Apple tree and moon by the house
Rick and I shut off the lights in the main room, ready to go to bed one night, and suddenly we were surrounded by bright, silver-blue light.
It was flooding in everywhere – through the large bay windows and the square panes of glass in the front French doors, spilling across the floor and slipping up onto the edges of the furniture.
I pressed my nose to the glass and saw an entire blue world outside.
“Let’s go for a walk,” I said. “Let’s go see the moon.”
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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.
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Sunshine
Podcast available.
“Buy a used tractor?” I said to Rick. “Do we need one?”
Three years ago, after finishing the paperwork to purchase 20 acres with an olive grove in Martinborough, Rick and I received an email from the real estate agent asking if we’d like to buy the vendor’s tractor as well.
In our city boy minds, a used tractor would break down and require mechanical know how. We wanted a new tractor, but we were already broke from the mortgage. We planned to wait a few years before investing in equipment.
So we sent an email back to the agent confidently telling him that we did not yet need a tractor.
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Petting newly shorn Sweetie
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We have a new sheep at our place. We call her Sweetie because she really is sweet. But she has a little problem.
She arrived about three months ago when Hamish, the stock agent, brought about 20 new sheep to graze in our paddocks. “One’s a pet sheep,” he said. “Belongs to my sister. That one’s never going to the butcher.”
At first the new sheep were down in the paddock beyond the driveway and the row of gum trees. I didn’t see them much. But after a while Hamish moved them into the paddock where the chicken run is. That’s when I got to know them.
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Huangarua river valley (click to enlarge)
It’s early on a Sunday morning as I put on my running shoes. It’s been a very, very long time, so the shoes feel a little unfamiliar. I stretch, then open the front door and go.
I head in the direction of Te Muna Road. The name is Maori for ‘secret place’.
When I get there, the blacktop surface angles up. This is the place where my body always starts saying it’s had enough, it wants to turn around and go home. The bed was so nice. The slope is too steep.
But a gentle breeze rushes though the pine trees on either side, and I keep running.
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Podcast available.
Because we lease our paddocks to a stock agent, we’ve seen a variety of cattle and sheep come and go on our property.
Being city boys, one animal has always seemed the same as another to us. One cow, however, has been a standout. She not only made an indelible impression on us, but she left Rick with an ongoing remembrance in the form of a dull ache in his side when it rains.
We named her Evil Cow.
Local farmers say cattle are smart. One farmer once told me he’d actually seen a cow push another cow into an electric fence just to see if it was on. Before I’d met Evil Cow, I didn’t believe that such calculated bovine treachery was possible.
Let’s just say that I believe it now.
18 Comments | New Zealand, Paddocks, Podcasts, Sheep & cattle | Tagged: cattle, olive grove, pruning, stock agent | Permalink
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Since moving to the country I’ve learned that sometimes smart cattle and sheep perform the farm equivalent of a prison break – with one key difference. Instead of breaking out, they break in.
After work one evening last week, I was on my way to the chook house to collect the day’s eggs when I came across two cows in the backyard. They were just beyond the laundry line, clearly on the wrong side of the fence.
Of course I did what any level-headed city boy would do upon coming face to face with two large, beastly escaped convict cows by the laundry line. I turned around and ran the other way.
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In our first few months here, the grass in our paddocks grew longer and longer, and then it quickly turned brown. I had no idea those paddocks would soon transform.
Cut hay
We’d been told that untended paddocks were a fire hazard in the driest days of summer, but we didn’t know what to do about our long, dry grass. We had no tractor to cut it and no animals to graze it.
Then our neighbour Duane called.
“Would you like to sell your standing hay?” he asked.
I didn’t really know what that meant.
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Rick and I each picked up a long stick on the way down to the bottom paddock.
The bottom paddock: scene of the crime
We were about to chase some sheep off our property, and if one thing was certain it was that we had absolutely no idea what we were doing.
This was during our first summer here, when we were even less experienced at country life than we are now — if that’s at all possible.
But how hard can chasing sheep be? They’re just sheep. They’re fat and slow and stupid. Right?
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Podcast available.
House and the footbridge to the top paddock
A group of six of our city friends helped us move out to the country. That was back in October 2006. It was a beautiful day, and it felt like a party.
Nobody wanted to drive a rented truck over the treacherous Rimutaka Hill Road, so Rick and I hired movers to move our big things like the bed, sofa, washer and dryer. The rest of our stuff we piled into everyone’s cars and drove over the Hill together, convoy style.
Our city friends were all people we’d met since arriving in New Zealand two years before. They were an odd mix perhaps, but went together well – Kiwis and Brits, straight and gay, Quakers and not religious at all. To them we were the gay Americans from Tokyo, city boys through and through. What were we doing, they wondered, moving out to 20 acres in the country?
12 Comments | Country dinner parties, Neighbors, New Zealand, Paddocks, Podcasts, Sheep & cattle | Tagged: city friends, gratitude, kind neighbors, moon, rimutaka hill road, tractor | Permalink
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