A Day With No Power

I spent yesterday with no electricity.  It was a scheduled shut down while they replaced several power poles down the road a bit.  I was making sure I was prepared for it, I filled two thermos flasks with boiling water and got everything that I needed to do that required electricity finished before 9am.

So, what to do with my day?

I had some vague ideas about spending some time in the garden.  They need weeding and many of the newer patches of vege garden are starting to look like they’re trying to revert back to lawn.  I had made some loose plans but really expected it to be a bit trying by mid afternoon.

It was actually one of the better days I’ve had.  I enjoyed myself.  We don’t have a corded phone so I was out of access for most of the day (unless someone desperately wanted to ring my mobile).  It was hot, reaching more than 20 in the shade.

I started to sort out my tomato patch.  I weeded, tied them up and picked off the lateral shoots (which I stuck in the soil around the plants - a friend suggested this one year and I tripled the amount of plants I got).  We really have picked an awesome spot for the tomatoes, I was in full sun with none of the light breeze that other parts of the garden got.  It got to be too hot to continue, so I had to stop.

The chooks got the weeds I’d pulled, much to their delight and I took some of the straw and chook poo from under their perch to spread around the plants I’d weeded and tied up.

 

I needed to find something to do that wasn’t in direct sunlight.  The irrigation system in the tunnel house needed some sorting.  The last time I’d used it, it had blown several connections apart and drowned the area around the taps.  All attempts to refit them had failed.  I went in armed with a few tools and ideas and set to fixing it.

After a lot of swearing and more than one drenching, I got it sorted.  I had to completely replace a section and then an elbow as for some reason the hose I was using wouldn’t fit on properly.  Tested it and it still wasn’t going.  There was water here, but no water coming out of the sprinklers.  On a hunch I turned the timer on, suddenly it worked.  That was odd - the timer hasn’t worked in the whole time we’ve been here, but now it needed to be set?  I found out 2 hours later that it didn’t turn it off at the end however.  Still, spuds, courgettes and red onions were watered without me having to stand there with the hose. 

Now what?

I’d been planning to split up some of the oregano that was growing in the tunnel house to plant out in my shelter belts and junction planters for the livestock.  That was easy and the excess is currently drying in the oven.

A small mountain of socks needing darning beckoned.  I’d gotten through four pairs when it was time to pick Miss 7 up from the school bus and then the power was back on.

It’s been a day of sorting out a lot of the little things that get overlooked.  It’s been so useful, that I’m tempted to have an ‘electricity free’ day every week.

Mitts and Armwarmers

I’ve been making gloves, fingerless mitts and arm warmers for a while.  I think each have their place and arm warmers can be especially useful for small children who are likely to be too busy with their hands for gloves.

Long Arm Warmers with Thumb

This pattern I made up as I went along.  I wanted long arm warmers that I could wear with some of my elbow length tops in those times when it’s not quite cold enough for a full jersey or sweatshirt, but too cold to go without something.  I like having the thumb in to keep them in the right place, but I can pull my thumb out and push them up my arms when I’m doing something that will get them dirty or when I’m feeding out hay (because you really don’t want hay all through anything knitted!)

Long Arm Warmers with Thumb

2 50g balls Ascot 8ply yarn - I’ve used Perroquet

3mm sock needles - 2 sets or 1 set and 3 stitch holders.

Cast on 72 st and distribute evenly around needles.

Work 10 rounds k1 p1 rib.

Work 4 rounds knit.

Dec 1 in next round and every foll 4th round until 48 st remain.  Try to keep dec stitches in line.

K 7 rounds.

Shape Thumb

1st round: At start of needle, inc 1 in first st, k2, inc 1 in next st, k rest of round (50 st)

2nd round: knit

3rd round: knit

4th round: knit

5th round: Inc 1 in first st, k4, inc 1 in next st, k rest of round (52 st)

9th round: Inc 1 in first st, k6, inc 1 in next st, k rest of round (54 st)

Cont in this manner until there are 60 st.  Knit 1 round

Divide for thumb

Shorter Arm Warmers with Thumb

Using a second ball of yarn, k15, turn.

P15, turn

Cast on 3st, k across cast on st and other 15st, set up rounds on second set of sock needles or transfer other st onto stitch holders.

Knit 5 rounds.

K1, p1 rib for 5 rounds

Cast off loosely in rib.

Return to base of thumb, pick up 3 st along inside of thumb.  As holes often form here in gloves, pick up an extra st in between picked up sts and k2 tog.

Knit 6 rounds

K1, P1 rib for 10 rounds.

Cast off loosely in rib.

To Make up

Sew yarn ends to round to even up the line, fasten off and weave yarn ends into inside of work.

Notes:

I like to knit garments like this using circular knitting as there are no seams to sew at the end, especially using a yarn like the one I have used, there is no need to panic about matching up stripes.

Working the thumb with circular needles can be a bit tricky to begin with, but makes a far better thumb to traditional knitting.

The easiest way to keep your decreases along the arm length in line is to make it the start of one of the needles.  The same with the thumb shaping.

Obviously, you can adapt these to any length you want.  I’ve also made these little ones that are basically five rows with the ‘feathers’ yarn and start with then the thumb shaping.

If you wanted to make this pattern with two needles, just decrease one stitch at the start and finish of every fourth row.

Adventures With Gorse

When we bought our little block, the land was at least half covered in gorse, broom and blackberry.  We knew that this was going to mean a lot of work, but started into it anyway.

To begin with, I spent several days with loppers and a small hand saw, cutting it back enough to be able to get to the main trunks.  This took me hours to clear even 5 square metres.    We looked in Hardware Stores but most of them were the little domestic “weed whackers” with the nylon thread ‘blades’ that also ran on electricity.  Not particularly practical for us as most of the gorse was quite some distance from the house and any sources of electricity but also we couldn’t see how the little nylon thread would cut through wood.  Then Hubby started to look on Trade Me for scrub cutters.

Hubby found a petrol powered John Deere scrub cutter with metal blades for $100.  It needed a service, but that only came to $130.  These babies were a minimum of $600 in the shops.  I think it took him all of 15 minutes to clear what had taken 3 days with the loppers and saw.  That was it.  His mission every waking moment that he was home was the gorse.

The neighbours soon noticed the difference and commented on it.  One said he hadn’t been able to see that paddock from where we were standing for at least 10 years.  Hubby was proud of his accomplishments.  At our recent wedding, another neighbour was overheard commenting to friends and family that it was nice to have someone like Hubby who was making such a noticeable difference to the land - and especially the gorse.

Every weekend in autumn, winter and spring is spent cutting more gorse and burning it.  He’s learned to keep the fires smaller, after one that had 10 metre flames leaping into the sky.  Gorse burns very well, very hot and leaves only a small amount of ash.  We’ve started saving the bigger trunks and branches for firewood.

Gorse fire being prepared

He’s found (and we’ve now heard from neighbours) that the previous owners used to just set fire to it where it stood.  We often find blackened dead trunks and plants in the middle of a healthy patch of gorse.  We’ve also found electric fence standards, long lengths of electric fencing wire and tape and more baling twine than should be reasonable.

The problem is, cutting it isn’t enough.  It grows back.  Many people grub it out, but when you’re talking about approximately 7 acres of gorse to grub, it’s just impractical.  Our land is also very hilly, the stream banks suffer serious erosion every winter and many of the paddocks are just too small to consider getting a digger in to root rake them. Never mind the costs involved.

After a lot of research and consideration, we bought tordon brushkiller.  We were given a 15 litre spray pack and we went off to buy some dye so we could see where we’ve been.  Our local farm supplies store was out of the more commonly used red dye, but sold us some blue dye.  That was a colossal waste of time.  The blue runs off the plants very quickly and is very hard to see against the dark green of healthy gorse.  We looked around some more and managed to get hold of some red dye.

Hubby went out and sprayed a paddock.  Two spray packs to clear it.  At $100 per litre of tordon, this was going to be an expensive exercise.  He noticed that the neighbour had called in spraying contractors and his place was dotted with bright pink gorse bushes dying off, so we talked to him.  It cost him thousands to have it done and that was with him supplying the poison!  Hubby rang a contractor and asked a few questions.

If you cut first and then spray, you have a window of between 10 and 20 seconds to spray (it varies depending on who you talk to) before the plant seals itself off to the spray.  So the theory was to cut it, let it grow back a little and then spray.

Weekends now were filled with Hubby cutting and burning and Master 14 wandering around with the spray pack on his back doing paddocks that had been done previously.  Master 14 wasn’t as interested in making sure that every little bit was covered so we’ve had sickly looking gorse grow back on half a bush in a number of places.  It’s still better than a healthy bush fully growing back, but is frustrating none the less.

I spent several hours one weekend with the spray pack on my back, following Hubby with the cutter.  That paddock is looking pretty good and it was only one pack to Hubby’s two last year.

Hubby was wandering around paddocks at night with the spray pack finding the tiny plants and spraying them.  The problem was that our grass is growing too fast and really we needed to get the cattle into those paddocks to eat the grass down so we could see where the gorse was.

I tend to get frustrated at the amount of time he spends clearing gorse.  I know that it needs doing, but it seems to be his preferred activity and sometimes there are other things that need his attention.  In the end, I bought chooks and was on my way to collect them before he finally finished building the chook house.  I had to force the issue to get it done!

This year though, we have nine cattle instead of last year’s two.  Every hour that he spends clearing gorse is potentially another day of feed for them - based on the amount of land he clears and how much grass grows in those spots.  In one paddock, we doubled the amount of grass that had been growing in there previously.

He commented the other night that the valuer who looked at our place for us said to him that there was a lot of unusable land here.  I personally don’t believe that any land is unusable, it just depends on what you want to use it for.  The amount of ‘unusable land’ that has become healthy pasture is incredible and there is still a long way to go!