Hello readers, it’s been a month. Despite promises by the weather service of a cooler, drier winter, it hasn’t been. It’s another one on the books for rain, and it’s driving us bonkers.
When I started writing this, I told you that you would get the unfiltered version of moving onto a small farm from the city. No sugarcoated puff pieces with pictures of smiling families in front of flower-bedecked villa-style houses whose trust fund paid for an organic orchard.
Buckle up, we are near breaking point, and I need to tell you why. It’s going to be sweary.
K’s nearly in tears. She’s been humping baleage (they come in a wrapped rectangle) out of the bottom paddock and lining them along the fence. She’s exhausted; some of these bales weigh more than she does. Again, I’m stuck in the office, dealing with what I am increasingly coming to think are morons.
I am proud of her; she does a better job than most men and doesn’t give up. It’s cold, the bales are slippery, a mud run to contend with, and it’s deeply shitty work. The bales are odd sizes to make it even worse; the contractors came through in a rush, as they always do. Some are not well wrapped, which means they will spoil, and when you’ve paid out $2,200 for one hundred and twenty bales, it means we’re losing money.
What people don’t figure on when they move back to rural, onto a lifestyle block or small farm, is the costs that are involved and the relentless efficiency with which they appear. Always at the wrong time and leaving you teetering on the edge of having no cash flow.
I can see K as I write this; she’s just made the trip through mud city to get some baleage for the horses. Because it’s wet, the horses have completely pugged up the home paddock. That means we’ll have to get a contractor in to roll it in spring before the summer arrives (if summer ever arrives again, we’ve missed it the last two years), and the whole field turns into an ankle-breaking nightmare.
The horses are part of the long-term plan, and while we love them, they are a pain in the arse, and it’s hard to remember that we’re building a future here for K to move into her dream of training others and providing training facilities for the stunt industry.
Horses must be covered when the temperature or wind chill drops below a certain level. We mainline every weather service the Internet has available to try and predict when the shitty weather is coming. The horses can be complete bastards, though.
Mahi, the big boy in the back there, has already destroyed one of Strider’s covers and takes great delight in trying to remove them. Strider, on the other hand, can be a minx and tricky to catch.
I was working in the office this week, and K stopped outside my window, “for fuck’s sake,” she said. I stuck my head out of the window, and there was Strider, cover on, rolling in the biggest mud puddle on the farm. She’s covered from head to toe in mud, soaking wet, the cover is coming askew, and we’re about to get a massive temperature drop with severe wind chill; we can see clouds coming up the valley.
It’s also firewood season, and I am furious with my firewood man. We’ve just dropped several gums planted by the last owners with firewood in mind, but that won’t be “seasoned” (dry) for a couple of years. Gums regrow, so once you have a cycle going, you have a good source of wood.
Of course, when K drops them around the home paddock, the weather turns to shit. It’s hard work stripping the main trunks of their branches, and halfway through the job (this is taking days), she injures her right wrist and can’t keep going. The cavalry is coming this week in the form of the mighty Sparrow, a good friend of ours, but it’s another knock to progress, and each setback feels like it stacks on top of the last one until you are looking at an immense pile of gloom.
K wants to mill some of the wood herself to build a round pen for the horses. This is a fabulous idea, in my opinion, and will save thousands in timber, but it’s going to be damn hard work.
Back to my firewood man. Let’s call him Ballsack. I called Ballsack and asked him if he had seasoned (dry) firewood. He did, indeed. I also told him I didn’t want half a cube of dirt delivered with it, like the last time. Ballsack promised there would be no dirt.
Now, we can’t use the woodshed at the moment because of two years of rain. It lives behind the garage in the now wettest part of the property. It’s a swamp. I could build it up with packing pallets, but getting there and back will create yet another mud pit.
Ballsack turns up and dumps the wood on a tarp, mostly, that seemed hard to do despite the tarp being ten by ten. Off he toddles after I have paid him, and I start going through the wood. On top, it looks ok; it’s mostly dry, but underneath, it is increasingly wet to the point where some of it is soaked.
And he’s bought another wheelbarrow of dirt with it as well. I’m not happy. There is some choice language, and I am now fighting with the wood every night, trying to separate the dry to get a good base, then supplementing with the wetter wood. It’s a giant pain in the arse. Add another disappointment to the stack.
On the back of a surprise $3,500 bill in May for a new septic field, and an annual insurance bill that is starting to feel like extortion, I’m running as fast as I can to top the coffers up. Balancing a full-time contract with some part-time work is tricky. Worse, every dollar I earn attracts more tax, so it feels like half of what we make is going to the government. We calculate that over the last three years, we’ve dropped $150k into the farm, a large majority of that being the glamping site, which will come online in spring.
But somehow, the system manages to throw bill after bill at us. The company attracts GST, company tax, terminal tax (whatever the hell that is), provisional tax, ACC, forces us to pay tax in advance, and many of the services I need for my engineering work come out of the United States. With the exchange rate having turned to shit, costs are creeping up.
It’s an election year here, and I will probably vote for National for the first time. It’s a stark change for me, I usually vote centre, but frankly, I can’t afford this current bunch to stay in charge.
Mind you, having been a political commentator in the past, and worked directly with most parties in New Zealand, I have learned one thing. Politicians have zero interest in improving things; they have an absolute interest in getting into power with all the benefits it provides. They almost become ruling elites. Voting encourages them and perhaps should be avoided.
I met John Key many years ago when he was the country's Prime Minister. I was introduced by name, and being a freelance journalist at the time, he knew me.
“Ah,” he said to me, as he looked at me with these black shark eyes (the brother had scary eyes), “I know you. You’re anti-government.” I looked back at him and said, “Not at all; I’m anti-stupidity.” He asked if I wanted a selfie; I politely declined and went and thoroughly washed my hands and had a beer.
My left-leaning friends will be shocked to hear that I have moved in my politics. You know what? It comes from living rurally. The burdens placed on the primary sector in this country are incredibly onerous, it’s killing businesses, and it’s killing people.
Enough of that.
When there is snow on the mountains, in a certain wind, it gets bitter. We are coming into the lambing season, and because sheep are bastards, they lamb in the worst weather. Even though we don’t have many sheep, they must be watched regularly so we don’t lose the newborns. One thing is for sure, any orphans this year are going straight to our friend Mish.
We’re seriously considering losing the sheep; the input costs and the amount of time and energy K spends looking after them outweigh the returns. But, they do keep paddocks in good condition. As I have said before, we only eat the annoying ones. Selective breeding. Good sheep stay and breed on; bastard sheep go in the freezer.
Winter here is incredibly isolating. Our community are out in this weather all day. Come sunset, they are in front of the fire, and socialising drops off. The local nights at the pub are hardly attended due to the cold and demands of feeding out stock, lambing, and dealing with winter issues.
We see three friends of us semi-regularly and have great neighbours. But people are busy, and everyone hibernates when that grey sky turns into night. Even though there are two of us, the feeling of isolation can be powerful.
Unlike the city, where you can get in an Uber, go out for a meal, split a bottle of wine (or two), there are almost zero transport options rurally. You have to drive. It’s not so bad in summer, but driving on unmarked, narrow roads in the dark and mist can be a nightmare in winter.
And while our small community and neighbours are incredibly supportive of us, we love our time together with them, drinking, playing cards, learning how to butcher things, swimming at the river in summer, hearing the history of the place, and listening to advice; now and again, you are reminded that the rural community can be quite closed to newcomers.
We were at the local pub recently on a Friday, not the local night. It was full of farmers and some contractors; granted, we didn’t know them except by face; none of our usual crew was there. But it was quite clear they didn’t want to engage with us. Something that we’ve worked hard to try and overcome. It’s a harsh reality that cliques exist in every community, and being locked out because you weren’t born here is uncomfortable. Especially when both of us are more introverted than extroverted, and we try very hard to be part of the community.
It also leads to the feeling of being trapped. As someone said to me once, rural life can become a bucolic prison.
Friends from Wellington think that the hour-and-a-half drive here is impossible. So it is rare we see anyone. We often discuss this; we might as well have moved to Gisborne or Otago.
Fuck I hate winter.
Yeah, it sounds like I’m moaning, and I am. This is a hard life; I never wanted to sugarcoat it in my writing. There are beautiful and amazing times, spring is incredible, but it is so hard to remember that in the depths of winter. I am an eternal optimist, but all my corners are being ground off in this dark.
We sometimes feel like we are reaching breaking point, and we’ve been here before. We know one thing, we can’t go back to the city. If there ever was a prison, then a city is it. We’d go mad because there wouldn’t be anything to do.
We’re two months from spring and hanging on for grim death. And we have learned so much and met so many good people. I sometimes forget that community works rurally (even if there are some arseholes, I mean, there are always arseholes) far, far better than a city.
Knowing what we know now, we'd do things differently if we were to rewind the clock three years. We are considering the strategy for moving forward with our lives in the valley. It may be that the last three years have given us a practical degree in small-block farming.
We don’t know what that looks like, but it probably involves a hill. I don’t think we’ll stay on the plains if this wet continues. At least we have options; for many people on the East Coast, they don’t; two years of wet weather has destroyed so many communities, families, and people; it’s sobering.
Here’s a shout-out to our greatest friends and neighbours. Sparrow, Mark, Ange, David, Bruce, the Herricks (so many Herricks), Mish & Greig, Sue & Frank, and the Gladstone Inn. If it weren’t for your friendship, we’d have quit.
Yeah, it’s an emotional read; sue me. It’s an emotional time but in the words of my great-grandfather, a full-blooded Italian immigrant who started farming in Wellington in the Hutt Valley, “non lasciare che i bastardi ti abbattano,” which translates to “don’t let the bastards grind you down.”
He was made of wire, steel, sinew, and metal. He never gave up. He procured a World War II flamethrower for the farm. It was how he cleared gorse and scrub. I have a picture of him hosing down a hill with napalm. I hope there is some of him in me.
K has that red Australian dirt coursing through her veins. Australians are incredibly resilient, especially that generation. In a country where everything is trying to kill you, making a living by putting your hands in the dirt was an extreme sport.
I told you I wasn’t going to sugarcoat this journey. Until next time, stay warm. I’m off to fight with the fire.
Epilogue:
I wrote this last weekend and have battled and debated whether to publish it the entire week. It's now published after talking with K and testing it on a good friend. My editors have often told me that the pieces I write that I hate the most are the pieces that everyone else loves.
And some good news. Lambing is done and dusted in three days. It’s only a small flock, but they all appeared; none needed intervention; it happened exactly like it should.
We also had a great night out at the local this week; catching up with friends we haven’t seen for a while was really good. And we had visitors from “over the hill,” the universe works in strange ways.
Today the wind is up, the sun is out, and we’re at least getting some drying out of the block.
Until next time.
PS I will buy your t-shirts ;-)
I hear ya, we are so over the mud and three dogs track buckets of it into the house multiple times a day. I can't even walk to the car in my 'Wellington' clothes without getting covered in it.
And the final kick in the pants this week is a 29% rates increase thanks to the council. For virtually zero services.
At lease the wind is blowing a howling gale so the paddocks are slightly less muddy than yesterday...