January 2012 Issue 52 by Pete's web sites

RODNEY'S

JANUARY 2012

Local people: Say cheese! pg 3 Horsinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; around: The way horses think pg 12 Pasture: Producing quality hay and controlling weeds pg 8 Landscaping: backyard makeover pg 9 Backyard makeover: implementing the plan pg 11

ISSUE 52

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what we’re both raving about, have a look at our website under Hot Topics and you’ll see the review listed there. I hope those of you who sent your comments enjoyed the bottle of Roaring Meg Pinot Gris we gave away before Christmas.

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We had a wonderful response to our reader survey. The lucky new owner of an ‘iPod touch’ is E. Petersen. Thank you for all your wonderful feedback and suggestions.

No doubt I’ll be putting the Terrax to good use again with our landscaping makeover. For ages we’ve struggled with ideas for what to do about the front yard and now Grant McKechnie has kindly pulled together an inspiring landscape design for us. I can recommend you make use of his expertise in this area over the summer months. I’ve also written about how we are going to implement the plan and its likely costs… you may be as surprised as I was.

$1000

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RURAL LIFESTYLE ISSUE 52

a FREE subscription

sliding Roller BlindsorCustom-made bi-folding Wardrobe With the hay harvestRoller in full swing, tractors Blinds Door System allows Wardrobe Doors are a frequent sight on our roads. Do

Letters or enquiries to Rodney’s Rural Lifestyle, RD Marketing Ltd, RD1, Kaukapakapa. Phone 09 947 3580. Email: neville@rurallifestyle.co.nz

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Advertising enquiries: space Marlene Brown storage 021-854-946

take care negotiating your way past and don’t be surprised if they don’t pull over. Sharp objects at the road’s edge are highly common and punctures cause considerable downtime for contractors (page 11).

publisher is prohibited. No responsibility accepted for any direct or indirect consequences arising from reliance on any content within Rodney’s Rural Lifestyle. Editor: Neville Walker. Sub Editor: Helen Martin. Writers this issue: Helen Martin, Grant McKechnie, Ben Longwell, Neville Walker. Cover photo: Claas Group (Claas.com) Designer: Dan Stenhouse, Bgraphix. Printing: PMP maxim.

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I have to agree. The Terrax is an invaluable tool. If you would like to know

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Happy holiday reading, and Happy New Year!

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In another competition we offered the chance to win a bottle of my favourite Pinot Gris or Pinot Noir for up to 6 readers who wrote in with comments on the useful tips and ideas that have proved to be the most productive or useful for you. The most encouraging letter we received explained how the writer has benefited from the magazine’s ideas over these last 4 years in so many ways. For example, “After your trial of a Terrax, I ordered one as a prezzie for Christmas that year. It’s been my buddy. It’s chopped out flax, dug holes, split bricks and smashed out concrete!!! Very cool, thanks to you!”

our equine communication skills by explaining horse psychology.

Custom-made sliding or bi-folding Wardrobe Custom-made sliding Door System allows or bi-folding Wardrobe efficient access to Door System allows storage space Neville Walker – Editor & Publisher efficient access to www.homeplus.co.nz storage space Visit rurallifestyle.co.nz for

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liFeStYle

Say

cheese! By Helen Martin

For most of us, going on holiday overseas is just that, a holiday, a time to kick back and relax.

mozzarella cheese in a big way and bought a mozzarella stretching machine. On their return to New Zealand, knowing nothing whatsoever about cheese production, the family decided to dive in and set up their own cheese making business.

But for one family, Pam and Chris Wills, their daughter Annie Wills, her partner Phil Armstrong and Annie and Phil’s wee son Marin, a trip to Europe to celebrate Pam’s 60th birthday three years ago also doubled as an opportunity to buy some Hanoverian horses for their Dairy Flat stud. And to make things even more interesting, a new business venture began gestating in Annie’s fertile mind when, during their time in Italy, she fell for

So how did they go about it? Talking with Pam at the 120 acre Dairy Flat farm where the family live and where the cheese is made I learn that, after a period of intense research, Pam, Chris, Annie and Marin went to Northern Queensland and bought 20 head of water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) – two bulls and 18 pregnant heifers. After five months in quarantine the buffalo were homed on the 50 acres bought for the purpose in the beautiful

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To find out how to make cheese Pam and Annie undertook the one-week NZQA certified course offered by the New Zealand Cheese School at Over the Moon Dairy in Putaruru, where they learned that all cheese is made using the same principles, with the difference between cheeses depending on the type and amount of culture used. Pam explains that Annie, who has an agriculture degree from Massey University, who formerly ran Angus beef cattle on the farm and who is an Ad Astra Hanoverian stud master, is “really good at sourcing what’s needed”, and the cheese-making set-up at Dairy Flat is certainly impressive. A purpose-built container houses all the cleaning and cheese-making equipment in what looks to be a very smooth and efficient operating system. While most Whangaripo Buffalo Cheese is made and packaged on site, the Marin Blue and St Malo cheeses are made by Over the Moon Dairy from Whangaripo buffalo milk.

“Water buffalo are gentle creatures,” says Pam, “and they all have their own personality.” They yield around only five litres a day, Only $105 and while their A2 milk has higher fat content than cows’ milk, it has lower cholesterol and higher calcium content. It’s very good for people allergic to cow’s milk, many of whom prefer it to the alternatives of goat and soy milk. Because of the milk’s colour the cheeses and yoghurt are very white and each batch is slightly different, giving a product that varies in size, shape and flavour 2-4 Morrison Drive, PO Box 378, Warkworth. Ph 09 425 7754 Fax 09 425 7560 thefarmcentre@xtra.co.nz 2-4 Morrison Drive, Warkworth. because it is hand made.

Call us to arrange delivery (09) 425 7754 email: thefarmcentre@xtra.co.nz www.farmandlifestyle.co.nz C.

Prices valid until 31 January 2012 or while stocks last. All prices include GST unless otherwise stated.

RURAL LIFESTYLE ISSUE 52

Everything the business produces is carefully named. The 2-4 of Morrison Drive, PO Marin Blue and the Saint Malo (a pecorino type cheese) areBox 378, Warkworth. Ph 0 $79.00 named after the boys. There’s also a Buffalo Brie, a Fresca (a soft farmhouse cheese good for baking and as a spread) and an A.

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Water buffalo yield around only five litres a day but with higher fat content than cows’ milk and yet lower cholesterol.

absolutely delicious Grado, named after the Italian village the family stayed at on their trip, which is made from buffalo milk yoghurt, Italian herbs, Himalayan rock salt and garlic. Outlets include the Matakana market, delicatessens and restaurants. The family also go to food shows to showcase their products and St Malo has won silver at the New Zealand Cheese Awards. As for meat products, the first animal has just been slaughtered at

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Ruakura abattoir (because they are equipped to despatch animals with horns) and processed organically at Soggy Bottom. If the tasty gluten free garlic, chestnut and herb sausages I tried were anything to go by, water buffalo meat is going to be in great demand. It’s a wonderful set-up. All the family live at the Dairy Flat site and all have their allocated tasks. Chris, an engineer with a demanding job, feeds the calves before and after work and helps on the farm. Phil, a builder, drives out to Whangaripo to do the evening milking, bringing the milk home in 20 litre buckets. Annie runs the horse stud and the Dairy Flat farm (which includes a couple of pigs, who happily dispose of the waste from the cheese making), Pam runs the house, grows herbs for the cheeses and supervises grandsons Marin and Marlo, and Annie and Pam make the cheeses, with some help from part-timer Anya. An employee works out delicious recipes using the Whangaripo cheeses and yoghurt and these are shared on the website www. whangaripobuffalo.co.nz/index.html The family have a shared philosophy that it’s good to live by organic principles, growing and eating natural food without having to resort to sprays or additives, and to recycle wherever possible. Their ultimate goal is self-sufficiency. It’s a seven-daya-week job and I’m interested to know why they has put so much time, money and effort into starting a demanding business that would make less adventurous folk tremble. “There are lots of things out there to try,” says Pam, “it’s a fantastic challenge, and something different something we can all do together as a family as well as providing an income. Working together as a family is very rewarding. What we’re doing teaches the boys a good them work ethic and they learn where their food comes from.” While it’s hard work, it’s a great lifestyle. And because they want to keep it as a family business they are determined that, when they move to their planned new home at Whangaripo, while their purpose built factory will be at least twice the size of the one they have now, they will still run it and work in it and enjoy it.

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conditions, soil moisture, shelter belts, good sunshine and the time of day your pasture captures and loses the sun.

PaStUre

Producing quality By Neville Walker

hay

Hay cutting season is here. Any type of pasture can be made into hay, but if it’s poor quality to start with it’s only going to deteriorate as it dries. The quality is determined by protein, energy values, physical appearance and texture. Hay should be a good light brown/golden colour, not smell mouldy, musty or stale, have leafy, fine, soft stems rather than stalks and be free from weeds, mould and any material you don’t want your animals to eat (e.g. bale twine, plastic bags etc).

Cutting 'Make hay while the sun shines' says it all really. Many landowners seem to wonder why contractors can’t cut and bale the same day and save everybody a lot of time, but hay has to be sufficiently dry before baling. When I spoke to Lyndon Knowles of Kauriview Contracting about this he explained there are several factors that affect the drying rat of cut pasture, including low humidity, wind

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Often contractors won’t cut if rain is likely within 2-3 days. Baling too quickly can mean your hay goes mouldy while it stores. So to even-up the drying rate, your contractor will turn the grass once or twice or ‘fluff’ up the cut grass after a day or two and then rake the swathe into ‘windrows’ (a continuous line of loose-heaped and stacked cut pasture). If a significant amount of rain falls during the drying period the windrows may require turning again.

Baling It’s time to bale once sufficient moisture has evaporated to leave 20 to 25 per cent moisture remaining. Above 30 per cent moisture the microbes on the surface of the foliage feed on the hay, reducing the quality and in the process producing heat. This is why moist hay will heat in storage, sometimes with devastating results to property. Hay contractors have a challenging job balancing your requirements, your land, the weather, equipment, neighbours (asking them to pop over and do their paddocks) and a number of other variables that, as Murphy’s law would have it, can conspire to ensure the inevitability of delays.

Weed control With many paddocks covered with carrot weed, pennyroyal and other weeds, I asked Dave Beattie (Vegetation Specialists) about what can be done prior to cutting and baling. The answer was, eliminating those weeds is too difficult and/or expensive right now (January) and you’re better to get in a contractor to top or mulch in the weeds and plan for spraying in September/October. For this time of year Dave suggests focussing on controlling gorse, blackberry, woolly nightshade and Wandering Willie. These weeds are prolific at this time and can crowd out native species and seedlings. While it seems there is a lot that can be done to improve the quality of your pasture for hay, the best times to work on it are autumn and spring. Watch this space.

Reference sites: www.vegetationspecialists.co.nz www.weeds.massey.ac.nz www.pestweb.co.nz

Weed Control • Silage (baleage) in 3,4, 5, & 10 bale-equivalent squares, and 10 bale-equivalent rounds. • Silage innoculant available as an additional option for optimized baleage • Hay in conventional, 5-bale square, and 12+ bale rounds • Standing grass, hay & silage bought and sold • Pasture under-sowing / seed drilling of grass mixes and high yield forage crops.

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RURAL LIFESTYLE ISSUE 52

• Specialists in environmental weed control in bush blocks & wetlands • Pasture spraying – Dock, Carrot weed, Thistles • Gorse and Blackberry spraying • Woolly Nightshade (Tobacco weed) • Wandering Jew • Revegetation projects for subdivision or farm/lifestyle block beautification • Pest control

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laNdSCaPiNG

Backyard

makeover

By Grant McKechnie

Landscape design sounds like a grand term, but essentially it’s what planting trees and/or gardening is all about, whatever the scale, from a small patio garden to a grand 5-acre country estate. And whether it’s the one-plant-at-a-time DIY version, the fullblown professionally prepared plan version, or one of the many stages in between, it should always be about using the right plants and materials for the job.

In landscaping terms, gardens and lawns are referred to as the

From the planting perspective, good design will consider what’s required in the way of plant size, shape, texture and colour. Consideration also has to be given to the growing conditions — wind, sun, shade, wet soils, dry soils, frost — and whether the chosen plants will handle them.

will look bitzy.

soft landscaping. Hard landscaping is the paving, retaining walls, pergolas, steps and so on. In hard landscaping, care must be taken not to introduce too many different types of materials as the result

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Before ... Neville and Nicky’s backyard as it is now.

And after … a perspective image of how the new area will look.

taking time to think about what you want out of the garden and how you will use it. If a professional designer is helping you, he or she will be looking to see how the garden will work for you, so you’ll want to get out and enjoy it. The benefit of a professional plan is that it will give you a vision of the finished garden and a blueprint to work towards.

Their design brief to me was to provide an outdoor room for entertaining, shaded in the summer but light in the winter, and protected from the prevailing winds, but not closed in by tall trees. They also needed a lawn where the kids could play, plus a screen to hide the chook run, while leaving space at the back for the tractor access to the paddocks.

That brings me to the point of this article, which is to redesign an area in the Waitoki garden of Rodney’s Rural Lifestyle’s publishers, Neville and Nicky.

So this is what we came up with. There’s a built-in barbecue with a back wall 1.5m high to provide wind protection. Also built-in on each side of the barbecue are two planters for herbs; the outside edge of the planters doubles as a seat. The barbecue/planter area is flanked by a 1.5m high feijoa hedge, again for wind protection (with the bonus of beautiful autumn/winter fruit). The feijoas will also effectively hide the tractor access and chook run.

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Summer shade will be provided by a deciduous tree, which will drop its leaves to let light through in winter. As the tree grows, Neville will progressively remove the bottom branches until he has a clear trunk up to head height. Suitable trees to use will be Melia azedarach (Indian bead tree) or Albizzia julibrissin (silk tree). Both these trees have an umbrella shape, which is perfect for a shade tree. But equally effective will be trees with more upright growth such as the Quercus coccinea (scarlet oak) we have used in our perspective image of how the new area will look. We’ve shifted the deck steps and broadened them so they extend around the corner of the deck to encourage people out onto the paved area. To screen the underside of the deck, we’ve edged it with two layers of Buxus sempervirens (English box), with a similar treatment along the base of the house. We’ve suggested paving using contrasting concretes, with a narrow planting of green mondo grass in between for added interest, and plenty of room for Nicky and Neville to have an outdoor table and seats for the family and their visitors.

Our landscape

makeover By Neville Walker

Grant McKechnie’s landscape plan for our front yard is a thoroughly inspiring project. We’ve been struggling with where to start before now. With the landscape plan in hand, I visited Chris Smith at Oikoumene Forest in Helensville. Chris was able to show off their recent changes, which include an expanded range of products and landscaping supplies. Looking at options for implementing some of the hard landscaping aspects of our make-over, Chris suggested we would be able to achieve a great result without too much fuss. The plan shows two-tone concrete for the spiral with the oak as its focal point. While this would look great for the longer term, our plans may require ripping it all up again if our dreams of building a new home on that site are realised. A shorter term approach using aggregate would require less cost and make for faster implementation.

At 1m spacing, we’ll need 60 plants for the feijoa screen. For the paved area with the green mondo grass stripes, we’ll plant the mondo 15cm apart, so that’s roughly seven per metre and we’ll have 50m to do. In round numbers, the pricing on plants and materials looks very good. • 800 metres of 40mm timber decking $1600, Aggregate (two types) $975-1400 (depending on what we decide with the type of aggregate), draincoil (30m) $206 or a total of $3206 (for more details on their range visit www.oikoumene.co.nz) • Caterpillar Skid-steer hire incl operator approx $1000 / full day (KBL Earthmovers, see advert page 3) • Hedging/plants: estimated at 160 x $8-grade buxus; 280 x smaller $2.75-grade buxus; 60 x $8-grade feijoa and 350 x $3.50-grade mondo, for a total for plants/hedging of $3,755. (www.mckechnienurseries.co.nz) That all adds up to just under $8000 for the whole project. It has been quite a surprise to see how easy this plan will be to implement. After we’ve completed the bulk of the hard landscaping we can spread out the planting over autumn and winter to fit within our budget. But by next spring, wow, it’s going to look fantastic!

He suggested two alternative options on the aggregate, the first being Mangatangi river rock alternated with either GAP-8 or 5-12mm grey pebble. Over the winter months things get a bit wet so Chris suggested draincoil to take away the water over winter months, a solution that would also retain a dryer, well-drained base for the paths. Inlaid wooden boxing would protect the mondo grass. Below the aggregate, weed matting would take care of emerging weeds. Oikoumene also have 100% bio-degradable coconut fibre matting which, when topped with mulch, would both help suppress weeds and lock in the moisture around the base of the feijoa hedge over the summer months. Once the hedge is established the matting would quietly rot. After checking the plans with Kevin Brashier (KBL Earthmoving) it was pretty evident to me how much quicker everything would take shape using their Caterpillar skid-steer loader. Its trenching attachment could make quick work of the 30m or so for the drain coil, the Harley rake could smooth out and contour the ground, and the 3-in-1 bucket could scrape a bed and then backfill the aggregate quickly and neatly. It’s incredible, but all that should only take a day’s work for the Cat. The decking needs to be replaced and the steps outlined in the plan make the space much friendlier and more useable. For the two-tiered buxus hedging in front of the house and the deck, Grant suggested we use two sizes of plants to get an instantly layered effect. At the back, we’ll use 30 to 40cm plants at 20 to

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laNdSCaPiNG

25 cm spacing. We’ll need about 160 plants for the 40m we have to do. In front, for the lower tier, we can start with smaller 20 to 25cm plants at 15cm apart, which means we’ll need about 280 plants to cover the 40m.

HorSiN' aroUNd

Foundation

principles

By Ben Longwell

Riding, working and training horses, as with anything, gains better results through better understanding. True horsemanship, working in a safe manner by building trust and respect, requires comprehending several principles from the perspective of the horse. Personal safety is a horse’s main priority, ranking higher even than eating, which comes in a close second. Everything about their physical makeup is created for survival, from their sharp eyesight and hearing to their flight instinct, which can be triggered in a fraction of a second. Because flight is the primary defence mechanism and the feet are necessary for this reaction, there is a solid connection between the feet and the mind of a horse. In order to have a working relationship built on trust we must understand this connection and its relationship to the equine’s need for leadership. This need is also directly correlated to the requirement for safety and is naturally provided for in the herd setting. However, once removed from the herd, the horse is much less likely to interact with us in a safe, trusting way. A horse’s mind is naturally set in the mode of instinctive, instant reaction. Humans can get into trouble when a horse perceives danger and reacts, usually faster than we can adjust, and as a result we get hurt. The key is to give the horse another option by teaching his mind to “respond” by listening to our cues and

staying “with” us in spite of perceived danger. We do this by building trust and respect and by consistent, clear communication. Horses communicate through body language and the hierarchy of the herd is determined through this medium. This can be as subtle as the twitch of an ear or as forceful as a double-barrelled kick, whatever it takes to get the point across. As rider, when we become fluent in this language we can direct the horse’s feet in specific ways, using pressure and release. If our timing is right we can engage their minds in the choice to cooperate. This teaches them that they can trust us with their mobility, which is the same as putting their lives in our hands. This foundational connection is vital to all further training if you want a horse that is willing and safe both on the ground (loading, trimming feet/shoeing, worming, saddling, bridling, etc) and under saddle.

Ben is running two clinics at Waitoki Feb 17th & 18th on Horsemanship that covers this topic in detail. These clinics have a limit on numbers so bookings will be essential. Please contact the host directly - Michelle: michelle@keandaniel.co.nz or visit www.truewesthorsemanship.co.nz (Events & Media) for more details.

Rt Hon John Key MP for helensvi lle

365 Main Road, Kumeu p 412 2496 e John@Johnkey.mp.net.nz w w w.johnkey.co.nz

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