Hell’s bells, what a couple of weeks it has been, dear readers. 2021 is looking like a good year now, and 2022 is a chaos of epic proportions. Plague, Protesters, and Putin has been on the minds of us all, while life on the farm continues.
The weather has had a decidedly autumn feel to it, and despite what the weather forecasters say, abnormally warm weather on the way, the local view is that it’s going to be a cold winter.
12 cubic meters of firewood is now stocked up and the fire has been lit a couple of times on the much cooler nights. Once the cold hits, the fire will be going pretty much non-stop.
The farrier has been an energetic Irishman who was great with the horses. I couldn’t understand what he was saying half the time because of being hard of hearing and the accent so thick in patches it sounded like a different language. Fizz finally has a new set of shoes and went out with K to celebrate; he has refused to walk on the road until now.
The septic tank guy has been and gone; the last thing you want is an issue with that particular biotic monster. It’s like some arcane underground stomach that digests everything and spits out greywater. It is essential.
The boys have nearly finished the glamping site itself and the massive, removable outbuilding that will be the kitchen and bathroom. Public service announcement, never, ever, buy a kitset building. As I said last time, the reviews on the product were good, and I noted that they said two people could put it together in a couple of days.
A week later, the final pieces are being assembled, and they should be finished today with any luck. The walls were so heavy it took three of us to get those into a standing position.
You could be forgiven for thinking that we live in the end times. The four horsemen have been unleashed: plague, famine, war, and death. It is easy to become melancholy with the constant barrage of media reports.
As an ex-journalist, I am largely immune to such things and find that my analytic, questioning side kicks in, reading immense amounts of news and trying to find correlations. There is only one thing that you can ask yourself, “can I change any of this?”
The answer, of course, is no.
The Plague has been fully unleashed on New Zealand, and while we have prided ourselves on our response, we are now no different to many western nation-states where it has been allowed to burn out of control, with the faint hope of it running out of fuel. We’ve now given up the firefight and are standing back with hoses, hoping it doesn’t get near our houses.
Putin’s swansong starts with Ukraine. While we were complaining about the new madmen of the world being the owners of super technology companies, he was carefully plotting a final move to put back together with his beloved Soviet empire by reducing it to dust.
In Wellington, New Zealand’s capital city, a mostly peaceful protest boiled down to reveal a hardcore group of mental health patients and homeless people that appeared to have created some mad new cult that featured death rays, tracking devices, a thousand intertwined conspiracy theories, and even wore tin foil hats.
Markets crash, seas rise, the sky boils, Australia is flooded, food prices skyrocket, and the spectre of the nuclear apocalypse can be seen flitting through the ferocious clouds.
I remember growing up in the cold war. In the early 80’s talk of nuclear war was everywhere as the US and Soviet Russia sabre rattled. Only the quick thinking of a Soviet Air Force Officer prevented the world from being reduced to radioactive fog.
The Soviet early warning system malfunctioned, falsely telling the USSR that the US had launched several missiles in their direction. The officer waited, discovered the fault, and the war was avoided.
There were several near misses over those years, and even at school, we held at least one drill I can remember where we practised hiding under our desks should a nuclear weapon hit the city. Even at that age, I knew that the chances of surviving a nuclear strike under a desk were highly optimistic.
Of course, the farm provided sanctuary in those days, many hundreds of kilometres from any large city.
When the Wind Blows was released by Raymond Briggs and was a dark comic, dubbed as “humour,” that depicted an English couple living through a nuclear war, or not, as it turned out.
The book was terrifying and filled with menacing artwork of missiles, submarines prowling under cold Atlantic waters, and the radiation sickness that afflicted the characters. It was a monstrous book to be given to children to read.
While we are on the subject of Terrible Books given to children to read, who the fuck thought it was ok to let loose Watership Down on us? Never mind nuclear war, that book and movie (I still can’t watch it) were nightmare-inducing. The left is banning books left right and centre, even burning them, but they haven’t put Watership Down on the list?
Going further down the rabbit hole (ho ho), the book became the subject of criticism in later years by the woke because they argued it was sexist, displaying “male chauvinist rabbits” and “anti-feminist tendencies.”
Never mind that it included mass genocide, violence, and an evil character prone to cruelty.
And there is part of the problem with the world. While it burns, we worry about stupid things rather than the important ones—I, for one, blame social media.
As Midnight Oil sings in their latest album, which is terrible by the way, “Who left the bag of idiots open?”
Who indeed?
Living rurally isolates you from a lot of this carry on for a few reasons, though politics does enter the conversation from time to time.
There is a swing away from our left ruling party that has been occurring over the last few months back toward the right. Labour made historic gains last election in rural areas, but the worm has turned well and truly.
I suspect as food prices in the cities start to rise, the same move will happen there as well. The problem with New Zealand is that it has no plan beyond a 1 pm conference giving as the Plague numbers. We see no movement on new renewable energy, the housing cartel, the electricity cartel, the supermarket cartel, the fuel cartel, failing hospital systems, a justice system backlogged by years, increasing taxes, and other issues.
Ooops, politics rabbit hole there, apologies.
There is a vast difference in the price you pay to live rurally compared to cities. It is a lot cheaper. It’s a fact that is likely to drive more people out of over-priced urban centres to smaller towns and rural areas.
Fuel here appears to be significantly cheaper than in the cities. Sometimes as much as fifty cents a litre. However, living rurally, with no public transport and at large distances, you tend to use more gas.
The food here is significantly cheaper than in the cities. Orchard stores on the side of the road have an incredibly short supply chain, from paddock to store, and the prices reflect that. The food is of better quality, a third of the cost in some cases has a lower carbon footprint for whom that is important, and you’re supporting a local grower rather than a corporate weasel.
It seems to me that New Zealand has a lot of corporate weasels, and we could do without them.
Meat is similar. When there is a glut of meat here, it can get very cheap. Better, if you hunt, or know a hunter, then access to high-quality meat isn’t far away, especially when a lot of what you are hunting are pests. Chalk up one for the environment.
Of course, prices out here are rising. One of our social circle has been looking for a place to rent out this way for him and his family, with a bit of land to work. Last week, they looked at a home in Gladstone (some distance from the nearest town), a standard house with a handful of acres, and the owner wanted $1,000 a week. That is to put it crudely, taking the piss.
Cities are more expensive, and despite the bleating from the Greens who live in Oriental Bay about how horrible farmers are when it comes to the environment, the fact is that it’s somewhat hypocritical given that their location demands a long supply chain from farm to their modern kitchen.
Here, it is from the paddock, into your kitchen, or perhaps with one store stop on the way.
Having a small block insulates you from what is happening in the rest of the world to some extent. There is too much to do to be affected by things beyond your control. Farming is pretty much adapting to something beyond your control constantly. That is the art of a good farmer.
The ram is in with the ewes; the ewes are not happy about this; the ram is. After a week or two, he is getting tired now, often seen sleeping in the middle of the paddock in between his work.
The pigs are proving their worth as garbage disposal. Perhaps that is an unkind term; let’s call them composters. However, they are boisterous and clever. Their run has expanded as they have grown and now have a new shelter. The new protection is next to the feed barn.
They know that the feed comes from that barn, and often as I sit here working, I can see them scheming about how to get in there. It has been barricaded. It is hilarious that they get very frustrated after attempts are made to get under, over, or through, all failing (so far). Great squeals erupt, and tantrums are had; if we are in sight, they will run over and express this frustration to us; K calls it “complaining to the manager.”
Still the escape artists, we were sitting in the bottom paddock this week having a drink and end of day debrief when we saw the two pigs making a mad dash for freedom across the top paddocks. Or perhaps, an angry wobble for freedom. But now, as they know we are the food providers, they can’t help but come when we call them.
They wobbled down to us to appeal, and because it was feeding time, I then led a cavalcade of pigs, chickens, horses, heifers, and sheep back to the yards. Honestly, I think I am Dr Dolittle somedays.
Down on the farms, the rhythms continue while the world turns all across the country.
I read in Ukraine that local farmers are stealing tanks and armoured vehicles that have run out of gas, perhaps turning them into tractors instead of death-dealing machines. The true definition of beating swords into ploughshares.
Until next time, be safe, get out of your city, into the green, and breathe.