A bit of craftwork

Well perhaps not so much craft as work. Here are two of my recent creations.

The first is a Rimu walking stick I carved as a Christmas present for a friend who has recently had a knee replacement. It didn't photograph very well so it is difficult to see the spiral carvings that go around the walking stick. I made the initial shape on the lathe and then hand carved the spirals.

The second is the second ever bone carving I have made. The first was also a Celtic cross but I gave that to a friend for a Christmas present. I liked the way it turned out so I made another one. This time I polished the bone a little but I'm not so keen on the way that looks. I think that perhaps I'll have to keep this one for myself.

Christmas Day in the country

We took the horses down to the Waingawa River on Christmas day. Our friend Linda lives right next to the river and she took this picture of us as we were leaving to ride home again.

We have lift-off!

In the 4WD gearbox saga we have finally come to the end, at least for now.

Last evening, about 30 minutes before I had to go into town for a church council meeting, I finished the repair job on the Nissan Terrano. No time for a proper test drive, and only barely enough time to change out of my oily clothes, have shower and get changed, I jumped into the car and took it into town.

All is well, no funny noises and it seems that nothing fell off. The meeting went well and after the meeting there weren't any pools of oil to be seen under the car. The drive home was, likewise, uneventful.

I think that we can call the car fixed. Perhaps this would be a good time to sell it, except that then I'll only end up buying somebody else's troubles in whatever replacement car I buy. Better for now to stick to the troubles I know.

The two wheel drive four wheel drive

My 1992 Nissan Terrano is finally mobile again. Taking the broken gearbox out was a simple task, accomplished in little over five hours. Five hours that is if you put all of the time I spent on it in one continuous string. In reality it took several days because the rest of the world keeps on marching on and continuing to make demands on my time with other tasks that have to be completed as well.

Putting the replacement gearbox in was an altogether much more complicated matter. First there was the problem of picking the 80 kg gearbox up off the ground and lifting it into exactly the right place underneath the car. Obviously I wasn't going to do that with just brute strength. In the end I used a small one ton chain hoist that I have. I made a frame that fitted over the hole in the car where the gear levers come through the floor to hang the hoist from. Then I hoisted the gearbox up and tried to get everything perfectly lined up so I could slide the gearbox into place. In the end that took me several days, the equivalent of maybe four hours. Amazingly it actually took me less time to put the gearbox in than it took me to get it out. Once I had it in place it took maybe another two hours to get everything connected up and bolted down.

Putting the gearbox back in did make quite a few demands on my back and it has been rather tender these last few days. Still, with an end in sight I simply pressed on and got the job done.

At last the moment of truth had arrived and I started the car. No problems there, everything worked as it should. It was time to go for a test ride but not before I had checked every bolt to make sure I had really tightened them all down properly. Success, I had. First I drove up and down the drive a few times both in two wheel drive and four wheel drive high ratio and low ratio. So far, so good. Time to go out onto the road and try it out for real!

The road test seems to be going well, no funny noises and the gearbox is working fine in two wheel drive. Time to try four wheel drive. Going up a little hill ........ when suddenly with a grinding noise I loose all drive. Turns out that when at speed the car jumps out of four wheel drive as soon as a little load comes on. Problem quickly diagnosed and so it's turn around and head back home.

At the moment the car works perfectly in two wheel drive and low ratio four wheel drive but not in high ratio. Luckily I have another transfer case (this is the bit that makes the car four wheel drive and it is bolted onto the back of the gearbox) which I know to be in perfect condition. It does mean that I'll have to spend another few days on my back under the car swapping over transfer cases. At least that isn't quite as big a job as swapping gearboxes. Given how my back feels at the moment I think I may wait until next week before I start on that though.

Weekend rest

The gearbox is having a weekend rest because on Saturday and Sunday Jenny and I are busy with the various markets we go to.

This morning we got up at 5 am to go to the Featherston market. It yielded a fair to middling result. It looks like there is quite some promise in Featherston and we'll continue going there for the foreseeable future.

Tomorrow we get up a bit earlier to get ready for the market in Masterton. Once we're set up there I head off to church at around 9.45 am, leaving Jenny to run things until I get back at about 12. We have built up quite a good client base at Masterton and are slowly become one of a few "destination" stalls that people come to specially every week.

In the meantime the gearbox is gently swinging underneath the 4WD hanging from a chain I used to hoist it into position. And there it will wait until Monday when I'll have time to get into the repair job again. If all goes well I should be finished by the end on Monday and have the 4WD four wheel driving again.

Gearbox progress

Another day and another step forward. Got the broken gearbox out of the car today. Referred to the workshop manual frequently and working carefully and methodically I quickly got to a point where the manual was of no use whatsoever.

Eventually with the judicious application of a few expletives and a little bit of brute force I managed to free the gearbox from its entanglement. In the end I used a block and tackle tied to the towbar and to the back of the gearbox to winch the gearbox backwards far enough so it was free from the engine, at which point I knocked the jack out from under it and let the whole lot crash down onto the wooden planks I had put there for that purpose.

Job done without damage to self or car. Satisfied and feeling I earned my peanuts this evening. Tomorrow comes the altogether much more difficult task of putting the reconditioned gearbox in. Alignment is somewhat more critical and a softer more deliberate approach is called for. Not sure yet how I'm going to lift 80 kg of gearbox into exactly the right place and then slide the whole lot forward into the engine but somehow I will do it.

While I was under the car and had access to the clutch I checked that and, thankfully, that looks to be in excellent condition.

At least that year studying automotive engineering at the ATS in Apeldoorn wasn't entirely wasted (grateful thanks to parents).

The easy bit is done

In the ongoing gearbox saga I've made some good progress with the easy bits so far. I found a recently reconditioned gearbox to swap into the 4WD and have just picked it up.

It does, of course, weigh much more than I can safely lift on my own so I used the small crane I have for my tractor to get it out of the car.

If nothing more urgent comes up I'll start taking the broken gearbox out on Tuesday and, all going well, I'll have swapped the other one in by Friday.

The forecast for the rest of this week is permanently black oily hands, possibly clearing on Friday.

Wellington Folk Festival 2009

Another wonderful festival this year with great music, great guests and great friends. Every year it seems that the Wellington festival gets better. This year there was even someone who sang a song in Dutch. It was just lovely catching up with friends we hadn't seen since last year. I'm already looking forward to the 2010 festival.

We had decided to take the elwinfarm organics shop to the festival and Jenny had bought in a whole lot of special supplies that we expected would be in demand at the festival. In the weeks leading up to the festival I was busy making wood turnings to sell at the festival, among them my enlarged version of the seedling pot makers, of which I sold a good number. Another good item were the spurtles. I had planned to have a couple of new instruments ready for sale at the festival but farm work had to come before finishing them so I only had the dulcimer there I had finished some time before.

A few days before the festival our Nissan 4WD, which we use to tow our trailer, blew the gearbox so we were rather stuck and were looking seriously at having to cancel going to the festival. Thankfully we have some very good, and very generous, friends who let us use their Toyota Hilux over the weekend. What a life saver that was!! A huge vote of thanks to Fred and Shirley. Of course now I'm looking at having to spend the next two weeks under the car to fix it because I'm not about to spend over $2000 to pay someone to fix it for me. The joys of owning an older vehicle with nearly 300.000 km on the clock! At least up to this point we haven't had any major problems with it and, hopefully, once I've fixed the gearbox we won't have any other problems.

Made a couple of planters

Just finished building a couple of planters for next season's strawberries. Because we don't want to use treated wood to grow things in I used macrocarpa for the wood surround because it is naturally resistant to rot. Macrocarpa is part of the cypress family (more info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupressus_macrocarpa).

Here is the pictorial story. What you can't see very well in the pictures is the sweat it took to build these planters.

Getting the fill was easy enough with the tractor. I just filled the bucket with good soil and transferred it into the planters with a wheelbarrow.

The planters are layered with compost, old hay, manure and top soil with some dolomite lime on top.

Once the planters were filled we let the soil settle for a few days, after which we planted the strawberry plants.

This was topped off with some bird netting to keep the birds from eating all our strawberries when they ripen.

It's winter

Winter has arrived at Elwin Farm and very picturesque it is too. Of course our firewood consumption has gone up a fair bit. At night I always light the Stanley wood range since I have to cook on it anyway and the fire is needed to heat the water since the solar panels don't do quite so well during the winter. We have both fires going at times which means that we're using up about 3 cubic meters of firewood per month. The wood bins are starting to look rather empty.

Consequently I have started chopping and splitting next year's firewood supply already. Just in case I need to use some it this winter. Doing this now gives the wood the best chance of drying out. If it turns out that there is enough firewood to last this winter then next year's wood will be really dry. So far I've dropped two trees, cut them into rings and am busy splitting them with the splitting axe I made from an old axe head I found in a paddock here. I do have a hydraulic splitter as well but it turns out that using the axe is faster and it doesn't use any electricity. Of course it keeps me warm as well, and fit too.

Here's what it looks like in our little bit of snow. It's nothing like the snows in Canada, the US or even most parts of Europe but it's cold enough to convince me that it's winter. Specially when the Southerly winds are blowing and bringing up that cold Arctic air.

Bliss is coming to Paradise

Yes, I know I've probably said it too often already; I live in paradise and my email address reflects that ....@paradise.net.nz

As if my joys aren't complete yet I've decided to add to them by installing a hot tub in the garden. Imagine sitting in the hot water under the open skies at night watching the spectacular stars above. For you city dwellers this might be a bit difficult to imagine, what with all the light radiating from the city blocking out the night sky. Here in the country on a clear night we have the most glorious skies but it gets cold at night and lying on the lawn looking up at the sky just doesn't appeal very much. That's why I decided to make a hot tub. Partly because I'm not about to pay a small fortune for a new one but also because the new ones are all designed to run only with chemical laden water and I want to sit in clean, pure, heated water.

So I scoured the online auction sites and finally managed to buy an old spa pool for $20. I did have to go and get it and had to drive some 30 km on unpaved roads to get to the place. When I got there the vendor wasn't home but his daughter was and she, very generously, helped me load the pool onto the trailer. While I was prepared, and able, to load it on my own her help made the job so much easier. Once I got it home Jenny and I lifted the pool over the fence and I then moved it to more or less the spot I wanted to put it.

Out came the spade, pickaxe and wheelbarrow and having double checked that the pool wasn't going to interfere with too many other, established, things like plants and the deck, I set to and, together with help from one of our roosters who took care of the worms, I dug a hole.

It wasn't long before I had the pool sitting in the hole and I'm now ready to attach all of the plumbing. That will have to wait until I can 'score' the necessary bits and pieces cheaply from people's discard piles. I do have an old fire with a wetback that I'm going to use to heat the water with. To do that I have to put in a small concrete slab for the fire to sit on, as well as build a surround to protect the fire and the fire wood supply from the weather.

It will probably be a few more months before the entire project is complete because I will also have to build an extension to the deck with some steps into the tub. And, of course, a nice surround for the tub to sit in and a cover to keep the leaves and, possibly, animals out of the tub when we're not using it.

Too cute

There times when things happen that are almost too cute to be true.

As most of you know we have alpacas and the one born here 18 months ago has turned out to be miniature alpaca. At this stage she should really be full grown but she still looks like a cria (which is what immature alpacas are called). And with that small size comes an inordinate amount of cuteness.

This is a picture of Dinah taken some 10 minutes after she was born. I had to assist a little bit because she had ended up being born tangled in the fence you can see in the background. The interesting thing is that as a result of that early contact, as well as the other handling I've had to do of her over the last 18 months, she has grown up to be very people friendly.


These days if I lean over the fence or go into the paddock Dinah comes over to me and presents her head to me to scratch. The other day I went into the paddock and sat down and waited to see what would happen. Sure enough Dinah came up to me and then started rubbing herself against me.


When Jenny joined me Dinah lay down against the fence and we were able to cuddle up with her while she just lapped all the attention up.


I'm in two minds now about selling the alpacas. With such a darling wee girl that is making herself such a part of our family it almost feels like you're selling a child!

Shame really because I'm pretty sure that there is a huge market for miniature alpacas.

THE new (to me) Bass

It arrived today and I've already spent a good hour or so playing with it. I think it probably took something less than a minute from walking into the house with the bass to having it plugged in and playing it.

"It" is a Hohner Professional Headless Bass also called "The Jack", built circa 1988. Typical of the era it is equipped with two humbucker pickups, active as well as passive electronics, and with the full size solid body has excellent sustain when you want it. It is called headless because the bass doesn't have a head at the end of the neck with tuners in it. Instead the tuners are fitted to the bottom of the bass in the Steinberger licensed bridge.

Tonally it is every bit as good as the Fender Precision Bass I had on loan. In fact the Hohner is more flexible because you can modify the tone quite a lot by adjusting the tone controls and switching the electronics on or off. Of course different playing techniques will also make a huge difference in tone. One of the modifications suggested by "those-who-know-these-things" is to replace the original humbucker pickups (which are made in Korea copies of EMG humbuckers) with real dinkum EMG pickups. That is something I'll keep in mind for the future.

The neck is somewhat slimmer than the Fender and the string spacing is also a bit tighter under the right hand. Once I get proficient enough for it to matter this slim neck will allow me to play fast riffs with more ease than on a wider neck.

The Steinberger bridge is fantastic. It incorporates the tuners in the tail stock. You do need to buy double ball strings, which do cost a whole lot more than ordinary bass strings, but once you've got the guitar in tune the Steinberger system is so stable you will barely ever have to re-tune.


The look and feel of the guitar are everything I had hoped for. In the beginning it does feel a bit odd not having a head and I felt as if my left hand might accidentally slip off the end of the neck. There are some small battle scars on the body but, realistically, what do you expect from a guitar that is some 21 years old.

On the wish list now are a better guitar amp (I need one with at least 100 Watts RMS output and I covet a Marshall or Mesa Boogie, preferably a separate head and cabinet) and a Marshall Gov'nor GV-2 effects pedal.

First of all though, I need to practice, practice, practice so I can become good enough to become one of the club's official bass players. Now I'm really looking forward to the Wellington Folk Festival in October this year for two reasons. One, I'll have had enough time to become reasonably proficient, and two, it will be the first most of our Wellington friends will know about me playing bass and I'm looking forward to surprising them with this.

Upmarket at the market

We have upgraded our presence at the Sunday market as from last Sunday. We've added proper branding to our market stall, making it easier for the public to identify what we have on offer.

Because the farm is still not producing saleable product year round we are always looking for complimentary products to add to our line up. We have just added a new product to our line up that is going very well for us. They are called SoapNuts and are a natural alternative to using chemical based soap powders.

SoapNuts grow on the Sapindus tree that is native to Northern India and Nepal. The fruit of this tree contains natural saponin which is nature's form of soap. In fact the word 'soap' is derived from saponin. In the days when people made soap from fats, oils and wood ash most everybody knew that the chemical reaction that took place when you mixed the oils with the alkali (wood ash) was called saponification. It's easy to see where the name for that reaction came from. Those soaps of old were gentle mild soaps that rarely caused skin problems.

Modern soaps, such as those you buy in your supermarket, are made mostly from artificial compounds and, unsurprisingly, many people have skin reactions when they use these soaps. The same is true of laundry powders. How many of you have noticed skin rashes, itchiness, or allergic reactions after putting on your freshly washed clothes? The reason for that is simply that your clothes come out of your washing machine laden with chemical residues from the soap powders, the whiteners, and the fabric softeners the marketing gurus tell us we should use.

SoapNuts contain only natural saponin and leave your clothes clean, fresh, and naturally soft. Aside from the obvious benefits of not dumping large quantities of residual chemicals into the waste water stream, nor leaving chemical residues in your clothes, SoapNuts are also extremely economical to use. $15 of SoapNuts lasts us almost a whole year.

Anyway, I'm not trying to sell you any because you all live on the other side of the world from me. But if you can find them at home, buy some and try them out. I know you'll be impressed.

We have put in a small lot of 50 trees here but it will be ten or so years before we'll be harvesting from them. It's likely that we'll be the only supplier of certified organic SoapNuts in New Zealand and, possibly, the world. Maybe I should have put in 5000 trees instead?



I am still looking to add more products and I have started making soap bars, using only natural ingredients. The first lot of 45 bars of Rice Bran and Palm Oil Lavender Seed soap should be ready for resale in about two weeks. Now the hunt is on for even greater diversity and one possible product is reselling Redmond Rock Salt imported from the USA. This salt is one of the purest and most nutritious salts available. We've been using it ourselves for some time now. If we can get a distributorship for this region we'll add this string to our bow as well.

Who would have thought that I would become such an entrepreneur? And in that department there is more to tell but it will keep for a later blog entry.

Musical Interlude

Some of you may know that when Jenny and I moved to Wairarapa we found out that there wasn't a Folk Music club here. Since folk music is a real passion for Jenny and I love music of all sorts we started the Wairarapa Folk Club which has now been active for about 2 years.

In that time we have gotten a core of active playing members who come to most club meetings. From that core we have formed a gig band, tentatively called Vox Populi. During the summer months we play every Saturday morning at the Farmers Market in Masterton. Week by week our sound is improving and there are now quite a number of people who come to the market regularly to listen to us.

Some people like us so much that we have been asked if we have a CD out yet and we're also playing at a wedding on the 30th of January.

Last Saturday we learned that our bass player isn't able to make it to the wedding. So it has fallen to me to try and learn to play the bass in two weeks. My normal role in the band is that of "knob twiddler" which is controlling the sound desk so we sound good and occasionally playing harmonica.

I'm certainly no musical genius and while I can produce some sounds vaguely resembling music from most instruments I am not a master of any of them. In fact the only instrument I play reasonably well is the harmonica. And that is mostly because you pick the harmonica that is in the right key for the song you're playing. The great thing about that is that it is really difficult to play a wrong note.

So ... I am practising like mad at the moment trying to get this bass guitar playing up to a standard that is acceptable enough to play at the wedding. Which also means that I'm playing the bass at the Farmers Market ... in public ... for the first time this coming Saturday ... GULP!!!


Back to the practising now!

What a long time between posts!

Gosh, we must have been busy! I just looked a few moments ago and noticed that it has been nearly two months since I last posted an entry. So this is going to be a BIG one.

In the intervening time we've had all sorts of fun! It started with the mountain dulcimer workshop I organised in Wellington.

Earlier this year I got in touch with Neal Hellman who is one of the world's foremost mountain dulcimer players (see, read and hear more about Neal on www.gourd.com). Neal wanted to come over to New Zealand in December/January and was looking for gigs so I took it upon myself to organise a workshop in Wellington for him.

With the most incredible help from Peter Denee in Wellington, who moved mountains for me, we got the workshop organised and had a fantastic Sunday afternoon with Neal.

There were several brand new players there and the spare dulcimers that Jenny and I had brought along were pressed into service. Neal was so supportive of the new players that all of them became 'converts' and are now either already the proud owner of a dulcimer or are looking to buy one.


In the weeks leading up to the workshop I spent most evenings in my workshop pulling out all the stops to try and finish building another dulcimer. I managed to do so on the Saturday evening (very late evening) before the workshop. I still have some finish polishing to do and the string spacing needs a little tweaking but one of the new players had a grand old time playing my brand new dulcimer at Neal's workshop.


After the workshop Neal, Peter and his wife Phillipa, Jenny and I went out for a meal at Leuven. This is a Belgian beer restaurant and everybody ordered massive plates full of mussels (apart from Jenny and I because we had vegetarian meals). It was a wonderful way to finish off a wonderful day. Many thanks are due to Neal and Peter for making the day such a success.

And suddenly it was Christmas already, followed very shortly afterward by New Year's Eve. We celebrated both New Year and a neighbour's 50th birthday at his place with mountains of food, loads of laughter, playing music, a bonfire and fireworks.

And here we are nearing the end of the first month of 2009, having made hay on two friends' properties and our own. With making hay always comes the saga of getting the hay baler set up right. This year that took several weeks and the application of over $1100 but at least the baler ran very well with only minor breakages. Now all we have to do is sell most of our hay to recover the repair costs.

We also had lovely times soaking in the river on the days when it was 35+ degrees and I was busy making hay at home. We took the dogs with us and just sat on the river bed and let the cool mountain water wash over us.


We're looking forward to a more productive year; the potato crop looks good, our other vegetables seem to be doing well, there is the possibility of another haying job (a big one that should pay quite well) and we're about to start cutting and selling firewood.

Oh, and somewhere in amongst all of that activity I installed a satellite dish and receiver so we can finally get half way decent TV reception. I used a decent size dish (75cm) to make sure we don;t get too much rain fade. I've also protected the dish as much as possible from the very strong winds we get here by mounting it on the side of the house rather than on the roof. It's only taken nearly three years of living here to get around to fixing that.


So that is a quick and rough catch up of the last couple of months. More, and more regular, posts soon.