2016: Zooming On Past

It's been a whole year since my Pippa arrived! So, I sorta celebrated her birthday today, actually well yes and no. I didn't wrap her up in a birthday suit, but I gave her a little more attention than normal.

Actually I wandered out to the compost bin today, via the garden and discovered a good handful of beautifully red strawberries - honestly I would say they're the best looking ones we've had all season. Then turned around and realised how many tomatoes were ready, I kid you not, the tomato plants basically died and we pretty much gave up on them. Now we're inundated with these massive tomatoes of a few different varieties, so much so that without my neighbour Sam, knowing, I dropped some off at his house on my way to work the other week - then texted him to say they were there. So I kinda didn't give him the opportunity to say no, lol, the tomatoes needed a home!!
It's funny really, tomatoes are the one thing in our garden that I eat and always have eaten, without a second thought. So long as they're red, I'll chuck 'em on anything. Everything else I'm concerned about bugs and slugs being inside them somewhere....lol. Yeah I'm kinda living off tomatoes at the moment, there are worse things to be eating!

Anyway, we've also got a whole heap of buttercup pumpkins growing, another lot of seedlings that we left in their pots and never got around to planting them out properly, until one day I kinda went a little mental and said it's ridiculous growing things if we're not gonna actually give them a fighting chance. (It was more the fact that the garden was already overburdened and we didn't really know where to put them!) So into a garden they went, and I had the brilliant idea of putting the lawn clippings around them to keep them moist, well, now they're going ballistic and are known as "Kayger's buttercups" haha. I keep pulling off the unnecessary flowers but today I realised how many massive bumble bees were in there, so I grabbed my phone and took heaps of photos. The Young Farmer Grand Final contest includes a photography section in the awards, among other things where you can put your club and region out there a bit more in front of the nation, so I'm gonna enter a few categories and see what happens. Zooming in on bumble bees inside massive yellow flowers is pretty fun!
But Pippa was helping me so I got some of her too....and then she and her buddy Jackson chilled out under the barbeque.
 



Life is, pretty basic these days. They say we'll get hit with a cyclone...maybe. They say the humidity will pass, lol that's a Tui ad! I got nicely tanned up again yesterday while I helped Dad and Nick with some fencing, I'm very lucky (touch wood) to have not gotten overly burnt this year - just a nice, crisp brown. The weather is painfully hot at midday, which is typically when you want to be out of the sun, but that's when we're working in it. Lovely. And milking in this heat certainly isn't pleasant either, what with the heat, humidity and a few hundred massive cows crammed into a concreted area with concrete walls surrounding you, plenty of sun gets through (especially with that skylight plastic roofing) but hardly any air-flow, yep, it's great.
But I'm not complaining, the work is good. It's taken me a bit to get back into the swing of it, but these days it's easy to get up just after 4am, as once I'm up I'm generally awake. If I have the odd sleep in here and there I wake up at the same time anyway, go back to sleep and wake up after 7 feeling worse. Fantastic! No, work is good.

Trying to get my assignments done is more of a problem, as these days I'm filling myself up on antihistamines to stop the sneezing, which then makes me sleepy, which then makes reading particularly difficult. I really shouldn't do this to myself, leave most of my study to the last month and a half, but it's painfully boring!!
What's worse is that this is my last lot of the course, thus needing to be finalised by end of February. One assignment completed and sent away, one lot of reading material almost finished and one assignment half completed which is now at a standstill as they missed out a heap of information in the reading material (quite literally, half a sentence and then a blank page) which is needed in the assessment and I've absolutely no clue how to do it. Waiting for them to get back to me. Ha!

I've also recently discovered that the next course I plan to do - Agribusiness Management Level 5, is in fact just another "certificate" qualification, not the Diploma I thought it was, and it's basically a lead in teaching on being self employed. Which, I dunno. I kinda feel the need to keep on studying while I'm young, but then I also don't want to spend $700 on another year long course (I admit, it's cheap really) if it's not what I want to learn and will I get anything out of it anyway? Argh, decisions. I don't want to look like one of those people who spends a lot of time and money doing things that might come in handy, when really on a C.V. it just shows that I'm one of those people who has no clue what to do and has the potential to be yet another 'career changer'. Meh, no clue, whatsoever.



In saying that, I'm going to apply for an exchange trip to Scotland for June/July in 2017. The Young Farmers organise the exchange for one accepted Young Farmer member, and (so far) provide $500 towards the costs and farming host families in Scotland cover your accommodation expenses. Well I don't know all that much about it, other than the fact it's a 6 week exchange trip where you meet with heaps of other young farmers in that general area, you get hosted on farms and you get to learn about their ways, and such forth. Scotland is somewhere I've always wanted to go, so I'm determined to apply and hopefully meet the criteria as best I can - with the intention of getting over there before I'm 25 (if I don't get accepted in the first couple years of applying). I looked at one of the previous years' applications of the guy who was accepted and he seemed to be a real industry 'big-wig', I guess is the best way to describe him (out of admiration, rather than being judgmental).
He had worked his way up in his farming career, heaps of qualifications and within the Young Farmers club and region he was involved in, he'd had a lot of roles in the executive committee, and such. So I figured, okay, looks like you have to be pretty awesome to be given the opportunity, thus I started planning.

We had our young farmers regional AGM on Tuesday night, where all the new executive committee members are elected for our region, I had previously been put up for Secretary but unfortunately didn't get enough votes. I thought, if I can go up in the roles each year and prove myself as a willing, hard working, fully involved member then it will increase my chances. But I did get my Publicity Officer role back again partly I think, because it's one of those roles where nobody else wants to do it, and partly because I showed last year that I was more than capable of getting things done well in a timely fashion. So, yeah ok, kinda bummed that I was beaten to the post of secretary again, but hey - sitting typing minutes and not really being part of a meeting is kinda lame anyway!
However, Duncan, a guy from the national Head Office was there on the night, he mentioned the exchange trip (mostly because a Scottish lass or lad will be coming over here and will need to bunnyhop between member's farms across the country for 6 weeks), so I asked him about it later on. Apparently, so it seems, in a good year only three (yes, 3) people apply for the trip. THREE?! WHAT?! So my chances of getting in are exceptionally high, not only but also, the criteria is simply to be a good member of young farmers - heard straight from the horses' mouth. Like, huh? Duncan basically said to just get in and apply, definitely. But perhaps give it a couple years as he was working on the young farmer big wigs to provide more money, such as to cover the airfares at least.

I mean, wow OK. Here I was thinking I needed to push, push, push, get good work references and look good in the club and all that. Now here is something to definitely look forward to!

Diving Head First

Into a sleep in. Yep. I got New Year's day off, and the day after. I'm talking two sleep ins, over the holidays, in summer, during a blimmen rain storm. But heck, at least I didn't have to go to work and get wet! It gave me more of a chance to get over this cold I've miraculously picked up over Christmas, it's still hanging around. Still get a squeaky voice during those odd occasions when I need to speak in public, but hey such is life, no?

Quite a bit has been happening around here, as of late. Dad has taken the Christmas/New year week or so off work to get some things done around here. The idea is that we get some things done before Nick's 21st party that we're holding here on the 16th. But, you know how it is. Everything just turns into a domino effect and yes a fair bit has been happening but it also involves a fair bit of unimportant things too, which is frustrating when you stand back and take a look.
Basically we hired a 5 tonne digger and Dad has done a lot of ground work in our new small section, cutting out a driveway and shifting dirt around etc. While at the same time we've cut off the front driveway/parking area from the lawn by digging in retaining which had a lot of added extras included as we went along - as per normal around here, someone comes up with a new bright idea about the project during the project itself.
So we've now got a retaining wall, and in front of that is a raised boxed garden that we've planted the roses in, and on the back side of the retaining on the lawn side is another, lower garden that will eventually have standard roses in when someone buys the odd one here and there for birthdays and what not, so things are progressing along nicely. It looks interesting, being there. There's always something different to look at around here - that's for sure.

Earlier on we pulled out our old boundary fence and quite literally, shifted it across the paddock to the new boundary and popped some battens on, it looks quite nice. And on Monday when Dad and Nick were playing with the big boys toys, I attacked the small section of old road fence with the ezi-pullers and a bucket, pulling off the battens and rolling up the wires so when Dad was ready he could pull the posts out. Nick and Dad thought I was sick, doing fencing of my own accord. Little do they know, I don't actually mind a small amount of destruction fencing! Little did they also know, that I was in fact sick and that night it seriously took over me!

Why am I always the first and often the only one to get sick in my family? It's super odd.

Now fast forward to New Years eve, the big rain storm was coming in so Dad, Nick and even a neighbour got on the big boys toys to shift all the dirt before everything turned to a slushy mess. Mum and I spent part of our New Years eve day together, painting windows. I really do treasure this time I can spend with Mum. Painting windows is a real pleasure that I wouldn't pass up on joining in with, any day. lol. Actually, the windows look quite good with only one new coat of paint, they need two more in later weeks, and the whole time we were doing it we joked about how we never get any "mother-daughter" time, always going our separate ways in life. haha
I spent part of my day stirring trouble with Dad. I'd been invited to a new years party by one guy I know - I never was going to go, with work and it being during the day and all that. But that didn't mean I couldn't cause trouble about it, asking Dad if he was OK with it, didn't matter anyway I was still going. This guy may be nearly 25 but age is only a number you know, etc etc etc. Mum and I were in stitches when he left the room.
Although, over the recent week with many conversations on similar topics about other people, Mum, Dad and Nick have all managed to blurt out at some stage - 5 years isn't a big age gap. And I just smile to myself, wondering when in later years I might need or want to use that to my advantage. It's quite amusing! ;)


The rain came at about 6am New Years day, over about 3 days of endless rain we managed to get 100mm and as expected, everything has turned to slush that you would somewhat expect in winter, but also not. The whole, the ground-is-too-dry-to-soak-the-water-up issue so it just-sits-on-top-and-stares-at-you problem got a little annoying. The water tank overflowed and I rebelled with the opportunity of two showers a day on my days off, simply because the water was going down the drain anyway, why not?
It hardly rained much yesterday and today we got pure sun so most things have dried out again. Dad jumped in the tractor yesterday to fill the plant boxes with a bit more dirt and dug massive tractor tyre holes all through the back lawn. SO currently, in the wake of attempting to tidy up before Nick's 21st in less than 2 weeks time when we have people here, there seems to be more mess. Things have been done, yes, but there's lots more to clean up now. Brilliant.

Otherwise our New Years "celebrations" weren't anything spectacular, not that they ever are. We actually managed to get some sleep those nights because the big music festival that is held in the next town was hushed from the wind and rain. Usually you see the strobe lights in the sky and the sound travels for miles, banging of the drums, people cheering; I think they have to shut it down at 2am? It would take a good 15 minutes to drive there, but for a crow it's just over the hill, it was pleasant not being able to hear it for a change - although I reckon I might go to it next year. Just for the excitement of it all.

On Saturday I had the pleasure of catching up with Bianca and going out to Chantelle's with her. We went to one of the local museums, had lunch, got ripped off at lunch (I'm positive I was overcharged, but you never quite know at cafe's). Had dinner at Chantelle's house afterwards and came home again. It's nice to be able to get together, and it's also good for there to be three people. I find with just two it's hard to keep a conversation going but at least with three there's always an easy topic going!!

Jackson is getting bigger and bigger, causing more and more trouble. Slowly he's getting to the stage of sleeping through the night and accepting his fate quite quickly, rather than screaming for hours and he and Pippa seem to be getting along OK - chasing each other around the house and such forth which is good. It amuses Pippa where I think that she thinks Jackson is absolutely ridiculous, while at the same time it keeps Jackson occupied, he hasn't accomplished climbing the stairs yet, other than the ones in the kitchen - thank goodness, it will be staying that way for as long as possible!

Although Pipsqueak gave me a scare yesterday when I came home to find her drooling, quite literally, everywhere. I thought she might have a tooth problem and expected a trip to the vets tomorrow morning, when they're open again. But after asking Chantelle (who's a vet nurse, convenient!) she suggested it's more likely my Mip-squiggally-squeak somehow poisoned herself, or at the very least had something stuck in her mouth. Her eyes were still bright, she was still her usual self happily eating and drinking, except that when she slept she couldn't control what stayed in her mouth and what didn't. However today, she seems fine! Thank goodness! Not even a dribble can be seen which is a relief. I'm not sure what happened and if she did eat something, what it could've been but I'm just glad she's OK...I would be gutted if it were otherwise.

2015: My Year in Review :)

It's that time of year again, the whole changing of the year time where everyone somewhat looks back over what's been going on. Where they write up this big spiel about nothing in particular and then at the end say some phrase along the lines of, "it's been a heck of a year, thanks for being part of the ride!" Or, something...anyway.
You know, I've never actually written anything like that, so to speak - I've always thought it a little cliche and yawnville, but this has been an interesting year so I figured that if I can't beat 'em, I may as well join 'em, right?
Here goes. Wish me luck!

This time last year I'd just turned 19, in my last, (meant to be exciting) year as a teenager, preparing myself to head into the big wide world, move out of home and go crazy. Okay, so maybe not that last one, but that was it. I spent my summer working full time, more than 30 hour weeks when I could get them and in any spare time I stressed over exam results and the fact that I wasn't quite going to get enough money to pay for my university residence hall. In hindsight, I should've applied for the two meal only option, it might've saved me a bit of stress! As you all know things didn't turn out as expected, I had myself a good stop and think session and wrote a cool as blog post, that if you haven't read already (which I highly recommend), you will find it here.It's quite incredible really, to think how one day, one hour, one minute even can change someones' life or change their perspective on it. I wasn't the same person from writing that post to finishing it and even now, thinking about it, I'm different again. Funny what a year does to you, wouldn't you think?

So life went on, life was awesome in fact! I splashed out all the savings I'd made for uni and bought myself a new (to me) car instead. We welcomed Ali the BMW to our place at the beginning of February. There may have been a slight bit of controversy over that, but everything worked out. Sure, I've had a couple of repair bills that comes with the territory of car ownership and yes they mightn't have been quite as expensive if she was your basic make and model, but hey, I'm not fussed!
I still get the odd person here or there that hints at me being "rich" and "snobby" because I own and drive a BMW which annoys the life out of me because if they knew me well enough they would know I'm nothing like that at all.
Ali was, it's fair to say, the luck of the Trade Me draw.






Not long after that, Pippa arrived. That beautiful, adorable, innocent and minuscule bundle of gray, flea-ridden fur. Dad was really peeved off, for about a minute - two at the most. Nowadays, well, she's the little ratbag who uses her claws as a weapon (I'm not kidding, my nose currently has a slice out of it as of last night), her eyes as a charm and her general personality to win everyone over. I can't believe she used to be that little, 300 gram rugrat!

then...

Now!

Life carried on as per normal, work slowed down. I took up studying my L4 Cert in Dairy from the beginning of March and now I'm only two months away from finishing it before I later move onto aiming towards a Diploma.
I began my role as the Northern Region Young Farmers "Publicity Officer" (I later learned to despise it, but I've also learned you don't always enjoy things 100% of the time). We covered heaps of maize stacks, I finally got to meet Miriam, I met a few more people early on in the year through work and other means and I also started working at some new farms.

I was eventually trusted as being a suitable assistant in regards to fencing and finally got to pull some hard hours and some blimmen long wires through the winter. Later proving myself as an excellent batten holder and I moved up the ladder when Dad entrusted me to operate the post banger to bang in some posts. Then I was finally taught how to do termination tie-offs (about time, Dad! I've only been watching you do it since birth). All is well that ends well, especially in relation to tying off wires!

I can't believe I nearly forgot this: I got my full license! (it wasn't out of a weet-bix box either, before anyone jumps to conclusions ;P )
Oh and we welcomed Anon into the blogosphere in July...lol, who remembers that day? Thinking back now, it was pretty hilarious...

Every year I want to try to do something good. For 2015 I managed to get in another two blood donations knocking my total up to 5 - 95 more to go to reach my target of 100 donations. I attempted Junk Free June just to prove that yes, I can do whatever I want to so long as I give it a good shot. And Mum, Andrew and I completed Steptember, raising a very small amount of money for Cerebral Palsy, the competitiveness was great!

I got through November without having to sit any more exams, being able to drive past the local College was probably the best feeling I had all year, knowing I never had to go there again. And for a nice change (talk to me about this next winter, I know I would've jinxed myself...) I only got sick twice this year. Which has lead me to believe I must be quite a healthy specimen after all...there are worse things to be thankful for.
I managed to get through the year without any creepy stalkers which made for a nice change although there's still one day left of opportunity! Potentially spent way too many hours at my computer emailing friends but there isn't one ounce of regret there, and I think overall there hasn't been anything I could look back on and think -  darn, wish I never did that.  Which is great as that is how a good year is supposed to be.

It's amazing how much I learned about sheep this year!

Got to work with some cool people that I was able to learn quite a bit from, and discovered that I am able to throw smart comments back at people without causing too much offense - I think it made them appreciate me more come to think of it. It was great to get through another year of work where everywhere I went and everyone I worked with seemed happy to see me. I got my mugshot in a popular dairy farming newspaper this month alongside an article about my family and yesterday a farmer I saw jokingly said he, "wanted my autograph". Which was rather amusing, to say the least!

This is my 67th blog post for just this year. I have found that over the years since beginning as a blogger my writing style continues to change and develop. Beginning as a 15 year old with nothing else to write home about except for farm stuff, I have discovered a few more interesting things to write about. Although there is room for improvement, especially in regards to possibly using some better words and phrases. However, it works for now. After two years writing on this site though, I think this poem I wrote is probably one of my favourite pieces of writing that I have managed to create, even now I'm still slightly baffled with it...


And still, I continue to learn more and more. Like today for instance, I finally figured out how to put links in a post, it's probably one of the most basic things around but I had no idea. Now I'm kicking myself for all of this wasted opportunity!

We don't have that long to wait for 2016 to begin, just a day and a bit now. The hours are ticking over rather fast. One of the major things I have learned and I have to keep reminding myself of is that time doesn't wait. Everyone has mentioned, at least once this year, that the year is going by at an extreme pace. And it lends a constant reminder that it isn't going to sit around waiting for you to make the right decision or choose the correct path.Many of my friends are going through the stage of their life where they have to make those quick-fire choices that will directly affect whatever they will do in their future years, they're essentially building the bridge that will lead them into wherever they're meant to go. It's a scary time for them, having those doubts running through their minds - are they doing the right thing? 
Everyone goes through that at some stage in their lifetimes. I had that this time last year, sure things didn't work out for me, but whatever is meant to happen, will happen. It's all about using the right materials to build the bridge to the standard it is meant to be built in, and don't stop building it. It will always require maintenance and every so often something new will pop up that will look great on the bridge, it's just where to put it that you have to decide.
And, honestly, life isn't a guessing game. You just have to learn how to make a decision and stick by it so that later on when people question you on it you're able to justify it in such a way that anyone a stone throw away will believe you.
And while I am still extremely young and I haven't had any major decisions thrown at me really. I find that it's not making choices that is difficult, it is learning to adapt to a constantly changing environment that is the hard part.

Finally, I'm preparing myself for a fun, exciting 2016. I've got so many things planned it's unimaginable how I'll get everything done. January is definitely going to be the good kick start and December next year should hopefully be the gentle smoothing out of a fantastic 2016!!