Fake Spring

Hibernating - Do not abandon the cave yet

Hello readers, this month’s update from the mighty tiny Three Fires farm finds things all together improved on the previous month of horror. In the last few days, it feels like Fake Spring is arriving, that period where it warms up before dropping back into a late winter snap. There are twelve seasons in New Zealand, not four. These are:

• Winter

• Fake Spring

• Second Winter

• The Pollening

• Actual Spring

• The Season of Love

• Summer

• Hell’s Front Porch

• Cyclones

• Fake Autumn

• Second Summer

• Autumn

Swans on the lagoon

Even though it feels like Fake Spring is upon us, we have been here long enough to know that it is not time to exit winter hibernation. And hibernating is what we have been doing as the weather continues to keep the ground wet. Some regular snowfalls are keeping the mountains picturesque and the air cool when it comes down off the tops and into the valley.

Hibernating here means K feeds out most days and manages the new lambs, which are lively. In and out of the shelter belt and climbing whatever they can find. When dry days appear, K works on smaller things that don’t involve heavy equipment in the paddocks.

This month, we have two examples in the Things Always Break on the Farm category.

Late on a freezing, rainy night, I spied flashing lights out the bedroom window. I thought it unusual that the police would set up a checkpoint in the paddock, and after further investigating, the alarm was happily going off on top of the septic tank. This is a problem because it means the system is not working. This means you have limited time to get it fixed before you can’t use the facilities.

Ben, our most excellent plumber, came and pulled it all to pieces, and I have now learned even more about how these things work. Of course, the pump has failed, they get old, and a replacement is installed. $1,500 later, it’s working again.

That means in the last three months, we’ve spent nearly $5,000 on the septic system. If anyone ever tries to introduce rates or tax to fund Three Waters, I’m sending them an invoice.

K finally found out why the electric fence was not working in the bottom paddocks, leading to things happening like the next picture, where the horses decided to go through the fence and hotwire into the glamping site, where the grass is very green and tasty. It’s why the lambs have been exploring the shelter belt.

Old mate, the last neighbour who thankfully has left now, had cut the wire and hidden it so he could nail his chicken coop to the fence. This is an absolute dick move and basically a capital offence in the country. If he were still here, there would have been a reckoning. We are still cleaning up the messes this fool created. Not only that, having a chicken coop that close to a boundary is not permitted, not that most people care about following all the rules.

Now that hotwire has to be reinstated, which means more time and money.

We may have come from the city, but we have always tried to respect our neighbours and ask for advice before we do anything.

Mahi - He Who Will Not Be Caged

For us, the weather enforces hibernating. For a lot of farmers, they don’t have that option. It’s still a full-time job for much larger operations, feeding out, milking, lambing, and calving. We can hear the quiet hum of the milk sheds and the putter of four-wheel motorbikes early in the morning, in the rain and the cold.

For K, it’s time to plan because paddock work is a hard no while it is wet. There is a growing “as soon as it is dry enough” list of things that will start to happen in spring. The driveway needs more gravel; we must pay to fix our potholes. Paddocks will need rolling. Gateways will need to be chipped to avoid another season of mud next year. K’s round pen needs to be built. And so on.

Hibernation for us has at least forced us to spend a bit more time off the farm, at the pub, and at a couple of local places that do great food. As the days start to get longer, there is nothing more relaxing than a couple of beers at the pub on a Sunday afternoon, judging the visitors.

A bit like Boomers, GenX, and Millenials, there are three kinds of people out here. The Boomers are the multi-generational locals who are truly locals. GenXers are the in-betweeners, those of us who have lived here for some time but are not considered to be truly local. And the Millenials, the visitors.

I think that a lot of rural people are true GenXers from young through old. That self-sufficient attitude coupled with ignoring what it is you are meant to do and realising that age is just a number.

In an election year, the other attitude kicks in, which is a total disdain for political bullshit. I’ve stopped watching and reading the news because it just makes me grumpy. It seems to me that the world has gone a bit more than bonkers, and it reminds me of what it used to be like when we were growing up. And by “we”, I also mean most of you, readers, because you are all of a similar ilk.

This is a great picture, and it reminds me that my next brother down and I convinced the youngest brother to do this (minus jumping people, I wish we’d thought of that), which resulted in him breaking his arm. Our father blamed us for this injury, which couldn’t just be “walked off”, and a Great Time of Punishment was carried out. I suspect for the inconvenience of losing a day to the hospital in order to get a cast.

Growing up in the 70s through the 90s, a lot of time was spent split between living in the working-class neighbourhood of Miramar and the farm at Puketitiri. K grew up in the borderlands between Sydney City and the country. There was none of the fuckery that exists today, the rules that are designed to stop people being offended, even if they identify as a possum and want special attention and recognition for this. Honestly, I am surprised that we haven’t seen anyone identify as a possum.

On the farm, we were fed in the morning and shown the door. Lunch was at 12 and dinner at dusk. Those were really the only two rules, along with “look after each other.” Life was full of dangers. Bows and arrows, guns (usually supervised), a dodgy raft, and an even more dodgy homemade trolley.

We roamed paddocks, forests, and mountains. There was no television, not on the farm, and the Internet was the sparkle in the eye of the American military, who needed to build a network that would withstand total nuclear annihilation. We lived under the shadow of the mushroom cloud, but on the farm, we were safe; no one was going to drop a bomb on the Kawekas.

We helped in shearing sheds and mustering in stock. These were both dangerous activities, but we were allowed to do it anyway. Any time we got injured from some misadventure or other, we were told to “walk it off.”

The Kawekas and Puketitiri are where the Mohaka River begins before winding its way down to the coast between Napier and Wairoa. It has some of the highest category rapids sections on earth. We kids would ride sections of that river in the “banana boat”, a tiny canvas inflatable. I still remember falling out of that occasionally before being bumped over rocks and gathering a few bruises.

The government was building things. Schools, dams, hydro schemes, power stations, motorways, cities, and without the seeming fuss of today, not needing thousands of consultants and HR staff. Life was far more sustainable and recyclable; vege patches were grown, milk was delivered, there was no plastic, produce was sourced off the farm or locally, and the weather was reasonably predictable.

Friends and neighbours came and went as they pleased. The door was always unlocked and open. Communities were tight, and while there were disputes, they were sorted out quickly and without the use of social media or lawyers. When something went wrong, everyone rallied together. Obesity wasn’t really a thing, and when it was, you were sent to a Fat Camp. If you were a child and you broke the law, you got locked up. Now, I’m not suggesting we bring those things back; however, it highlights the differences between then and now.

Interestingly, in the country, this is still very much how it works. Because it works. I’m not sure that humans are designed to be packed into cities. That doesn’t seem to work so well.

I love this next example of GenX, which rings true in rural.

This is truth. Both sets of grandparents would not let us out of the house without baking, frozen leftovers from last month, jerseys that had been knitted in a week between visits, and sometimes random household objects. My dad’s mum had even stationed the chest freezer by the back door and would open it as we exited and, like some kind of food priest, hand us packages as we departed.

I know that most of you readers will remember this. And she’s right; even today, we tend to want to find things to give visitors when they are departing. Even contractors get beer or meat on departure. It still works like this in the country today.

We had dinner with two good friends of ours recently who did exactly this thing. I won’t say their names; you know who you are. After having us over for a meal and a catch-up, we were leaving, and they said, “Do you want a trailer?” They had two, and one was surplus to requirement; they knew we needed one.

I think that is one of the most generous things we’ve experienced. Going to dinner and being gifted a trailer. We are most thankful and still somewhat blown away by it. Our grandmothers would be very proud.

Freya, judging me

I hope this postcard of sorts finds you well. Thanks for all your feedback and messages and for supporting us.

All the indicators look like we’ll be out of hibernation by the end of September. The long-range weather talks up an El Nino season, which can last between two and seven years on average. That brings much warmer and drier weather to the eastern side of New Zealand.

That, coupled with the Tongan eruption causing temperature increases, means it could be a hot spring and summer. Something that is long overdue, and with so much water in aquifers now, we should be ok, but the hill farmers will be watching it closely.

Until next time, turn off the news, leave the phone in the draw, go for a wander, and make sure you’re back by dark for dinner.

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