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.
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