January 19, 2012
Donuts for Lucy
Rick had been back from the States a week when our pet pig, Old Lady Lucy, got sick again. She had her time with him, her walks around the paddock and her belly rubs. Then she decided to go.
She lay down and stopped eating. When I syringed water into her mouth, she let it fall out the other side. I got her a new round of anti-inflammatories in a powder form, but I couldn’t get the drugs into her. She wouldn’t even eat the lovely, drug-infused jam sandwiches I made. She began whimpering in a new way.
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Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
January 13, 2012
Lucy on a hot day
It wasn’t until Rick went away to the States and I had a week off that Rick’s beloved pet pig, Old Lady Lucy, started having trouble.
The first sign was when she showed no interest in a piece of bread. This is a bit like a fierce lioness losing interest in a limping wildebeest.
Lucy’s previous owners regularly fed her day-old donuts, but at our place the occasional piece of bread is as close as she gets to the glory days of her misspent, donut-eating youth.
As a result, she usually snatches bread up. When she wouldn’t even lift her head to eat the bread I’d laid next to her, I was worried.
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24 Comments | Death, Neighbors, New Zealand, Pet kunekune pigs | Tagged: kind neighbors, pet, pig | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
November 12, 2011
Feeding Jack the baby lamb
I knew I was in trouble when I received a text from Rick that said, “We have a new baby.”
When I got home I found Rick sitting on the front deck, holding a very small lamb in his arms. Its head was resting peacefully on Rick’s shoulder.
Rick looked up and smiled, “Isn’t he just the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?”
I sighed. “And just how did this lamb end up in your arms?”
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17 Comments | Death, Neighbors, New Zealand, Sheep & cattle | Tagged: bottle feeding, kind neighbors, lamb, lambing, sheep | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
August 24, 2010
Henry in his healthier days
I should have known that something was wrong when our geriatric rooster, Old Man Henry, started sleeping in the nesting box.
At first Rick and I just figured it was cold and that he’d go back to his low senior citizen’s perch in the spring.
But when I found Henry sleeping smack dab on top of three eggs, we knew something was not quite right.
From then on, Henry was always on the eggs. Every morning I found myself in the odd situation of having to reach under the rooster to gather the eggs from the nesting box.
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25 Comments | Chickens, Death, Neighbors, New Zealand | Tagged: chicken coop, Chickens, kind neighbors, lavendar araucana | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
February 20, 2010
Light on the far hills
I had just hopped back over the fence after visiting Kiwi Bronwyn and Jim when I saw Rick walking towards the chicken coop. He had a shovel in one hand and an axe in the other.
The evening light was bright on the far hills, but the paddock we were in was drenched in shadows.
I knew what Rick wanted to do. In fact, I’d agreed to it a couple of weeks earlier, but all of a sudden I had reservations. I certainly hadn’t expected to be doing it now, on a peaceful Monday evening after visiting the neighbors. I wasn’t prepared.
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16 Comments | Chickens, Death, New Zealand | Tagged: blue-green eggs, chicken coop, Chickens, chook house, scaly leg mites | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
January 2, 2010
Our gingerbread persons (click to enlarge)
No matter where I’ve lived in the world, if I couldn’t get back to Michigan for Christmas, then a little bit of my boyhood Michigan Christmas has always come to me – in the form of a box of gingerbread men.
Whether we’ve been living in provincial Japan or crowded Tokyo, central Wellington or out here in our rural paradise of Martinborough, the gingerbread men have always come.
That is, until this year.
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32 Comments | Death, Family, Food, New Zealand | Tagged: Christmas, gingerbread men, gluten free, gratitude, molasses, recipe | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
November 7, 2009
Rick and Uncle Oscar went away on a trip and I woke up alone on a very cold Saturday morning, so I decided to build a fire.
I had no idea that it would end in a moral dilemma and a nightmare.
Before moving to Martinborough, I had never relied on fire to heat my home. Growing up in suburban Detroit, our fireplace was for decoration. Heat came at the touch of a button.
Now heating our home involves touching trees – chopping, stacking, piling and lighting.
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14 Comments | Death, New Zealand, Woodburner | Tagged: birds, fire | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
September 26, 2009
Over 6 years ago my sister called from Michigan and left me a voice mail message that I’ll never forget. “I have something to tell you,” she said. “I think you know what it is.” She was right.
Foggy morning view of the grove
I knew my dad was dead.
Significant events always come with stories, and when I called my sister back she told me the story of how he died. It was a story I would hear many times over the next several weeks, from several people – where they were, how they found out, how it happened. We turn important stories in our hands, listen to them from every angle in order to grasp their enormity.
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Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
September 12, 2009
It all started with a ram. At the end of last summer, in late February, Hamish said, “I’m going to bring over a ram.”
Stockyard full of sheep
Hamish is the stock agent who grazes his sheep and cattle in our paddocks. We were standing at the fence, looking out at his 30 or so ewes that were grazing in our olive grove at the time. Hamish has a friendly smile, but he says very little. “You’ll see lambs out there in the spring,” he added. Then he nodded and walked away.
We’d never had lambs in our own paddocks before, and we couldn’t wait.
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10 Comments | Death, New Zealand, Sheep & cattle | Tagged: lambing, manure, olive harvest | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
August 22, 2009
Rick and I were both wearing clothes we wouldn’t mind getting blood on as we drove up Aussie Bronwyn’s driveway in our little city boy Nissan Pulsar.
Axe - photo by milan6
When Aussie Bronwyn came to the door – the High Priestess of Chicken Wisdom herself – Rick called out ‘Your loyal chicken killers are here!” My stomach turned.
Was I really going to do this?
At a dinner party a few months before, Rick had said to Aussie Bronwyn, “If you ever need help killing chickens, let me know.”
In some circles this might be considered an odd thing to say at a dinner party. Not here.
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21 Comments | Chickens, Death, Neighbors, New Zealand | Tagged: Chickens, culling, kind neighbors | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
