Welcome readers, I thought it was time I wrote to you, I see it has been a couple of months. Hopefully, you enjoyed summer and it’s a mild autumn. It’s hot here and the Wairarapa Hairdryer has been in effect up until recently, turning paddocks to concrete split by large cracks.
It’s just hit 38 degrees Celsius and K and I are sitting in the river with a drink. It’s a relentless dry heat and the nearby hills are almost bronze. It’s the absolute opposite of last year when we had eight times the amount of rain and paddocks were underwater.
Moving in this heat is done at a slow pace. Any physical work needs to be out of the way by 10 am as the temperature starts to soar after that point peaking around 6 pm. The house goes into “Australian Mode” with curtains pulled, doors and windows open, and ceiling fans on high.
The dogs lie around under fans, it’s too hot for them to want to play. Stock hides under shelter belts and trees during the day, venturing out to graze in the evening when it cools down and the sun is low.
We have a small sprinkler that gets rotated in the near paddocks to keep some grass growing for the sheep and horses. Across the valley dairy farmers are irrigating as well and on farms, hard feeding has begun in earnest. Tractors rolling with bales of hay and silage are a common site on the roads along with heavy trucks taking advantage of the dry.
We moved to a full fire ban quickly, any spark now creates problems. Standing hay (long, dry grass) is everywhere and a tractor mowing or a thrown cigarette butt can cause fast fires that spread over hectares fast. The volunteer fire brigade is kept busy and we can hear the siren periodically calling them off in the distance.
The weather forecasters are predicting the dry will last for a few more weeks, but it doesn’t feel to us like it is going to be a wet winter. A lot of their predictions have been off by a few months, locals reckon it isn’t likely we will see decent rain until spring.
Of course with the dry comes the dust and each time a car or truck goes past us on the gravel road clouds drift slowly across the paddocks. By the end of the day, you can feel it on your skin.
Generally, the outlook for farming this year is pessimistic. Prices at the farm gate are low thanks to a range of factors and persistent increasing costs are putting pressure on budgets. There is a general slowdown in spending to curb that and right now the only people winning in this economy are the banks.
This is a happy time for Freya. She hunts birds and rodents (who are on the move to find water) and at this time of the year, empty nests fall from the trees in the wind. For some reason, she loves old nests and we find them in her hidey hole along with outdoor seat cushions, sticks, and branches from trees she has pruned by leaping up and pulling them off, other dog toys, and various treasures.
Recently K and I split the rams up and put them in with separate mobs in different paddocks. Generally around here, rams go in on Valentine’s Day or St Patrick’s Day. This is when I wish we had a drafting gate. Because pulling sheep and rams out of stock pens is hard work.
K has decided who is pairing with whom and I get the first go in the pen. I think people believe that sheep are small, light, fluffy things that like to be touched. This could not be further from the truth.
Sheep are very heavy animals with a lot of strength. Consider all that muscle that ends up on your plate for a Sunday roast. Multiply that by four, and that’s just a lamb. The two younger rams are weighing in at around fifty kilograms. The prize ram I would say is in the region of eighty kilograms. For the breed that K is producing a mature ram will weigh upwards of one hundred and twenty kilos, possibly up to one hundred and fifties. Even the ewes can get around one hundred kilos.
The horns work to your advantage somewhat (and disadvantage if you get the wrong end of them) because you can grab them and use them like handlebars to steer them out of the pen. The ewes not so much, they must be grabbed and manhandled out the gate. My days of sheep-wrangling are over and I have forgotten how to flip the slippery devils.
After a lot of paddock tourettes, shouting, stumbling around in the dust, and generally nearly having a heart attack we have all but the largest ram in the right places.
Last but not least K wrangles the largest ram who has an affinity with her, and just as well, at his size, if he doesn’t want to do something then you’re in trouble, and if he wanted to make trouble then he’d be a devastating machine. Ramalamb, our sometimes depressed ram, is put in the chute and dosed to prevent flystrike, before wandering off to join his paddock. He’s a good ram, prone to occasional bouts of depression where he wanders off and lies down in a mope. I think he misses the cows we had, who he stuck to like glue.
With two wet years in a row, we lost a few trees in areas where the water table never budged much below the surface. So it was that the mighty walnut tree died after giving years of service. As autumn shyly announces its arrival with cooling temperatures and longer days firewood becomes a priority.
The walnut tree was so dry and brittle that when it was felled it shattered into thousands of pieces, which made it easier to clean up. Sparrow recycled it for us and it will feed the fire over winter and some of it will head into my smoker.
The BnB continues to tick along with guests most weekends, even with the cooler weather at night we still have people booking. So far, we’ve had nothing but five-star reviews and people love being out of the city. I remember when we first started glamping years ago the joy of slowly getting inebriated in a paddock, next to a fire, watching the stars come out.
Of course, it does bring out the fact that some people are weird and can’t read instructions. Like the man who managed to lock himself in the toilet. Or the couple that couldn’t get the shower to work and didn’t tell us until they had left. Or the people who turn up at the house and not the site itself. Do you know why AirBnB sites have laminated cards stuck all over the place? Because of these people.
There is something very satisfying about sitting on the deck and seeing the fire twinkling down at the BnB through the trees, fairy lights ablaze, and hearing laughter and people enjoying themselves. I’ve included a link to the AirBnB page at the end, and if you do want to come and stay (K is running a special for a couple of nights over Easter) then email me directly and we can hook you up.
As the season changes so do the residents of the farm. You will remember that K’s first horses were Mahi and Strider. After much deliberation, they have gone back to their original owners a lot healthier and with a much better set of manners. They taught us a lot over the three years they were here and it was time for them to get back to work on the farm they came from.
K then set about horse trading, literally, with some help from her cowboy (and cowgirl) community. In short order, Naro and Shiraz joined the farm, arriving last weekend.
Shiraz is an Andalusian mare, which is a relatively rare breed that is sought after. They are characterised by their large necks and broad chests, which you can see in the picture above. They are also generally smarter than your average horse, a little more docile, and very agile, it’s not unusual to see them in competition. They are also popular in film.
Shiraz arrives with a great set of manners and she’s been trained very well. This means that K can go straight to work without having to spend time training. Shiraz is still young and very interactive, she just wants to hang out with K and work. It’s a testament to K that her previous owners chose to sell to her there was a lot of interest and even sight-unseen offers for Shiraz.
All animals need paddock mates. This isn’t something you generally realise before you land on a small farm. Single animals are unhappy animals. So, enter Naro, an ex-thoroughbred older gentleman to keep Shiraz company. He needed somewhere flatter to live as where he was relatively hilly country, and as we age, hills are harder to navigate.
He’s a very gentle horse that came with a wide range of horse covers (or as I think of them, Smoking Jackets.) Both are amazing creatures and allow K to move on with her plans.
As summer draws to a close the country cricket season nears its end. We go and watch one of the games around the corner in Parkvale. This is an institution locally and well worth the afternoon.
The Parkvale Cricket Club has been around almost as long as I have. It sits in a field and the farmer who owns it tends the wicket and field very professionally. Sparrow tries to explain the rules to me, but he might as well be explaining algebra to a monkey.
What is clear is that if rules are broken (such as not using the gate to enter and exit the field) the punishment is generally having to drink beer. Not much of a punishment if you ask me. Scattered around the outfield are adapted standards that hold a jug of beer and three beer glasses, all of which are regularly topped up.
The original pitch was created nearer the Ruamahanga River on dairy land. The outfield grass grew and grew and the farmer refused to cut it because he wanted it for his cows. This made for terrible cricket as the ball would get lost in the long grass.
A friendly discussion was had with said farmer about him mowing the grass so that play could be improved. The farmer was obstinate. Fisticuffs erupted, and the field was moved to Parkvale, where it has remained since.
And so it is that summer ends and autumn slyly sneaks about the hills. My apologies for the long delay in writing to you, work has been busy, but let’s not go on about that.
As I said, you can check out Sleepy Hollow Glamping here (https://airbnb.com/h/sleepyhollowglamping) and if you do want to book, do it directly by emailing me (ian@threefires.co.nz)
Until next time, make sure your firewood is stocked and freezer full. I’ll be writing to you about AI (Artificial Intelligence, not the other AI), which I have been experimenting with and producing some very entertaining results. What would happen if we let AI run a farm?