21 June 2009
Winter solstice has arrived. We should be planting garlic today but vegetable planting is not yet on the agenda.
From today the days get lighter and it is always a relief to know that as of tomorrow we’re on the uphill swing with daylight.
These short winter days have meant that I cannot see the property in daylight except for the weekend. With HelpXchange people here it means I miss out on seeing all the work that happens on a daily basis. Still it all becomes clear on a Saturday morning. I see all the scrubcutting, the tree planting, the building, the weeding, etc. Oh my god, it is just so wonderful to see our property transforming knowing that all I have to do to achieve it is throw a few extra items in the supermarket trolley and make the occasional dinner. And there’s another bonus of having these guests; half the time they offer to make me dinner as well.
I feel blessed, truly blessed that complete strangers actually want to help us transform the property and want to become our friends as well.
Jay and Bex have now been with us just over 2 weeks and we have just 2 days of their company left. I really don’t want them to leave. They are doing so much for us, including making all the pig meals and doing the evening feed outs. The dogs are getting heaps of exercise and Mabel’s piglets are getting daily massages and back scratches.
Like Alex and Tristan we have enjoyed their company immensely. The house will seem empty without them. We are doing our best to convince them to come back but of course we acknowledge that they are here to travel and see the country. And so it is with mixed feelings we also encourage them to leave.
We also had Thomas arrive last Sunday. He left yesterday morning after putting in a good week’s work. It is fair to say Thomas struggled to fit in and by Wednesday I was expecting him to leave. However, come Thursday evening he seemed to transform and suddenly we were all getting on really well. He spent much of his week planting trees in all those places I have wanted planted up for the last couple of years.
I am not sure what Thomas expected when he arrived but it quickly became obvious that he does not much like animals. To give him credit he did not treat the animals meanly in any way, he just didn’t want anything to do with them. In the end I am not sure that he got anything out of his stay but he left with a smile on his face and I found that I was happy that I had met him.
Come Wednesday, when Jay and Bex leave we will once again be alone. It is going to seem very odd, if not a little lonely. We still have so much to do on the property and much of it involves work requiring strength and practical experience. After turning away so many HelpX people over the last few weeks we now find ourselves with only one person left to come. Vicky arrives on the 4th of July.
For some reason all these Helpers wanted to stay in the same short few weeks and now there are no more requests. We still have lots of building projects and heavy physical labour jobs to get through. And to be totally sexist, we really need a strong male for a lot of them. Although, having couples stay with us is by far the best option. So many of the jobs we need to do require more than one person. I am hoping that this lack of interest from Helpers is only a short term halt in proceedings. Even the CouchSurfing interest has dried up.
To be fair the weather is a bit dire. It’s cold and wet and not particularly conducive to outdoor work. I’ve lost count of the number of time Jay and Bex have ended up sinking into mud over the tops of their boots or slipping into the stream.
And then Bex tells me that a lot of Northland hosts don’t want guests over winter so the options to travel and help in Northland are limited. That could be keeping other travelers from knocking on our door. Perhaps the recession is also causing some hosts to turn helpers away. Providing a couple with all their food plus accommodation adds to the monthly bills.
However I am hoping I might be able to help turn this situation around. I’ve been in contact with Lifestyle Block magazine with a Reader’s Story on being a CS or HX host and the editor is keen to print it. The more people who become hosts the easier it will be for helpers to travel the country. It means competition for us of course but then our aim is to have such good references from Helpers that helpers will choose us over others or will somehow manage to fit us in.
Still, even if the help offers don’t come flooding in. If my article is printed I should get a nice little payment for it which always helps towards monthly expenses.
It’s interesting to me how much this last 6 months have really changed me as a person. My resolution for the year was to become a nicer, more generous person and I think maybe I’m getting close to being the type of person I want to be. I am trying to be grateful for what we have instead of obsessed with what we don’t. I think Aaron and I are both now very aware of how lucky we are. We may not be financially rich but we are incredibly rich in terms of what we have in our lives.
It is incredible to me that our guests see me as a good host when I have only ever known myself as a social misfit. I have always struggled to fit in and to talk to others but I have learnt so much this year. The most gratifying thing for me is the number of guests who have asked to stay longer or to come back.
Our home has now become everything we intended it to be. It is home away from home to anyone who should turn up on our doorstep. There is nothing better than finding a virtual stranger so comfortable in my home that come evening they are happy to put on their pyjamas and sprawl themselves on one of the sofas with a blanket and a book. I love that these friends-to-be can just arrive and feel relaxed within a short period of time.
Aaron plays a big part of course, with his incredible ability to just put people at ease straight away. He starts the process and then we both somehow make it work.
I can’t imagine not sharing our lives with others now.
More Hellos and Goodbyes
This last week has been a somewhat trying one.
Not only have we said hello and goodbye to guests but also animals.
Arthur arrived home last weekend after several weeks away on stud duty. Upsettingly he was not happy to be back. Taken away from his love interest and put in a strange new paddock with no girlfriend he has been in a foul mood. He has chased me, Aaron and Bex out of his paddock and taken swipes at us with his large mouth.
Arthur now resides in the southern paddock and quickly discovered the scent of Phyllis on the other side of the electric fence on the ridgeline. For an entire week he has paced the ridgeline back and forth, he’s even taken to sleeping up there and refused to come down to eat for several days.
He is certainly not our gentle giant at the moment. Instead he is an aggressive, worked up boar desperate for a girlfriend and a root.
We are hoping he will have another temporary girlfriend within the next couple of weeks. That should at least calm him down until Joy is ready to go back with him. If this other girlfriend doesn’t turn up though we may just have to put Joy back with him earlier than intended.
Friday the 19th Joy’s piglets were destined for slaughter.
I knew it was going to be a hard week for me and I stopped the cuddles and scratches. Then Tuesday morning, as I fed Joy and her piglets, I noticed Baby Girl wasn’t hungry. After weeks of struggling with a heart and lung condition I felt sure the cold, frosty mornings were taking their toll. I told Aaron and we hoped like hell she would make it until Friday. Tuesday night “Baby Girl” died. Aaron fed Joy and piglets Wednesday morning and noticed Baby Girl was missing. He found her in the bush. Her heart must have given out and suddenly it was all over.
I felt upset. Upset she had lost her fight for life and upset she had died 2 days before slaughter.
How cruel life seems to be sometimes. Why is that the animals we choose for slaughter attempt to die on us only days before their slaughter date? It’s a cruel twist of fate that stabs at my heart.
Big Red had done it to us and then Thyme’s girl and now Baby Girl.
Aaron had the ghastly deed of burying her and then of taking the others to slaughter Friday night. I held it together all week. There’s not much choice when I’m at work. I can’t spend my time at work endlessly crying over animals. I felt I coped really well. I just avoided thinking about them and all was fine.
Aaron always wants to talk about the slaughter but I shut him up on Friday night. I told him I couldn’t cope with knowing. I’m emotionally attached to them and don’t want to know. And then Saturday morning he tells me the pigs couldn’t be done Friday night and were due for slaughter then.
“Don’t tell me! Don’t upset me! I don’t want to know!”
Aaron rolls his eyes.
Sunday morning I’m cleaning the bathroom and Aaron tells me he’s just had a call from the new slaughterman / butcher.
“Stop! Are you going to tell me anything that upsets me? Don’t tell me anything that’s going to upset me!”
“No. Of course I’m not!”
And then Aaron tells me the piglets haven’t being slaughtered yet and that the butcher’s about to do it now. And so it happens, the floodgates open and my body is wracked with sobs.
“I told you not to tell me anything that’s going to upset me!”
“Oh grow up!” Aaron storms out of the bathroom.
I know Aaron sees my attachment to the animals as my biggest failing. He wants me to just harden up and deal with it as if it is the most natural thing in the world. And it is natural but I still struggle.
I don’t understand why Aaron constantly struggles with me acting like a girl and thinking like a girl. I’m never strong enough, never tough enough, never hard enough. This lifestyle has stripped me of my femininity and my natural desire to be girly and still it is not enough.
Sometimes I think I would be completely useless at this life without a man. I could cope no problems in the city but country life is different. There are too many things I struggle to do. My lack of size and strength and ability to cope with stress annoys the crap out of me.
I am sure I will cope better with Phyllis’ piglets. I cannot tell one from the other they are all so alike. Even the little fella I nursed for so long is now the same as the others and the only time I recognize who he is when he is lying on his side and I see that telltale tuft of hair in his groin.
Piglet Pleasures
Mabel’s piglets are well and truly by far the most adventurous of all the piglets we’ve had. The only time they are ever in their paddock is at night or when they want a feed from mum. They are now pretty much permanent fixtures in front of the verandah. They spend hours sleeping in the sun under the seat or digging up and eating the succulent garden, digging up the gravel path or digging up god knows what under the house.
Many belly rubs and scratches from Jay and Bex have given them cause to believe that they too are now very much part of our household.
As for Mabel, she sits by the gate and watches them, making sure they’re safe and occasionally calling them home for a feed. It is all very idyllic and sitting in the livingroom watching the little piglets roaming back and forth just reinforces how lucky we are to have this lifestyle.
Even the dogs have become more accepting of piglets on the loose and most of the time just watch them as we do. Although, occasionally Whisky still feels the need to lie next to them where he can sniff them and have the odd lick.
Of course with Jay and Bex leaving us we have come to the realization that the piglets will still come out in search of their daily massages, and if they’re not forthcoming they may go looking further afield. I’ve discovered them down by Phyllis’ once already and that’s a worry. So this coming Wednesday Aaron will rig up the electric fence to discourage them from leaving their paddock.
I’m not sure what we will do about the fenceline between Mabel and Stanley though as they both seem quite smitten with each other. And as for Stanley, he seems to be doing his best to prove he is good fatherly material by playing very nicely with Mabel’s piglets.
We Spend More Money
We have just started our next lot of fencing. We now have proper stockyards opposite the shed and have new fencing dividing Phyllis’ paddock in three.
We’re also extending the fencing in front of the shed so that the area can be fully enclosed.
As always Focus Fencing are stretched to the max with their time and are having to fit us in in fits and starts. I’m sure they find us to be an absolute pain as they are used to big projects and big money, but somehow Aaron always manages to persuade Geoff that we are a worthy customer.
We’ve also had 6 large poles whacked into Stanley’s paddock so we can build a large shed, similar to Phyllis’ shed. This will become our new maternity shed for Mabel and her daughter.
I’m not sure what we will do about Stanley’s van. If it still had its axle we would have been able to sell it for at least $50. We possibly still can if we can find someone with a big enough tractor to pull it out and load it onto the back of a car carrier. We’ll have to wait for summer and dry ground though before we even contemplate it.
We’ve spent about $200 on trees to plant around the property this winter and we also want to spend another $200 on fruit trees.
We’ve splashed out on a couple of 2nd hand Swanndris for Aaron and I am trying hard to get one in my size as well.
There’s always new tools to buy or old ones to repair and I seem to be constantly buying buckets as we increase the size of the pig feedouts. 2 weeks ago we were up to 12 buckets of feed every mealtime!
But for all the money we seem to be endlessly forking out, we seem to finally be making progress with our finances. This recession is doing wonders for our budget. Food and petrol costs are still exorbitant but our mortgage rate is low enough now that we can finally start to get ahead. How wonderful it is to finally see our bank account finally going into credit.
These short winter days have meant that I cannot see the property in daylight except for the weekend. With HelpXchange people here it means I miss out on seeing all the work that happens on a daily basis. Still it all becomes clear on a Saturday morning. I see all the scrubcutting, the tree planting, the building, the weeding, etc. Oh my god, it is just so wonderful to see our property transforming knowing that all I have to do to achieve it is throw a few extra items in the supermarket trolley and make the occasional dinner. And there’s another bonus of having these guests; half the time they offer to make me dinner as well.
I feel blessed, truly blessed that complete strangers actually want to help us transform the property and want to become our friends as well.
Jay and Bex have now been with us just over 2 weeks and we have just 2 days of their company left. I really don’t want them to leave. They are doing so much for us, including making all the pig meals and doing the evening feed outs. The dogs are getting heaps of exercise and Mabel’s piglets are getting daily massages and back scratches.
Like Alex and Tristan we have enjoyed their company immensely. The house will seem empty without them. We are doing our best to convince them to come back but of course we acknowledge that they are here to travel and see the country. And so it is with mixed feelings we also encourage them to leave.
We also had Thomas arrive last Sunday. He left yesterday morning after putting in a good week’s work. It is fair to say Thomas struggled to fit in and by Wednesday I was expecting him to leave. However, come Thursday evening he seemed to transform and suddenly we were all getting on really well. He spent much of his week planting trees in all those places I have wanted planted up for the last couple of years.
I am not sure what Thomas expected when he arrived but it quickly became obvious that he does not much like animals. To give him credit he did not treat the animals meanly in any way, he just didn’t want anything to do with them. In the end I am not sure that he got anything out of his stay but he left with a smile on his face and I found that I was happy that I had met him.
Come Wednesday, when Jay and Bex leave we will once again be alone. It is going to seem very odd, if not a little lonely. We still have so much to do on the property and much of it involves work requiring strength and practical experience. After turning away so many HelpX people over the last few weeks we now find ourselves with only one person left to come. Vicky arrives on the 4th of July.
For some reason all these Helpers wanted to stay in the same short few weeks and now there are no more requests. We still have lots of building projects and heavy physical labour jobs to get through. And to be totally sexist, we really need a strong male for a lot of them. Although, having couples stay with us is by far the best option. So many of the jobs we need to do require more than one person. I am hoping that this lack of interest from Helpers is only a short term halt in proceedings. Even the CouchSurfing interest has dried up.
To be fair the weather is a bit dire. It’s cold and wet and not particularly conducive to outdoor work. I’ve lost count of the number of time Jay and Bex have ended up sinking into mud over the tops of their boots or slipping into the stream.
And then Bex tells me that a lot of Northland hosts don’t want guests over winter so the options to travel and help in Northland are limited. That could be keeping other travelers from knocking on our door. Perhaps the recession is also causing some hosts to turn helpers away. Providing a couple with all their food plus accommodation adds to the monthly bills.
However I am hoping I might be able to help turn this situation around. I’ve been in contact with Lifestyle Block magazine with a Reader’s Story on being a CS or HX host and the editor is keen to print it. The more people who become hosts the easier it will be for helpers to travel the country. It means competition for us of course but then our aim is to have such good references from Helpers that helpers will choose us over others or will somehow manage to fit us in.
Still, even if the help offers don’t come flooding in. If my article is printed I should get a nice little payment for it which always helps towards monthly expenses.
It’s interesting to me how much this last 6 months have really changed me as a person. My resolution for the year was to become a nicer, more generous person and I think maybe I’m getting close to being the type of person I want to be. I am trying to be grateful for what we have instead of obsessed with what we don’t. I think Aaron and I are both now very aware of how lucky we are. We may not be financially rich but we are incredibly rich in terms of what we have in our lives.
It is incredible to me that our guests see me as a good host when I have only ever known myself as a social misfit. I have always struggled to fit in and to talk to others but I have learnt so much this year. The most gratifying thing for me is the number of guests who have asked to stay longer or to come back.
Our home has now become everything we intended it to be. It is home away from home to anyone who should turn up on our doorstep. There is nothing better than finding a virtual stranger so comfortable in my home that come evening they are happy to put on their pyjamas and sprawl themselves on one of the sofas with a blanket and a book. I love that these friends-to-be can just arrive and feel relaxed within a short period of time.
Aaron plays a big part of course, with his incredible ability to just put people at ease straight away. He starts the process and then we both somehow make it work.
I can’t imagine not sharing our lives with others now.
More Hellos and Goodbyes
This last week has been a somewhat trying one.
Not only have we said hello and goodbye to guests but also animals.
Arthur arrived home last weekend after several weeks away on stud duty. Upsettingly he was not happy to be back. Taken away from his love interest and put in a strange new paddock with no girlfriend he has been in a foul mood. He has chased me, Aaron and Bex out of his paddock and taken swipes at us with his large mouth.
Arthur now resides in the southern paddock and quickly discovered the scent of Phyllis on the other side of the electric fence on the ridgeline. For an entire week he has paced the ridgeline back and forth, he’s even taken to sleeping up there and refused to come down to eat for several days.
He is certainly not our gentle giant at the moment. Instead he is an aggressive, worked up boar desperate for a girlfriend and a root.
We are hoping he will have another temporary girlfriend within the next couple of weeks. That should at least calm him down until Joy is ready to go back with him. If this other girlfriend doesn’t turn up though we may just have to put Joy back with him earlier than intended.
Friday the 19th Joy’s piglets were destined for slaughter.
I knew it was going to be a hard week for me and I stopped the cuddles and scratches. Then Tuesday morning, as I fed Joy and her piglets, I noticed Baby Girl wasn’t hungry. After weeks of struggling with a heart and lung condition I felt sure the cold, frosty mornings were taking their toll. I told Aaron and we hoped like hell she would make it until Friday. Tuesday night “Baby Girl” died. Aaron fed Joy and piglets Wednesday morning and noticed Baby Girl was missing. He found her in the bush. Her heart must have given out and suddenly it was all over.
I felt upset. Upset she had lost her fight for life and upset she had died 2 days before slaughter.
How cruel life seems to be sometimes. Why is that the animals we choose for slaughter attempt to die on us only days before their slaughter date? It’s a cruel twist of fate that stabs at my heart.
Big Red had done it to us and then Thyme’s girl and now Baby Girl.
Aaron had the ghastly deed of burying her and then of taking the others to slaughter Friday night. I held it together all week. There’s not much choice when I’m at work. I can’t spend my time at work endlessly crying over animals. I felt I coped really well. I just avoided thinking about them and all was fine.
Aaron always wants to talk about the slaughter but I shut him up on Friday night. I told him I couldn’t cope with knowing. I’m emotionally attached to them and don’t want to know. And then Saturday morning he tells me the pigs couldn’t be done Friday night and were due for slaughter then.
“Don’t tell me! Don’t upset me! I don’t want to know!”
Aaron rolls his eyes.
Sunday morning I’m cleaning the bathroom and Aaron tells me he’s just had a call from the new slaughterman / butcher.
“Stop! Are you going to tell me anything that upsets me? Don’t tell me anything that’s going to upset me!”
“No. Of course I’m not!”
And then Aaron tells me the piglets haven’t being slaughtered yet and that the butcher’s about to do it now. And so it happens, the floodgates open and my body is wracked with sobs.
“I told you not to tell me anything that’s going to upset me!”
“Oh grow up!” Aaron storms out of the bathroom.
I know Aaron sees my attachment to the animals as my biggest failing. He wants me to just harden up and deal with it as if it is the most natural thing in the world. And it is natural but I still struggle.
I don’t understand why Aaron constantly struggles with me acting like a girl and thinking like a girl. I’m never strong enough, never tough enough, never hard enough. This lifestyle has stripped me of my femininity and my natural desire to be girly and still it is not enough.
Sometimes I think I would be completely useless at this life without a man. I could cope no problems in the city but country life is different. There are too many things I struggle to do. My lack of size and strength and ability to cope with stress annoys the crap out of me.
I am sure I will cope better with Phyllis’ piglets. I cannot tell one from the other they are all so alike. Even the little fella I nursed for so long is now the same as the others and the only time I recognize who he is when he is lying on his side and I see that telltale tuft of hair in his groin.
Piglet Pleasures
Mabel’s piglets are well and truly by far the most adventurous of all the piglets we’ve had. The only time they are ever in their paddock is at night or when they want a feed from mum. They are now pretty much permanent fixtures in front of the verandah. They spend hours sleeping in the sun under the seat or digging up and eating the succulent garden, digging up the gravel path or digging up god knows what under the house.
Many belly rubs and scratches from Jay and Bex have given them cause to believe that they too are now very much part of our household.
As for Mabel, she sits by the gate and watches them, making sure they’re safe and occasionally calling them home for a feed. It is all very idyllic and sitting in the livingroom watching the little piglets roaming back and forth just reinforces how lucky we are to have this lifestyle.
Even the dogs have become more accepting of piglets on the loose and most of the time just watch them as we do. Although, occasionally Whisky still feels the need to lie next to them where he can sniff them and have the odd lick.
Of course with Jay and Bex leaving us we have come to the realization that the piglets will still come out in search of their daily massages, and if they’re not forthcoming they may go looking further afield. I’ve discovered them down by Phyllis’ once already and that’s a worry. So this coming Wednesday Aaron will rig up the electric fence to discourage them from leaving their paddock.
I’m not sure what we will do about the fenceline between Mabel and Stanley though as they both seem quite smitten with each other. And as for Stanley, he seems to be doing his best to prove he is good fatherly material by playing very nicely with Mabel’s piglets.
We Spend More Money
We have just started our next lot of fencing. We now have proper stockyards opposite the shed and have new fencing dividing Phyllis’ paddock in three.
We’re also extending the fencing in front of the shed so that the area can be fully enclosed.
As always Focus Fencing are stretched to the max with their time and are having to fit us in in fits and starts. I’m sure they find us to be an absolute pain as they are used to big projects and big money, but somehow Aaron always manages to persuade Geoff that we are a worthy customer.
We’ve also had 6 large poles whacked into Stanley’s paddock so we can build a large shed, similar to Phyllis’ shed. This will become our new maternity shed for Mabel and her daughter.
I’m not sure what we will do about Stanley’s van. If it still had its axle we would have been able to sell it for at least $50. We possibly still can if we can find someone with a big enough tractor to pull it out and load it onto the back of a car carrier. We’ll have to wait for summer and dry ground though before we even contemplate it.
We’ve spent about $200 on trees to plant around the property this winter and we also want to spend another $200 on fruit trees.
We’ve splashed out on a couple of 2nd hand Swanndris for Aaron and I am trying hard to get one in my size as well.
There’s always new tools to buy or old ones to repair and I seem to be constantly buying buckets as we increase the size of the pig feedouts. 2 weeks ago we were up to 12 buckets of feed every mealtime!
But for all the money we seem to be endlessly forking out, we seem to finally be making progress with our finances. This recession is doing wonders for our budget. Food and petrol costs are still exorbitant but our mortgage rate is low enough now that we can finally start to get ahead. How wonderful it is to finally see our bank account finally going into credit.
