Continuing from where I left off - Jonty farms about 1600 acres on his own with the aid of 4 working dogs, a quad bike. Sheep and beef. The farm was quite run down when he took over 7 years ago since when he has put in a great deal of hard work and money to get it up together. There are about 80 miles of conventional post with eight wires fencing. A lot of new fencing has been put up together with electric fencing plus 150 new 14 foot gates. Cattle and sheep yards have been renewed and several paddocks have had land drains renewed plus additional water storeage ponds ((called Dams out here). The house is timber clad with a verandah on three sides. The original house was built in the 19th century and has been modernised with a large extension built on in the same style. Lovely polished hardhard wood floors throughout. Our room is en-suite with super big shower. Large high ceilinged hall with open staircase and open balustraded landing leading to bedrooms at each end of the house. Open plan kitchen with living room nearly as big as the whole ground floor of the White House.

Wednesday 12th November. The weather for the last few days has been glorious and today has been just perfect. Jonty takes us for a drive to Lake Ferry where the river Ruamahange meets the sea. At this time of year the river is not flowing very fast and is quite low and if there is a Southerly gale it throws up so much sand and shingle on the shore that it closes off the mouth of the rivercreating a lake which slowly fills to well above sea level. In the old days a team of about 25 volunteers would hand dig a channel for the water to run into the sea. Once they had dug enough to get the water running the scouring action would do the rest and by the next morning there would be a deep channel 100 metres wide. Of course it is now done by machine and the last time this happened was only 5 days ago but we could see the level to which the lake had risen by the huge bank of drift wood and tree trunks that had been washed down by the river onto the shore. We have a very nice lunch at the cafe beside the beach and watch the fishermen netting Whitebait along the shore. Their Whitebait are tiny and resemble baby eels rather than the small fish fry that we are accustomed to. In the afternoon we have a guided tour of the farm. There are fantastic views from the high ground behind the homestead which look out over the whole Martinborough plain. - the wine growing area. Some of the paddocks over wghich we drive in the Ute are very steep - very hairy for us old greytops. The cattle look in very good condition but there are no lambs now as all 3000 of them were sent off last week for their fatal appoinment with mint sauce and rosemary!!