It's unseasonably warm and wet and we are still feeding the cows maize, unheard of at this time of year.
The cabbage trees are flowering and Bruce, once again, can't remember if this is supposed to herald a wet summer or a drought.
To be honest, I don't think the cabbage trees themselves know, they just burst forth when light and temperature dictate and we will just have to wait and see what summer brings as it unfolds. And be prepared, like scouts, for anything.
I can tell it is spring because all the animals, from the cats to the cows, are shedding hair in great drifts that enthral nobody except the birds building nests.
Snowy the goat's dreadlocks would impress a Rastafarian - he enjoys the attention when we try to scratch his dreads off, but the other, bigger, goat who suffers no hair issues, hates that Snowy is getting extra attention. He vents his displeasure on us with well-timed butts.
I'm not sure whether shedding or a gastro bug was to blame, but two of our cats spent a couple of days last week gagging and puking.
Young Ed, our foundling kitten, was apparently so terrified by the sensation of vomiting that he tried to run away from it.
Not a successful move, as you can imagine, and one of the times that I'm thrilled to have concrete floors; so easy to clean up any kind of horrible mess.
I'm less excited by the negative detailing that the architect thought would create a play of light and dark.
This it may do, but it's a damn nasty job fishing unpleasant substances out of those crevices.
Calving is over and mating under way - in between (well, almost in between - there were still a couple of cows left to calve) we managed a "sort of" holiday.
To begin, I refereed a weekend of swimming in the Bay of Islands, charged home, picking up the youngest from his grandparents on the way, threw the teenager out at home for a week on her own and set off for Napier.
And promptly ground to a halt with a flat tyre. The spare tyre storage on a Highlander was obviously designed by a sadist, because it's torturous to get the spare out, and involved some rolling around in mud and puddles. Exhausted, and now covered in dirt, I set off again, only to discover that, sadly, the road was closed due to an accident.
About an hour down the diversion route I gasped in horror, realising I had forgotten my laptop (which I needed quite desperately for various vital tasks).
I cheered myself with the thought that at least I was driving independently, while Bruce was enduring a lengthy road trip by bus to the same destination, while also overseeing a gaggle of teenage boys.
Fortunately, we both survived our challenging journeys and enjoyed a week watching our son's team play intense hockey games, and then headed home, from where I immediately had to head south again for our daughter's swimming, followed by our other daughter's 20th birthday celebrations at home to end the holidays.
Sending them all back to school felt like the real holiday.
Meanwhile, Bruce was back on the farm in time to supervise the birth of the last calf, which turned out to be a monster.
He was so big, he couldn't even support his own weight at first and lay pathetically, waiting to be handfed.
Luckily he did pull himself together after a couple of days and scrambled to his feet, ready to take on life - I need to follow his example.