When the wind blows
A travelling party
Hello readers, old and new, spring has well and truly arrived and work on the block continues while it is warm and dry. Off the farm, politicians are in full election mode, and it’s boring me to tears, though it has inspired me to create a drinking game to go with the televised debates. The patrons at the local are in good spirits after a break from the cold and wet.
Let’s do some election analysis first; I know some of you don’t come here for it, especially my overseas readers, so if you want to skip over this bit, then scroll down to the next picture and start from there.
I’ve created a drinking game to go with political debates. It’s important because these debates have so far been a shambles of the highest order, and we might as well have some fun with it. It works like this. Each time one of these things happens, you drink.
Chris Hipkins pulls his cry-smile face.
Chris Luxon says, “Coalition of Chaos.”
Winston Peters says, “Now listen.”
David Seymour pulls his surprised face.
Someone points. Bonus drink if someone points at someone else.
Anyone says, “Crisis.”
Anyone says, “Let me finish.”
An attack is made on someone else’s figures or facts.
I was going to add in “anytime an interviewer asks a stupid question”, but you’d be drunk and falling off the couch in the first fifteen minutes.
A few thoughts so far: some of you will know that I used to write political commentary; I’ve always treated it as a bit of a blood sport because if you took it too seriously, then you’d end up with your head exploding. I am the voter who makes their mind up when they are standing in the ballot box, pen in hand.
Right now, my pick is a National and ACT coalition, if for no other reason than that it is quite rare for any party to get into government more than twice in a row. New Zealanders get bored and vote for change.
National is just rumbling along as they do, and I suspect they have a coalition strategy in place already with ACT. You can see National moving into Labour’s space in an attempt to steal their Old Labour voters, which will be annoying their more right-leaning voters. ACT is waving the right-wing flag at every opportunity, so those voters National are losing will vote for them. It’s a nice tactic.
Labour is completely lost at sea. Even the Greens have abandoned them. Meanwhile, the Green Party and the Maori Party look like twins. Good luck telling them apart. New Zealand First is, as always, entertaining, and if you wanted to vote for your funny and inappropriate grandad, then this is definitely the party for you.
None of them really have much of a rural policy. Most of the larger media organisations have a policy section that shows you different areas and who’s promising (lying) about what. But, the majority don’t have a rural section; they lump it in with “Climate,” which shows you a couple of things. First, they can’t see past the city limits and second, for them, rural is not about primary industry and local communities; it’s about the climate panic. It’s not good enough, but we are used to it out here.
OK, I’m boring myself now.
The Wairarapa Hair Dryer has started to come out in the last couple of weeks. The hot wind that rolls down off the mountain range and across the valley. The technical term for this is Foehn Wind. It’s pretty typical across the country, and it drives people mental down South. In fact, in part of the South Island, a local Maori iwi called it the “murder wind” and believed it to be a demon of some kind.
The region had a wind storm in the last few days; even for New Zealand, the wind gusts were outstanding. The Remutaka Hill got up to 180 kmh (110mph), and Cape Turnagain, north of Wairarapa on the coast, maxed out at 246 kmh (150mph.)
Weirdly, the valley has “wind shadows,” areas where even the most extreme wind remains calm. We are in one of them, depending on which way the wind is coming from. What happens is that it can be quite still at the farm, but you can hear the wind a couple of kilometres away. It sounds a lot like a jet passing over you at high altitudes, the roar of the engines.
El Nino is definitely underway; temperatures are up on the last couple of years, rain is down, and everything is starting to dry out. Contractors are on the move, getting everything in the ground while they can before it turns to concrete. The Australians are panicking across the Tasman and backburning thousands of hectares around Sydney to prepare for the coming heat.
While I am stuck in the office, K has been out as usual; spring means a lot more work before summer arrives and bakes everything down. Tim is back for a couple of days while we can grab him; he’s moving a big trough today and driving himself bonkers trying to find the irrigation line. Might have to get my water witching kit out at lunchtime.
The timber from the gums that K cut down is now in the paddock in readiness for Tim to put them in the ground for the round pen. Once built, it makes for a much more effective place to train horses and humans.
There’s a bit of a rush on work today with a cold snap predicted over the weekend. It looks like a couple of days of wet and cool; this may force a retreat to the pub. Speaking of retreats, we were in Masterton this week to grab some stationery at The Warehouse. Good lord, there are some unusual human specimens up there.
Or, as my brother would call them, “horse beasts.” Used in a sentence thus; “Bro, you should have seen the horse beasts at the supermarket today.”
With the longer days, the dogs have come out of hibernation. Freya has been particularly active, the German short-haired pointer. Birds are not allowed, and with the blossoms finally starting here, we are seeing a lot more of them. She can’t reach them, but this does not stop her trying, and I occasionally see a blur as she flies around the house chasing them. Or, this jerky, slow-motion stalking across the lawn, sneaking up on them. It has been successful in the past; she’s caught magpies and ducks.
Work at the glamping site continues in preparation for opening. The first gift card was manufactured this week looking very professional. It won’t be long until the first guests start to experience that little slice of paddock paradise.
The last lamb ram was docked and vaxxed this week. This was the outlier, a very good specimen that is going to end up massive. He resisted our attempts at capture for quite some time.
These aren’t normal sheep. They are a mix of Arapawa and Suffolk; well, that generation is. The Arapawa is an interesting sheep; they were feral (it shows) and native to Arapawa Island at the top of the South Island. One theory says that a Spanish Galleon left them there when they discovered New Zealand (before the English) in the 16th Century. They are designated a rare breed, but there are many in the valley.
They have a couple of interesting qualities. They tend to have the escape tendencies and springiness of goats. They are super annoying, mostly because of the first trait. As I have said before, we breed the more docile ones and eat the annoying ones.
So it was, “Blackie”, as the neighbour has dubbed him, was wrangled by K into the sheds, and I was called in to play muscle while she docked him. Blackie was having none of this; he leapt onto a feed bucket to a storage box and then over a fence to freedom.
“You’re perilously close to chops, you bastard!” I shout after him. Other choice language is used to describe the devious beast. Sorry, new neighbours, you’ll get used to it.
A bit later, he’s wrangled into the cattle yards (try and jump those fences, you little shit); K has lassoed him, I put him in the yoga pose known as “Shearer’s Repose”, and the job is done. More advice and commentary are hurled after the bouncing rocket as he crosses the paddock to return to the rest of the mad creatures. “Thought you could get away with it, but no! That’s right! No more tail for you, mate!”
And for the city folk, the tails are docked because otherwise, they end up with dags. Basically, shit that just gets caked on until there is so much of it you can hear what sounds like rattles running around the paddock. That leads to all kinds of other problems that you really don’t want. We have some original Arapawa’s we bought whose tails were never docked (hippies), and you can only do it up to a certain age (weeks), or you need to get the vet in to do it.
Getting the vet in is around about the same cost as a trip to Melbourne, so that’s out. Look, the vets we’ve had out here are good, but you kind of want to say when you see them, “Where’s the gold-plated ute?”
We don’t have a lot of sheep, so it’s a quick job for us. We’ve got friends who are gearing up for docking this week (it is school holidays, so there is a lot of labour around), and they are dealing with mobs of more than 1,500 lambs—back-breaking work.
K bought me a late birthday present that I am stoked with. Yes, it’s a BOOZE BAG. Man, she knows me well. It can fit thirty-five cans inside its insulated goodness. Apparently, the insulation will keep the cans cold for 24 hours. Clearly no need for that, not much chance of beers lasting 24 hours.
It’s Australian, I mean, of course it is.
It has reinforced straps as the weight of all that beer and ice is going to be around twenty kilograms. Genius. I mean, you can go on a hike, and when you get hot and bothered, drink 35 beers to calm down.
If you’re down at the river and get attacked by a wild bear, then no longer do you have to abandon the chilly bin to the greedy critter; you just get up and run, and the beer comes with you. When you are hot, you can stop for a cold one, obviously after the bear has given up.
No one is going to be able to steal your beer at a party, not if you’re wearing the Booze Bag all the time! And if you want to give one to your mates, you just spin around, and they help themselves to your backpack beer fridge.
Need a few travellers while you are dragged out on a shopping expedition by your partner in Masterton? Booze Bag! No longer do you have to carry around a six-pack conspicuously.
Basically, with this Australian beast of a bag, you become… a… TRAVELLING PARTY.
That’s it from me. Have a good weekend. Get your election bingo cards out, and refrain from betting on our national rugby team; I think the Warriors might be a better option.
And for god’s sake, order yourself a Booze Bag; summer isn’t too far away, and the river is calling.
I need a booze bag. An obviously brilliant idea 💡