around and show their kids how things grow. There would be lots of little signs to say what things are and how long they take to grow.
There would of course have to be a cafe and shop. I thought it would be cool to sell produce from the animals and garden. Fresh grown fruit and veg could be used in the cafe or sold fresh. Eggs from the chickens and ducks could be sold. Wollen clothing items made from the sheep or alpaca fleece. Honey from local bees. Herbs from the garden could be sold dried, fresh or even in beauty products. Perhaps even milk from the cows.

I would love to have a lake for the ducks and geese. Preferably with fish in so that people can feed those too. Paddle boats could be hired. In my mind there would be a grass verge on one side for people to picnic on leading down to a pier where they could look into the water and feed the fish or climb onto the boats. The rest of the lake would have a forest edge with a walking track through it and at some point a tree tower that can be climbed to get a good view over the park.
So what do you think? Am I nuts or am I onto something? All I gotta do now is find a million odd dollars to set the place up and I'll be away!

Day 11 - My Weekend

I'm going to let the pictures do most of the talking for this post. I was housesitting at the weekend on a lifestyle block. It sure makes me wish I had my own 5 to 10 acres! I will one day.
They had about a dozen chooks all of different breeds that produce a pretty array of different size an coloured eggs.

These boys were the loudest of my charges and you sure knew about it if you were late for a feed. They were rather pretty though so it was easy to forgive them.

There were two dogs, total opposites of each other. This is Jake who was very forward, loving and wanted to be involved with everything. The other dog was a collie called Star who was very shy and scared. You can just make out her legs on the far right as she heads away from the camera. Jake though sat like this for 5 minutes straight patiently waiting for me to take his picture.

There were 4 cats, all of whom worshiped the heater. two were very shy and one was my total shadow whilst in the house. It liked to sit near me when I watched tele and help me out in the kitchen when I was prepping the lambs milk.

One last picture. I just couldn't resist a quick pic of these cabbages. Most of these pics were rather hurried as the weather was so terrible this weekend I didn't want to risk getting my camera wet. I hope you enjoyed my visual account of my weekend.
Did you do anything exciting this weekend? Or did you take any great pictures?

Day 9 - Tattoos and Piercings

Lately it seems I've been meeting a lot of people who don't appreciate and certainly don't understand my body mods. Quite often they think they are giving me a compliment by saying that I look pretty with 'normal' coloured hair or that I look cute when I take my lip piercings out but all I hear is that they don't like the things I've added. To be fair I've never taken compliments very well and it could just be that they want to reassure me that I don't need to add anything to look good but I always see the negative side of a positive word. I need to find myself some one who not only appreciates my body mods but sees them as an improvement.

So today's entry is an intro into my mods! I of course love them all. I spend a lot of time planning what to get and then saving and researching someone to do them for me. I put more thought and effort into tattoos though as I figure they should be done once and done right where as piercings can be removed, healed and re done fairly easily.

So what have I got? Currently I have 14 piercings and 5 tattoos. And 2 of each in the planning. I shall start at my feet and work up.

This is on my left ankle and my sister has a matching one. It has double meaning meaning as it's a sister tattoo obviously but also an ode to our pet sheep that we bottle fed, walked on leashes and generally loved while we were teenagers.

This is on my left thigh. It's celtic runes that spell out Dragon. Again it has a double meaning for me. The first is my fascination with runes. I used to write my diary in runes and send letters, using it as a code. The second meaning of course is because I'm obsessed with dragons!

This little one was my first and symbolises my love of animals, the fact that I understand dogs better than humans and also the fact that I consider myself a bit of a bitch. In a good way. I consider some of my actions more like that of a female dog that a person. I can be very tolerant of some people treating me badly and yet completely intolerant of some people treating me well. Sometimes I just don't like people for no reason, like dogs.

This one is my largest tattoo and my favourite. My sister drew it for me and it's her animal version of herself. I got it because my sister means more to me than anyone and it's so hard living away from her that I wanted a reminder to carry with me and also because I adore her art work. I have a few pictures that she's drawn for me on my wall and I even hoard all of the little doodles that she puts on notes or letters that we send.

This is my last and my newest, positioned on my right wrist. Again drawn by my sister it reminds me of one of the first pictures she drew for me and also symbolises my love of travel and freedom. It's a little reminder to myself that I have the power to fly, to explore, to be free to find new things.

I reckon I've typed enough for one entry so I will write about my piercings tomorrow. Do you have tattoos? If so how many do you have?

Full Moon and New Tech

I started this weekend with no plans other than to relax which of course means that something happened! Firstly it was full moon which always seems to up my energy levels and it was apparently a blue moon although it looked the same to me. I took my camera outside to try and get a pic of it, not expecting much and was pleasantly  surprised when I got a pic as good as this. My previous cameras could never focus on the bright orb in the sky. This has made me even more excited for summer though as I would love to get a full moon rising pic at the beach!

Onto the animal section of the post and first up Pigs! One of the places that we mow has three pet kune kunes called Gerty, Gus and Gromit! Gromit is a new addition this year and we hadn't seen him for 6 weeks so he had grown a lot. We always take a little something up for them to eat so the older pigs have learnt to come running over to greet us when the ute arrives now.

Also on the subject of feeding animals, we are running low on grazing at the moment just due to the cold weather and lack of growth so the sheep are getting a bit hungry. Well not really because we give them hay daily and also bring them home all the weeds that we pick from the gardens but they think they are starving. Luckily we leash trained them when they were younger so we can take them out into the village to graze some of the neighbours lawns (the ones that agree of course) and the road edges. They haven't been on leads for 3 years or so but when Mum brought the collars out from the garage they knew the drill and stood calmly while we got them buckled in, it's amazing what they remember.

On Saturday Troy invited me to go to Palmy to watch the boys play turf hockey. I'm always keen for any excuse to get out of town and watching (in some cases quite attractive men) running around a field trying to politely hurt each other seemed as good a reason as any. I took my camera and practiced taking action shots which was super hard when I had no idea what was really going on but I got some practice and that was the idea.

 Last but not least, check out this beauty! So I just happened to be in Dick Smith today and I just happened to look in the laptop section and what did I see but the very model of comp that I have been wanting, super reduced to $470. So I may have just happened to buy it...
I can't even begin to describe how much of a joy it is to have a responsive laptop again and also it's so small and cute! Now bring on windows 10 so that I can upgrade away from horrendous windows 8 and I'll be as happy as a pig in shit.
So that was my weekend. Nothing that I had hoped to do got done and lots of things that I hadn't even considered happened so it was a pretty good weekend!

Photography Lessons - Day 1

It's day one in my self training for how to use my new Canon SX530 and things are going pretty well considering I have no idea what I'm doing! Jack was keen to help this morning, he's not a very good model though as he was too busy trying to press all the buttons with his teeth.

He did round up two of the girls for a group shot though. Dusky, on the left, takes these things very seriously and made sure her pose was just right before I took the picture!

I had a bit of a play with the settings too and had a go at depth. I think it turned out rather well but I'm not sure what setting I was on when I took it so I guess I'll be doing some more practice.

I never realised that shutter speed could make such a difference. These three pics have no filter on them and they were all taken within minutes of each other. The only thing that I changed was shutter speed!

Also while playing around I found out that I can remotely control my camera while in a wifi area . This one was taken while my camera was sitting on my desk and me and Mum were warming up by the fire. It's a cool little trick but only works in wifi zones I think so I'm yet to determine how useful it will be.

I just had to stop in and visit Rush of course and he is such a good poser when I ask him. He was a bit confused about the size of my new beast though I think, it's rather larger than the phone he is used to.

Last one for now and I really like this one. I actually took this at the gas station. I was being lazy and didn't even bother to get out the ute to take it which is perhaps why I like it so much.
It's quite hard to find subject matter at this time of year with the weather so bleak but if today was anything to go by then I guess I'll find enough to practice on before my holiday.
Do you have tips or tricks for taking great pics that I should know? Let me know in the comments.

Meep! Sheep!

It's high time I introduced you to my favourite pets, my sheep! They are also my only pets but that's just a technicality. Our current mob are all between four and six years old and are very friendly. They like to be petted and when at home they follow us around hoping for treats. Jack is our only boy and my personal fav as he is such a fuss bucket. He likes to lean against my leg so that I can scratch the top of his head and if I stop too soon he chews on my tshirt to remind me to carry on! He's a cheeky chap but amazingly gentle considering he weighs more than I do. 

 

Monday was sunny and hot so in the evening so we went to check on the flock of 5 pet sheep who are currently grazing in a neighbours orchard and since we have had so little grass growth we took them some hay and apples as a treat. I was leaning on the fence enjoying the antics of the chooks who were running in and out under the noses of the sheep to try and get some apples when Ruffles came up towards me and did a graceful little pirouette. I couldn't help snort a laugh at her but realised as soon as I laughed that dancing sheep mean trouble. 

 

I called Mum over and we both watched her for a few minutes, she was wagging her bum around and licking her lips and side stepping her back legs which would be hilarious to watch if we didn't know that it usually means fly strike. So we raced home for some supplies and were back in the orchard within 5 minutes with some more apples to coax them over. I'm the official sheep holder and Mum does the doctoring just because having kids makes her less squeamish and means she has more experience when it comes to patching things up and I'm younger and better on my feet so firstly I'm less likely to fall and secondly, if I do, I should heal quicker.

Once everyone was distracted munching on apples I, rather unceremoniously, grabbed Ruffles by the leg and then got her head into a lock between my knees. It's not very dignified for anyone involved but it's the easiest way for me to control her without hurting her. She's not particularly bothered by the whole idea either since she's gotten used to it over the years. In fact she's so relaxed about it that while Mum prepped her gear Ruffles happily nibbled on tit bits of apple from my pocket.

Treating fly strike isn't a fun job but luckily we had caught it early and we have a magic liquid that you pour into the wool and all the maggots just up and leave on their own accord. It's hideously fascinating to watch and very satisfying to see your pet so instantly free of such horrible pests, if only they had something similar for fleas. Once the procedure was done we reassured everyone with lots of ear tickles and bum scratches and of course they obliged me by posing for some photos. I'm always pleased when they still like us after we have to do something unpleasant to them and I like to think that they know we are only doing it to help them. After all sheep are so easily frightened and once the fear grips them it takes ages to calm them down, perhaps it just goes to show how much time we put into them as lambs has desensitised them to us and our weird ways. 

 

Introduction To My Life

Back Story

Well I guess before I start I better tell you a few basic facts so that you have a little perspective. I'm female, 25 and I live with my mother who owns a lawn and garden business. The reason I still live at home? Mum has more work than she can handle alone but not enough to afford a full time employee. A lot of the day is spent travelling from job to job and that would all be wasted money if she had to pay someone to sit in the truck. That's where I come in. I literally get paid only the hours I work which can sometimes be as little as 4 in an 8 hour day but the incentive is that I live rent and bill free. It's a win win for us both really as I get to keep my entire pay cheque and she has to pay less to have a helper.

We live in a little village called Fordell which is 14km out of the nearest town called Wanganui which is in New Zealand. We have a quarter acre but my Mother is very sociable and persuasive and has managed to convince half the neighbours to allow us to use their land for grazing which is how we are able to maintain a flock of 10 sheep. We also have a pig pen which we rear porkers in. That means that every 4months or so we get a new pair of pigs.

As a side earner I do housesitting/petsitting. Which isn't always as fun as it sounds but it's a nice money earner.

I tend to spend a lot of time in town with my friends and boyfriend because as much as I love my Mum when you work and live together you need space.

I've been toying around with the idea of starting a blog for awhile now mainly because almost every time I write my diary I start with 'Today was weird/odd/strange/interesting' and it got me thinking that maybe other people might find my accounts of an 'average' day worth a read. Of course my diary is out of bounds for all human eyes except my own as all my dirty dark secrets are written there. Telling my stories to people I know isn't an option as I seem to become a babbling idiot as soon as I have to speak face to face with someone and besides, the people I know are too old/young/cool/busy/judgemental and/or idiotic to appreciate the subtleties of the things that fascinate me.

So lets just jump right in and I'll tell you about today March 5^th 2015

Today was weird..... XD

My alarm actually woke me this morning which was the first oddity as usually I am awake before it and just pretend to be asleep until it goes off and forces me into reality. I padded through to the bathroom and Kit Kat the resident cat (the owner forgot to tell me her name so I've christened her Kit Kat) must have heard me and she started up her morning cry which is terrible racket for an old cat to make and amazingly loud. I gave her breakfast and she was happy for all of about 3 seconds but then she started her war cry again and paced by the front door. Turns out she had brought me a present, a cute little baby bunny nice and stiff on the doormat, dead. How the hell she caught the thing I don't know. She's so old she's all skin and bone, moves around slow and deliberate, can't seem to see or hear me unless I move around in front of her face and yet the old biddy can still catch rabbits. You can't trust cats aye?!

After telling her what a girl she was and playing with her prize for a few minutes I got myself organised and headed out to Fordell to pick up Mum. She was booked in for a surgery today, I won't go into details but it was a minor procedure and she's ok. It was expected to take about 3 hours from arrival to departure so I decided I would do a little work in my boyfriends garden while I waited for her.

Now to say that Troy (my boyfriend) isn't interested in gardening is the understatement of the century. The house he owns actually has a pretty small backyard that is almost all brick with a few bushes and a box hedge which should be pretty easy to maintain. That of course would require someone to actually look at it every now and then. To be honest I'm not one of those girls that try to better a person when I'm with them and I wouldn't even care that his garden is a shit tip if wasn't for Rush, his dog, who we share custody of. Sort of. It's complicated. Anyway long story short is that anything I can do to better that dogs life you can bet I'll have a crack at. Which is how I found myself in his backyard at 9am avoiding the dog poo and trying to shift a few years worth of weeds and debris.

I'm not going to say that it was most pleasant experience of my life and I'm also not going to say that I turned it into a perfect garden. I was there for 3 hours and I got a truck load of weeds and tree trimmings out of there but I'm far from happy. The down side to being a gardener as your day job is that you have high standards, you have to, people are paying you to take care of the details and do a good job. The problem arises when you do a job like Troy's yard which is all unpaid and has no clear objective. Where to start? How much to remove at once? Do you focus on one area or do a bit of everything?

The best part for me about doing Troy's yard though is that he literally doesn't know and/or care what's out there. So for example, I hate roses. Oh sure the flowers are pretty enough when they are safely in a vase and dethorned and at a distance but working in a garden full of rose bushes is a nightmare. The thorns grab your clothes, hair, gloves and skin and any cuts or grazes sting for a day or more after. The roses in Troy's yard haven't been tended for probably half a decade and I swear the thorns are bigger than the flowers. Whenever I have to work with roses I wish that I could just cut them at the base and at Troy's I get to do what I like. So those poor ancient rose bushes? I'm sorry but it's death row for you.

After taking the green waste to the dump I went and collected Mum from the hospital and took her home. She was pretty sore so I sent her off to bed with some painkillers and told her I would be back around 5 to check on her. I returned to the Waites (the places I'm housesitting) and let the chooks out the pens then, mostly to entertain myself I decided to do something fancy for lunch. It didn't quite go to plan though as I had been shopping the day before and had a fridge full of delicacies that were all asking to be eaten. I ended up with a tasting plate which had a little of , well I can't say everything because I really did go over board with my shopping, but it had a good selection.

After playing with my food the sunshine called to me so I wandered outside to laze in the sun reading for a couple of hours until I got a txt from Mum around 4.30 telling me to go to my cousins to collect a fish. He had been out on a boat that day and caught a nice haul of snapper and had one gutted and descaled for us. I've put it in the freezer for when Dad arrives when we will bake it whole.

I helped Mum to feed out to the sheep, saw her back to bed and arranged a time to go back tomorrow before returning to the Waites again.

I stopped on the drive to collect pine cones and then decided to give some apples to Mother cow in the paddock. I picked a broccoli from the garden and fed her all the leaves too. All the chooks were hovering around trying to get in on the action but Mother cow wasn't keen to share. At 6.30 on the dot the chooks decided they weren't going to get much from the paddock and all made a mad dash for the coop so I wandered over to feed them. The bloody cheeky rooster though decided to have a go at me for some reason, he's been fine with me all week. I was only wearing jandals though and had visions of a toe massacre so when he came at me the second time I whacked him with grain bucket and that seemed to cool him off a bit. I went into the shed where the grain is kept and managed to spill half a can over my toes and the floor which got the hens all excited and again my poor toes were in danger of being pecked. Luckily for me the hens are rather more friendly than the rooster and they were very polite about clearing up the grain. This did mean though that I was stuck in the shed for 5 minutes standing awkwardly whilst anxiously watching my feet... I'm telling you my life is not normal.

After all the excitement of the day I couldn't even be bothered to make myself dinner so I sat in front of the tv watching Top Gear and ate crisps, crackers, lollies and a small cheesecake. Not the healthiest or most satisfying of dinner but it filled a hole.

The last odd thing of the day? Finally making myself sit down and start writing and pushing through to write this much. Although perhaps it should have been shorter!