New Additions To The Block

 
5 November 2008

Tuesday evening Aaron arrived home with 2 young Devon heifers. They’re a fiery red colour and quite attractive. They went straight in with the other cattle. Being so small 51 and Baby Red took to bullying them almost straight away.

It’s a strange quirk of cattle that they seem quite intolerant of newcomers. Mind you, 46 seems to be an exception to the rule. I remember when Baby Red first arrived on the block. She was bullied and harassed constantly, day after day until eventually 46 became her protector and boyfriend. But then sometime many months ago 51 ceased his harassment and became somewhat lovestruck. He and Baby Red have been an item ever since.

One of them is going in the freezer at the end of summer. I strongly suspect it will be 51. How he’s survived this long is a mystery. He’s been nothing but a troublemaker since he arrived. So anyway, after a few days on the block the young girls seem to have settled in well. If nothing else they have each other for company.

Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud

Saturday morning we fed out and changed the pig’s hay. Actually, we just added more as they’d either eaten what was there or stuffed it into any draughty corners.

With the girls and Arthur in the shed together we assumed the 3 would snuggle up together. This didn’t happen though. For some reason Arthur decided to sleep in the one patch of mud there is in the back corner of the shed. I suggested we tip several buckets of wood chip onto it to at least absorb the moisture. Aaron didn’t think it would work so I suggested we sit some loose planks of wood on top of the mud and then pile the wood chip on top. Aaron decided it would be better to nail together a wooden platform of sorts but it sat up so high it was a tripping hazard so we pulled it out and just dumped the woodchip straight onto the mud.

Olivia Turns 5

By the time we’d finished mucking around it was 10am and we had to be on the road heading down to Rotorua by 11am at the latest. Scotty’s daughter was turning 5 and we were invited to the party.

It was a good 4 hours drive away and with so much to do around the property I hadn’t wanted to go. However, Aaron had promised several months before and he wasn’t going to let me get out of it.

We took the dogs with us as far as Auckland and dropped them off at Troy’s place for the night. Aaron’s sister-in-law Ilona had agreed to feed the pigs and chooks their dinner and then breakfast the next day.

We arrived in Rotorua about 4:30pm. It had been a long drive and I was quite exhausted. There were about a dozen adults sitting outside drinking and smoking and we sat down and got chatting. Olivia was pretty much by herself. Her parents had hired a bouncy castle for the weekend and initially she spent most of her time on this with a 13 year old boy from nextdoor. He got tired and bored though and so Olivia came and asked me to go on with her. She didn’t know me from a bar of soap so it seemed odd. I wasn’t the youngest there either. However I would have felt bad saying no and so I got on the castle and jumped around on it with Olivia, and I squealed and giggled as I imagined a 5 year old would.

Eventually, after what seemed like a very long time (but I suspect wasn’t), I was exhausted and hoarse and I rolled off it and staggered back to my seat. Olivia carried on bouncing and the boy got back on. About 10 minutes later he got off and Olivia came back to me. I wasn’t keen. I asked the other guests to take my place. None of them would. So I got back on and jumped and squealed and giggled and then collapsed with exhaustion again.

Back on my seat I was struggling to both breathe and talk. The boy got back on with Olivia and then he got tired and Olivia was back at my chair. I demanded one of the other guests take a turn and perhaps it was the alcohol because most of them did, one after the other.

And then there was no one left so Olivia came back to me. I had my 3rd and final go and then Olivia also seemed to tire and the jumping was over. Guests started to leave and then Aaron and Scotty went inside to watch a rugby game on tv. I went to bed.

It was a rough sleep, apart from Olivia, the residents of the house are all chain smokers. I struggled to breathe and several times in the night I stuck my head out an open window just to try catch my breath. My problem as a non-smoker is that breathing in cigarette smoke makes me panic and I start to hyperventilate. In the end it was as much a mental struggle as a physical one. So at 7:30am we left and started the long drive home.

On Being Selfish

It had been an odd trip away and I couldn’t help but think of all the work I should have been doing at home. I was baffled as to why there had been no party and later when Aaron spoke to Scotty he discovered the party had been earlier in the day and we had actually been invited to the piss up at the end of the day.

I told Aaron that I was too old and had too many property commitments to be spending 8 hours on the road just to have a few drinks at someone’s house. The cost of petrol alone is horrendous. I wouldn’t even do that with my own friends and family.

I absolutely admit my life on the block has made me selfish with time and money but the fact is we’re short on both. Our property isn’t just a home, it’s an investment in our future. If we don’t put in the hard yards now we will have no chance of making a living from home or eventually selling our property for enough money to fund our retirement.

I know most of our friends and family see our block as a lot of hard work and probably think we’d be glad of the break but there’s more to it than that. It’s a difficult one. Obviously friends and family are important to us but we effectively have 2 jobs each. One to pay off the mortgage and one to pay off our future. There’s no blobbing out on the couch for us when we get home and an indulgent sleep-in on the weekend is a 7:30 start instead of the usual 6:30. Our lifestyle is virtually a fulltime commitment but to be honest I consider myself one of the luckiest people around.

Of course I’d love to quit my admin job and stay at home and have more balance in my life but my life’s not a hardship. I don’t resent the hard work at all. Yeah there’s the feeding out, the cleaning, the gardening, etc but I also get to take the dogs on bunny hunts. I get to watch lambs frolicking in the paddock. And I get to sit down with the pigs and shoot the breeze and know they enjoy my company as much I do theirs.

I confess, I do worry sometimes that I have a selfish and uncaring attitude. For Scotty, his daughter’s 5th birthday is a highlight and means the world to him. I understand that, but I find myself unable to let go of the fact that time equals money in my world. With so many friends and family to spend time with and only 52 weekends a year in which to do it, giving up one weekend for one person is a lot to ask from me. That’s why I love having people come to stay because it means I can work and play and I don’t feel panicked about my time.

It's Free Range Or Nothing - Doh!

So anyway, Sunday morning we drove home. We stopped in Tirau for breakfast. We had scrambled eggs on toast and fresh coffee. The resident cat joined us. Cat hair ended up in my coffee and my eggs. I asked Aaron if he thought I could get away with complaining that I’d found cat hair in my breakfast. He suggested this might be difficult as the cat had been sitting on my lap the entire time we’d been there.

Of course it wasn’t until the eggs were put on the table in front of us that we realised we’d just committed the cardinal sin of ordering non free range eggs. We eat out so rarely that despite ensuring we didn’t order anything with ham, bacon or chicken in it we’d completely forgotten about the eggs.

Breakfast sat a little heavy in our stomachs as we got back in the car and headed for Auckland. When we stopped to pick up the boys they were sitting at the gate lapping up the attention of a bunch of kids hanging around outside. Any doubts I had about our boys being miserable were completely unfounded.

Turns out Troy had had his own party the night before and there’d been about 6 dogs all up. Our dogs would have had an absolute blast with all that company.

From Troy’s we made a quick stop at Jo and Phil’s to fill a couple of large sacks with garden waste. They have a small garden but generate a lot of grass and leaf litter, which they just pile up in a corner for want of a better place. A few weeks ago I was moaning to my sister about the lack of grass and leaf mulch for our compost and hey presto, both our problems were solved. With grass packed into the boot we headed back on the road. Finally home we made ourselves lunch. We were both absolutely shattered and Sunday became as much of a right off as Saturday.

Makin' Bacon

After a couple of hours lying on the sofa we got the bacon down from the carport and sliced a piece off. We stuck it in the fry pan. When it was nicely cooked we both tried it. Wahhh! It was unpalatably salty. We unwrapped all the bacon and stuck it in a large container of water for several hours and then we rewrapped it and hung it back up in the carport.

Phyllis The Pocket Rocket Returns

Monday I spent the day doing housework and catching up on writing. Aaron came home from work mid afternoon. The homeopathic vet arrived about 4. One of Aaron’s colleagues had given us her details after a not particularly reassuring phone call to our standard veterinary practice regarding Phyllis.

Phyllis and Joy were on the hill above their shed. We went in and Phyllis came down to see us. Joy on the other hand just sat up. With pregnancy Joy has decided that it’s too much effort to stand when we come into the paddock so now she just raises herself into a sitting position.

The vet observed Phyllis for a while and we explained the circumstances of Phyllis’ miscarriage. In the end the vet was quite sure that our fear of a bacterial infection was unfounded. In her opinion the most likely cause was the electric shocks received when she had become entangled in the fence. I felt absolutely awful.

That weekend of moving pigs had been a complete disaster from start to finish and we now had to accept that our actions had played a role in this tragedy. Despite Phyllis’s spirits having been a little brighter in the last couple of days the vet believed Phyllis was still suffering and that her energies were blocked. She asked if she could perform acupuncture on Phyllis.

I’ll admit I was a little surprised. Acupuncture on a pig? It’s not something I would have ever imagined one might do to a pig.
“Go for it” we said.
I sat next to Phyllis and rubbed her tummy. She rolled on her side and let me rub away. Meanwhile the vet placed several needles either side of her spine.

Phyllis lay there for a few minutes but then decided she’d had enough and stood. The vet removed the needles and we all just stood there for about 30 seconds. And then Phyllis just went completely crazy. It was if she had just been plugged into some high voltage unit.

She started racing up and down and spinning around and then started ripping huge chunks of turf out of the ground and shaking them madly. Aaron and I were gobsmacked. The vet wanted to give Phyllis a couple of homeopathic pills. I told her I’d get some cheese from the shed to make sure she ate them.

I raced up the hill and as I walked away Phyllis raced up to the vet and walloped her with her head and then raced off. It was most unlike Phyllis and I suspect both Aaron and vet were surprised. I returned with cheese and the pigs slurped it all up with great enthusiasm.

We left the paddock and chatted to the vet a bit more and Phyllis eventually returned to normal.

Tuesday evening after work we took the bacon down from the carport again. We cooked another slice and again the salt packed too much of a punch. This time we filled a large container with water and a cup full of honey. The meat soaked overnight and then Aaron hung it the next morning. Friday night we removed the bacon once more and fried another slice. This time it was a lot more palatable, although by no means perfect. We sliced all 5 pieces of meat and then we vacuum sealed them into 200g packets and put them in the freezer.

In the end we had picked pieces of pork that were just too fatty for bacon and we ended up with just over 3kg worth of bacon but also 2.9kg of fat to throw out. Oh well, we’ll do better next time I expect.