skip to main |
skip to sidebar
22 January 2010
Last week I advertised on our HelpX host page for a helpXer for the last week of January. We need someone to feed out on the last Friday and Saturday of January when we go down to Auckland for Troy’s wedding.
An English couple applied but then changed their mind a few days later. The only other person to apply was a young Korean girl. She sounded good but she wanted to arrive on the 16th. We said no as we didn’t have any work for her to do. We asked if she could come a week later and she said she really needed to arrive on the 16th as she was leaving the Kaiwaka property she was HelpXing on. Our farm was exactly what she was looking for as a place to work on.
Although new to the system she had written herself a good HelpXer profile. I emailed back and told her she could stay for 2 weeks if she was prepared to do housework for the first week. She was keen and then of course so was I!
And so she arrived and she was all smiles and friendliness. We sat and talked for a couple of hours about this and that and she asked if we had many animals. We explained what we had and then she asked, almost hesitantly, if we ate any of them? An odd question since we mention that on our host page.
We confirmed that we did and then she says “Ohhhh. Cos I’m a vegetarian. I won’t eat any type of meat or fish.”
I don’t why, but I was a little shocked she hadn’t bothered to mention this. Especially as we clearly state on our host page that HelpXers must inform us if they are on special diets.
Her spoken English seemed pretty good so I began to wonder if she hadn’t actually read our host page at all.
She explained that she is quite against the idea of animals being harmed. Not that she was offensive or rude in anyway but I just sighed as I thought of all those special meals I’d now have to make.
After we had had a talk we went for a walk with the dogs, to show Kuri the property.
Only 5 minutes into the walk Coppa raced off into the undergrowth and seconds later appeared with a freshly killed bunny in his mouth.
“Good boy!” we said as he paraded it in front of us, the dead bunny’s legs and head bouncing up and down as he turned and trotted down the drive in front of us.
“Ohhh! Oh no! Oh no. Oh the bunny. Oh no!”
“It’s alright. It’s alright. It’s dead. He did a good thing”
Kuri was suitably horrified.
We started to explain how rabbits are a pest when suddenly another bunny raced out from the undergrowth literally into Whisky’s waiting mouth. A couple of quick bites and that dead bunny was also bouncing up and down, all floppy legs and head as Whisky raced down the drive.
“Good boy Whisky!”
There were more horrified exclamations from Kuri.
Then, as we walked down the drive and around the corner there was Coppa ripping the legs of his bunny.
“Don’t look! Don’t look!” we said
We walked over to the paddock with the cows and filled their water trough. We changed the subject and then turned around to walk back out the paddock. I had to stifle a giggle. Whisky was sitting in the middle of the path literally tearing the head off his bunny.
All the way back to the house the dogs ran in front of us with their half eaten bunnies in their mouths.
Kuri’s introduction to our lifestyle was interesting to say the least!
2 days later, as Kuri and I took the dogs for a walk over to the cows Kuri asked me the oddest question
“Do you also raise cats?” She’d been with us 2 days and we’d shown her all over the farm. Where the heck did she think we would be raising cats?
“No. We trap cats and we kill them! Don’t get me wrong, I like cats but if they come onto our property we kill them!”
“Ohhh” Kuri went very quiet.
I can only be grateful she wasn’t out with me Tuesday morning when Whisky caught a possum.
Whisky chased it up into the bush and I could hear the possum hissing and growling and Whisky growling. This went on for several minutes and I could hear Whisky having a go at it.
“Kill it Whisky! Kill it!” I’m whispering as loud as I can, trying not to wake neighbour Kevin up and then Whisky starts howling in pain. Oh my god, my baby’s being hurt! So I go racing up into the bush with just my headlamp on, getting smacked in the face by tree branches, searching desperately for Whisky. Somehow he manages to get the upperhand and drags the possum out onto the driveway. It was putting up one hell of a fight and Whisky couldn’t kill it so I had to pick it up and smash its head into a tree. Six times for Christ’s sakes! I’m half way up Gary’s drive at 4 in the morning with a badly injured possum and I’ve got stuff all options. It was quite awful. I can’t stand it when animals suffer but the damn thing wouldn’t give up.
Whisky got a good breakfast out of it but it wasn’t a nice end for the possum.
So anyway, Kuri’s a lovely girl. She’s giving the house a really good spring clean and she’s very polite, helpful, etc.
It did take me a couple of days to discover that she doesn’t really understand spoken English very well, not with a Kiwi accent anyway. We’ve had a few hiccups. I’ve explained various tasks and then she’s gone off and done something really random and I’ll be standing there watching her thinking “What the?!?”
As with most of our non-English guests we have asked her to make a traditional Korean meal. She’s been very keen but then she gave me a shopping list and I said I could only get about 2 of the 10 ingredients.
“You need to try find them” she says
“Not in Whangarei I can’t”
“You need to try”
“I can get ingredients that are similar but I can’t get those”
“You need to try. I found them in Asian supermarket in Auckland. If you try you will find them”
“No I won’t”
And so the conversation goes back and forth as I try to explain (nicely) that Whangarei isn’t quite the China town Auckland is. Thank god (No, I didn’t say that.)
So I went shopping and bought similar ingredients.
“Oh no, these are not right ones.”
And so we have the conversation again.
“You’re going to have to adapt your recipe and make a New Zealand version” I said
So tonight I will go home and will have (presumably) the Kiwi version of a Korean dish.
It Must Have Been The Cleaner
For the last week or so I have been reacting to something. Shampoo? Conditioner? Mousse? Curling spray? God knows. It randomly happens; I develop a reaction to one of the hair products I’m using and suddenly my head itches like crazy. Usually a quick change of products does it and the itching stops and the inflamed scalp calms down and life returns to normal.
But not this time, if anything the itching got worse. And you know what it’s like when you start itching badly in one place, suddenly the hair’s start prickling all over the body and one’s imagination starts to fire off itching signals here, there and everywhere.
And so I’m scratching like crazy start to wonder, should I be taking anti-histamines? Is the house flea infested from that now deceased kitten the dog’s found? I’m thinking, thinking, scratching, thinking, and then an awful thought occurs to me.
Surely not. How?! It couldn’t be! And then I start calculating dates and thinking about all the visitors we had over the Christmas period and I suddenly realise that I’ve become a host to more than just visitors.
I know, I know, it’s no big deal and there’s far worse things that could happen to me. But seriously!?!
So now I’m just adding it to me I ever increasing list of why I don’t want children.
Not that I have proof, and it’s a classic case of blame the cleaner, but you know, where there are children…
And so it was that I sat on my bedroom floor last night with a potent brew of alcohol and tea tree oil aimed at my head and a husband trying desperately to extricate himself from being involved in the process.
“I don’t know what I’m doing” he says exasperatedly
“Well I can’t see my own head can I? Just point and shoot the bloody stuff!”
“Uhhh. It smells awful!”
“Well open the window then!”
“It’s no use. I can’t do it. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do”
Why is it that men are all eager and skilled when it comes to manly stuff but as soon as it’s gross, domestic stuff they’re completely incompetent, their coordination, ability to see and need to do a job well disappears out the window? It would seem that men are as skilled at using a lice comb as they are at using a toilet brush.
And so Aaron retired for the night while I sat by the open window ripping out great chunks of hair with a comb designed for the fine hair of young children, not the coarse, colour-treated hair of a woman of rapidly advancing years.
The alcohol dried my hair out terribly and the tea tree oil is clearly an aromatherapy stimulant so I spent almost the entire night lying in bed feeling exhaustingly tired yet completely wired, itching like crazy and pissed off like you wouldn’t believe!
Death Waits Patiently At The Back Door
The Sussex chickens are growing fast and looking good. Except for the sickly one we brought home. It had turned a corner after 2 weeks, was standing, then walking, then running and flying. It looked great and then suddenly this last weekend it collapsed, started losing feathers and now sits unable to use its legs or wings anymore.
We feed it, put a water container next to it and somehow it lives. We are watching for signs that mentally it has had enough but it hasn’t happened yet. It managed to drag/roll itself into the chicken house, and then perhaps because of the sunny days it got itself down to the back of the house and there it sits, alone and helpless.
I don’t understand. What the hell is wrong with it? Aaron thinks its neural damage and actually I can’t help but wonder if he’s right. It’s possible that somewhere in its brain there a signals short-circuiting.
What do we do?
Aaron yelled at the chicken in frustration. I in turn yelled at Aaron and copped a telling off myself.
“It’s not you who will have to end its life is it?!”
I would if I had too, but no I don’t want to, I struggle with it. The guilt causes a clumsy physical reaction in me, a slowing down, a physical weakness that leads to animals suffering.
Once again we are faced with the question - when do we decide an animal should die? When does it stop being about our discomfort over what we are seeing and start being about doing the humane thing? There’s a line that is crossed somewhere along the process but it’s so hard to detect.
This is not commercial farming. This is not a profit and loss scenario. This is life and an animal’s right to live.
And so it is when death calls at the farm that once again he has also brought life to fill the void.
We have a new lamb on the block. Thyme has yet again produced a mid year lamb. The sheep are across the stream and spending their days under the tress, shielded from the sun. I’ve caught a fleeting glimpse of it just once as Thyme whisked it off to safety. It’s is clearly healthy and robust.
But death waits to take the chicken as payment.
He will have to wait a little bit longer. I am not ready yet. If it recovered once perhaps it can do it again.
14 January 2010
It’s been a peaceful week, just me and Aaron and the occasional visitor. Sometimes it’s nice just to have the house to ourselves.
We’re already 2 weeks into the New Year and I find myself thinking (worrying?) about what this year will bring. 2009 was such a good year for us and I find it hard to believe we could be so lucky as to have more of the same.
So far so good I think, but I have an uneasy feeling about today. I fed out this morning and the piglets were gone.
How Many Pigs Is Too Many?
Aaron was given 2 x 8-week old piglets on Wednesday evening and they have escaped 3 times already. Aaron’s 4th attempt to keep them penned in seemed like it was fail-proof, but alas, it was not to be.
We opened the gate to the yard, from where they’ve escaped, and I poured their breakfast into their tray. I can only hope they come looking for it sometime today. I looked for them this morning but it’s not easy to find anything at 4 O’clock in the morning. I suspect they’re curled up asleep in the bush somewhere.
They spent all of yesterday outside Joy’s, wanting to get in and play with the other piglets but Joy was having none of it. According to Aaron she was aggressively defending her territory and so the piglets just curled up and went to sleep outside the fence.
Eventually they gave up trying and went up the drive and Aaron found them trying to get in the paddock with Stanley and the girls. He managed to get them into the yards and trapped them in there. It didn’t take them long to escape though and off they ran. He managed to catch them again in the evening but, well, they’re gone now.
Aaron has lost patience. This morning he gave in to the idea that they could just go bush and so be it. It’s a lovely idea in theory but the practicalities leave a lot to be desired. They’ll come back regularly because there are other pigs here. How long do you suppose before they start getting into the vege garden, the compost, any unguarded bags of cheese or buckets of fruit, etc?
If we had a 100 acres of bush behind us and no close neighbours I’d say “Sweet. Let them be!” But that is not what we have and so we must try again. And again after that if necessary.
I have an idea already for a good pen. The first one we built for Joy, Phyllis and Spotty was just warratahs and corrugated iron and it worked beautifully. We’ll do it again and by the end of February they should be familiar with us and happy enough to just stick around like all the other pigs.
Of course we have to find and catch them first and that’s where the uneasy feeling is creeping in. I’m quite convinced something is going to go wrong today and we’re going to be unhappy with the way the day unfolds.
But perhaps I’m wrong. I hope I’m wrong!
Stan Is The Man
Well it’s all very odd.
Or is it?
We put Stan in with Rose and Mabel and as soon as they came into heat he went all shy and brooding. For 5 days the girls harassed him and pleaded with him to make them pregnant and nothing. We saw no action. Instead Stan played hard to get. Actually it wasn’t even ‘hard to get’, it was more a case of “Leave me alone. Stop harassing me!”.
Poor Mabel. I was devastated for her. Her desperate pleading was just humiliating. She shouldn’t have had to beg after all those months of love talk through the fence.
I had words with Stan. I also pleaded, asked him to see reason and even tried to bargain with him. He was tolerant with me but I could tell he wasn’t interested.
Okay. I was willing to consider that maybe something wasn’t quite right. Maybe Stanley’s diet wasn’t quite right. Perhaps that was affecting his libido. We’d had no such dramas with Arthur. And so we changed Stanley’s diet for 2 weeks and then a week ago we waited for the girls to come back into season. Nothing. I’ve been checking every day and quite frankly it hasn’t happened. Is it at all possible that they coincidentally both skipped a cycle at the same time?
Or is it possible that they’re both pregnant?
When?! How?! Did he just do it the once in the early hours and then decide that was his duty over and done with? Or did he make them hang out for the 3 days and finally relent after the constant pleading? I find it hard to believe he got them both pregnant.
I’m not trusting what I’m seeing. I won’t believe it until their next cycle is due.
What About Olive?
Olive appears to be pregnant.
This is devastating news. We had actually thought Emily was pregnant because we caught her brother Spotty getting too friendly with her just before he went to the butcher. We quickly shut Emily and Olive in a paddock alone and I washed Emily’s rear end with white vinegar in the hope the acidity would kill off any sperm. It was an action born of desperation rather than knowledge but she’s not pregnant so maybe it worked.
But what about Olive? When did that happen and who with? Did one of her brothers also take a fancy to her? What about Stanley? I remember him trying to mount one of the girls one day while the piglets were in there playing with him. Could he possibly be the father? He’s so much bigger. Surely he would have crushed her?
We saw nothing actually happen and so I am at a loss to know when it happened.
It’s an unexpected shock and not a good one.
When is she due? And what will happen to both her and the babies?
To have them so young may damage her reproductive organs and ruin her chances of ever having piglets again.
If one of her brothers is the father there’s a high possibility of deformities. I can’t begin to imagine the horror Aaron and I will feel if we are forced to euthanase new born piglets.
Everything about it makes me feel physically sick. We are responsible for her and we’ve let her down. She’s such a sweet wee piggie like her mum and I just wanted her to get to be a carefree gilt for the 1st year of her life.
One of God’s Angels
And so it was that Aaron set off for work at 4am on Tuesday morning. It was raining; wonderful, blessed rain. And as Aaron drove out the other side of Kaiwaka he could see a car on the side of the road with hazard lights on. He drove past, but in the dark and the driving rain he could swear he saw someone trying to wave him down. Something made him think he should stop. And so it was that that he turned his car around and drove back.
He discovered a couple in their 60’s with their son and daughter-in-law, in a car with a failed transmission. The older couple were on their way to Auckland Airport. They had a 90th birthday party to attend in Warrnambool, Australia. Aaron offered to drive them to Wellsford. The older couple jumped into the ute with their luggage and the younger couple stayed behind to mind the car. They drove and talked and Aaron realised they didn’t have a hope in hell of getting to the airport in time.
“I’ll take you” he said They were extremely grateful for the offer.
The couple rang AA to get their car picked up. Their membership had expired and it would cost $180 to renew it.
They had no choice but to pay it. Only one catch, they didn’t have a credit card and AA wouldn’t bill them.
Aaron gave them his credit card details and they paid the fee.
An apparently devout Christian couple, they bestowed many blessings on Aaron and promised to pay as soon as they got back from Australia.
They asked to pay for petrol but Aaron had mentally calculated the cost of the car recovery and repair and he refused. “The company pays for it” he lied.
More blessings and then he dropped them off at the airport and they had time to make their flight.
He got to work 2 hours late and somewhat poorer but with a happy buzz on that lasted all day.
He trusted his instincts. He did good and nothing bad happened.
And I feel quite impressed by his selfless act.
Last year my New Year’s resolution was to be less selfish and more giving. I thought I had done quite well by the end of the year but then I thought about what Aaron had done and I asked myself “Would I have done the same thing?”
The answer is no.
I would be too scared to stop my car to help someone in the middle of the night. 1 stranger on the side of the road is scary enough but 4?
If I did even get that far would I offer to take them to the airport knowing they wouldn’t get there otherwise?
The answer is no.
Fighting Auckland traffic, spending an extra 2 hours on the road and then offering to pay for the gas? Are you serious?
But say I did, by some completely random brain short-out, offer to do that, would I then give my credit card details to a stranger so they could have their car towed?
I don’t even need to answer that. You know the answer.
So am I the selfless, giving person I hoped to be by the end of 2009? Clearly not!
It was a bit of a shock to the system to be honest. I thought I had done so well last year but then I found out what the problem is when Marty came to dinner on Tuesday. He asked Aaron why he’d done it.
“Because I like doing nice things for strangers. It makes me feel good”
Whoa! Is that it? Is that all?! Because it makes him feel good?
Feeling good is one thing but that has certainly never been the driver for me when I perform random acts of kindness.
What I’m after is payback; karma payback. When I’m nice it’s because I’m clocking up spiritual brownie points. I‘m a total believer in the ‘give and ye shall receive’ philosophy. I don’t care if the payback is in this lifetime or the next I ‘m just making sure I’m heading into the future with good deed credits in my back pocket.
And so essentially that’s the problem. Yes, I am a much more giving person, but selfless? absolutely not. I’m not sure I actually ever do anything for other people without out even some vague thought of myself.
So here’s the question – is selflessness achieved through nature or nurture?
If it is nature then there’s little hope for me. I would essentially be destined to be selfish for the rest of my life, and too bad about those poor people who need a helping hand who I choose to ignore.
If it’s nurture then Aaron’s mum has done an excellent job and perhaps there is hope for me yet. Although quite frankly, such a state of mind seems completely beyond the realms of possibility for me.
5 January 2010
What a busy few weeks it has been!
There has been no time for writing and barely enough time for reading or just taking time out.
We have had an almost continual flow of guests since HelpXer Sam arrived and finally as of today I’m getting some time out.
Sam was here for 2 weeks and diligently and quietly worked away on a number of projects until we sent him off to Marty’s for a week. He returned for a few days and then we sent him off to Muriwai Valley Farm for 3 weeks. We took him to Christmas breakfast at Troy’s and he unexpectedly gave us 2 fabulous books for as Thank you presents.
Another HelpXer Georgia stayed for a couple of weeks in December. She worked hard, read lots, chatted heaps and took the dogs for numerous walks. She, like Sam, was a pleasure to host.
Olivia (6) and Jacob (9?) are 2 of the most delightful, polite, well-mannered kids I have ever met. They weren’t just on holiday but on an educational trip to the farm and Olivia especially wanted to know about and be involved in everything we did on the farm. Everything took twice as long as usual to do and Olivia wanted to follow me everywhere. While I was delighted to be able to teach them about our way of life it made me realize just how exhausting parenting can be. It made me very grateful for choosing not to be a parent. I just don’t have the energy!
Two days later CouchSurfers Tom and Alannah arrived. They were our only scheduled guests for that period and we were now a house of 9! Aaron managed to score the loan of a queen-sized mattress off Marty and we converted the bar into the kid’s bedroom. Subsequently we have now decided to turf out the old sofa and chair in the bar and invest in a couple of fold-out beds so we never get caught short again.
CouchSurfers Tom and Alannah were just absolutely delightful to host. We had a lot in common and conversation just flowed. They stayed for 2 days and we honestly felt like we just made some great lifelong friends.
