STUPID PEOPLE

Okay so here's the thing, I am a little bit intolerant.  Not a shock to my nearest and dearest who know me well.  Why is it that people can't follow instructions or if they're not sure ask about something.  Its been a bit of a week of stupid people.  There's a little old guy who was living in our shearer's quarters (he's moving out today).  He's been working on the station for donkey's years and although lovely is not a rocket scientist. To give you an example, last year he painted our house.  He did a good job but decided that he also needed to spray ripcord around the place to deal with the spiders and flies.  For anyone who doesn't know Ripcord is a nasty insect spray.  Johnny turns up and he's got all the safety gear on, full body overalls, glasses and mask.  It was 6.00am and the kids had slept in the outside room that night because they wanted to watch a movie  They had just got up to go the loo and by the time they got back Johnny had sprayed the entire room with pesticide.  When I say the entire room, I mean the ENTIRE room.  There was pesticide running down the walls, all over the computer, all over the tv, all over all the other electrics in the room and all over the beds the children had been sleeping in.  He didn't think to ask us, and we were just in the kitchen, whether we even wanted ripcord sprayed around the place.   We only discovered he had done it when I went out there to check the email.

So last week Scott asked him to spray out an old crop ready for discing and ploughing in of a new crop.  Scott told him to spray the herbicide at 3 litres to the hectare.  He checked Johnny had understood and thought all was well.  Johnny turned up later that day and said "I need more herbicide I've run out".  Scott said to him that he couldn't of run out as there was plenty there.  "What rate did you spray it at Johnny".  "Oh, I sprayed it at 8 litres to the hectare as I wanted to make sure the thistles were killed".  Gotta love it when people think for themselves.  Scott just shook his head.  PGG Wrightsons merchandise agent is rubbing his hands together as we had to buy another 20litre drum of herbicide and they are not cheap!  As Johnny is in his 70's he often has senior moments and uses the wrong products in the sprayer on the tractor.  This week he also sprayed some thistles on the new young grass paddocks but used the wrong stuff and sprayed the grass as well.  There are now large stripes of dead grass all through the new grass paddocks.  He said "oh, someone must have put the wrong herbicide into the containers and labelled them wrong".  No Johnny, I think you might have read the containers wrong.  No-one touches the herbicides except him and I'm pretty sure they're not coming from the store in the wrong containers.

So we had trouble with Johnny with the spraying out of the crop and I've already said about the trouble we've had since he did that with the greasy cut worm and slugs.  But of course nothing is ever simple. The crop is now coming up but its really patchy and in some places doesn't appear to be coming up at all.  Scott telephoned the contractor who put the crop in who said "Oh yeah, I changed the depth of the seeder and decided to sow them deeper partway through".  So the upshot of that is, the seeds that were sown at the right depth have come up nicely, the ones that the contractor decided in his wisdom need to be sown deeper are struggling....I wonder if Scott will ask for a discount on the bill??  Interestingly Scott has spent the last couple of days trying to track down some more cropping equipment locally and is going to just do the rest ourselves.

Why don't people just ask a question and check before they make decisions?  There have been a couple of other stupid incidents this week as well.  Scott asked the staff to take the heifers away to another paddock.  He assumed they would shift the bulls out of the way before they took the heifers through.  They just decided to bunch the whole lot together.  Never mind, after a re-draft and a sort out things are now where they need to be.  Lets just hope the bulls didn't get to the heifers in the meantime and we won't have out of season calves.

Perhaps next week will be a better week.  I have to spend today trying to fix the window as Iwa the dog has decided that the best way to enter the house is Dukes of Hazzard style through the lounge window in the middle of the night.  The window doesn't have the best latch on it so she just pushes it with her nose and then squeezes her body in through the small gap.  She's not a small dog and only has three legs so its no mean feat.  Perhaps I could get Johnny to come up and fix it for me...I'm sure he'd have some sort of clever idea for what I need to do!!

SLUGS, GREASY CUT WORM AND FISH

I know I should have done a blog post earlier in the week, but as I've said before, things just get away on you up here with no apparent warning!  Last week we discovered that 30 hectares of brassica crop that we had just sown for summer feed for lamb fattening had a slug issue.  This of course meant that I had to go down and spend over 3 hours one evening spreading slug bait all around the crop with the aid of the quad bike and fert spreader.  All I can say is Thank God for the Ipod.  Going around and around in circles in a paddock left to my own thoughts would have driven me crazy.  Some women go out to cafes for their time out, not me, I spread slug bait!  Thought we had got on top of the issues with the crop only to have the Wrightsons rep turn up to tell us that we had a massive infestation of greasy cut worm (Agrotis Ipsilon).  I had never heard of greasy cut worm, but now know all about it!  For the benefit of anyone else who doesn't know it is the larvae of a moth type thing that originated in Australia.  The caterpillar itself is about 50mm long and has a sharp cutting mouth which runs along the rows of sprouting brassica and nips them off at ground level.  Poor old Scott had to go straight out and spray the paddock, as soon as the spray arrived from Gisborne.  This all occurred at 7pm so Scott was out spraying until nearly midnight and then back again at 5am the next day.  He was pretty grumpy I can tell you!  Just as well we went to Whakatane and went fishing!

Fishing was great.  It was Madi's first time out at sea in a boat.  Weather was pretty good considering but not the best for fishing.  We went out through the Whakatane bar and then motored up to Matata.  Fished in water 30-50m deep.  Caught snapper, tarakihi and blue cod.  Would have caught more but had a terrible time with Barracudas coming up to the boat frightening the fish away and tangling all the lines!  Still had a great time though.

Schooling is coming along nicely.  Not impressed at all the art that has to be done.  Today we have been tye-dyeing which makes a hell of a mess.  The intinerant teacher is due to visit us tomorrow and I noticed in his letter to us he made a point of asking for the dogs to be tied up...guess he doesn't want his laptop bag being peed in again!  Have had a few issues with Madi's science project.  Iwa the dog decided it would be a good idea to pick up her trays of seeds and distribute them around the lawn just as they were beginning to sprout.  We have had to start that experiment all over again but have learnt that things must be put out of reach of animals and small children!  Speaking of small children, Jimmy is coming home this weekend from Hawkes Bay.  Have missed him quite a lot, but no doubt will be pulling my hair out within minutes of arrival back home.

Scott is busy busy this week.  He has a board meeting and the Partnership Annual General Meeting in Gisborne this weekend so has been flat out writing reports and finishing budgets and associated spreadsheets.  When I say Scott has been doing it, I should actually say he has been standing over me while I complete them for him!  Hence part of the reason I haven't completed the blog!

Off to the creek and river this afternoon to try and catch some whitebait.  I think the season may be finished but we are only catching them to look at and then let go.  We went down to the beach on Monday and saw heaps of them but didn't have a net.  Purchased a butterfly net today as that was all that was available in Ruatoria which hopefully will do the trick.  If not, I am sure the kids will have a lot of fun trying.  I may try to get some photos.