An unexpected guest
It was the height of summer when I found a brown duck swimming around our goldfish pond like it owned the place.
The duck stared me down fearlessly as if to say, “I was here first. Go find your own pond.”
Our property has long been a home for waifs and strays. We’ve taken on geriatric roosters and aged sows, not to mention the occasional stray human. So I was ready to have this new guest stay as long as it liked.
After all, how much trouble could a wild duck be?
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Neighbors, New Zealand | Tagged: animals, goldfish pond, nature, waifs and strays | 
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Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
Kowhai displaying his tongue
“Kowhai’s lonely,” I said. “We have to give him back.”
Rick looked horrified. “What?! Get rid of Kowhai? How can you say such a thing?!”
I shrugged. “Well, he doesn’t really belong to us.”
Kowhai had served as Old Lady Lucy’s strapping young boarfriend and companion in the last year of her life. Towards the end he kept guard outside the gate to the hayshed hospital where we cared for her. He lay there in driving rain and scorching sun just to be near her.
After we buried Lucy, I let Kowhai inside the hayshed so he could see she was gone. He wasn’t convinced, and for the next three days he continued lying in his spot at the gate, as if waiting for her return.
It was heartbreaking. Pigs need company, and we had to do something.
17 Comments | Commute, Neighbors, New Zealand, Pet kunekune pigs | Tagged: free range pork, heritage breed, kunekune, new pig, pet, pig, pig farmers | Permalink
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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.
24 Comments | Death, Neighbors, New Zealand, Pet kunekune pigs | Tagged: kind neighbors, pet, pig | Permalink
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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?”
20 Comments | Death, Neighbors, New Zealand, Sheep & cattle | Tagged: bottle feeding, kind neighbors, lamb, lambing, sheep, Wairarapa Lifestyle Magazine | Permalink
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Little Francoise the Aracuana Hen
“Kill them all,” Rick said. “We’ll start over.”
“What?!” I was horrified. “We can’t simply cull all of our chickens because they couldn’t learn how to use the chicken feeder!”
For the past few months, we’d been hearing stories from our neighbor Aussie Bronwyn about how easy her life was with her ‘Grandpa’s Feeder’ – how she didn’t have to go out and feed her chooks every day, how the sparrows never ate the feed anymore, and how even her clever young hatchlings had learned how to use the feeder.
We were sick with envy. But kill our chickens?
22 Comments | Chickens, Neighbors, New Zealand | Tagged: blue-green eggs, chicken coop, chicken feeder, Chickens, chook house, lavendar araucana | Permalink
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Kowhai and Lucy grazing
“So, is she pregnant?” Rick asked.
Naya looked over the fence at our pet kunekune pig, Old Lady Lucy. “She does look a bit more plump, doesn’t she?”
Naya is a vet and a pig farmer. She was wearing a thick knit cap and an old jacket that was tied closed with a bit of twine wrapped around her waist. There was a bit of hay stuck to her left shoulder.
Rick and I had asked Naya to come over to give us her professional opinion. Although Rick and I suspected Lucy was ‘in pig,’ as they say, the simple truth is that city boys like us wouldn’t know a pregnant pig from a bar of soap.
23 Comments | Food, Neighbors, New Zealand, Pet kunekune pigs | Tagged: kunekune, meat, pig, pork, pregnant | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
Lucy and Kowhai
One sunny afternoon a few months ago I noticed that Old Lady Lucy, our pet kunekune pig, was standing in the middle of the top paddock covered in mud and screaming. Something was clearly wrong.
I went over to check on her, but she was irritable, aggressive, and didn’t want to be touched.
So I did what one does when your pet pig turns psychotic. I called the Martinborough Pig Whisperer.
33 Comments | Food, Neighbors, New Zealand, Pet kunekune pigs | Tagged: kunekune, pet, pig, pork, Wairarapa Lifestyle Magazine | Permalink
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The first ripe Barnea
Our very first harvest was just around the corner, but Rick and I had no idea how to harvest and no equipment to do it. So that first year in Martinborough, I volunteered to help Helen at Olivo with their harvest. That way I could learn how to do it myself.
In late May I stood in the Olivo olive grove with Helen and her harvest team – Mavis, Scott and Bernard (pronounced BER-nerd here, not Ber-NARD the American way). Mavis was a thin, elderly woman. Scott and BERnard were clearly used to physical labor. I, it must be said, was not.
13 Comments | Neighbors, New Zealand, Olives & olive oil | Tagged: gratitude, olive grove, olive harvest, olive oil, satisfying work | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
Overgrown olive grove, 2006
Rick and I were standing with our neighbor John down in the olive grove. The trees were thick and green all around us.
“Look how great the grove looks,” Rick said.
John scowled and shook his head. “Well, you’re not done yet.”
Rick and I had only been living in Martinborough for less than a month. When we moved in the grass in the olive grove had been chest high, and John had helped us to hire a contractor to mow it.
Now the beautiful green grass was low to the ground and wonderfully even – with 500 significant exceptions. Around the base of every tree, there was a perfect square of long, ungainly grass that the contractor’s enormous tractor mower hadn’t been able to reach.
22 Comments | Neighbors, New Zealand, Olives & olive oil | Tagged: kind neighbors, olive grove, olive trees, prune, pruning, satisfying work, secateurs, suckers, water shoots | Permalink
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Dave's carrot cake
“Why won’t you share it?” I asked Rick. We were standing in the kitchen, looking at a carrot cake recipe written on the back of a long, white envelope.
“Because it’s too special,” he answered.
“But all the neighbors are asking for it.”
“Too bad,” Rick said. “If we share this recipe then everyone will make it, and it won’t be special anymore. Besides, it’s the only cake we know how to make! And we can’t serve store bought ever again. The locals will shoot us.”
53 Comments | Food, Neighbors, New Zealand | Tagged: baking, blue-green eggs, carrot cake, gluten free, recipe, rural, wheat free | Permalink
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Kunekune piglet - Image from 'Armchair Caver' on Flickr
Podcast available.
“You want a what?” I said.
Rick smiled. “A pet pig. A kunekune.”
I paused, then laughed. “For a second I thought you were serious.”
Rick looked at me blankly.
“I am serious,” he said. Suddenly his voice changed pitch, like he was talking to a baby. “They’re just so darn cute.”
I knew I was in trouble then.
32 Comments | Neighbors, New Zealand, Pet kunekune pigs, Podcasts | Tagged: kunekune, pet, pig, sow, Wairarapa Lifestyle Magazine | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
Sheep in front of the olive grove
Podcast available.
“There’s a sheep down in your paddock,” our neighbor Jim said over the phone. He’d been working along the fenceline when he saw the sheep. “It looks pretty sick,” he said.
I immediately called Hamish.
Hamish is the stock agent who leases our paddocks to graze his sheep and cattle. He’s in his mid 60s, I’d say, and he’s got a broad New Zealand accent and a gravelly voice. A man of few words, he’s nevertheless friendly in a low-key, Kiwi farmer kind of way.
28 Comments | Neighbors, New Zealand, Paddocks, Podcasts, Sheep & cattle | Tagged: cast sheep, hayshed, podcast, sick sheep, Wairarapa Lifestyle Magazine | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
Moore Wilson's
I looked up at the enormous building and the huge green sign that said “Moore Wilson’s Fresh Market,” and I felt like Dorothy at the gates to the Emerald City.
In my arms I held a heavy cardboard box full of olive oil bottles that I’d carefully labeled the night before. At my side was our good neighbor Kiwi Bronwyn, carrying another box which contained more olive oil, a tablecloth, a bread knife, and some plates and bowls.
Rick stood right behind us, next to our little Nissan Pulsar. He’d just driven us over the Rimutaka Hill Road and into Wellington city for the day.
“Do you have everything?” he asked.
17 Comments | Food, Neighbors, New Zealand, Olives & olive oil | Tagged: gratitude, kind neighbors, olive oil, olive oil tasting, wellington | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
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.
25 Comments | Chickens, Death, Neighbors, New Zealand | Tagged: chicken coop, Chickens, kind neighbors, lavendar araucana | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
Frantoio olives (click to enlarge)
Podcast available.
“They’re all still green,” Rick said.
We were standing in the middle of the olive grove on a cold morning in the middle of May. Nearly five hundred olive trees surrounded us, and there wasn’t a single ripe olive to be seen.
The frosts would be starting soon, but the grove simply wasn’t yet ready for harvesting. We didn’t know what to do.
Frost damage can completely destroy your crop, because it ruins the taste of your oil. We needed more time.
I looked around at all the green olives. “We have to delay the harvest. There’s no choice. We just have to hope the frost doesn’t get us.”
20 Comments | Neighbors, New Zealand, Olives & olive oil, Podcasts | Tagged: city friends, gratitude, kind neighbors, olive grove, olive harvest, olive oil, olive press, satisfying work, Wairarapa Lifestyle Magazine | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
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