Hal Borland says, "Of all the seasons, autumn offers the most to man and requires the least of him."
I’m not so sure about that. I think Borland may have spent too much time, in the end, living in New York and not enough time in Nebraska, where he was born, dealing with the endless list of farm equipment that is broken.
Autumn is an “if it can go wrong, it will go wrong” season. But it’s not all bad, so let’s bring you up to date because it’s been a while since I wrote to you about things breaking and stuff needing to be done before winter. It’s not all bad, as you’ll see.
There is a lot to like about autumn. Crisp mornings and days of sunshine that isn’t burning you like a crisp. Still warm during the day, with no wind, and that autumn light that you never see in any other season. Long shadows with the sun low in the sky light up red leaves.
You know it’s autumn because the second the sun sets behind the hill, the long shadows reach down off the Tararua Mountains and drop the temperature by ten degrees Celsius in five minutes. Ground mist starts to form, and the dark comes down slowly but surely.
Morning frosts are starting to appear, and while we aren’t reaching zero yet, it’s close. The grass has all but stopped growing, which means that stock will need to be fed out for the next few weeks as the paddocks diminish.
It’s been a hard few weeks getting ready for winter, due to arrive in mid-May, no doubt, and the fact that everything breaks on the farm is making it more challenging. As the summer leaves and the winter starts to usher itself in, breakdowns and problems increase.
The lawnmower has thrown a compression valve, the dishwasher has blown up, the topper on the tractor doesn’t want to rise, the wood range is still out of commission due to a leaking wetback, the ute still doesn’t have a warrant and now has become a true “backcountry” illegal beast that can’t be driven on the state highway for fear of arrest, and the electric fence is running at small child-level rather than bull-strength.
I’m not suggesting you use an electric fence to keep your small children gathered in one place, but if you should, our fence is about the right level. It’ll sting a bit, and there might be some tears, but no lasting damage, and I guarantee the child won’t touch it twice.
Sadly, this does not keep the pigs and other stock where it needs to be.
Starsky and Hutch, the Kunekune, are a nightmare. We said we’d experiment with different stock when we first moved here and see what worked. I think they might be our first failed experiment. To be fair, it’s because the electric fence isn’t working as well as it should be, and they are so strong now they get their nose under the bottom wire of the fence, lift, and they are through.
Until I can get the fence sorted, tomorrow with any luck, we’ve barricaded ourselves on the deck to stop them from getting to us. You can hear the bastards coming around the side of the house, snorting and talking to each other. Then, once they spot us, it’s all squealing and complaint, but if you stay quiet, they sometimes don’t know you are there…
“It’s like a horror movie,” K said to me, “having to be quiet and still so that pigs can’t find you.”
As I write, they just trundled past the office door snorting and talking about their new schemes for destruction.
And lord, you can’t move the buggers any more. They are so dense. I’m pretty sure they are made out of the same material as black holes, there is zero chance of us ever lifting them, and the only way to get them back into their paddock is by coercing them with food.
We’re 95% sure that we will foist them off onto some other unsuspecting lifestylers in the valley. Someone who doesn’t mind two fat demons running rampant around the farm rooting up the lawn despite nose rings.
Room at your place Margaret?
Most of you won’t know that like humans; horses need to get their teeth sorted out by a horse dentist now and again. If not, abnormal growth can cause issues with their eating, and they suffer some pretty severe consequences.
To get the teeth done, a qualified horse dentist is required. They put a device on the horse’s muzzle to keep the mouth slightly open and stop biting. Then they put their hand inside the mouth to figure out the state of the teeth. Finally, they produce what looks like a gigantic toothbrush with a file on the end and set to work.
For Fizz, the retired racehorse, this is old hat. He’s had it done before and knows the drill. But for Mahi and Strider, off the farm stock horses, it’s clear they have never had it done before. Mahi, the gelding, takes it in his stride, and it’s a testament to the training K has been doing with him that he trusts her to let the dentist do his work.
Strider, the mare, is having none of it. She’s still being re-trained by K and so the morning starts with her trotting around the small paddock in a tizz refusing to be caught. She’s managed to get herself into a bit of a lather by the time K catches and corrals her. There is no way she will stand in a paddock for this.
The dentist, a man with many years of experience, gets himself into the corral with the crazy mare, and his toothbrush. You know true horsemanship when you see someone confident enough to put themselves in with a half tonne animal that is agitated. The drama begins.
At first, you can see that she's scared, but after she gets past that point, she starts being a real bitch. She’s playing up and pushing Glynn to see exactly what she can get away with, including rearing like a stallion and using her shoulder to try and push him around.
He’s having none of it. Thirty minutes later, her teeth are done, the mare is covered in sweat, Glynn is covered in sweat, I’ve learned a lot more about how you work with a horse in that situation, and I have also discovered new combinations of swear words that I don’t think I have ever heard before.
We made the mistake of baling a paddock the year before and then possibly overgrazing what was left. The short answer is that we needed to fertilise it. As always, this was a first for us, and we managed to stuff it up somewhat.
Mark dropped us around a spreader. A giant bucket with a hole in the bottom that you can open and close to control fertiliser flow. The fertiliser drops through and hits a spinner that throws it in a circle. You tow in behind the tractor or ute.
Despite Mark telling us not to have the hole completely open, we totally ignored him and got on with an apocalyptic run of fertilising. It looks impressive; sadly, I can’t upload a video, but you would see the ute at a reasonable speed, bouncing across the paddock, fertiliser flying in all directions and a massive dust trail.
As K heads around the paddock about the fourth time, I notice that her tracks aren’t going to be wide enough to cover the entire field, so I try and slow her down to tell her to come wider but all I hear is, “I CAN’T STOP!” as she blows by at thirty kph leaving me covered in fertiliser (bad idea) and trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
The fertiliser runs out quickly, and we assess our first attempt. The centre of the paddock has no fertiliser. The outside has a lot. Adjacent paddocks have been fertilised extensively as the spinner throws the stuff about ten meters. I have been fertilised. When the grass grows in spring, it will be around the edges.
Worse, we’ll have to go back to the farm store and get more fertiliser, necessitating more ribbing about our attempt. Mark listens to us at the pub and offers his sage advice, “I told you not to leave it all the way open!”
Lesson learned. Still, damn, it looked good.
With the help of a couple of the locals, the glamping site moved ahead under K’s watch. Sparrow and Mark turned up along with the Hand and the tent was moved and resurrected along with the composting toilet. The fireplace is being installed today, and all that is left for autumn is a gate.
Of course, nothing is without challenge, and it appears that either the sheep or a deer has gotten into the site and eaten half of K’s shelter planting.
“Bastards,” I declare, “let’s eat them.”
One of the contractors installing the fire is convinced a deer has been in there as well. He literally picks up poo, smells it, and declares it a deer poo before also diagnosing tracks on the ground as the same.
Now, if anyone could get a gun license these days, it’s pretty much impossible thanks to Labour, then the neighbours and I would be out hunting the pest. As it is, I will have to borrow a tracking camera to see where it is coming from. If true, it shows just how far the deer are moving off the hills, and it’s a pretty significant threat to the QEII reserve we back onto.
Plus deer are tasty.
We’ll be up and running with the glamping site come spring with any luck. We’ll road test it over winter to iron out the bugs and put some hardy souls through it for free to get feedback. Then dear reader, we’ll let you know when it is open, and you can come and witness the farm first-hand.
K declares a day off the farm, and we head off to a “BBQ and Hoedown” at a local winery.
The boys from Balter in Carterton have been slow smoking and BBQ’ing since 9 pm the night before. Having done a lot of smoking in the past, I’m interested to see if they get the brisket right. It’s an absolute shit cut of beef, but if you smoke it correctly, it becomes more delicious than fillet steak. It’s tough to get right.
On the way to the BBQ, as it happens, a local game of golf is underway. This is hosted by a farmer we know and consists of nine holes across four different farms, marked out with road cones. While driving down one of the back roads, we see one of the teams staggering across the road, golf clubs in hand, gumboots on, chasing a ball. The out of towners would have no idea what was going on.
The BBQ area is set out with tables, and this is the first time the vineyard has done this. It’s organised chaos. It looks like there might be table service, some people seem to be getting it, but by my count, it will take four hours to feed everyone. There is a mad stampede on the BBQ, which I happen to be sitting next to, and everyone is fed while the country band plays on.
The brisket is perfect, and in true American BBQ style, they do hot chicken wings, chicken itself, pork belly, ribs, stuffed potatoes, and Mac and Cheese. The food is fantastic and not a salad to be seen, which I applaud them for.
They offer me some takeaways as the close and clean up; who am I to say no, and I take back a tonne of meat. The crowd is happy and fed.
As the days get shorter and the nights are still, the dogs tend to roam the home paddock after dark. Now and again Freya will hear something that she doesn’t like and let loose a bark. This causes the other two dogs to also hear something, and we have a Barking game at Ghosts startup.
They’re all running around like morons thinking each of the others has found something that is a genuine threat when there is no such thing. Barking at Ghosts can go on for some time and usually finishes by all three returning to the deck having triumphantly scared off … something.
Frankly, the last three weeks have been bloody hard work, and we feel like we’ve been barking at ghosts a bit as well. Autumn has been very busy, and with a few more weeks to go until winter, no doubt more of the same.
I promise I will write to you soon. Until then, please share if you love it and let me know what you think. Right now, I’m going to grab a beer and go for a wander down the lane.
Sounds like you're more of a Paul Verlaine autumn guy there Ian 🙂