House Sitting In Pukekawa

Firstly, welcome to my very first post on my new blog. I should have launched a website like this years ago, but never mind – better late than never as the saying goes. Anyway, this is my current house sitting job. It’s located in Pukekawa, which is about 10kms south-west of Mercer. I’m staying here for four weeks. I arrived today (August 14th) and will be here until September 11th, and then it’s straight on to the next place. This Pukekawa house sit is one of my repeat properties. I’ve looked after the place several times over the last few years. This is my seventh visit here. I usually stay for four to six weeks during the winter months while the homeowners go up to Canada to visit family.

This is one of my favourite properties. I always look forward to coming back each year. The house is spacious and comfy and it gets lots of gorgeous winter sun. It has a nice big wood burner and there is plenty of firewood in the shed. The property once upon a time used to be a working orchard, but it’s been retired for a few years and is now basically a lifestyle block. There is no shortage of fallen timber to turn into good firewood. Old fruit trees are generally all hardwood and thus they make for excellent long-burning fuel for established fires and for pushing heat throughout the whole house. This house is two-storey and the wood burner has no trouble warming up the entire home.

As for the pets, there are two elderly dogs, Munter (12 yrs) and Shiva (16 yrs). Munter has gone stone-deaf since I saw him last year. Shiva has become pretty deaf too, but if I add some good treble to my voice she can still hear me. There’s also one young cat Maisie (3 yrs), and half a dozen heavily pregnant pet ewes, so I could have a few lambs skipping about the place while I’m here. All the pets are super friendly, even the ewes, and the cat and dogs always seem to be happy to see me again. I’m going to enjoy the next few weeks.

Maisie & Shiva

Maisie

Shiva

Munter

Ewes