NZ Lifestyle Block Magazine...

Peter and Willoughby have made an appearance in a 2 page article in this month's NZ Lifestyle Block magazine. The article can be found below...

Production Line...

Peter has been busy knocking out wooden squares to go around all our new trees, to hold the mulch and bulbs in. He has got it down to a fine art. We should have plenty of timber left for building the potting shed, and making borders for the Lime Walk and Bluebell Walk. 

We have planted up the second stretch of the driveway with a further 14 Plane Trees, and have been at work mapping out and planting up Badger's Wood. We have also started planting up all our urns and pots with fresh potting mix and spring flowers, and have started preparing a site for our boutique vineyard, which we shall share with you in our next post.

While we have been busy at that, the Dorset Horns have kept giving birth to late lambs. No more Highlands yet. They must be due by the end of this month though.

Diamond and Jubilee...

One of our Dorset Horn ewes has given birth early, to twins - a boy and a girl, which we have named Diamond and Jubilee respectively...

It seemed the appropriate thing to do given the circumstances.

Long Live The Queen.

Art Deco Weekend, Napier 2012....

Peter and I are travelling down to Napier for the Annual Art Deco Weekend to relax and unwind after the exam. We are also going down to collect some more pedigree Dorset Horn Ewes to cross over our current Ram (yes, thing are really taking off on the Rare Breeds Farm).

Napier is known as the Art Deco capital of New Zealand.

The 1931 Napier earthquake (10:47 AM on Tuesday 3 February) killed 256 people and devastated the Hawke's Bay region. It is still NZs deadliest natural disaster. It was 7.8 on the Richter scale and lasted for 2.5 minutes. There were then some 525 after shocks over the subsequent fortnight.

When the rubble was cleared, many of the Buildings were redesigned in the voguish art deco style, and some Spanish mission style. Thus, Napier remains the Art Deco Capital of NZ to this day...

Above and Below: The iconic National Tobacco Company building

Above and Below: The Daily Telegraph Building

Above and Below: Views down Marine Parade

Above and Below: It's just not deco without those glamourous deco ladies...

People usually go all out with their dress and there is usually a vintage car parade. And being the Hawke's Bay there is good weather, plenty of fresh produce and wine in abundance.

Settling In...

Well now,

The move was not as traumatic as we had anticipated, and we are now fully ensconced in some very charming temporary accommodation down the road from Willowbrook. In the midst of the shift we had quite a bit of farm work to do. All 3 flocks of sheep and the goats needed their hooves trimming and all the animals needed drenching. All this had to, of course, co-incide with a fortnight of heavy rain (I can tell you wet, pregnant sheep are very heavy when you have to flip them on their backs, even more fun in a muddy tail-race). It has cleared up a bit over the last few days thankfully.

Four weeks ago we had adorable boy and girl twin lambs born to one of our Suffolks out of season. Unfortunately 2 weeks after they were born their mother died of unknown causes. Luckily, there is a lovely sense of community in the country, and we were able to drop the orphaned lambs off at the pre-school down the road with some milk powder, and the children there have been bottle feeding them for us three times a day and giving them lots of love and attention.

Yesterday one of our Dorsets gave birth too (I suspect we have a couple more on the way as well). Mother and lamb seem to be doing well, as are the rest of the flock.

Work is keeping me very bust at present, and I am currently on a week of night shift, however I look forward to sharing some pictures of a Winter Willowbrook with you all shortly. Bye for now.



'All we like sheep' from Handel's Messiah

Dorset Horn Sheep...

Well, we had a lovely time at the Horse of The Year show, and came back with several nice antiques and a Georgian oil painting (a portrait of an unknown lady). We also collected our Dorset Horns. They are so cute, and very friendly (despite their horned appearance).

The Dorset Horn, which was developed to its present form in the mid 1800s, and is known for its all round qualities as a meat and wool producer.

Its chief distinction is its horns – large and curled – in both rams and ewes. Ewes with horns of this size and type are unique to the Dorset breed among modern domestic sheep, while the rams’ horns are even larger and tightly curled in “regimental mascot” style.

The Dorset Horn is a big sheep, hardy and very active. It boasts capacious stomach and is an excellent “doer”; a ewe in good condition tends always to look as though she is in lamb and even the rams often look a little “preggie”. The fleece is of medium length, fine and very white, and the face and legs, clear of wool, are also noticeably white and show another of the Dorset Horn’s distinguishing features – a pink nose and light coloured hooves. This pink and white look is particularly marked in lambs where it appears to be intensified. A young Dorset has "hoofs of mother-of-pearl and a nose like a fresh raspberry".

The breed’s other great distinction is the forwardness of the ewes. Dorset ewes can breed twice in one year although three lambings in two years is more usual. The lambing rate is good and they are excellent mothers with abundant milk.

The Dorset’s characteristics, the horns and the breeding rate, were bequeathed to it by a dominant ancestor – the now extremely rare Portland Sheep, found originally on and near Portland Island, very close to Dorchester. The Portland Sheep was first recorded in the sixteenth century and its origin is obscure, but it was spectacularly horned, and noteworthy because of its ability to lamb all year round – with up to four births in two years.

Dorset Horn sheep were imported into New Zealand in 1897 and several times in subsequent years, but did not prove very popular. A further importation in 1937 marked a period of breed increase, but numbers remained low. By the early 1990s they had dwindled less than five hundred in New Zealand and were also rare in their homeland, Great Britain.

Their horns are no longer acceptable at a commercial level. They cause carcase damage in these days of trucking sheep rather than driving them, and the shearers don’t like them either. They are, however, an excellent breed on a smallholding, being extremely quiet and easily handled, as well as producing excellent meat and saleable fleeces.