The digger strikes again

Saturday was another constructive day on the block. With the inlaws in tow again, we went out to Waterford Estate to meet Kathryn & Damian who are doing our soil engineering samples for us. Well Damian was, Kathryn, Lesley and I sat in the shade and 'supervised'. This time we were clever enough to bring the umbrella which made for a great possie in the shade.

Our possie in the shade

Damian showing them how its done

Damian doin' his thing

Chris having a go

Bob filling in trenches (the hard way)

Chris filling in trenches (the easy way!)

The easy way and the hard way...

Visitors, water pipes and trenches

This weekend Bob and Lesley came to visit from Gisborne. It was their first visit to Waterford Estate and we told them to come equipped with work clothes and sensible shoes - no point wasting good workers!

On Friday, after a bit of a lie in (we had been to Cliff Richard and The Shadows in Auckland the previous night) we packed a picnic lunch complete with sandwiches, thermos for tea and fruit and headed out "the paddock". We had a picnic lunch when we got there, after which Bob and Chris got straight to work laying water pipes under the driveway while Lesley and I inspected the Estate. We set up our camping chairs (Thanks Gina & Nigel!) and watched the met at work.

Having picnic lunch at the "paddock"

Here are some photos of their efforts.

Unrolling pipe

Pulling the pipe through the conduit

So this has got to go where? Over there?

Making a few adjustments to the trenches

This goes in like that, then that goes in like this

What you fella's looking at?

Another productive day.

We have power... well nearly

Today our friend Chris came and laid out the power and phone cables in the trenches ready to be connected up. Chris (Jackson) has to build a frame for the meterbox and then once we've done that, and he's put in the water pipes and filled the trenches in Chris (Walters) can come back and connect it all up. So we are a step closer to having power in.

Below are some pics showing the results of yesterday's efforts. Chris pruned the willow off the boundary and I did some whipper-snipping.

The finished product

This was the willow tree

My whipper-snipping efforts (cottage site & driveway)

More whipper-snipping efforts (the turnaround bay)

Here lots of pics of today's efforts (I had to do something while the boys were working!):

Chris with the 25+yr old Masport mower that emigrated with the Schneider family from Aussie in the late 80's - it struggled a bit in places but put in a valiant effort!

Chris working the mower some more

Driving the digger - 'cos he can

Getting there slowly

Filling in the trenches

Pulling the electrical cabling through the conduit - it actually worked!

Working

Chris W doing his magic

Chris & Chris working

Inspecting the finished product

Danger - don't dig here!

Remove privet...check, Remove willow... check, whipper-snip driveway... check!

Another couple of things were ticked off the endless to-do list today. Chris had a bit of arb work he wanted to do, and I was whipper-snipper queen. Although, I'm told that its not whipper-snipper here in NZ, its weed-eater. Potato, potato!

There is/was a huge privet tree tangled up in the barberry/blackberry/weed patch that is the hedge down the driveway. Chris chopped a big limb off with the pole saw, but the hedge is so overgrown it just hung there! So the trusty Surf was put to work (in 4wd of course). The surf made short work of pulling the tree free from the hedge, go the hilux!

Next job for Chris was to tidy up a big willow tree that is actually on our neighbour's place but overhangs our boundary. Chris had a chat with the neighbour about it yesterday, so today he set about tidying it up. It's a pretty ugly specimen and we both would rather it were pruned at ground level but we will see how the neighbourly relations go before we suggest something quite so drastic. After all, most neighbourly disputes are caused by trees and boundaries! Chris gave it a good haircut including taking out quite a bit of dead wood which kept him busy for most of the morning. He left the firewood on the neighbours side to help said neighbourly relations.

While he was doing his thing, I whipper-snipped the driveway and turnaround area, as well as the house site as it had become somewhat overgrown. I found it much easier than last week (my arms had finally stopped hurting by Thursday!) so managed to get quite a bit done. By the end of it my hands were tingling and I thought they were going to fall off, but it was very satisfying to see what I had achieved. By the time I'd finished my section, Chris had tidied up his tree mess and dragged all the brush into a big pile to burn.

All in all, a very successful day. Some pics of our finished work will feature on tomorrow's blog as in our haste to get out to the block we forgot the camera!

What I learned today...

During the week we received the quotes from the various driveway contractors. As was expected, the quotes varied quite significantly between all five firms. We have yet to decide which one we will go with, although one seems to be a clear favourite at this stage. Watch this space. We have one more contractor to hear back from, as we only got him out yesterday to have a look.

Chris spent all day out at the block yesterday. I desperately needed to stay home and give the house a good clean as we've been away a bit lately and it was looking a bit neglected. And there wasn't really all that much for me to do out there. Chris on the other hand was a busy bee. He got quite a bit more trenching done, taking the trench for power, water and phone over to the shed site. He also put in some electrical conduit under where the driveway is going and filled the trench back in so we can get vehicles into the block (and more importantly, cattle out!).

Trenching out towards shed site

Chris inspecting his handiwork

Conduit in the trench and hole filled in

Once the trenching was finished, Chris took down an old fence and pulled the posts out with the digger. Next in his sights were the cattle yards. We are going to salvage the loading race and move it to a more convenient location but remove the rest of the yards as they have definitely seen better days. The digger was doing a great job until a hose got caught on the rails and burst. Oops. So that was that. All in all a very productive day.

The digger and the half-demolished cattle yards

Houston, we have a problem...

View of paddock with internal fence removed

Today we both went out to the block as "many hands make light work". With the digger still out of action until Chris can get a new hose, we turned our attention to weed and grass control. It was my very first time with a whipper-snipper and I learnt really quickly to keep my mouth shut as flying bits of grass and weeds don't taste very good! I had the normal whipper-snipper and it was my job to do under the post & rail fence-lines so we can spray the grass to keep it clear of the fence. Chris had the big whipper-snipper with a slasher blade on it and he dealt to the base of the barbary hedge. I finished before Chris as grass is much easier than hedge so I went on a thistle destroying mission. There are a couple of patches that I dealt to but then I ran out of whipper-snipper cord. Nevertheless it was very satisfying seeing thistles lying toes up in the paddock! Chris managed to finish spraying along where he'd been slashing the hedge weeds just as the spray ran out. Great timing!

Me with the whipper-snipper - what a great invention!

Close-up of me covered in plant goop

My handiwork

Chris the weedsprayer

In other news, we received a draft set of cottage plans back from Alena Homes' draughtsman. He had a couple of really good ideas for maximising space, but we want to tweak the bathroom and kitchen layout as we don't think it works particularly well as it is. Our good friends who are in the know are going to take a look and give us their expert opinion. Once we've decided on a layout which works best we can send the plans back for a re-draw.

Chris in the nicest stip of pasture on the whole place

Maybe one day it will all look like this?

Because at the moment most of it looks like this...

(and that's after the cattle have been through)

Driveways and Houses

Tonight after work we met with Alena Homes who are building our cottage (and eventually our main house), and a contractor to do our driveway. Chris has organised a few contractors (5 to be exact) to give us quotes over the next week or so for the driveway. This will start to get things moving so the builders can start building.

It was a very productive meeting with Helen and Lena-Jane from Alena. They were quite impressed with our layout and our plans, and offered a couple of really constructive ideas that we hadn't considered. Helen is going to get the architect to start drawing up the cottage plans this week so we can get them to council to start wading through the red tape as soon as possible.

As a result of the suggestions from Helen and Lena, we decided to reposition the cottage on the site so we pulled the pegs out and repositioned them. I'm sure it won't be the last time that we change things around.

As an aside, I think I'm going to get Chris a toolbelt for his birthday. He seems to have developed this habit of randomly dropping whatever tool he's holding in his hands wherever he happens to be without even noticing it! Silly boy! I keep reminding him of the Square One principle he taught me (everything gets put back to square one) but he doesn't seem to practise what he preaches.

Busy weekend!

Saturday

After the stressful settlement on Friday, we were really looking forward to our first official weekend working on the block. We were keen as mustard to get started so bright and early on Saturday morning we packed the Surf with stakes, measuring tape, a hammer, a big bottle of water and heaps of sunblock and off we went.

When we got there we went and had a chat to Kevin (the old owner) and now our neighbour about what we were planning to do and to organise what was going to happen with the stock on the property. He was grazing two mares and foals and the other neighbour's cattle to help keep the grass down. After sorting everything out we started staking out the driveway.

Me attempting to hammer in stakes - the ground was hard!

Chris checking out the services - power, water & phone

Next to be staked out was the cottage site and the shed site. After a small diversion when the cattle decided to stage a jail break (the buggers figured out the power was off in about 5 mins), and us running around like loonies trying to keep them from galloping down the driveway, we managed to get them back to where they were supposed to be and turn the power back on. All this running around was thirsty work and it was very hot, so we decided to nip into town and have a bite to eat. It's very handy being only 4 minutes from town!

After our pit stop we carried on with the staking. Next to be marked out was the arena site and the main house site. It was great to finally get an idea of what our months of planning on paper was going to look like. After a few modifications to our plan and some 'discussion' on various aspects of the driveway such as the size of the gravel area outside the shed (the accountant was seeing the dollar signs fast disappearing) it started to take shape.

We decided to knock off about 4pm by which time I was sure I was dying of heatstroke. We thought it was a good idea to go and meet some of the neighbours. We went across the road and met Graham & Esther, a lovely older couple. They revived us with chocolate cookies and cold water which was great as we were fading fast. Then it was off to the neighbours next to us. They are a lovely couple from South Africa, Verna & Dave. They have 3 children, though I can't remember their names (very bad of me). We must have been there for about an hour or so just chatting. We headed home about 6pm, what a day!

Sunday

Sunday dawned grey and miserable. We headed over to Katikati to see Dad, Cathy and Briar to celebrate our property purchase over lunch, with the ulterior motive of raiding Dad's shed for tools and equipment. The weather got steadily worse, and by the time we got to Lockington Road it was fair bucketing down. We had a yummy roast beef for lunch, with spuds and beans out of the garden. After lunch there was a break in the weather so we headed out for a tour of their property. We inspected the progress of the trees they'd planted, and visited the beehives. We also attempted to get the digger trailer out of the paddock - I say attempted as we needed a couple of go's at it. The heavens opened and we got absolutely drenched. Eventually Chris and Dad got the digger on the trailer and we headed back to Hamilton about 4pm.

We were a little dubious of the trailer as it had been sitting unused for a wee while. It seemed to tow alright, in fact the Surf did a mighty fine job of it. It wasn't until we rounded the last corner up the street from our house that we noticed one of the tyres had blown out! The weather was so atrocious driving back that we didn't notice it at all. Oops. Oh well, lucky we had a spare!

Monday

Today we headed out to the block again with digger in tow (with replacement tyre on the trailer). It was raining when we got there so we waited in the car, itching to get started. Apparently we'd had about 88mls of rain over the last 24 hours, and there was still quite a bit of water lying around. We only had to wait about 10 mins for it to stop raining, and we unloaded the digger from the trailer and headed off to Bunnings to buy some supplies. On the list was a padlock for the trailer, a fuel can, a spade and some pipe. We came back with the padlock which was the wrong sort (should have listened to me!), and a fuel can that didn't pour all that well (design fault!).

Back out at the block Chris started digging a trench with the digger. Kevin popped round and we shifted the two broodmares with foals over to his place. That freed up their paddock so I dismantled their temporary fencing. It was warratahs with wire and tape, which I was VERY pleased to see the back of. When Kevin kindly offered the warratahs to us, I politely decline - that stuff gives me the heebie-jeebies!

By the end of the day Chris was a pro on the digger. He dug quite a length of trench ready to lay the power and phone cables under the driveway to the cottage and the shed. With all the warratahs gone and the trenches dug, we could see more clearly where things were going to go. All in all it was a very successful weekend. Here are some pics of our escapades today.

The green machine

Getting the hang of it

Looking great!

Action station

Another action shot

Supervising from the "office"

The finished product