July 23, 2011
It was howling a gale outside when Amelia from Radio New Zealand showed up at my door. We immediately headed out for a walk through the paddocks. She had a black box hanging from her side, and she was holding two very large, imposing microphones.
When the gusts picked up she would jump from one side of me to the other, trying to block the noisy wind with her body and always holding one of the microphones in front of my mouth. I tried to pretend like this was normal, and I continued answering whatever question she’d asked.
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Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
December 21, 2010
Lucy the kunekune pig
Podcast available.
“I don’t want to get this pig,” I said to Rick. It didn’t matter that I was already sitting in the back seat of our friends’ ute on the way to get it.
Rick was sitting next to me, practically bouncing with glee. “I know you. As soon as we have her, you’ll love her.”
In the front seat were our friends Leelee and The Wolf. “Pigs are great,” they yelled, practically in unison.
The Wolf is a do-it-yourself mastermind who’s had a lot of experience transporting pet pigs, and Leelee has such an uncanny ability to communicate with pigs that we call her the Pig Whisperer.
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19 Comments | New Zealand, Pet kunekune pigs, Podcasts | Tagged: kind neighbors, kunekune, pet, pickup truck, pig, rimutaka hill road, Wairarapa Lifestyle Magazine | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
November 21, 2010
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.
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32 Comments | Neighbors, New Zealand, Pet kunekune pigs, Podcasts | Tagged: kunekune, pet, pig, sow, Wairarapa Lifestyle Magazine | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
October 22, 2010
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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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
July 25, 2010
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.”
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Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
June 27, 2010
Gumboots and firewood
Podcast available.
Back in March, just as the fall weather was setting in, Rick and I were talking with our neighbors at a dinner party about getting firewood for the coming winter.
When you heat your home with a woodburner, getting wood in for the winter becomes an annual event, like the changing of the leaves and the onset of shorter, cooler days. Rick and I have been living in the country for over 3 years, and every year we’ve picked up the phone to have firewood delivered.
When I admitted to this, I received some strange looks from around the table that night. I didn’t understand. Had I said something wrong?
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38 Comments | Country dinner parties, Neighbors, New Zealand, Podcasts, Woodburner | Tagged: gratitude, kind neighbors, pickup truck, satisfying work, ute | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
May 1, 2010
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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19 Comments | Neighbors, New Zealand, Olives & olive oil, Paddocks, Podcasts | Tagged: gratitude, kind neighbors, olive grove, satisfying work, tractor | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
February 13, 2010
Petting newly shorn Sweetie
Podcast available.
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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10 Comments | New Zealand, Paddocks, Podcasts, Sheep & cattle | Tagged: animals, chicken coop, chicken feed, olive grove, sheep, Wairarapa Lifestyle Magazine | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
January 9, 2010
Dry paddocks and olive grove - March 2007
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.
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18 Comments | New Zealand, Paddocks, Podcasts, Sheep & cattle | Tagged: cattle, olive grove, pruning, stock agent | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
October 10, 2009
Podcast available.
Rick and I had been living in the country for only a couple of months when Rick’s city friend Fiona came to visit.
Well in the olive grove
Fiona is like a graceful, exotic bird you feel compelled to pamper and adore, and Rick had promised her a relaxing country weekend far away from her stressful professional life. So it caused us great concern when, just hours after her arrival on Friday evening, our tap water suddenly stopped running.
I was in the kitchen preparing to cook dinner when I turned on the kitchen faucet and nothing came out. I checked the sink in the guest bathroom and found the same thing there.
Out on the deck I made the announcement.
“There’s no water.”
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20 Comments | Neighbors, New Zealand, Podcasts | Tagged: city friends, gratitude, kind neighbors, olive grove, Wairarapa Lifestyle Magazine, well | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
October 3, 2009
Podcast available.
Daisies in the garden
Nothing is normal at our house. Even a simple dinner party comes alive with bizarre and friendly characters.
The reason for our most recent dinner party was simple. The neighborhood was crawling with Americans.
I was pulling out the wine glasses when our neighbors John and Aussie Brownyn arrived that night. John has taught me how to prune vines and Aussie Bronwyn taught me how to kill a chicken. I have a lot of respect and admiration for them both.
That week they had an American staying with them, and so did Rick and I. It was a great excuse to get everyone together. It doesn’t take much around here.
Our American, TJ, was setting the table. John and Aussie Bronwyn’s American, Lily, was walking in just behind them.
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13 Comments | Country dinner parties, Food, Neighbors, New Zealand, Podcasts | Tagged: dinner party, gratitude, kind neighbors, olive oil, pickling olives, River & sea, table olives | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
July 25, 2009
Podcast available.
Old Man Henry is our geriatric rooster. He is mangy and decrepit. The feathers on his head are just quill stubble. He’s half blind, bow-legged, and he pauses strangely after every step.
Old Man Henry
On certain misty mornings, when the light is right, he looks as though he’s stepped out of some twisted chicken fancier’s version of Dawn of the Dead.
Yet this unlikely old man is a Nobel Peace Prize winner among poultry. And it is by peacekeeping that he earns his keep.
When I brought home our first two young chickens nine months ago – the sisters Henrietta and Ethel – I had no plans to get a rooster.
I didn’t want to deal with baby chicks hatching left and right, and I had nightmarish visions of cracking open an egg for breakfast to find a half-formed fetus inside.
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24 Comments | Chickens, Neighbors, New Zealand, Podcasts | Tagged: Chickens, chook house, lavendar araucana, light sussex, rooster, Wairarapa Lifestyle Magazine | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
May 23, 2009
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?
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12 Comments | Country dinner parties, Neighbors, New Zealand, Paddocks, Podcasts, Sheep & cattle | Tagged: city friends, gratitude, kind neighbors, moon, rimutaka hill road, tractor | Permalink
Posted by Moon Over Martinborough
