Blackberry and Cheese

Update on the cheese front ...

Well, we cut our first hard cheese - the Caerphilly.  It was very edible, albiet a little salty.  The rind went a little hard with mould spots but was completely edible.

Have spent the weekend making 2 camenberts.  These will be matured over the next 4-5 weeks and hope that they will look nice and fluffy in time.  With the excess whey, another round of ricotta was made.

Blackberry season is upon us, although a bit later than normal.  I was presuaded by Alice to pick blackberries the other day whilst taking the sheep back down the road.  They tend to be a little dusty, nothing a good wash can't solve.  This lead onto:

•  a 'Blackberry Smoothie' with banana, homemade yoghurt, honey and fresh cow's milk.  Rather tasty. 
• Homemade ice cream using our eggs collected and picked blackberries along with cream and chocolate chips.  Haven't tried it out yet, but previous attempts in making it and eating it, I am sure it will be yummy.

Community Activities

It's a busy weekend for community events. 

23rd - 25th February was the Waingaro/Te Akau Centennial Dog Trials, held on two local properties on State Highway 22.  We managed to sneak a quick look down to see the Seaville Cup (Short Head & Yard) and the Joe Maihi Cup (Hunt) on Saturday afternoon for the local participants. 

Mark Porter about to close the gate on the winning run for the Seaville Cup.  This was the only penning of the three finalist.

The Hunt course - keep inside the pegs and push the three sheep to the top.  Two of the three finalist for Joe Maihi Cup managed to get them to the top.  Look closely the three sheep are almost middle of photo.

Second event was the Naike Community Bike Ride on Sunday 26th February.  This raises funds for the local community centre and is run on an annual basis.  The course was 35 - 40 km long, and went through about 8 different properties.  Riders go round the course anywhere from 1 - 3 times (depending on skill).  We made it out to our back paddocks where the bikes were going through.  From the top of the nob we could see about 80% of the course.  I managed to get 1 photo then my camera battery died!

Lone biker coming down the track

There are other bike rides around, with Waikaretu hosting one 6th February and Te Akau school on 18th February.  Great fundraisers for local communities.

February Catch Up

Apologies for the delay in getting the next blog up ... have been doing lots of different things which probably don't amount to much in a single blog.  I will try and recapture some of the activities.

In New Zealand, on 6th February, we celebrated Waitangi Day.  For many of us, it is a holiday but also a chance to remember the signing of the treaty.  For more information on the day visit http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/politics/treaty/waitangi-day.  For us it was pretty much a holiday, and we even managed to have a break from farm work.  That evening our shearing gang 'Clayton-Greene and Welch Shearing' had their cut-out shout for clients at the Waikaretu Hall.  Well attended and an enjoyable evening.

Much of the month has been moving stock around and putting stock on trucks for a terminal ride.  This included the balance of our older cattle and 372 lambs.  The 2-lines of lambs averaged 15.5 and 16.3 kg carcass weight.  A bit disappointed in the 15.5 kg CW but could have been something to do with the distance they had to travel. 

Mob 2 of Dairy Heifers just before shift

Mob 3 of Dairy Heifers being shifted

We have also started some gorse spraying but have quite a bit still to do.  Whilst the property does not have a lot of gorse, it is important to keep on top of the small patches before it takes over.  You can read a bit about gorse at http://www.biosecurity.net.nz/gorse.html.  We have a varying population of feral goats on the property and whislt they do some control, there is a need for spraying.  Most of it is in our steeper hill country, therefore using a high pressure pump with long lead-out hose is ideal for most of it, followed by knap-sack in non-accessible areas.  This will be an on-going project for us.

With work in Otaki 12th - 13th February, we decided to take Alice on her first plane trip which inevitably got delayed then cancelled, so instead of flying Auckland - Palmerston North, we flew into Wellington and bused to Levin.  The reason we were in Otaki, was a retreat for the AgDialogue Group which I have mentioned before (check out the blogspot - http://agriculturalemissions.blogspot.co.nz/p/about.html).  This is being co-ordinated by Motu  (http://www.motu.org.nz/) and involves representatives from a wide background but all have an interest in what or how we can make any form of 'ETS' work for the whole of NZ.  At the retreat there were 10 ideas put into a pot to work with so watch the above space.  Our flight back home on Valentine's day was as predicted but a bit bumpy.  Mum didn't like it much but Alice didn't seem to mind.

Alice excited about her trip home!

Recently was also the annual Limestone Downs Field day.  A large property on the coast south of Port Waikato.  The topics of this years field day included plans for dairy conversion, hogget mating (Paul Kenyon - Massey University) and parasite management (Bill Pomeroy - Massey University). 

Mal managed to sneak off the field day, between rain showers and between mustering our terminal ewes and pre-tup drenching them.  In addition to this our Discussion Group meet at AgResearch (http://www.agresearch.co.nz/Pages/default.aspx), where we were able to catch up with a number of scientist and have great discussion about pasture persistance, animal welfare, epigenomics, future research regarding FE and pastures and other current research.  It was a great worthwhile day.  As a group we benchmarked our lamb selling for the past 3 seasons (not this) and looked at store and prime sales, along with running an analysis on Farmax to compare enterprises.

The 2-tooth and light ewes also came in for their pre-tup drench.  A sample of the ewes were weighed and condition scored.  The 2-tooth were 62.6 kg average and 3.9 condition score (CS), whilst the light ewes were 63.5 kg and 3.4 CS.  Whilst in the season we have just had, that doesn't sound overly high, to put that in perspective, the first tupping season here, albiet after the 2007/08 drought, our ewes only averaged 50 kg, so we feel we have made great progress in a short time.  We just hope that it extrapolates out into a good lambing %. 

The muster

Although 4 days earlier than planned, we decided to put the rams out with the 2-tooths.  A shown in the pictures below, the rams were obviously showing an interest.

Sniff me then I will sniff you!

Who is that sniffing my bum!



2 rams showing an interest in the 2-tooths.  The one at front being submissive, the ones at back continue eating!

So far we have had 141.8 mls for January (139.1 mls av) and 54.75 mls of rain for February (73.8 mls av), although the February rainfall so far is greater than the last 2 seasons and January was marginally less than last 2 seasons.  NIWA is predicted a normal autumn so will see what happens.

Week of stock work

This has been 10 days basically doing stock work, with both dairy heifers and sheep being moved around their rotations. 

We were able to have some 'city' friends come and visit us a week ago and took them for a ride around the farm.  Unfortunately the day wasn't the best weather wise so the views weren't as good as they could have been. 


Showing the boundaries



Looking north

2-ths milling around (pines are the neighbours)

Looking east from the back country, Huntly slightly to the left of photo

 This was a 'long weekend' for us with Auckland Anniversary on the Monday, with Mal spending it with his girls in town, celebrating Rachael's 12th birthday.  This involved an excursion to the Hamilton Museum (http://www.waikatomuseum.org.nz/), which has lots of interactive things for the kids.

The 600 odd MA Ewes (Mixed Age) got their booster shot of Androvax (talked about in December post).

Our dairy heifers grazing have all been drenched and administered with a Time Capsule (http://agrifeeds.co.nz/index.php?act=facial_capsule).  This is a slow release zinc capsule that protects animals against Facial Ezcema.  Despite our pasture samples to date being zero, the monitoring around the district does show an increase in levels.  Discussions with the owners of the heifers, we agreed to administer now.  They aren't the easiest things to put in, and we find it easier to get in with the heifers to drench and 'bullet'.

Alice showing how the capsule is inserted into the 'gun'

Mal inserting the gun into the animals throat and then pulls a wee trigger to shoot the bullet down the throat

Alice helping to insert the capsule for each animal

Drenching the weaners

With our big bulls now gone, next intake of 100 lease bulls have arrived.  These are 18-month Jersey bulls with an average of 357 kg.  With ample feed about at present they will be sent out to do a bit of a clean up job, preparing pastures for weaners and hoggets.

We also weighed and drenched the remaining of our ram lambs.  With the next marketable 370 going out in the next 2 weeks, that will leave us with 250 lambs, which will be gone by the end of March.

Holidays and Cheese

Well we have finally managed to have a wee break off farm for more than 2 nights!  We have timed the weather pretty well and Alice and I had 4 great days away at the beach and Mal is still there.  Unfortunately he had to come home in the middle to load out the bulls.

The big bulls we were sharefarming have gone on a terminal trip.  Of the two mobs:

• Averaged 600 kg LW, grew at 1.10 kg/day over a 207 days and killed out at 315 kg CW
• Averaged 548 kg LW, grew at 1.12 kg/day over a 146 days and killed out at 273 kg CW

I came home early as work awaited me and someone had to shift the animals.  First jobs home were to open the gates for the hoggets/light ewes to drift to a new paddock and shift the three mobs of heifers and treat a lamb for flystrike.  The dogs having had limited run time in 4 days were taken for a run to the back of the farm.

We have had some more spore counts taken and still have a reading of zero, which is great news so far.  We will aim to take a pasture sample on a weekly basis to monitor the situation.

Before we left on holiday we had the vet out to palpate and blood test our flock of rams before the breeding season.  In recent seasons there has been out breaks of brucellosis (http://www.biosecurity.govt.nz/pests/brucellosis) but luckily we have not been affected by it.  If infected the rams easily spread this within the flock at mating time and/or amongst other rams.  The infection can lead to reproductive failure or abortions.  At palpating time, the vet is checking to see that the testicles are healthy ie no lumps or abnormalities.  All the rams passed the palpapation test and awaiting results of blood test.

On the cheese making front:

• the Farmhouse Cheddar has been coated in wax and sitting out in the shed where it will age for 5 weeks.  End of February will be cutting time!
• I made a Feta, but unfortunately didn't take a photo of it and now it is all gone.  It had a lovely fresh creamy taste and didn't last long at all making its way into salads and top of crackers, or on its own.
• Milk is out to make Caerphilly cheese which orignated from Wales.

Making the cheese hasn't been hard but can be time consuming and getting timing right so not up at all hours of the night or sometimes having other things to do.  Patience is required.  As mentioned in an earlier blog we bought the Hard Cheese Kit.  In this it provides you with the mould, wax and bowl, butter muslin, starter culture, cheese salt, steriliser and instructions.  In the booklet it gives recipes for 3 cheeses and a feta.  There are other kits to get you started with other types of cheese. 

In addition to the kit, we do need a few other things such as:

• cheese vat - am using my perserving pot
• incubator - am using a 4.2 litre tupperware container in our chilly bin
• thermometer - am using our electronic soil thermometer
• Pipette - am using one from our FECPAK kit (not used for FECs first thankfully)
• Maturing box - am using a small chilly bin
• Feta mould and brining container - am using the hard cheese mould and it fits snuggly into a round clik clack container
• Cheese press - used a jar with my husband's weights on top
• Knife for cutting curd and a draining spoon - all things in the kitchen
• Timer - my oven timer is my next best friend and use it to time all steps in process.

The only part of the kit you will need to replace over time includes:

• salt
• steriliser
• culture
• milk
• maybe butter muslin but I just wash and reuse

Hobbies and stuff

Well, I couldn't resist going to the next door dairy farm and getting some milk to start my cheese making experience.  This coincided with getting a cheese making kit (http://www.madmillie.com/) for my birthday.  So, with Mal out at a meeting I nothing better to do but start, and managed to get it set in its mould before midnight!  Most people start at simple cheeses, I decided to start with a farmhouse cheddar.  Amazingly everything went to plan and have now have my cheese air drying before waxing.

Farmhouse Cheddar 1 day old

So, Mal is onto the home brew beer and I the cheese so we can have beer and cheese sessions!

Also this week, we sorted out our store lambs on Monday and took them to the Frankton sale on Tuesday.  We had a mixture, with a handful of black face lambs, some white face ram lambs and white face ewe lambs (n=190).   There was a fair turnout of buyers on a nice sunny warm summers day (not that we have had too many of them to date) and the lambs were sold for about an average of $90 for our smalls.  The results from Tuesday 17th results can be viewed at http://www.pggwrightson.co.nz/Services/SaleyardResults (although the results aren't up yet) or http://mylivestock.co.nz/market_reports (which is listed). 

The girls are home this week of the school holidays, and Mal had them out working yesterday with the goal of getting most of our drains sprayed out to allow better water flow.  By the end of the day, the tank was empty and the drains were done.

Today, the balance of the lambs finally got their fly treatment.  With all the wet weather about, fly as been prominent this season.  All the ewes and ewe lambs were done 10 days off shears, whilst the ram lambs we left until our January sales were done.  It is not a nice thing to watch, an animal being struck.  There is a simple article on fly strike on the Lifestyle Block website if you want to read more -  http://www.lifestyleblock.co.nz/the-basics/article/141-flystrike.html.

Today brings another fine day, no significant rain for a week now!  The grass is still lush, the stock are finally back on track and growing again, as are the weeds.  Finally it is starting to feel a bit like summer!

Fridolin flies the coop

Today is Fridolin's last day, but there is one last job before he goes, getting up at 6am to put the lambs on the truck this morning.  180 lambs are off on a terminal truck ride.  (Since I started writing this blog, 2 days have passed!)

This week we have had relatively fine weather with only 38 mls falling, with 22.5 mls on Thursday, so we have had an opportunity for getting out and doing some jobs without getting too wet.

Monday we headed north to Maramarua and collected our new rams.  It is non-negotiable since we have been farming out here that our rams must come from a FE tolerant flock and that they must record their information on SIL (Sheep Improvement Limited) database (http://www.sil.co.nz/).  I do have to confess at this time, that I have worked for SIL in the past so have a bit of an understanding of the records.

Our trait focus when selecting rams, is reproduction and growth, as we are building both of these traits in the flock.  Our focus is selecting the highest DPO (Dual Purpose Overall) or DPP (Dual Purpose Production) animal we can afford, and then within a small group select animals that do well in the sub-index of DPR (Dual Purpose Reproduction) and DPG (Dual Purpose Growth) without necessarily having negative traits in any of the other sub-indexes.

Studying the records before looking at the rams

Malcolm and Jan putting the rams into the diamond

The group of rams to select from

This year was pretty easy, as although there were 30 rams in the group, we had narrowed it down to about 6 based on records.  We got the top 2 in to check conformation, and in this instance we rejected one, and then got the next 2 and chose what we considered to be the next best animal.  Hence we walked away with our 2 2-tooth rams in less than half an hour.  In addition we took 2 older rams to boost numbers, that still had good records.

Rams ready for the trip home

Once at home, they got a drench and stood in the yards overnight, before joining the other rams.

On Monday, we also took in a pasture sample to get tested for FE spores.  The results came back 0, which is good, but is something we will be watching closely, especially on the paddocks where the weaners graze.  There is lots of good information about Facial Eczema such as the Beef + Lamb New Zealnad link as follows http://www.beeflambnz.com/facial-eczema.  There are parts of the Franklin and Northland areas which are already showing elevated spores. 

Tuesday we had more rain!  and managed to weigh up some more lambs, which were the ones that went on the truck on Sunday morning.  The 187 that headed off to Te Kuiti Meats averaged 16.4 kg CW which was more than we were expecting as we had weighed a bit deeper in the flock.

In the afternoon we did a bit of investigating into Farm IQ (http://www.farmiq.co.nz/) deciding on whether to join or not, what information to put in and what we wanted out of it for both the sheep flock and for the finishing bulls.  We are still evaluating things at present, so watch this space.

Wednesday was a day off as it was birthday, and my policy is not to work on this day.  We spent the day in town doing lots of jobs but did managed to sneak in a lunch out.

We started having some fine weather at last, so there was some tidying up of ewes and lambs about the place, especially following the rain and start and stop shearing.  So finally all the lambs and ewes were put away in their respectful mobs.  Fridolin spent some time stripping a fenceline and we managed to get this all cleaned up before he left.