Te Akau Tuesday Update

David writes:

After a beautiful, fine weekend with near Spring-like conditions - it looks like the weather is going to turn again!  But farmers are never happy, we need rain all the time to keep the grass growing.

This morning at Matamata we galloped 45 horses with some really top work from a number of our horses.  Matt Cameron reports that his stand-out this morning was a Mastercraftsman filly called Latin Rose who is a half sister to Mexican Rose, the Champion 2YO and Champion 3YO in Singapore.

Of the 2YOs Matt's pick on today's work was an Exceed and Excel colt that I bought in Sydney at Easter who is now named Unsurpassed.  There are many other horses who also worked very well that Jason is pleased with.

What an exciting time of the year Spring is - not just on the farm with the grass about to explode - but also for the stable and we will have a lot of horses trialling again at Te Teko next week.  We will also have quite a number of 2YOs at the Cambridge trials in the first week of September.  I am going over to the stable on Thursday to inspect all the horses and am looking forward to catching up with the team too.

This morning on the farm the lads are very busy with two chainsaws, cutting up a couple of trees that fell down during the winter.  This will be next year's firewood, we like to work a year in advance so the wood is nice and dry for our open fire.

Today we are crutching the hoggets and separating those who have twins, singles and those who didn't get in lamb.  The singles are coming down to Te Akau Stud where they will be cleaning out horse paddocks that are empty so that we have nice, fresh grass coming away for the Spring.  It is a huge advantage for us being able to put sheep through our horse paddocks and is one of the reasons why they are all literally weed free.

This morning I looked at the O'Reilly/Suream colt that I bought for $40,000 from the Gold Coast sale in June - he worked well today and this is an example of a horse that I love buying.  He was a little underdeveloped on sale day and this is why I was able to buy him for $40,000.  However, back on Te Akau's grass he has really developed and I have  no doubt that if we put him into the Ready to Run sale he would be a $150,000 colt.  He has really grown and progressed into a particularly nice type.

The other horse that I bought on the Gold Coast was a Fastnet Rock/Dragon's Tail filly - she has been fully broken in, educated in the stable, has had a month spelling on the farm and is now back in training.  We would like to think that she can be ready to trial in November.

Yesterday we planted a further seven trees on the farm - two pohutukawas (main picture), three tulip trees and two cherry blossom trees.  This brings to 40 the number of trees we have planted this winter.  My aim is to plant 30 trees a year for the next 10 years.