The Diggers Arrived For A Couple Of Days Of Tidying Up Jobs & More Riparian Planting Possibly

Good morning everyone and welcome back. It seems like quite a while since I've actually been in the couch that I've been away for the last week. I had a couple of days down in Wellington at a Dairy Environment Leaders Conference. That was very cool. It was my second year going actually. It's very big picture stuff but it's also very interesting seeing sort of where the dairy industry is heading and it's also quite cool to meet some very, very cool people and listen to them as well. Then for the last five days I've been away up the Coromandel with Holly's family. It was cool. It was our second year up there at a little cove. I'll try and put some footage in there of where we stayed but it's an awesome place. Back in the day I think 22 or 26 families went into a syndicate and they bought this farm where we stayed at and then they put up these little huts which you should be able to see in the video there. So that was very cool and the weather was pretty good. Caught a few fish. Although it is good to be home and it is pretty busy at the moment. The digger's turned up. Reece's actually turned up this morning too. He turned up at 7 so that's a good early start for him. He's tracking it down to the next job which is over the back there in the deer block. Sun's not up but it looks like it's going to be a bluebird. Absolutely awesome morning and there's a big pile of hedge right there. So yesterday he ripped out this bit of hedge along there. It was just really, really holey, needed replacing and it definitely looks a bit different now doesn't it? I think it looks good now though and we'll have to get dug in at some point and we'll fence that. Probably put a new fence the whole way along there and I also want to stick a gate down the bottom from this paddock into the race just to make it so much, so much easier. It should have been done years ago but we're getting there. Getting there slowly, ticking things off. Forgot she was a bit of a slow one so might be a little bit of a wait. Cows have dropped a little bit in production, sort of slid down. I was hoping they weren't going to but they have. We are sort of coming to the end of the season I guess. Mornings are getting pretty cool actually. This morning I almost had to put sleeves on in the milking shed it was, my fingers were getting pretty cold. But yeah we shouldn't be too far off going to every second day pick up. So at the moment the tanker comes every day and once we go to every second day it's quite good because you don't have to wash the vat every day. So hopefully it's not too far away. Just shot home for a coffee for breakfast and I'm supposed to be meeting Dad down here any minute now. I think he did say 10.30 which is just gone. But I'd like to also say a big welcome to anyone that has come over from iFarm, WeFarm. Adrian did give me a little bit of a shout out in one of his latest videos and he was talking about the weather, how he enjoys seeing just such good weather down here in New Zealand and we do. Today is certainly no exception. Look at that, like an absolute ripper. Like I was saying a little bit earlier, it's a bluebird. It's a little bit on the chilly side but it is a beautiful autumn's day. And I do understand it's been pretty tough up there in the UK slash Ireland, you've had a very very wet winter slash early spring and it makes things a little bit on the challenging side especially around getting slurry out and cows are still indoors. So hopefully you do see a bit of a dry spell at some point, soon that is. But what we are actually going to do now is measure up this area through here because once Rhys has finished over the back there we're going to get him to level out this area or just scrape it. We're going to put weed matting down then put a little bit of sand over the top and then stick a bit of rock on top of that to make it nice and flat through here and it'll be quite a nice area once we do that. I need to organise some sand too so I'll get good rights to bring in a load maybe tomorrow morning I'm hoping. He's going to be over the back for at least about a day and a half by the time we sort out that culvert. He's just doing a few little drains over there, scraping off a few piles of drain cleaners. We're going to check it out later on and then he should be over this side. I actually need to see if they can come and pick these up again, made a bit of a mistake. I said could I have some culvert crossings but these aren't sturdy enough to put in and have tractors driving over them so good rights have got some in their yard, they're like second but they're good enough for what we want and I need to see if I can return these, hopefully I can. I actually had a little bit of an unexpected busy morning there, the last hour, hour and a half I've actually caught up with the fellas from Koroneke because yesterday the digger cleaned out this drain through here, it needed doing, it needed a bit of the sediment pulled out, it was just full of weeds and it was backing up, so we've cleaned the drain and the reason I got them out is because I really want to plant this stretch of drain out. It's not a massive section, it's just from those trees there, down this way to that corner right there, I think it's about 200 metres and what I want to do is pull the fence on this side out a couple of metres from where it is now, the other side needs a new fence so we'll stick two new fences, probably three wire and get two rows of plants down the whole way so more sort of flaxes and then the one on the closest side to the paddock would be more of like a hardwood species with the whole intention of getting sort of shade over the water and creating a bit of a habitat down there so less sediment gets in the drain and then it also shades it a little bit and helps with water quality so I got them to come out and have a little look, I was interested to know what to plant and give me a bit of a price so not including the fences, there would be about 500 plants that went in here and it would be looking at about two and a half grand so that's including the plants, planting out, spraying out and I think, did they say maybe a release, well maybe not a release so to get the job done we're looking at about two and a half excluding the fences which I think's pretty reasonable, it would be quite nice to do this stretch, I've wanted to do it for a while now so I have put it to dad and he gave me the green light but I might also see if I can find like a little bit of funding somewhere would definitely help but if we've got to do it ourselves I'm not too worried I think it's going to be an awesome little project, if we can just do little ones each year that would be pretty awesome so that's what I've been doing for the last couple of hours trying to sort this out and it just so happened to be that they were only actually next door and they were able to pop in and have a look which was pretty cool. I forget what they called it but this green sort of flaxy stuff they would plant a little bit of this which sort of works in places, it's a rhizome, rhizominous plant so it spreads quite quickly, that's just native and it's just been brought in and working quite well so from here up it pretty much is and we wouldn't have to move the fence too far but yeah go for a three wire, move that probably out to about here so we're not losing too much and yeah we can get two rows of plants the whole way along, stagger them but get two rows of plants the whole way along, I think it would look absolutely awesome once it's done, look real cool. Ted's actually here at the moment too giving the hedges a bit of their annual haircut, I think he's, I think I can hear him just up there somewhere but the cows are coming on to their last break of chicory today and then that is it, they're finishing up so I think Dad got out this morning and he sprayed the top half, once they're finished in here we'll give them, we'll give this paddock a little bit of time to recover and then go through and spray it and it can go into an annual. The other chicory paddock up there is ready to be drilled so hopefully that gets done in the next day or two. You can see Reece is just working down there on the flats, he's just tidying a few of those drains up, it just gets quite boggy down there, water sits in paddocks so that should help with a bit of water flow. But talking about grass, I thought I'd come and have a little look at this up here and see how it's getting on, I haven't been here for as I said the last week so it'll be interesting to see what it's like. This annual's got planted, oh it might have been about a week ago, actually I think it was planted about 10 days ago but it is up, it's a bit hard to see because the ground's still dry. If we're in the shade there it might help but, or against my finger so it's up to there. This stuff bolts though, yeah it's a couple of inches, it's looking good, you can sort of see drill rows but over the next couple of weeks they'll get more defined, it is very hard to see when the ground's dry like this. Because it is only a short term grass, this, once it comes out of the ground just absolutely flies along. We did plant with DAP as well, 120 kilos of DAP which helps it out and then once it gets its first grazing we'll put a little bit of urea on behind it just to help it get established. That's good, that's looking really nice, if you were in the right light like at night or in the morning I reckon you could see a little bit of a green tinge there but that should bolt over the next couple of weeks. It's actually quite dry again now, probably wouldn't hurt to get a little bit more rain and we had some last Friday I think it was, which was 6 days ago, 4 or 5 days ago. And this was planted 2 weeks ago, the mohaka, you can actually see quite a green tinge just out there on the flat, so this is all up, this is looking really good, this is also kind of a short term grass so it should fly, I actually haven't planted any of this before, but it's probably an inch taller than that annual stuff, although it got planted a little bit earlier. It's looking really good too, look, the clover's come through, again though if it was in the right light you might be able to see a drill row, I can see it here, it just might not show on the camera very well. Looking really, really good, although it will be a good feeling once that chicory's all in new grass too. I think I am going to under-sow the odd paddock too, there's one over there that got pugged quite bad in the winter which I think I'll do with the mohaka as well, just to give it a bit of life because it hasn't really produced much over the summer. I also sprayed out and drilled a couple of, oh there's about 5 hectares up by Buckingales up there a couple of years ago and that probably almost needs under-sowing too, it is getting quite patchy, it's very hard to see from here but it's getting very patchy at places, although it doesn't grow the best on that hillside, but yeah, probably needs doing maybe next season. Look at that, that is a bull catalogue for next year, so that's the first one out, the others can't be too far away, it's well by size, I don't actually use them but I like having a look through them all. I can hear he's getting pretty close to my house so I thought I'd shoot down and open the odd gate for him, saves him having to do it, there's calves in that paddock too, just saves him the trouble. It always looks so nice once it's done, nice clean and tidy, he can't get down this side, there's too much of a distance between the drain, so it's on an angle, it's not nice and square but that's just how it is around areas like that. Probably be, I don't know, another hour he's really only got this bit of hedge along there, there's, oh no he's just done the bit along the drain so yeah just another short bit along the race there and done, so maybe not even an hour, although it's pretty bad, it's really bumpy down here, makes it a little bit hard. This girl's had to change mobs, she was suckling another cow so she is in my herd at the moment, I've also got to take the calves up, I think they need a drench and also need to retake a sample from that one there, number 64, I took one a couple of months ago, sent it away for genome testing for CRV and I just had an email saying they got everything, the envelope and what not, plastic bag, except for the sample, the sample wasn't in there, I don't know why it wouldn't be but I'm going to take it one tomorrow and see, she said, the girl that messaged, she lives in a halpo so she can come and pick it up which would be pretty good but it's a job for tomorrow. I'm setting a paddock up for the cows tonight and it's next to this maize paddock but the annual in here is absolutely miles ahead of that other one, look you can see the, you can see it's looking really good, it's almost like that mohaka in the first paddock although maybe even a little bit better than that too, awesome. Cows are all on, there's still those pasture cages, they are going to get collected in the next couple of days and then they'll get taken away, the trial has ended and I will talk more about them soon actually, I'll do a video on it soon. I didn't really get down to see Reece too much today, I think he's got probably like a good half day down the back there and then when he comes up, another job I'm going to get him to do which should have been done ages ago but there's this overheard wire here and it takes power down the farm so I'm going to get him to dig a trench down here and we're going to put it underground because I hate this sort of thing, it just really annoys me, some machine or some of the big gear we can't get under there, it's just too low and while he's at it, I'm going to get him to clean this little bit of hedge up too so we'll rip this little bit out and just tidy this corner up, it'll look much better than how it currently is. I am getting there piece by piece, just small bit by small bit every year, if we continually do these little bits it all certainly adds up at the end of the day and once we take it out it's done, we don't need to do anything from then on, well we sort this corner out and then it's good for the next 50 years, it's a little bit like that planting, if you do 200 metres a year or you budget for that then at the end of 10 years you know that's a couple of K's so it certainly adds up pretty quickly and it's pretty nice when you look back on it, it's always very rewarding when you look back on stuff like this. I actually haven't really had a look down here or close look, it looks really good though, a few tree roots, not tree roots but a few roots in there from the hedge, there was actually a plum tree that sat in there and pulled it down, it's actually on top of that pile over there, it sort of, it had been past it's use by date a little bit, stuff was falling off it, it also got a little bit shady down the bottom there so he's cleaned that up as well but I was thinking like I was saying earlier I might just run a fence straight through there to the row, there is a bit of a fence up there but we'll take it out and sort of move it on top of the hill there and that'll look quite tidy, might go four wire just because it is a calf paddock and then not quite sure how I'll sort this, this little bit out but pretty much just move the strainer back so we can get a gate in there because that'll make one heck of a difference, especially like around the time when we've got cows and calves it's quite nice to run them into that paddock but you've got to take them up to the shed and into the yard then back so if we could go straight in there or when we get them out if we brought back a cow that is calving, they like to come out this bottom end plus calves, when I'm feeding calves it'd be nice to bring them out and also when the bulls are there we can sort of bring them out so there's a lot of good advantages of having something there but just getting around to doing it, like I was saying, bit by bit. Just having a bit of a switcheroo at the moment, that tractor got taken off the sprayer, it has got the little topper on it because the thistles are real bad at the moment, we're going to get stuck into them, need to take the bale feeder off that tractor, put it on the Landini most probably because I need to put the fertiliser spreader on and get some ferd on while it's still pretty hot during the day, these mornings are cooling off. We're not really under pressure but we do need to get it on soon so we can get a good response for it. However that will do it for this video guys, a little bit of a catch up on what's been happening, it feels like I haven't picked up the camera for a while, I actually did get a new camera, this is a new one so hopefully everything's worked pretty good, I did have trouble uploading, like the little link or the cord you plugged in kept falling out and well not falling out but it was struggling to upload and I also had trouble with the sound so hopefully it's all good on this one but I'll see you next time.