Fifth and Final Season

As of yesterday Mum and I are back into the calf rearing. On Tuesday night after work on my way to Taylor's I stopped in at the calf shed to see how many pens of calves they had, knowing the next morning we'd be feeding them.
Five. Five pens, fifty calves, and Taylor and his boss are already over it! Once I got up to his house I was just like, are you serious? You guys can't cope with feeding five pens of calves?! I was joking of course, but it was still amusing!
We're starting a tad earlier than normal - usually we'd start once there was a group of 40 heifers in the outside barn, but they're bringing in about 10 calves a day now, so tomorrow or Saturday those older heifers will need to move on out to make some room. This year is going to be a lot easier on us, as they're calving only 350 - 100 less than normal. Also all of the calves are either keeper heifers or friesian bulls that go to the sale every Tuesday, there's already 20 bulls that will be ready for Tuesday but calves born tomorrow and Saturday will be going too. I daresay there will be at least 30 for the sales next week!
Oh how I love Wednesday mornings! The problem is that we're feeding them four litres per calf straight off the mark, so most of our time is currently spent waiting for them to drink. Once we've got a group outside we'll be able to spread our time better, filling the mobile calf feeder and feeding the big group while we leave a couple of pens to drink on their own. In a couple days our system will be down pat again, thankfully with our starting a few days early we're able to wean ourselves back into the job! Thinking ahead for the next 10 or 12 weeks of calf feeding, I told Tay that at least I'll get to see him every day again lol.

This is the fifth year Mum and I have reared the calves on this farm, it's also likely to be the final season we do it, if anything it's the last winter/spring we rear calves as the guy is changing to Autumn calving next year.

Last weekend I took my last "real" weekend off, where Mum and I ran away from home on Friday morning in the direction of my sister's place in Te Aroha. Saturday was her baby shower, so we took our time cruising down there. It was my first time driving all that way, apart from the rain it was a good trip. However I've decided I won't be staying there in winter again, as it was cold. Bitterly cold that first night especially, I might've been born in the Waikato but I'm not a Waikato-ian at heart!
The party went well, my blood sugar level must've skyrocketed over the weekend, with all of the sweet food that was on hand and the fact that everyone was munching on the leftovers Saturday night and Sunday morning. It was actually good to get home to have some decent meals again.

The baby will be pretty in pink for the first few months of her life outside the womb as almost everybody gave clothing as gifts - but they're all in that same sort of age bracket. So baby might only get to wear each item a few times before she's outgrown them, which is unfortunate but they're all good quality clothing items so any future daughters will be able to wear them too or she could give them to an opshop or similar if necessary.


Work is going OK at the moment, there's only another week or two until the bulls come out of the herd at the big farm I'm on. To think they went in mid June and my boss said they'd be pulled out around the 10th of August, I thought at the time that it was so far away! But time is ticking along and I think the bulls are so used to their routine now that they aren't too much of a problem with them being in the herd anymore. That, and I'd say most of the cows are in calf now so the bulls aren't too overly excited these days. I've only got five and a half months of milking to go until I'm finished - time is flying by now.
The weather isn't our friend at the moment, somedays I'd much rather it was bitterly cold with frosts. Instead it's just always very wet and windy, our lawn is a mess and whenever I'm outside hauling myself through the mud that used to be our lawn, I can hear all the water rushing through from the paddock above us. We really do need some better form of drainage to stop the water coming through from the neighbours, but there's not much to be done.

Nick and Dad are home a heck of a lot lately too, it's simply too wet for them to work which is terrible for the finances. Thankfully they've had a couple of residential fencing jobs that don't require the tractor that they could carry on with, and the last two days has been calm enough for them to spray on a farm, but it's still seriously wet and when it gets to this stage the water simply doesn't go anywhere.
So as you can imagine we're super excited about the weather bomb that's coming in tonight - not!

I've got a new laptop now - hence these posts being updated more frequently. It's rather amusing how my old laptop gets into a little bit of trouble a couple months prior to the end of the warranty - four rather important keys suddenly stopped working. They were all in the same area of the keyboard, so I would say that there was suddenly a fault through the system somehow (no, I didn't spill anything on it).
The repairers took it back and agreed there was an issue that they weren't prepared to bother fixing, so I either got a credit of around $1100, or I could take a direct swap of a new laptop with the same specs. Once the technology department special ended, their direct swap model was worth about $1400 so I agreed to that one. However our Harvey Norman didn't have that model in stock, so found me a similar, but even better laptop instead. It's an HP with two harddrives, really good graphics card and a disk drive (which is quite important to me as the last laptop didn't have one). It's pretty massive with the 17 inch screen, but hey it's a free laptop with Windows 10 which I'll have to get used to, and all the newly designed programs - like the ability to connect the laptop with my phone for ease of access when I don't have the laptop with me or vice versa. Pretty interesting, that.
So just like when I got my last laptop, we got a Product Care warranty with it for $200, so that gives three years of warranty and we've discovered that laptops only tend to last three years. So I wonder what will happen if this one randomly fails towards the end of the warranty - will I get the same deal again and get another new one?! Somehow I'd say it's unlikely, but it's a cool thought.


I thought I'd quickly mention a little bit of Tay's trip on here. The guys eventually left to go hunting on the Tuesday? Getting to the DOC hut that afternoon sometime. Taylor, his brother Jordan, and their friends Nate and Luke, went with Luke's two other friends Max and Kamble. From what I remember they split into two groups and went in opposite directions on Wednesday. Taylor and Nate went with Luke but they only made it half way and had to give up and go back Wednesday afternoon because the fog was too thick and they couldn't see much. On Thursday Tay and Nate swapped and went with Max leading them another way. They got to around 2200 feet, but it was all rock which eventually got seriously dangerous with the ice, Nate pulled out first and not long after that Taylor said he wasn't prepared to go any higher so they headed back.
Meanwhile Luke, Jordan and Kamble had gone somewhere else, getting to only 1700 feet where they came across big groups of Tahr - they shot four I think.
I got a text Thursday night to say they were heading out of the mountain - so much for their seven days up there! The weather up there and the conditions weren't the best, with a lot of snow and ice. I'm glad they decided to quit and leave early rather than stay up there and run into trouble.

A day or so later Tay, Luke, Max and Kamble decided to head to Queenstown for a few days where they went snowboarding and tiki-touring around a bit. I think it got to the stage where Taylor was over his holiday and just wanted to come home again, but had to wait it out a few days until their set day to fly home. Nate was the opposite though as he sorta found himself a girlfriend down there and probably wasn't wanting to come back! It was really good when they finally came back, I was like "you are never doing that again! No more holidays without me" which he's agreed with quite happily haha
Apparently we're going to Queenstown next winter so I can see the snow and so he can ski - snowboarding is deemed quite difficult. Apparently I have to learn how to ski too, but that might take a little bit of coercing for me to try!

Some pictures of Mt. Cook I stole from Tay, and this one I found on his facebook page. Twisty nose, sometimes you have calves born like this but you don't often notice until they're a lot older. I guess you can say she won't always want to follow her nose, as she'll just go in circles! But look at that tongue!!!

If I Were A Politician

With our General Election coming up again, it's making me think about what is actually becoming of our country. This will be my second voting election (my gosh that makes me feel old!) and this time instead of just choosing National as the lesser evil - because at the time I thought John Key seemed pretty human compared to the rest - I'm going to quite seriously consider my options.

Knowing full well any votes towards those smaller Parties like the Greens, United Future or Act are quite simply wasted votes, it really only leaves National, Labour or NZ First. The latter of which I seem to think will get quite a following this year.
Although I'm not the biggest fan of old Winston Peters, he does seem to have a few good points to consider, and like every other Party - a few not so great points. So how do you weigh the options?

Making an end to the anti-smacking law? Tick. Making an end to the Treaty of Waitangi? Hmm, I'd really need to do a heck of a lot of research to think about where my opinion is on that one. Although I'm not full Maori, I think the Treaty is a good thing for NZ, it's a special piece of history that shouldn't just be given the flick because one guy thinks it's a good idea...

I haven't any clue yet as to what National and Labour are offering, but even so it's just so confusing! How does one justify choosing one Party over the other? They've all got good ideas and bad ideas and you must take the good with the bad - there's no other option...or is there?

Cue: If I were a politician.

Now yet again I claim no responsibility for anyone getting exasperated at my ridiculous ideas and I am fully aware that my knowledge on politics or anything to do with the Government is limited. But why don't we just push that aside and just consider a few things? Just consider them, let it sink in for a while and then you can go back to your daily business. I don't want to hear any comments like - "oh that'll never work because...". Let's just pretend this is a free world and we're all entitled to our silly ideas and opinions just for a couple minutes a day.

If I were a politician I'd say to everyone - why the heck are we wasting our time? The Government is wasting a lot of time and taxpayers money running around putting billboards up all over the countryside with pictures of an MP claiming "I WILL DO...For you". (Not to mention the waste of materials making these billboards - they're likely to just be thrown in the dump at the end of the election..)
Every Party is fighting to come up with what they think is the best idea for the country and all we as citizens can do is vote for one Party, taking all of the good ideas (not that there are many) with all of the bad ideas. Yes, okay everybody thinks differently and a good idea to me may be a bad idea to somebody else, but my point is still the same.

What I want to know is why are we still voting for a specific Party? (And MP's but I'm ignoring them for the time being). Why can't we vote for ideas? Imagine a world we could choose five options to vote for? Where I could vote for the anti-smacking law to be canned by NZ First, but I could still choose a couple of different ideas from someone else and I'll be happy knowing I voted for what I believe is right, rather than voting for the lesser evil; even if the majority of votes aren't what I voted for...It sounds confusing, I know.

I'm fully aware that when you vote for a Party you're typically voting for who's going to be the next PM, and then they'll choose who will join them in Parliament which then runs the country. But my argument is, for example if I suggested NZ First won the election and good old Winnie is our new Prime Minister - nothing is going to change. Nope. You'd think ok sweet, Winnie is in so everything will start to change tomorrow. But truth be told, it seems in Parliament they must talk and type ridiculously slow because it takes a couple of years for anything to come into play. Winston Peters may be the top dog, but they'll forecast that the smacking law will be amended and reconsidered sometime in 2019. What is the point? A year later he'll probably be kicked out again! It just seems like a complete and utter waste of time, and this is what we pay them for.

If I were a politician I'd say, why don't we come up with some realistic ideas for a change? Instead of the Greens coming up with some ridiculous idea to fix the country's carbon footprint (by adding yet more taxes to things such as fuel), why aren't they being like an overseas European country (I forget who it was), and say that the import and sale of brand new petrol cars will no longer be allowed. If we want a new car, is must be electric - because that's not a bad idea!

And while they're at it, how about suggesting that cars made in certain years will soon no longer be registered and will become unwarrantable - therefore nonviable to NZ? A harsh idea yes, and I understand the importance of those old fashioned vintage cars because they're cared for and are looked after. But cars made in the 80's that are still used for day to day driving, that are being held together by duct tape and cost the earth to run, what is the point of them? Why can't the Government offer the owner a deal for them to be taken and recycled properly, rather than those cars breaking down and becoming irreparable. Thus being dumped to rust for the next 10 or 20 years in a messy car junk yard. Hey, it's a thought.

If I were a politician I'd ban plastic bags from the get-go. Rather than a couple of supermarket chains saying they'll be plastic bag free "by 2020". While others continue to give them away. Supermarkets are the largest provider of plastic bags to the community, why are we continuing to either produce the plastic bags, or why are we buying them in from other countries? Who does make them anyway?

Why are the supermarkets simply no longer replacing the bags? They supply trolley's, why can't the consumers refill the trolley just like it was before the items were scanned, then just take the trolley to their car? That's how it is done at Pak'n'Save, it has been that way for years and we've survived - it's doable so why isn't it being done?

I've recently been getting more into recycling our items at home, and I've discovered that plastic bags that you can buy the likes of icing sugar in, are actually recyclable. Why are these bags recyclable but those bags you put your groceries in, aren't? What is the difference? And if there is such a difference, why aren't we fixing it this way instead? Make those bags reusable! We're in the 21st century, we're high up there in technology, things such as making items more recyclable shouldn't be that hard anymore. The problem is established, so sort it out. And don't say, "oh yeah, well in two or three years time, we'll get back to you".

If I were a politician I'd want to do a lot of things, that to me, seem more important than random ideas Parties are coming up with nowadays. Take cigarettes - changing the labels on the boxes to make users think about what they're doing. Yep, sure what good has that done? When you're an addict, no label on a box will change your way of thinking.

A sugar tax is a good idea, but an even better idea is providing more healthy food at a cheaper price and making it more readily available. Stop the production of goods such as Zero Sugar Coke that is filled with hideous chemicals such as Aspertame, and stop allowing those Coca-Cola ads to go on tv, making it look like Coke is the best thing since sliced bread - when it obviously isn't. But it's cheaper than water and it's more appealing - why wouldn't we buy it?

Stop the sale of our beautiful water to the rest of the world! Or if you can't do that, why aren't we getting more money for it? And the water bottles that are littering the country, becoming such a big issue. Why can't we take our water bottles back to a collection facility and get credited for it? Wouldn't that encourage better recycling, a cleaner, greener NZ and more consumption of water rather than sugary drinks?

Finally why can people continue to sit on the dole? Why can they continue to be paid to sit around, while those of us who work hard every day supply them the cash almost personally? Shouldn't there be a limit on how long you can stay on the dole for? Especially the younger generation who can easily get a job doing anything, so long as it makes them some money to live.
More importantly, why is the Government transferring money straight into the recipients bank account, to be spent on anything? Why don't they pay your bills for you, i.e., your power bill or your rent, and give you vouchers to spend in certain places, such as orchards so that buying fruit and vegetables provides you with proper healthy food, rather than buying lots of cheap junk food, cigarettes, alcohol and even drugs. Surely I'm not the only one to realise that this could be the better way for the system to work? Why can't it be trialed?

If I were a politician...I'd probably get fired.