Back in the ’90s I was an Ag. journalist and hobby farmer. Then we decided to head off on a new adventure- as we so often do - this one meant that we both gave up our day jobs. I continued to write my monthly columns “At least until you kill yourself, you mad bloody woman!” my Editor said encouragingly. After a couple of years, I’d received a number of letters from people who’d come to the columns late and wanted to know how we’d started. Publish them, they demanded. Write a book, they suggested. So I did, via Vanity Press, and sold the book as Going Bush to anyone who asked for one. Every once in a while someone contacts me to ask if I have any left. I don’t – I only printed about 1000 or so and, once they were gone, that was that. But it occurs to me that this blog is an ideal place to put it back out there for anyone still interested – and given what else is going on in my life – for anyone who wonders who I am and what I’m about. So here it is again – the collection of my monthly columns serialised weekly. Or so. Read and, hopefully, enjoy.
GOING BUSH
CHAPTER ONE
June
I don’t know if we’re going mad or are having a joint mid-life crisis or have simply seen the light. Just three months ago our lives seemed utterly predictable. We’d live in this gentle Manawatu valley, until we dropped off the perch, in this friendly old house, on our eighty acres. We’re both in our mid-40s. Both kids have left home,returned, left, returned again. Right now Jason and his horses and dogs are back; Emma flatting and at Massey. We thought, someday grandchildren will run on these lawns, climb the trees, play in the river. We feel part of this community, accepted and settled. But, nothing is forever.
Rene’s job is no more secure than any these days and becoming increasingly unpleasant. From above, demands to perform the impossible and the unpalatable to reach unachievable targets and to cut costs by cutting ‘labour units’ previously known as employees. From below, urgent pleas for more work, more money. Redundancy looms constantly. I knew he was unhappy but I hadn’t thought much about his alternatives.
I think his thoughts about alternatives surfaced one weekend. Rene was fencing. (I’m the farmer/journo; he’s the business/maintenance man. I do the animal things. He fixes things. Animals don’t readily accept Rene’s style of management – he expects commonsense, cooperation and that staff, [he includes all the animals in this category] once they have learnt to do something, will carry on doing it at appropriate times with minimum supervision. It irritates him that our sheep don’t yard themselves, form a line and open their mouths for a drench and the cattle still don’t accept the inevitable at weaning time. Me? Well, I have similar problems with numbers, wire and some machines. In my hands machinery becomes suicidal, wire homicidal. That’s the ways it’s been for 13 years of smallfarming and I never imagined it would change.)
Anyway, suddenly, one Saturday night, Rene said, “This place couldn’t support both of us, right?”
With our mortgage and lifestyle? Hardly!
“Well, let’s sell up and buy again, bigger but down market, eh?”
Oh, okay, dear, whatever.
The next thing I knew we were reading ads and ringing agents but I still honestly thought we were just playing. We looked at biggish bare blocks and talked about living in a caravan till we could afford to build. We looked at smaller blocks with houses and we did our sums or, rather, Rene did our sums while I looked on admiringly, and thought “This is fun.”
Another ad caught our eye. It read “Lots of potential! 250 hectares, some buildings, stream, bush, 100 acres in grass, Bay of Plenty.”
Bay of Plenty! We’d been there, once, and been happily reminded of Rarotonga, the warmth, the peace, the pace, the gentle people and, anyway, it’s nice to get away for a break once in a while isn’t it, so off we went to have a looksee the next weekend. I supposed we’d got a bit carried away, being on holiday, as we did when we were in Rarotonga, running around looking at houses to rent and businesses to buy, but we came to our senses eventually. Besides, I still thought we were tyrekicking.
When Rene made the offer, there and then, pending the sale of this place, I was mildly surprised but I went along with it and, suddenly, here we are, the owners of 450 acres of bush, 200-odd in native grasses, pigfern, bracken and lawsoniana, a stream and a couple of creeks, a swamp, a derelict cottage, a shell of a workshop and 200 sheep. Goodness.
What have we done?
Well, the upside is, we’ve sold this place back into the family who owned it for about 80 years. That couldn’t be better. And the new place is beautiful. Peaceful. Isolated. Sunny. There are birds in the bush (yes, yes, I know what they’re worth but these are kiwi and weka). There are breakfast sized trout in the stream. There’s no TB and no erosion. Those of you who’ve been following this know about our trials with the tanty-throwing Kiwitea. It’s warmer than here. We’re told it blows only rarely. Best of all, it’s freehold and Rene will be his own man.
Is there a downside? There’s always a downside. Leaving here is hard. Parents leaving kids seems wrong. Up there, Opotiki is 35kay away, the nearest shop 25, the road to the highway is 20kay of one lane dirt with cliffs on one side and a precipice on the other. There are no yards, no woolshed and, other than one and twobit boundaries, not much in the way of fences.
The accommodation, a tiny two room and a leanto remnant of a roadman’s cottage, is in considerable disrepair. One outside wall seems not all there, the corrie iron roof is mostly rust, the piles are stumps and most are missing, the Edgecumbe earthquake knocked the bedroom window out, and squatters or campers have made their fires on the hearth going by the state of the walls and ceiling.
There is power, however, and bottled gas to cook with, there’s a cold water tap in the kitchen, but there’s no mail, no papers and, what is really serious, there’s no bathroom – just a longdrop toilet out back and an old clawfoot bath in the front yard under which you apparently light a fire!!
Until next week, we’re camping in our empty house, with most of our possessions sold or given away. We’re taking almost nothing bar our animals, ute, computer, mattress and bedding.
It’s been three weeks since we first saw the ad! Eleven more sleeps…
CHAPTER TWO
July
Andre sounded very nice. He also sounded very, very young. (They’d sent a child to do an adult’s job! I kicked up a gear into panic mode.)We’re not entirely the woolly woofters we might seem so we had expected downs alongside the ups when making a lifestyle change like this. Sure enough and soon enough, there were downs aplenty.
In the morning, ignoring an appalling forecast, a snowclosed Desert Road and marginal National Park, Emma and I drove off in the ute, Rene following in the furniture truck, long before the stockstruck was due. Okay, I couldn’t call off the trip off but I wasn’t hanging around to watch some infant messing about with my animals. When he screwed up I wasn’t going to be there to deal with it. I’ve had to shoot one of my horses and I have no intention of doing it again if I can avoid it. I’d probably find it easier to shoot baby truck-drivers.
National Park stayed open. We drove through snowswathed hills. The kunekune shivered in their strawfilled hut. At Wairakei, when we stopped for lunch, Rene rang the truck. They’d reached Hunterville.
“Yeah,” said Jason sounding cheerful, “we’re fine. The stock’s fine. Yes, mother, the horses are fine…” (so far, I thought, miserably.) “…and Andre’s going to unload the cattle in Opotiki for the night but we’ll bring up the horses, goats, dogs and chooks tonight.” (At night?! In the dark?!! Omigod, a demented baby truckdriver has my son and most of my animals in his inexperienced little hands!!)
It took us eight hours, not counting stops. I drove up our road, with Emma, who’s a natural-born thrillseeker, peering through the window into nothingness and saying “@#$%” and “&^%$” and “They’ll never get a stocktruck up this!” I got a migraine.
The cottage was lit but locked and unoccupied. Through the windows we could see the owner’s stuff was still there. Nothing was packed. Now what? Not that Caveat again, surely? We’d got the date right, surely? We were tired, cold, worried about Jason and the stock, and in no mood to drive back down to Opotiki and a motorcamp, especially with six kunekune pigs.
“Right, bugger this!” said Rene and smashed his elbow through a window. “In you go, Emma, get the door open!”
We’d cleared space on the floor for the mattresses and got a smokey, sulky fire going before Louis arrived, surprised to see us. He’d been told, by somone in town who’d been told by someone else, that we weren’t arriving till the next day. He pootled about getting enough of his gear out so we could get most of ours in, including the cats, whose cages had somehow been tipped up in the furniture van and who were exceedingly upset about it. Creep fled yowling under the house until the next morning but Lily and Leo disappeared for a fortnight. Louis pottered off and we settled down to wait.
By 11.30 there was still no truck. Obviously, something had gone wrong or they’d changed their plans. There was nothing we could do with no phone and so far from town. If anything truly dreadful had occurred we’d hear, soon enough.
Then, at midnight, we heard.. big engine, airbrakes, airhorn. Ooogah, oooogaaaah! It could only be them. We grabbed torches and ran. Before we reached the gate, the Childdriver had turned and backed up to the bank. The boys bounced down from the cab. Dudley and Tom leapt from the toolbox. Off came their kennels, chockful of chooks, and were parked under trees. Off came all the goats. The dogs swept them efficiently into the paddock. Off came Thumper, Legend, Sarah and Joshua, not even sweating. Last came dear old William, reeling like a drunken sailor towards me and stood on my foot.
Then Andre, Boywonder, was gone with a “See you tomorrow, eh?” and another blast on the airhorn.
The 42 cattle were delivered as promised, unscathed, in two runs the next morning. Jason said Andre had handled the stock, the snow and the truck and trailer unit as if he’d been born behind the wheel. We’ve since heard from locals who laughed to hear of my fears, that he probably was.
“What was it like, coming up the road, in the truck?” we asked Jason as we lay in our sleeping bags before the ineffectual fire.
“I dunno – I kept my eyes closed!”
CHAPTER THREE
August
That first morning, we woke to frost, the reek of damp and woodsmoke, mess everywhere and NO WATER. The supply pipe was frozen. We fetched water from the creek, (in pots, since for some bizarre reason, we (that’s the Royal We, I admit) had decided buckets were non-essentials!?), settled the cattle as they arrived, checked the stock, finished unloading the furniture and tidied the cottage as best we could. Then came the first down. I’d thought the kids would stay a couple of days at least, but early that first afternoon Jason decided he’d take off. Emma said she’d go too, pick up her car and return that night, or early next day.
Rene and I fell into our bed on the floor and crashed, tired, cold, grubby and thus grumpy. The waterpipe had thawed for an hour or two but we still couldn’t light a fire under the bath in the garden because there was barely a skerrick of dry wood to be found.
About midnight, Dudley woke us. He sat, whinging outside his kennel in the frost, peering sadly in at most of the chooks. They’d been perching under the shed earlier and we’d thought they’d stay there until we built a chookhouse, but no. They’d travelled up in Tom’s and Dudley’s kennels and had obviously decided these were their new accommodations. Tom Huntaway had seen off his home invaders and was tucked up smugly in his with just a few red feathers scattered about as proof of his battle but Dudley would have eyed them and been entirely ignored. As fast as we pulled chooks out and perched them in a convenient Lawsoniana they ran, squawking indignantly, back into Dudley’s box. Over and under Dudley. Eventually, cold and fed up, we took Dudley back with us to the cottage. He was delighted. He’s always known himself to be a working x lap dog (something to do with the unworkdog-like name he’d been given by his breeder’s little daughter I’ve always thought).
We woke again, shivering, to -5 degrees and the waterpipe frozen solid from the spring to the cottage. It remained frozen all day and so did we although the day was beautifully sunny after the mist rose around ten. (The Royal We’d also thought winter woollies would be unnecessary in sunny BOP ) In the afternoon, there was still ice where the flowhole in the pipe sends a fine spray up a sunny bank. We scratched about for dry wood, continued tidying, a chore made more difficult by still having Louis’ stuff everywhere. He’d gone on Friday night and hadn’t returned. Even so, we wondered, how come people who’d dispossessed themselves of 75% of their stuff needed days to put away what was left? We checked the stock, pandered continually to the ineffectual fire, ate and crawled exhausted into bed, wearing all our clothes. Emma hadn’t returned and Saturday hadn’t been a great day.
Sunday was a repeat. Frost. Mist. Clear, crisp day. Pipe frozen. Wood wet. Fire sulky. Us too. It was the third French Test so Rene began organising the tv. He got no picture, just a lot of grey dots, no sound but static, and no radio station we could pick up was broadcasting it. He became… upset. He said, amongst a lot that doesn’t bear repeating, he was going back to civilization. Being a bit upset myself, I said, amongst other things best forgotten, bloody good riddance and I hoped he’d get put away on a vagrancy charge, given the way we both looked and smelt which, by then, was all his fault.
It’s not that we don’t have a bath. We do, as I’ve told you. It’s in the garden. You fill it with a hose and you heat it by lighting a fire under it. It was the first thing I fell in love with when we came to see the property. However, to bath requires both wood that will burn and a supply of water. Therefore, I couldn’t bath. I was cold. I was dirty. I feared I was smelly. I was being shouted at. I was unhappy. When I’m unhappy, I become unreasonable. Which is reasonable, IMHO.
“Forget the sodding test – make me a proper bathroom!! Now!!!” I shrieked at Rene. He didn’t. We had a teddibly polaite dinner, sponged in half a litre of water since neither would make another trip to the creek and went even earlier to bed in what few clothes were still dry and all the bedding we owned including Emma’s who still hadn’t turned up. Sunday was a rotten day.
Monday dawned, frosty, misty then sunny. No water, no wood, no Emma. Even for her, this was worrying. She could be dead in a ditch somewhere, I thought. Or given her sense of direction, (at twenty, she has to hold both hands up, thumbs out, to see which one makes the letter L for Left) she might be parked, staring at Cook Strait & wondering why she hadn’t noticed it before. Or she could have changed her mind. With no phone, we wouldn’t know unless the news was really bad. Besides, if I didn’t get clean, I was going to have a breakdown…nervous, mental, marital, one or all of the above. I drove to town.
My parental concern was outweighed, just, by my other concerns. I don’t do crises when I’m dirty. I went straight to the motorcamp and, taking great care to not get too close, begged Marion for a shower. She’s a kind and hospitable woman. She smiled at my embarrassment. Up here, she explained, lots of people don’t have hot water. Some don’t even have power. They all use the motorcamp facilities. I began to realise how sheltered we’ve been. God, that shower was wonderful. I stood on spotless stainless steel. I hummed mindlessly to piped music. I used 21 minutes for 20c per 7.
Then I rang Emma. She was fine but fedup. Apparently, her flatmates had borrowed her car while she was with us. They’d crashed (maximum speed – minimum ability) through a farm fence and written it off. She had no insurance (?!) and the understandably furious farmer had locked up the wreck until his fence is paid for.
“They swear they’ll pay for the fence and get me another car…”she said. (Have you heard the latest? About pigs in the Manawatu starting to grow vestigial wings? Until then Emma’s without transport, can’t get to uni, and can’t even get her car stereo and mags off it to sell.) “…but they laugh as they say it.” No darling, really?
Then she said she was missing us which isn’t at all like her and no, she didn’t know when she’d be able to get up….”probably never.”
Squeaky clean and maternally reassured, I went shopping. I bought postcards, waterbuckets and thermal socks and undies in grey marl and royal blue. The grey’s since turned out to be a mistake; there’s nothing quite so depressing as grey longjohns hanging limp on a line in the mist,) and in a much happier frame of mind, went home to Rene.
“What’s the matter with the girl?” he wondered when I reported that Emma was ok but missing us. His grip on English is occasionally tenuous, you should know. “We never modelcollied her, did we?”
CHAPTER FOUR
September
We’ve been here nearly three months and life is taking shape. Our days are forming patterns; we know who does what best and who enjoys what most. We’re working harder than ever before and nothing is as we had expected. We overspent setting up and Emma has arrived, not just for a holiday but “for years” so already our original budget is dead in the water. Really, we ought to be worried. Instead, we trundle around wearing halfassed grins. We’re having fun.
Before we bought, I did a worstcase farm forecast based on 10 years hobby farming in Horowhenua and Manawatu.
I figured we had 641 acres, 100-150 in native grasses, 50-75 (more? less?) reclaimable from the ringfern, manuka and bracken, and the rest in native bush.
We’d have no mortgage to worry about but little income, either, for 14 months.
Starting with 150 ewes, RWR (that’s ‘run with rams’ for you non-rural readers!) and 50 lambs/hoggets already on the property, our 27 RWB cows and heifers, 12 rising yearlings, with a miserable stocking rate of, say, 3-4supa (that’s stock units per acre and 1su is a ewe with a single lamb) and lousy prices for our beef, say, $500per head for 15-18mth old steers and heifers, allowing for 5% stock losses and only 80% lambing, I reckoned we’d be fully stocked and earning by Dec ‘98, four and a half years from now.
We’d fertilise the place each year. We’d build yards and a woolshed and we’d be fully fenced by then, too.
We’d live in the cottage as is and start building our new house, having milled all the Lawsoniana for it ourselves, in Jan ‘99.
Now, a situation report.
Two cows aborted, one before we left Manawatu and one the week we arrived here. Did Lawsoniana cause the second? Some people suggested it did. The trip? Something else? One of our first time calvers produced a beaut little bull calf two days ago, at least three weeks early.
The neighbours reckon we’ll be lucky to do between 45-60% lambing this year!! The ewes are karking, one after the other, six old gumjobs and a couple of hoggets dying, virtually the day we took over, I’m guessing, of lice and inadequate drenching . They were being ‘farmed organically’ it turns out – I think simple lack of animal husbandry is the primary problem. The rams ‘went out late’ I’m now told, so we shouldn’t be lambing till October, but there are a dozen on the ground already and I reckon some of the wether hoggets aren’t! plus twins dead in a bog and half the ewes are bagged up and slow moving. They weren’t shorn in June, as is usual here, so I’m forever picking up cast ewes.
The first job we did was muster all the sheep we could find into makeshift yards and drenched and deloused them but for some, it was probably too late, and those we missed in the scrub must take their chances. We discovered a surprising number of wethers amongst the “200 ewes and two-tooths” we thought we’d bought. Wethers are going to play havoc with the lambing percentages – you don’t have to be very experienced to figure that out *sucker sigh*
Drenching without yards is a fun way to spend a day. Not. Sappy grins and happy chat ceased within minutes, let me tell you. We staggered home covered in mud, sheepshit and bruises and I yearned for a proper bathroom, with a shower, hot water, fluffy towels and a lav not down the bottom of the garden but we still had no dry wood and were relying on the weekly motorcamp shower and a nightly pot wash.
One midnight, during those first weeks while we were having heavy frosts and I wasn’t properly programmed, I could put off visiting the dunny no longer. I was tired, ill-tempered and not thinking clearly. I clambered out of bed, (still a mattress on the floor which isn’t easy to get in or out of when you’re exhausted and injured and about 90 years old) scrabbled jumper and socks over the longjohns and stumbled out to find my gummies. All this took longer than was advisable so I was running when I got outside. Gummies, frost and grassy slopes don’t go. Grassy slopes are very hard when frosty. I lay on my back until the cold penetrated, the stars stopped making great sickening loops overhead and I could recall where I’d been going.
But, forgetting the bathroom problem, the cottage is starting to feel like home. This is worrying. I might get to like it. It might end up my permanent residence! *shoot me now*
Last week, I was riding through the kahikatea by the stream. Suddenly, from under a log, ran a stoutlegged, coarse feathered, longbeaked fellow, shrieking his head off, hotly pursued by Jess, the foxy, shrieking hers off also. I dived off William, shrieking ditto and he, horrified by the commotion, backed up, put his hoof through his reins and snapped them. Bugger. Dudley hid behind a tree and Tom hunted nothing away to the top of the adjacent hill at the top of his lungs. The poor little kiwi went to ground under a fallen ponga. Luckily, Jess allowed me to call her off.
It’s the first kiwi I’ve ever seen in the wild and I was thrilled. Every night, we hear dozens of weka and several kiwi calling across the valleys. Jess may prove a real problem. She’s farm-bred but not farm-raised and we got her as a young adult bitch. It took weeks for me to convince her killing chooks was A Bad Thing. However, we began her kiwi-training there and then and she went home, stuffed in a saddlebag, much to William’s consternation. Like the rest of us, he’s on a steep learning curve. He had never before carried anything on his back but a usually elegantly clad rider and until now, mostly on decorous show grounds or the hunting field. Now, he’s expected to carry me, up and down precipitous hills, tracked only by sheep for the most part, often wet, muddy and/or bloody and never ever elegant, saddlebags, fencing tools, ropes, the occasional downer ewe, sack of orphaned lambs, always my .22 and now a wriggly and rueful foxterrier.
I’ve taken to carrying a gun for two reasons. One, I truly hate cutting throats. Two, wild dogs are a helluva problem. DOC called a meeting to discuss our concerns last month and thirty or so locals attended. Hunters come here from all over and many, it seems, leave with fewer dogs than they brought in. Twentytwo so far this year have been shot, worrying stock, and sixteen of them were bitches. Dogs are breeding in the bush backing all our farms. Their pups are very cunning and they don’t kill just to eat. If people saw what feral dogs do to stock for fun perhaps they’d take all their dogs home with them. The three latest killers are hanging on a neighbour’s roadside fence as a plea to hunters to be more careful. It’s an unpleasant experience to be working alone up the back, to feel you’re being watched, to have one’s own dogs snarling, and glaring into the edge of the bush and to know there’s a feral dog pack watching you from hiding. Neither Tom nor Dudley show any inclination to take them on – they have too much sense - only Jess becomes combative and has to be grabbed and clipped to the fence.
Speaking of injured stock, Norma, our house cow, has fractured her skull. The skid marks show she fell thirty metres down a hill, through a fence (our only fence!) and over a bank onto the road. (Did she fall or was she pushed? The other cows hate her.) She tottered about our garden for weeks, bleeding from the hole in her head where her horn used to be and tried to come inside for frequent cuddles and whenever it rained. The cottage stood up to her onslaughts but only just. It’s hard to control a cow with a headache that can only walk in little circles. She’s pulled through, we think, though she looks like hell and she’s clearly lost her calf so there goes the ‘corner dairy’ this year. *sigh* She’s back out in the Water Valley now and Van is delighted.
“What must they think?” he fretted, watching departing visitors stepping around Norma revolving where the front door step ought to be and piles of Normadung. “We look like country pumpkins!”
Chapter Five
October
We talking, argued, dreamed, planned. We saw beauty, potential and opportunity everywhere. Like us, our new neighbours use words like magic, idyllic, paradise to describe the valley.
We’d improve the pasture; after all, nothing we could do would make it worse. I’m keen on sowing at least one paddock with chicory, timothy, red and white clovers, and some other forage plants I’ve yet to research. We’d fence, fertilise, scrubcut. We’re sure we can support ourselves; our immediate daily needs are mostly met already except for a bathroom and we’ve had a brainwave in that department. We’re going to build a sort of Japanese bathhouse! A shower and bath with a view and a roof! Oh glory days…
What else might we do to make money? Agroforestry? Probably – we’ve always planted trees. Firewooding? Maybe. Possuming? Probably not, not commercially, just pest control and dog tucker. Eco-tourism? Certainly – some day. Write? Definitely, I always have. Fishing? Well, we’ve bought a little boat and we’re learning and Emma wants to learn to dive. There are just so many opportunities. So much fun!
Ought we to be having so much fun? I do sometimes worry. It’s probably not good for us. Life’s ups and downs are usually in roughly equal portions, in my experience, and we’d been having such a good time. Life’s rather like a game of Snakes and Ladders, I snickered, Snakes and Ladders in Paradise, forgetting how much I dislike those childhood games of chance.
Right now, we seem to have landed on a considerable Snake – though we didn’t realise it at first. September 20 it was. Rene and Emma spent the day cutting manuka and barberry off a hillside, uncovering in the process an old circular sheep deep, to great excitement. Not sure why, quite, but it was a bit like an archeological dig finding buried artefacts. They returned, aching, punctured, grimy and triumphant. They washed, made drinks and fell into chairs before the fire. Later, when Rene tried to get up for dinner, he couldn’t. He’d slipped and fallen on the hill and now he was cast like an old ram. He’s had rest, exercise, physio and despite extreme frustration, he is not to work for at least another 8 weeks, at least, until a specialist our GP admires, returns from sabbatical in the islands. In the meantime, he’s useless and in terrible pain. He’s unable to sit at all and has to be upright on two sticks or flat out on a mattress on the floor. Given he’s fairly stoic about things I’m a bit worried.
Of course, all this has coincided with calving proper. I always worry about calving. This year, I’m worrying in particular, about eight small Angus heifers I’d put to Murray Simms (again for those of you new to this column, Murray is our Murray Grey X Simmentaal bull) a practice I’m not at all sure about but by which I hoped to calm a nervous bank manager.
These purebred, $480ph Anguses have proved extremely mobile, disappearing the minute they got here into what I find impenetrable bush, and emerging, days later somewhere entirely different. None of the other cows do it, thank God, but the Anguses delight in it.
I clamber about, crawling up and falling downhill, the going still unfamiliar and often not where I expect, so I end up on the top of cliffs or in a bog I didn’t know existed, searching for heifers I’m convinced are hiding, watching silently as I struggle by.
For several days I could find only 40 or 41 of our 42 cattle. Not always the same 40 or 41 but never more. On September 25 I finally counted 42. Angus 21 had obviously calved, her uterus was trailing on the ground behind her for a couple of days at least, but there was no calf to be seen. Angus 21 had lost a lot of blood, was weak and shocky. I tried to walk her to somewhere I could get a vehicle but she went down so I went home for the gun and Emma.
Emma’s butchered sheep and goats but never cattle. I’ve euthanased but managed to avoid butchering anything. Rene was unable to walk let alone butcher. Given the difficult terrain, I rang the neighbours and Marj and Lance Next-door did the job quickly and efficiently while I grizzled and Emma and Dudley searched for the calf. They found him drowned in a creek. I was too upset to even cry. I know. Livestock = dead stock. But I hate it anyway. Marj and Lance divvied up the meat and bones for their and our dogs, took the hide in payment for the work and that was the end of Angus 21.
Actually, she is the only calving problem so far and we have nineteen calves safely on the ground – only five to go but three are Anguses. I’m imagining more problems ahead.
Maybe this is a ladder? Dudley’s getting really good at finding things. A month ago I’d ask “Where is it, Dudley?” and he’d sit down and stare at me. Not anymore. It’s his favourite job now. He finds all sorts of things…orphan lambs, (three; An, Denka and Agnus Dei) dead ewes, (twelve) dead lambs (far too many) calves secreted by anxious mothers, Anguses in hiding, sleeping possums (lunch). He likes ‘finding’ so much it’s hard to get him to do anything else.
Then, on Monday, we rolled the dice and hit another snake. Dudley out in the carpark screamed in fright; I ran out as Emma ran in to the cottage.
“There’s an injured doe in the carpark!” she called. There was indeed. A doe, her face a horrormask, had been shot just above her eye the bullet exiting under her chin. She’d come maybe 800 metres home to find us. Rene hobbled out with our .22 and put her down while Emma and I raced up the Long Valley to find who was shooting our goats.
Just above the bushline, we could hear a small dog barking excitedly but we couldn’t get up there above the waterfall and we couldn’t make ourselves heard. Then we found another goat. This one was so torn I couldn’t tell if he’d been shot as well as mauled. His leg was broken and he was crying as only an injured goat can. Emma ran home for the rifle while I followed, carrying him. We put him down and, pretty shaken, we went round all the neighbours. None of them had been hunting on our place. None had seen anything bar a small white hatchback parked on top of the hill, all day.
Three days later, I heard that same little dog, above the far boundary. Dudley and Jess raced up the gully but I recalled them. If a feral dog (or a stranger with a gun) were up there I didn’t want my dogs tangling with them.
That evening, Emma drove her dad round to Marj and Lance Next-Door for a shower. The bath in the garden’s useless of course since he can’t sit and transporting him involves him lying flat on the back of the ute. It’s not something he or we enjoy putting him through but potwashing is not ideal either.
It was while they were away that I heard the dog again, back in the Long Valley. I panted round the hillside and there they were… a black, german-shepherd type and a yellow, hairy terrier. The shepherd had a doe by the throat, the terrier yapping and biting at her rear. Our rifles had been in the ute so all I could do was yell. They turned, looked at me, and trotted unhurriedly into the bush. I ran home to ring Lance’s and ask Emma to get the guns home as soon as.
Lance, Bernie the Mill, and Tony the Lighthouse, (explanation pending!) all turned up armed to the bloody teeth. I was astonished to see them – two standing on the back of Lance’s ute, with rifles and semi’s and very big knives – they looked like extras in a Rambo film.
Back up the Long Valley we found nothing but a dying doe and some pawprints. Of our 22 goats, we now have 5 left. Three more were found, dead or dying, by Dudley. Some are running with the feral goat in the scrub, most are missing believed dead. Lance lent us a bloody great cannon then Carol the Corner traded me a 30/30 now for a weaner in March. Our .22 is about as useful as a popgun in this situation. Most evenings Emma and I sit out on the hillside… waiting.
So who’s shooting our goats? We think someone from town brought in two unwanted dogs, walked them through the bush, spotted our goats and potted a couple to distract the dogs then took off.
They’ve been seen again, the big black dog and the little yellow one, on another property. Yesterday, Lance Next-door called us over. I guessed either he had ‘my’ dogs to show me or more mauled sheep. The Valley hopes these columns of mine are helping to turn the tide of public opinion against the havoc stray dogs are causing on farms all over the country. On the back of his ute were two dead dogs, shot just behind our place – a big yellow dog and a little black bitch in season – a third, big yellow one ran before Scotty (another neighbour, a young single guy with a bit of land of his own who works for everyone around here, and is a hunter-gatherer type) could get a third shot off.
None of them were ‘my’ dogs – mine are still out there. Somewhere.
Chapter 6
November
God, I’ll be glad to say goodbye to November. It’s been so busy and confused with the black cloud of Rene’s injured back hanging over everything. From the end of September through October and into November, he’s been in constant pain, unable to work or to care much for himself, and very hard to live with.
In October, Jason came to visit and brought with him his own Cunning Plan. He was subcontracted to a cleaning firm in the Manawatu. He’d lost several big contracts when the company lost tenders and his bills were mounting. He suggested he move here, start again in the EBOP, and be around to lend us a hand. When he left, Emma went with him to help him wind things up.
Now, Jason’s Cunning Plan B solves several problems but it poses others.
Remember, we live in a two room shack, 120 sq ft at most, with no hot water or bathroom, a dunny down the garden and 35kay from town. We thought we’d bought a romantic hideaway for two but, let’s be frank, I’ve found being cold, wet, dirty and/or exhausted singularly unsexy. Then, when Emma came home we reverted to being just Mutter and Farter once more. And yes, we choose to believe, this is Emma’s linguistically inept attempt to sound Dutch rather than descriptive!
So, where would Jason live? Emma has the ‘workshop’ now known as ’the Bitchbox’. A six foot four boy sprawled across our 8×10foot sitting room won’t make things any easier. And what to do with all his gear; his fridge and washing machine, furniture, tv and stereo?
Cunning Plan A, you may recall, involved our cutting sufficient timber to build woolshed, yards and our house over the next four years using the chainsaw mill we’d bought. Because of The Back, that part of the Cunning Plan A has gone on hold for the foreseeable future, anyway.
But, once upon a time, there was a woolshed here and bits of it remain. We’ve decided to turn it into a utility shed/sleepout since it’s too close to the house to be a woolshed and yards again. We’ve had some Lawsoniana milled and building has begun. None of this was in the Budget but we can repay the millers with more trees and as for the rest… well, ok, so we can’t live beyond April ‘95. So what? We’ll worry about that later.
Another Angus had a problem calving. When I found her, after an hour’s hike from the road, she was down in a creek inaccessible even to a tractor, the dead calf had one leg and its head through but was stuck solid and was far too swollen for me to push back. I cut off the head but even so it took an hour and a half to get the rest out.
Two days later, the Angus was still paralysed, still in the creek, and I shot her. Could I have done something better? Something different? I don’t know what. I feel I should have been able to but with no fences I can’t control where the stock go. Could a vet have helped? I didn’t think so at the time but, now of course, I’m no longer sure.
There have been pluses. Lovey, a very corpulent Simm.cross who didn’t calve last year and didn’t appear to be in calf this year until the very last moment, produced from under all her fat, her first calf. Which is as well for Lovey, she was heading the “Sell List” which lengthens daily, due to the demands on our Budget. First timer, Lashes, has calved too; a beautiful heifer of which she is fiercely proud. Which leaves just two to calve but they are Autumn calvers so I can stop worrying for a while. Yea!! Twenty three calves running around. Lovely.
Back to the Back. Our new very thorough GP wanted Rene to consult a specialist who was overseas until November. At the end of October, he was admitted to Whakatane for pain relief. Rest at home and physio wasn’t helping. As it turned out, hospitalization didn’t either. Five days later he was home again, still in agony, to lie on a mattress on the floor or hobble about on two canes, and fret.
In mid-November, Jason and Emma, Jason’s two horses and both their dogs plus Jason’s gear arrived home. Jason moved temporarily into the Bitchbox, walled into a corner by all his possessions, he sleeps on a mattress on her floor.
So far, it seems amazingly calm and friendly. Mind you, they’re probably too tired to argue. Jason has joined Kevin On-the-Corner’s shearing gang and Emma is rousying, rousieing? whatever! Some days, they’re up at 3.30 to start by 5.00 and they don’t get home till 7.00. Those of you who know Emma can stop laughing now, she says to tell you, “It’s not funny!”
Meanwhile, the building goes on apace.
We shore 198 (of 154 ewes and 51 hoggets bought) and docked 129 lambs. This looks better than it is. Some hoggets lambed that shouldn’t have – twenty or so ewes were dry. Really, we did 64% - better than expected but terribly disappointing. We have 48 ewes more than 4 years old (surprise!) and only 6 2two tooths, (surprise!) one of which is a mongrel ram (boo!) It took a lot of juggling and hard work to get them through the winter.
“We’re undergrassed, underfenced and underfertilized,” I say.
“You’re overstocked!” say the neighbours but I like my theory better.
After shearing and drenching, 28 ewes went tits-up within two weeks. Now, there are little scrubby orphans everywhere. Luckily they were old enough, just, to be weaned. We’re already bottle feeding three – I really think I’d have shot the lot if I’d had to handrear thirty.
On November 24, Rene went to Tauranga to see the newly returned Orthopod. The very next day, he was operated on at Southern Cross. The disc was in three pieces, the largest the size of the top joint of his thumb. No wonder it hurt, no wonder his leg was numb, his reflexes wonky. The bits were removed, four screws put in and a bone grafted off his hip to his spine. He’s home again, in much less pain though he’s still numb. The nerve damage is ’severe’; it will take time to repair, if it ever does.
And guess what? After all those years of having medical insurance as part of his salary package and on which we’d never made a single claim, we had to give it up when we came here. We simply couldn’t make the Budget work including health insurance, no matter how we wiggled the figures. Two months later; whammo! Carol and Kevin On-the-Corner sent him flowers in hospital and a card that read “Bet this’ll blow the Budget!”
Oh, well, bugger the Budget.
Chapter Seven
January
We’ve been here six months and we’re still having fun more often than not. We should have made this move years ago. Really. Rene’s op has been entirely successful. He’s more or less without pain though his leg and particularly his toes remain numb. Hearts in our mouths, we watch him lurching about, misstepping and falling, and rushing on again but he’s on light duties and he’s a happy chap again.
Jason’s accommodation is almost complete. The millers wandered off to another job before Christmas and left us timberless but Bernie and Linda The-Mill and young Edward Next-Door, came to the rescue. They felled our Lawsoniana and are milling them in a mill that seems as efficient as it seems ancient.
The stock are doing ok. Most have adapted. Some have not. The cows I hand-raised from calves, no matter how long ago or how good their condition when they got here, are finding it toughest. When they get hungry they stand at the nearest gate and yell for me. They refuse to climb hills to find feed. In fact, Choccy gave up and died at the gate. Norma, she of the fractured skull, is never happy unless she is with us. If she’s shut in a paddock for a couple of days, she sucks in her cheeks and eyeballs, sticks out her ribs and hips and threatens to drop dead. Like Emma, who as a 2yo held her breath until she turned blue and collapsed, Norma’s found this an effective technique. She spends a lot of time on our lawn.
The woolcheque was marginally better than expected and we got shot of all the old crones we bought. We mouthed 48 5yrs+ out of the 200-odd we bought. We sold the lambs (at the gate, with the trucks meant to come at 1am, I kid you not, but not arriving until 5am) getting $18.50 for the mediums (keeping the best 20 ewelambs as replacements) and $8.00 for the rubbish. We’ve never produced lambs like those before and I’m deeply ashamed of them. This year, we’re putting out Marshall Romney rams expecting to get some size and growth into the flock.
Interestingly, our lambs which got through the fence onto Jim Over-the-Road’s, were returned looking magnificent. I couldn’t recognise them. They’d lost their mums, Jim’s grasses are the same as ours, he hadn’t drenched them. Jim reckons it’s Nitrosol. That’s something to think about.
Friends from Wellington camped here at New Year. Our first guests. We were worried. Would they cope? Would we? They’re city people – theatre people. And the friends they were also bringing we hadn’t met before. What on earth would they all think?
Uncomplaining they used solar showers and the dunny and watched Mother Bellbird drunkenly trying to feed her twins in the harakeke by the dunny door. They heard kiwi and longtailed cuckoos, they saw weka and glowworms. Some swam in the river, some went possuming, some went horseriding, some went fishing. Did I tell you we’d bought a little boat, and head off to fish for snapper and kahawai, not nearly as often as we’d like?
Every night, we dined ‘al fresco’. We stuffed one of the kunekune with herbs and kumara and roasted him on a spit. He fed thirteen for two nights, including five hungry boys, and don’t let anyone tell you kune are too fat; he was delicious. Twice we ate fresh kahawai, once smoked and once with tomatoes, garlic, lemon, pepper and rosemary. We ate homemade bread and icecream. We drank red wines, homebrew and retzina.
One night, we saw seventeen satellites and lost count of the falling stars. (Not because of the above, I swear!) We mulled over EBoP guidebooks and pamphlets. What did we most want to do? Eleven to two, we voted to visit Whakaari, White Island.
Rene said, “I might get seasick.”
Toby said, “I will get seasick.”
The rest of us said, “Nonsense… take pills…you’ll be fine… chance of a lifetime… it’s educational… it’s good for you… piker… cheapskate.” Bracing, supportive stuff.
“Ask them,” I demanded as Sarah rang Whakatane to book our trip, “to ring if the bar’s closed. I don’t want to leave at crack of sparrowfart for nothing!” My friends concluded I was concerned about a potential lack of alcohol on board – not realising how often the bar at the rivermouth can get up sufficiently that the harbourmaster can close it; it would be a 160kay round trip for no good reason if he did.
Our first stop was the Hot Bread Shop for takeaways – steak and oyster pies, pate on french bread, chicken, camembert apricots and grapes on foccaccio, mmm mmmm! Toby and Beatrice, travelling in the back of Jason’s van, reported in sick.
“You’ll be fine!” we insisted, pilling them and swapping them from van to cars.
We reached Whakatane with Toby and Beatrice ever more wan and palely loitering. Beatrice promptly donated her breakfast to the gulls.
“Poor Bea, never mind,” said Jason watching her heave with clinical interest. “What did you buy for lunch? I’ll have it.”
The forty foot catamaran rolled as we crossed the bar. Some of us rushed forrard, oohing and aahing. I went for the ‘been to sea a million times’ look marred only occasionally by a hurried grab for chairs and bulkheads. Minutes later we were out in the Bay driving into a small swell.
Jason chugged a beer and made crass remarks about sea sickness. Rene eyed him coldly. Robin sat beside Rene looking thoughtful. Beatrice and Toby grew steadily sadder. Then Jason sat down suddenly and was mercifully quiet. Takis arrived on deck beaming.
“Come below,” he ordered Bea and Toby. “The seats on the sterndeck are right on the waterline – far less movement. Much better for you.” He shepherded them away. Jason mumbled something, thrust his beer at me and hurried after them. Tolis went with Takis to look after the kids. Robin and Rene remained on deck but pensive. The rest of us were having a lovely time. Sun. Sea. Dolphins. A mako.
Whakaari is truly worth visiting. You enter an active crater. The world is being created right before you. You’re witness to the earth’s inner workings. It’s fascinating, scary, impressive as hell.
While we were exploring the wind got up. Our skipper moved the boat to a different bay, one with no jetty only great, round, slippery boulders instead of beach from which to clamber into the inflatable.
Worried about Rene’s back, Tolis scrambled into a rapidly rising sea to help him into the tossing, barging rubber ducky and there he stayed, our Greek Hero, helping everyone else, three or four per trip, until 70 or so passengers were safely back on board. He returned, soaked and cold to cheers from all, a speech of thanks from the skipper, a hot shower, dry clothes, and free gin all the way home!
And going home was great! From the sterndeck we were looking up at four to five metre waves; great,glassy mountains of water. Alexis got sick. Rene got sick. Beatrice got sick, again. Jason got sick, again. Toby did not but sat beside them scoffing icecream.
“Greedy little sod!” muttered Jason, the last but one intelligible word he spoke for the next three hours. Tolis and Takis were playing nursemaids and, since both my blokes were losing their livers and lights, I felt dutybound to help.
There we sat, eight of us in a row, sick person, well person, sick person, well person; the sick people either being sick or doing really excellent impersonations of already dead people, the well people swapping new sickbags for old, drinking gin, eating pies, icecream and chips. More bracing, supportive stuff. What made the whole thing funnier was that while Tolis was getting everyone of the island, Jason who’d been in one of the first boatloads back, was using the downtime to chat up one of the young sailors (a girl!). Despite the fact that his head was stuck in a sickbag, he hadn’t given up trying to impress.
“How’re you doing now?” she’d ask as she collected the full bags.
“Gggrrracchh!” he’d reply attractively, diving into the new one.
“Is it getting any better?” she’d brought him a dry towel she’d warmed in the microwave.
“Bbbrrroooggghh!” said Jason, winningly.
The only word I heard him say clearly was when a wave, with obvious malicious intent, hopped the stern rail and dumped itself into his crotch. Jason lunged to his feet, fists clenched, eyes wild.
“Bastard!” he snarled before falling back and groping for a new bag. In his condition I’d be praying for oblivion. Family, friends, even strangers kept popping out on deck to watch his progress; it was hugely entertaining, valiant, farcical and it worked. As he wobbled down the gangplank she pressed her phone number into his hand.
What a great day out!
Chapter Eight
March
Autumn. We’re wrapped in a warm, wet shroud. The Valley in the Clouds is living up to its nickname. Our drive is impassable except to 4×4s. The carpark is a swamp. The newly dug dunny has filled up with water. Washing hangs limp on the line in the lean-to for days. Chestnuts crash like coconuts on our lacey tin roof.
Autumn must be the Biblical plague-season. For weeks, we’ve been driven mad by wasps. Apparently, they’ve been shut out of their nests to die. They don’t like it. Too bad. I kill as many as I can.
First, though, came “The Plague of Bees”. The honey people were harvesting the hives all over the valley. They stopped one loaded truck outside for lunch. Distraught bees swarmed up to our place to vent their feelings. Emma was stung four times on the face getting from the Bitch-box to the cottage. She was very brave and just said rude words, loudly. I was head down, bum up in the vege garden planting veges and was stung once, on the back of my neck. Obviously, it could have been worse! I am not brave about bees, being allergic, so I bawled rude words, screamed, flapped, ran in circles and generally behaved very badly for the rest of the day, swelling, itching and whining. Rene was twenty feet up a ladder battening Jason’s bach. He had nails in his mouth, hammer and battens in hand, was not stung luckily for him and, therefore, behaved better than usual. Jason was looking out the Dog-box window.
“Hey, Dad, what’s up with Mum? Yo, Mum, what’s the matter with you? Bees? What bees? Aah, bees!!”
Rene, Jason, Bernie The-Mill and young Edward Next-Door fought each other in through the cottage door. After several hours trapped inside telling each other Bee Stories; like Ghost Stories only worse if you’re scared and allergic, watching hundreds of angry bees crawling over the windows and the chooks scoffing my winter supplies of cabbages and silverbeet, Bernie rang Linda to come and get him and Edward. She was intructed to drive across the lawn right up to the cottage. No way was Bernie going to run the twenty metres to his own truck.
“I don’t bloody like them buggers!” said Bernie pulling his jersey up over his head before racing outside and diving headlong into Linda’s car.
Next, we had ”The Plague of Mice”. Fieldmice seeking winter food and shelter were using cupboards and drawers for toilets. I had continually to take everything out, chuck the spoiled packets of food, boil clean what could be boiled, lay poison everywhere safe and have several stern words with the three cats. I made it clear to them that there is no point to cats if they don’t work and showed them the .22. Jessie, the housedog, is a fanatical mouser. She dug two holes through two walls and one down through the floor of our previous house chasing a particularly active and lucky rat before his luck ran out. The walls here are only cardboard boxes opened out and stapled onto the framing to exclude some of the draughts – they cannot withstand being fox-terrorised.
After the mice, came Rain. Very old Testament eh? Bees and wasps instead of locusts. Mice instead of frogs then Rain for at least 40days on the trot. We’re living in a bloody bog.
In March, Jim Across-the-road, [he who other of our neighbours call 'a good Maori'...grrr!!] took us to a Field Day.
“These fella’s’ll interest you,” he told us. “They use electric fencing like you want to. Some of their land’s like yours – bit bigger, of course.”
Bit bigger, yes. 4000ha bigger, still, we’re really glad we went. Really, it seemed to us that Sisam’s, the MRDC Monitor Farm, is being managed like a really efficient smallfarm: lots of little paddocks, lots of fertiliser, lots of monitoring. Remember me? I’m the one who thinks we’re not overstocked, only under- fenced and fertilised? Anyway, Sisam’s helped confirm that opinion.
Visiting Sisam’s has altered our stocking policy. Along with being told we’re overstocked, we’re being told we can’t finish stock on this country. Fabulous. Can’t stock squat and can’t grow what we do.
Now, given a tendency to not admit I’m wrong until the mistake’s perched right on the end of my nose and disregarding all this negative stuff which is hardly helpful since noone is saying what you CAN do up here, we’ve decided to work towards Sisam’s 35% breeding ewes, 15% breeding cows and 50% finishing beef, unless things change and wool or beef prices start showing a definite longterm trend, or we can see it just won’t work for us. Flexible management, that’s the story.
So instead of selling the weaners, we rounded up the cows. Which ones should go? We culled those not adapting, (some had culled themselves by dropping dead) the oldest and the one cross-breds. Three handraised murray greys, ten year old Deirdre, two Sim-X heifers who’d raised good calves at their own expense, two Sim-X two year old bulls, a yearling steer and two dwarfish jersey yearlings trucked off to the Opotiki Sales.
You might see that Sale as The Plague of Blood. What a bloody nightmare! Now I know what a ‘depressed market’ is. We don’t have a mail delivery so I don’t get the papers except once a fortnight when we go to town. I can’t get internet service. I hadn’t realised just how rotten prices were though stock agent, Phil Wrightson, had gone to some trouble to warn us. Ours were the worst stock on offer, no argument there. After all, that’s why I was getting rid of them. But $56 for the jersey yearlings and one of the Sim-X heifers? Other cockies were taking their stock home…
“Stuff that!” said one when an auctioneer asked if his pen were on the market. “I didn’t bring ‘em here to give ‘em away!” but it was Rene’s first Sale and he was so shocked when the auctioneer asked him the same question, he said yes. We should have taken them home again for us and/or the dogs. Crazy! Like the mature and intelligent woman I am, I snivelled and sulked all the way home.
I didn’t have as much to sulk about as some. One poor sod bought Angus weaners last year for $400.00. (Last year, I paid $630 in the Manawatu for each of six pb Angus heifers. This year, I’d pay $230 for the same class of animal.) He sold them this year, prime 18month steers for $300 and lost $60,000.00.
So we’ve kept our twentyfour weaners – we’ll have a story to tell next year, one way or another – and we went to the Weaner un-Fair the following week just for a looksee. We left half way through feeling pretty depressed but others mostly seemed accepting or angry.
“What can you do? You have to keep going. You can’t afford to stop,” they said but I noted that several talking like that had their bank managers standing over them. Some are going to fall over. And what are the banks doing? They’re still lending up to $200 per stock unit on land loans.
We’re lucky. We don’t have a banker watching our every move but I can’t see where sheep and beef farming is going. I read recently that farm sales are increasing in this area most are being converted into dairy or into forestry and are being valued accordingly.
I reckon sheep and beef farmers adapted pretty quickly to the free market economy. Most are producing quality, most are cost effective. But most are priceTakers not priceMakers (except perhaps the biggest Big Boys) and most are competing against their neighbours which is driving down the prices at the farm gate surely? I don’t see how this can be sustainable – this combination of high capital value, low income – for long.
Chapter Nine
May
At last, it’s stopped raining. We have, as last year when we came to view the place, crisp, frosty mornings and beautiful blue and apricot days. The chestnut tree has stopped bombarding our fragile roof with enormous nuts and is clad in old gold and bronze. The scrub and fern between pasture and bush is changing colour, mainly due to the barberry, I regret to say, but also to other, native plants I can’t identify. The kahikatea are covered in berries, tiny tomato-red things with blue caps, lovely against the blue-green or olive leaves.
The mouse plague is over. Presumably, they’re safely tucked up for the winter with their stores of pasta and rice, soupmix and lentils, behind the cupboards and under the stove, according to the cats which are belatedly showing interest now the need to actually do any work is over.
Puku and the girls come home every night. Tama is more stoic, content to nest in the pigfern where he spends his days rooting about but the kunekune ladies arrive at dusk, harass the hens out of their feed and then launch a fullscale assault on the garden gates. Puku thinks the cottage is the ideal place to bunk down. We don’t agree. They have a perfectly fine pigsty. They don’t agree. Most nights they end up in the workshop on a pile of baling twine.
Emma was asked to ‘house-sit’ by an often absent neighbour. Granted his place has an indoor bath, with real hot water and a flushing loo but we noted with some interest the alacrity with which she accepted his offer. It came as no great surprise, therefore, when the neighbour’s absences seemed to be less frequent nor when Emma announced that she and Scotty were now ‘SheandScotty’ and would we care to come for dinner?
Bernie and Linda The-Mill’s heading bitch had a litter of pups in January and Rene and Jason both managed to score one. Jason chose a dog, a solid, happy-go-lucky little chap he’s called Spy. Jason’s huntaway, Tom, though very well-bred, was surplus to his breeder’s requirements and spent his unfortunate formative years caged. This apparently caused his hind legs to twist so he crosses his hocks when he runs. While he’s great in the yards, the sheds or in small paddocks, he finds the hills pretty hard going. Besides, a huntaway on these bushclad hills can be a menace – a quiet, subtle dog is better, I think. Anyway, Tom can’t be allowed to work all day; he rubs his hocks and sheath raw. :-{ Nasty! So, Spy’s going to be Tom’s legs.
Rene chose a dainty little bitch and named her for his grandmother, Petranella, Piet for short. Piet is going to be Rene’s legs, (not that HE has hock or any other problems, I hasten to say, but his back is stuffed and these are high hills) and my dog, Dudley’s sidekick.
Piet and Dud! Get it?
Given that I’d never trained a working pup before, Dudley is surprisingly useful. He’s pretty smart – it didn’t take him that long to learn to cope with our hills, the impenetrable scrub, trackless bush and one big paddock.
At first, it was:-
Me: “Dudley, go back. Dudley, go back! Dudley! Go Back!! Dudley, Go Way Back, you lazy bugger!!!! IF I HAVE TO CLIMB UP THERE, YOU’RE DEAD, DUDLEY!!!!! GO BACK!!!!!!!!!!”
Dudley: “Waddya mean, go back – I am back. Am I back now? No!? Aren’t I next door yet? I can’t heeeaarr you! You mean, way-the-hell-up-there-back? You cannot be serious! I’m getting a nosebleed. I can’t breathe. No, no, boss, don’t bother coming up. You stay down there in comfort. Don’t worry about me up here all alone in the cold and the clouds with not a bloody sheep or cow to be seen…. grrrrr.
He’s not 100% reliable. If Dudley scents a possum, the sheep and I get to have a bit of a blow for as long as it takes him to dispatch it. If he’s on his own and a cow stands up to him, Dudley backs off for a bit of a blow himself but if he’s got backup he’s very staunch.
Backup brings us back to Piet. Rene has never been responsible for a small creature before. The pups start yelling for breakfast about six. Since Jason is often away, working off farm, it’s usually Rene who lets them out of their run and cooks their porridge. He’s never cooked porridge before (or anything else you can’t normally chuck on a barbecue) and would rather starve than eat it himself so that was fun to watch.
He has also to mix the two litres of milk(powder) they drink a day and to remember to get a dogroll out of the freezer for their lunches and to mush bikkies, veges and milk for their dinners. Since they’re allowed in the house (to socialise them and facillitate bonding 
he has then to keep an eye on Piet and housetrain her. He has, naturally, to deal with any mistakes she made. Heh heh! He has to ensure she isn’t run over by a truck or trodden on by a horse, he has to wade back, filling his gumboots, to carry her over the river and, before he remembered he had a small pup at his heels, to chase her downstream when she got swept away and empty her of water when she damn drowned. He has had to learn not to pound her head into the postholes he’s ramming and to not just drop his clothes on the bedroom floor for the laundry fairy to collect because the laundry fairy is much slower to do so than Piet who actually loves his stinky pants and socks and drags them under the house to add to her hoard of bones, dead rats and assorted taonga she keeps there.
For a month or two, Rene has had the harried I’m out of my depth please tell me it gets easier look of a new parent. I on the other hand have a distinct, ha-ha, payback time inner glow I’m not at all ashamed of.
Mind you, Piet’s going to be a cracker little bitch. She’s heading everything in the garden, running wide round the cats, dogs, pigs and chooks, stopping in front of them and eyeing them hard. None is reacting terribly positively to all this, least of all the pigs – it’s not behaviour the kunekune care for at all but Piet is not offput, she just tries harder. And the other day, when we didn’t realise she’d got out of her pen and she tracked us out to the long valley, she brought two bewildered ewes out of the manuka that Tom and Dudley had missed. We supposed the ewes were actually just chasing after their mates but Piet was convinced she was doing it and has been inspired. Rene must get a proper stop on her quickly.
CHAPTER 10
JUNE
Considering we went bush seeking peace and quiet and time to do nothing if so inclined, this month has left a bit to be desired. Actually, every month has lacked something, one way or another. We’ve had a foal, lost a calf, we’ve shorn prelambing, and scrubcut, fertilised and Fielddaysed, worked off-farm, halfbuilt a dogmotel, AND…tadaaaaaa! renovated the bathroom, adding a shower and gas-heated water but we haven’t been fishing for ages.
Jason shore our remaining 100 ewes and 30 ewelambs at Jim Over-the-Road’s shed then got the learner’s stand for Jim’s 2,500. Rene tried to do the pressing. He found it just too damn hard; his back isn’t that good, his terror of pressing one of Ann and Jim’s precious mokopuna and the America’s Cup final on a telly in the middle of the shed didn’t help. At dinner that night, Jim’s Gordon told us he liked the new front gates Rene made out of Lawsoniana and the fencing we’re doing and the sound of the new house we reckon we’re going to build someday but he can’t put a Tiriti claim on the place yet, he’s too busy working out how to put one on the Cup so bloody Dennis Connor can’t get his hands on it ever again. Good idea, Gordon.
Because of the lousy weather, shearing coincided with kiwifruit season. Instead of helping Ann cook the five meals a day she provides the gang as I have got into the habit of doing, I went packing kiwifruit.
I was The Stamper. Armed with inkpad and rubber stamps, I puffed and sweated up and down, trying to catch the boxes as they flew off the rollers. In the first week I lost a stone, (good!) and my temper (with myself) more times than I care to remember. Only my workmates made the job worth it. Elder statesman, Ikey, who is in his 70s, wore his jammies under his clothes one freezing day (too cold to strip off he reckoned) is working two jobs fulltime, to save for the Golden Oldies Rugby Tournament in Oz (and yes, he’s a player!). Len, who writes poems and the best short story I’ve heard in quite a while. The kids and their constant reggae. Claude who went fishing for kahawai at low tide and found a few hours later he’d parked his car in a tidal creekbed. Buwahahahah, Claude! Hori and Carl who left halfway through to sail the waka, Te Aurere, from Hawaii back to Rarotonga. And Rene.
After shearing, Rene started at the Packhouse. He was The Lidder. Lidding required much less skill or energy than stamping so he was paid even less than I. Unfortunately, lidding allowed him time to stand and stare about, usually at me catching my (few) mistakes.
We’d leave home in the dark and return in the dark, in a bad temper (me) or sulky silence (him) after one remark too many about stamping cock-ups. Watching rugby games at uncivilised hours hasn’t improved my disposition, either. I gloated when the Rainbow Nation beat the French. Very very appropriate. Now we can beat them.
Which reminds me. I’ve been tired every since we got here, I reckon. I wake yawning for God’s sake. I used to read till 2 in the morning and still coped with a reasonably full day. I’m constantly having to renew my library books. Ann Salmond’s Two Worlds took me over two months and by the time I’d finished it I’d forgotten what the beginning was about. I’ve now given up reading anything halfway intelligent at night since I’m semi-conscious by eight and i’ve dropped the two uni papers I was doing extramurally. I keep thinking there must be something missing, from the water maybe, some vital mineral or other.
Actually, there probably is. We had soil tests done (not herbage though which we should have done, also) and every damn thing was missing. Hopeless. I can’t understand why the sheep are looking good and the cows have stopped dying.
We’ve been getting fert. newsletters and going to fielddays for years and we budgeted to fertilise this autumn. Jason’s LiteAce couldn’t cope up here with its little fat feet and was costing him a fortune on HP so we spent the fertiliser money on Kevin On-the-Corner’s ute and deferred fertilising until this spring. Then we looked at the miserable grass, and the miserable soil tests, and we looked at the stock and, well, as usual, it’s bugger the budget. Utterly confused by facts, fictions, figures and stats, this place is so different to any other district we’ve farmed, we shall have to wait to see about cost-effectiveness.
Jim was choppering on Nitrosol, a five year trial he’s doing I think, so we’ve added our order to his for the discount and added clover, Kopu, for us.
I recognised one of the pilots from a tv doco some years ago. Dennis started rescuing people at age 11 when he dived into a river to pull people from a crashed car and he’s continued doing it ever since. He pilots the Bay of Plenty Rescue Helicopter. It’s the first time, knowingly, I’ve met a genuine hero but I’ve read about plenty and Dennis seems typical. Why are heroes so quiet, modest, self-effacing? Really, they are probably the only ones who should be encouraged, even permitted, to open their mouths. They could do the radio talk backs and the newspaper columns that would actually mean something, eh?
Anyway, the young bloke, Brett, (The Apprentice, Rene called him and I wished he wouldn’t) took us up to overfly our block.
I’ve not flown in a helicopter before. Rene had when he was in the Army so he’d whipped into the front seat while I was still working out how not to be decapitated. Van had a communication headset so he could tell Brett where to dump the Nitrosol ( and a joystick thingy I found out,with some trepidation later, given his controlling personality) and I got the wooden back seat with no comm.set and no controls of any sort though I did look for the brakes a couple of times.
Flying in a helicopter is very … immediate. Everything happens instantly. However, it was actually seeing our entire property for the first time that made my knees wobble. Three quarters of our land is vertical! We were either flying straight UP it or straight DOWN most of it. It looks as if it might shelter several lost tribes beneath the primal forest but the secret grassy valley I dreamed of discovering wasn’t there. Pity. Gordon might appreciate a bit more grazing.
