Hello dear readers; time has passed, and winter has arrived. I have much to update you on as the sun gets lower in the sky, the days shorter, and the firewood pile smaller.
Today, the first day of winter, is also Gypsy Day. The 1st of June is considered the start of a new dairy season. This is moving day for dairy farmers, share milkers, contract milkers, and employees to new farms. Herds are also moved around the district.
Some people have complained about it being called Gypsy Day; it’s disrespectful to use the term; personally, I don’t care what those keyboard warriors think. Plus, I understand that I have gypsy blood, on my mother’s side, from Romania and out of Transylvania. Get your head around that lineage.
I also have Scandinavian (Viking) blood and a lot of Italian; it makes for a confused set of genetics. A constant need for movement, a voracious appetite for beer and meat, and the want to yell about everything demonstratively. I also quite like fires and boats.
Enough of this distraction. Let me bring you up to speed. As Shakespeare said, let’s sit around the fire and listen to old people tell woeful tales of long ago. Well, let’s not; that would be depressing, but I liked the quote.
In winter’s tedious nights sit by the fire with good old folks, and let them tell tales of woeful ages, long betid.
May has been unseasonably warm, but the weather has been weird, which is not unexpected. According to the weather station, the last four Mays have been increasingly warmer. That’s right, we’ve been here for just over three years. It’s been a long three years, as this journal records, but it is something that we would do all over again, albeit differently, with the lessons we have learned.
K has set the farm to winter mode and turned up the temperature on the spa pool. Sheep have had their pre-winter shear, and the horses have grown thick hair with covers at the ready for the bitter storm days, which, no doubt, are starting to prepare to launch themselves north from Antarctica.
The shearer hates his life with all the mud. Yes, we are back to our mud season, where if you accidentally back the ute onto the lawn or into a paddock, you start to sink slowly and will be stuck there until Spring. He was working the other day here in the small stockyards, and I could hear “for fuck’s sake!” ringing out every now and again. The poor guy was so over it that he drove off before I could give him his beer bonus. It’s a hard time of year for contractors and those working outside. I have much respect for K and our contractors.
I’m trying to source some more firewood, with the explicit instructions that it be dry, not covered in mud, and doesn’t come with a free half-tonne of bark. It drives me bonkers. I swear some suppliers bury the damn firewood and dig it up when an order is made.
And because it’s wet, the firewood shed is now designated swamp land. So it has to go somewhere else, usually in an annoying place. But that’s ok; the fire is a wonderful thing, and there is nothing like going to bed after a whisky and seeing flames flickering down the hallway.
The upgraded septic field is now in place in the “things always” break section this month. It’s taken contractors months to appear, but finally, it’s happened. Growing up with a father who is a civil water engineer has given me a fascination with plumbing. I know, it’s weird. The replacement system has a filter, pumps, irrigation lines, and many modern things.
Best of all, it means that my neighbour won’t shoot me. He had threatened to stop drinking beer with me, which would have been worse than being shot because I always enjoy his company and advice. He gets his laneway back, and hopefully, we get our wood shed back. No doubt in time for summer.
Other neighbours have now sold their house and are leaving tomorrow. God only knows who we will replace them, hopefully, someone decent. Regardless, having planted trees around their property, we’ll at least get some privacy back.
In what is a cautionary tale for lifestyle and small-block farmer wannabes, when they moved in next door, one of them started to make significant changes to the property, some of which involved a forty-tonne digger. As a result, they ended up with broken drainage and septic, and we ended up with two new ponds. Of course, before selling, that had to be remedied, and I imagine it has cost a lot of money.
The first rule of rural is when you move, don’t change anything until you’ve been through at least four seasons. That really annoying tree line in winter keeps you cool in summer; that other treeline blocks the screaming southerly in winter and traps the heat in summer. You get the idea.
Excuse my language; it does look like the rooster is being left behind. For fucks sake!
Winter drives the dogs a bit mad. K keeps them busy during the day, and they follow her everywhere. The boys think she is the Entertainment Manager, whereas Freya makes her own entertainment. Freya has several jobs she has assigned herself, including Chief Murderer of Mice. She will stalk them for hours, and so far, we haven’t seen any this season, unlike last year when she would happily bring them to us almost once a day.
She’s also discovered how to get into the shelterbelt by the lane and is now wearing a track up and down there, barking at every passerby, whether on foot or in a vehicle. Apparently, it has become her laneway and needs to be patrolled. Sorry neighbours. The boys sit on the porch and watch her; I think she tires them out. Every now and again, she spontaneously pounces on them for no reason other than she can and get away with it.
She also prunes trees. I think she learned that pruning trees is a job. K spends a lot of time around now pruning back trees, and Freya is always with her. Freya can leap from the ground and grab low-hanging branches, which are dispatched and proudly presented.
She certainly lives up to her namesake.
Arlo, being a Staffordshire, is prone to allergies. The poor boy gets quite itchy, and a vet visit is necessitated. This time he was prescribed the cone of shame. It’s not fun, but it is quite funny. I think he was actually quite proud of the cone; he’s always liked wearing things. Arlo sulks if you laugh at him, so there was quite a lot of snorting going on that week.
Freya was absolutely appalled by the cone, almost disdainful. If Arlo came into the lounge wearing it, she would sit and glare at him. She would move away and resume her accusing stare if he came toward her.
Koda, our mighty Gonk, the wolfhound, is a simple creature. He has a love of the curtains. He flops behind them, hides under them, peers out from under them, and even has a favourite one. Such a strange dog.
We haven’t been out much. With K working on the farm and me stupidly having two contracts on the go, it’s been busy. Come July, the back of all that will be broken, and we can start to return to civilisation. It would be great to have an actual holiday; I think everything has stopped breaking (touch wood), so it may happen.
Another momentous thing occurred. I had my fiftieth birthday. Never thought I would make it this far, given the mad things I did when I was younger, but here I am. K, as usual, curated some great presents, and we went out for BBQ at Balter in Carterton. As my paternal grandmother would say, “I don’t want a fuss,” there will be a joint party in summer; a mini-Woodstock without the mud is planned.
I always get mildly depressed in the run-up to my birthday. Thoughts of mortality creep into the wee small hours, and I avoid the mirror and focus on stupid things. Then, the day comes, and it’s all fine.
It’s interesting, I am not sure if it is my generation, but all my friends I grew up with have turned fifty in the last year, and not one has thrown a party. One of them told me that he actually turned his phone off on his birthday and hid in his house because he didn’t want to hear it.
I told him that was fine, he was old and weird now, and he should just embrace his mortality. You can imagine what he said to me, it involved the suggestion of sex and travel, but then he has always been easy to wind up.
K bought me a set of noise-cancelling headphones. These are great. You push a button, and you can’t hear people talking anymore. Oh my god, I have needed these for decades. People who talk too much? Push the button, and all you can see are their lips moving. Annoying chatter about irrelevant crap? Push the button. Rooster? Push the button. Neighbour jabbering on about trees? Push the button.
Push the button, queue Appetite for Destruction, and walk on with a smile.
Around the region, everyone is pulling on their winter coats, and Greytown is being its usual weird self. They’ve produced these candles that are meant to smell like each town in South Wairarapa. I thought it was satirical, but apparently, people in Greytown are buzzing about it.
I will probably offend people, but these are not the smells you would associate with these places. I’ll leave Featherston alone because they are probably crying in shame over the whole matter already. But the other two, one smells of mothballs and the other most likely over-perfumed Wellingtonians. Ah, and to my friends in Greytown, this doesn't apply to you, though I encourage you to move somewhere better. Carteron, for example.
Greytown is also rapidly heading toward its Christmas festival, which they hold in July. This year’s theme is gingerbread. I told you they were weird. I suspect if I go down there on King’s Birthday (also a weird concept), they will all be Morris Dancing and riding in tweed on electric vintage bicycles drinking mead. FFS.
Elections are looming, and I think as a result, I have watched the news twice in May. The tiresome dance of liars and thieves has begun with local rallies being held. A certain party was in Greytown today, speaking again of weird, and one of the locals raised the issue of why the NZTA was installing solar farms in the area.
For my international readers, NZTA builds and maintains roads; they don’t build solar farms. There has been a bun fight in Greytown because a solar company wants to build a massive farm there. The town will not have it. Because you know, fuck the planet; let’s build a giant gingerbread statue instead.
At this point in the election cycle, I tell myself I won’t vote for anyone. I am the ultimate swing voter. I sometimes make my mind up while standing in the voting station. I do think that voting only encourages some of these idiots, and I know for certain that nothing will change for rural. Promises will be made, the political football will be kicked, and they’ll all slink off back to Auckland after the day.
But don’t let me get started on that topic. It’s for other places and days.
I hope you are warm and well. I always say I will write to you more often, but then I don’t, so you can expect to hear from me in a few weeks.
Until then, be well.