24 February 2010
It finally happened. Last week Joy’s darlings broke out to investigate what was on the other side of the fence.
Why oh why didn’t they break out where it was easy and head straight up the drive? What would be the fun in that eh?
8 O’clock on a weekday evening there’s a knock at the door. Aaron’s in bed. I lean myself out the window. (The front door lock is broken and permanently shut until we buy a new one). An older gentleman is standing there.
“You own some piglets?”
“Yep”
“Black ones?”
“Yep”
“They were just running up the highway”
“Oh my god!” I feel absolutely sick at the thought of 7 piglets running along the highway.
“I’ve got them back in for you”.
“Thank you so much!”
“I didn’t realise your driveway was so long”
And then I remember the locks on the gate and I look down to see the man has a bandage on his leg. Oh my god! The poor sod has just had to hobble all the way up our long driveway.
Aaron was out of bed, dressed and outside before I had a chance to close the window.
We went down the drive and said our thank yous and then attempted, with some difficulty to get the piglets out of Phyllis’ paddock and back in their own paddock. They had clearly just had a feed and weren’t that interested in the sound of banging buckets and troughs.
Still they were all back in within 10 minutes, which was fortunate as the light was fading fast.
We couldn’t figure out how they’d got out but Aaron wondered if it was the open stockyard gate. I wasn’t convinced but we closed it anyway.
With nightime arriving we were pretty confident the piglets would go to bed now. Then in the morning they’d have the 4am feed and then head back to bed until lunchtime. That would hopefully give Aaron enough time to get home, feed out and board up any escape routes.
Still, I tossed and turned all night, as my imagination tried to convince me that we’d have no piglets left by the morning.
They were there in the morning though. And when Aaron got home from work the next day the piglets were still with mum. He found their escape route out the front fence, hence the reason they’d gone for the bridge, (although up Gary’s drive would have been a better option!) the gap was quickly bordered up and then Aaron set up an electric unit around the perimeter. A few piglet zappings later and they seemed content enough to stay away from the fences.
When Will This Drought End?
From Auckland north it is looking brown. In fact the further north you go the worse it gets.
We at least have some green, unlike many other farms we’ve seen, but our pasture isn’t that great. Most of the grasses have gone to seed and there’s whole patches that have died off. It’s only the cursed kikuyu that bravely battles on. We’re actually grateful for it for once.
The cattle are getting plenty of willow, the sheep seem unconcerned and the pigs have enough to keep them happy.
The ducks and chickens on the other hand aren’t coping all that well. The ground is rock hard so most attempts at foraging are severely restricted. The chickens struggle to scratch the ground and the ducks cannot get their bills in the earth to retrieve tasty insect morsels. We are feeding them all extra but for no return. We’ve had no eggs since early December.
The ducks’ pond keeps drying up and we keep trying to empty our water tank into it but the dam walls have cracked and the water just drains away.
Subsequently the ducks are bored and spend most days lined up along the fenceline quacking their annoyance at us.
The vege gardens and the orchards are taking a hammering. We had wonderful fruit set in December but all the fruit, without exception, has dropped off early and Emily and Olive have made the most of this unexpected opportunity and eaten the lot.
A lot of the veges have struggled or failed to grow, although our Perpetual Spinach, Bright Lights Silverbeet, Welsh Bunching Onions and Society Garlic have all gone crazy.
And then finally, horror upon horrors, our dam ran dry last week. It was an unpleasant discovery and ohhh how grateful I am we bought a water pump last year. There’s a strong water flow coming out of a seam in the ground through the bush, on Gary’s side. The hole wasn’t there until about 18 months ago when mother nature lashed out and the ground gave way. A bastard at the time for Gary but what a blessing it has proved to be for us now.
Aaron has spent several hours over several days at the pump, slowly chugging water into the 25mm pipe. It’s a pain of a task but at least we don’t have to pay to truck water in. Apparently water prices are up to triple their usual amount in some northern areas due to demand. Hmmm, how surprising!
A Somewhat Empty House
We’ve had a few HelpX requests come through since Kuri left but we (meaning me) decided to take a break. Sometimes it’s nice just to let the discipline slide. It’s nice not to have to worry about eating perfectly balanced meals. It’s nice not to have to do the housework if I don’t want to. And it’s nice not to spend so much money at the supermarket if I don’t want to.
But this last weekend was Paul and Nicky’s quarterly weekend. It didn’t start so well. They set off from Auckland Friday mid-afternoon and arrived early evening. The traffic was a crawl virtually from Puhoi tunnel north. And the reason? No, no car crash, no bodies strewn across the highway, just cones. That’s right, god damn blasted cones in Warkworth where Transit NZ have been working on the Warkworth intersections since early 2009.
Surely they must be going to finish soon I thought. So I Googled it. Apparently completion of these roadworks is scheduled for 2012. Oh our visitors will be thrilled.
Eventually Paul and Nicky arrived.
We had dinner, drinks and the traditional apple pie and custard and then as usual I insisted on going to bed early as we had an early start and I had to get up and feed out before we headed up to Whangarei for the morning.
We went to the Whangarei Growers markets for the first time and how fabulous it was. If only they were closer I would shop there every week. As it was I emptied my wallet of all its cash for tomatoes, apples, oranges, garlic and coriander.
After wandering around the markets we walked across the road to the artisan markets. I found some absolutely beautiful jewellery, all murano glass. I could have spent hundreds; I spent nothing. We did however buy a beautiful blackboard with fencepost frame, which we plan to use once we find ourselves a market to sell at.
Then it was home and a weekend of relaxing with bits of farming thrown in. For some reason I felt completely spaced out and unwell on Sunday and I struggled to even hold a conversation, let alone anything else.
The Circle of Life
9 February 2010
It caught us by surprise.
Death continued to hang around as our chicken bravely battled on. She seemed to get stronger and stronger by the day and seemed to be walking quite well.
“This isn’t going to last is it?”
Aaron agreed. He was as unconvinced as I at the chicken’s once again miraculous recovery.
It was HelpXer Kuri’s last day with us and she asked if she could see the sheep. The sheep have been on the other side of the stream for several weeks. We generally check on them twice a week and it was a good excuse to go for a wander and make sure the lamb was still doing well.
Kuri, the dogs and I walked behind the stream and out into the open paddock. The sheep were in the shade under the macrocarpa. I did a head count and then I moved around the tree and did another head count. Tulip was missing.
And then the wind shifted direction and both the dogs and I caught a whiff of something rotting. The dogs took off across the paddock and I after them.
“Stay here Kuri!” I yelled behind me.
I got to the stream edge and looked down.
It was bad; 3 or 4 days in the hot sun bad.
What had once been Tulip floated on the edge of the stream, bloated to hell and down to bone where the eel’s had been feasting. I couldn’t recognise her at all as Tulip
I turned around and Kuri was walking towards me. There was no way in hell she’d want to see this and the dogs were getting excited by the stench. There was nothing I could do and so I quickly walked back the way we’d come, taking the dogs and Kuri with me.
I expected to feel distraught but what I’d seen floating just didn’t look like Tulip at all. If it had just happened or she was stretched out in the paddock I think I would have felt differently but instead all I felt was acute embarrassment. For some reason I didn’t want a vegetarian HelpXer to know our sheep had drowned.
To be honest I can’t figure out how it happened. The stream is so low now with the drought that the water is barely ankle deep in most places. Although she may have fallen (?) in in a deep place there were plenty of places that she could have got out. She must have jumped, slipped, fallen into the water and then panicked and floundered in one spot until she exhausted herself. Recently shorn she didn’t even have wool to weigh her down. It would have been an awful end.
She was due to go in the freezer next month.
So Death got bored waiting for the chicken and took our ewe instead. It seems an unfair exchange to me but what am I going to do about it?
She’s Wearing What?!
Troy and Jacqui got married on the 29th.
Aaron and I drove down to Auckland early morning. Aaron spent the morning with Troy and I with Jo. I took 3 outfits from my wardrobe and I tried them on at Jo’s. I’d lost too much weight for the little black number, I’d put on too much muscle for the long brown dress and the purple top and black pants didn’t match.
Once again Jo emptied her wardrobe for me. I tried on various outfits and narrowed it down to 2.
I decided on the black and white halter neck, Jo preferred the brown and gold.
I ummed and ahhed, ummed and ahhed and then had a shower, did my hair and face and put on the black and white one. Suddenly it looked blah. I put on the brown and gold and it was a winner.
We arrived at the venue and went straight inside to get away from the heat of the sun. We stood around talking to various people for about half an hour and then suddenly my sister was waving me over with a slightly mortified look on her face.
She pointed at the doorway just as my sister-in-law walked through in the exact same dress as me. She laughed and saw the funny side but quite frankly I was mortified and promptly died a thousand deaths.
How often do I ever go anywhere that affords me the chance to dress up? And to find myself wearing the same outfit as my sister-in-law???
And so now my overriding memory of that day, apart from the unbearable heat, is of the dress, and not even the bride’s!
So Much Pork
We are in a bit of a quandary. Aaron has calculated that we could have some 40 piglets on the property between March and July.
That’s a lot of mouths to feed. 17 buckets per mealtime he’s worked out.
That’s a lot of pork to sell. How? Where? To whom?
I don’t think the deal with the German butcher will happen. He wants an abattoir and the more we think about trying to build one with no money the less likely it seems. We know someone who will build it and we can only hope they will allow us to utilise it. But that won’t make the German the money he wants and if we sell our pork to him it’ll it be at break even price for us.
Is it worth it?
And so we are slogging our guts out, producing great pork but floundering in terms of selling it. The meat regulations are so restrictive in New Zealand. The laws are designed to make it easy for the big corporates and virtually impossible for the small player. Ethics and old-fashioned quality count for nothing.
What did the man from the NZ Pork Industry tell me? - Free-range pork is of inferior quality and not worth producing.
No one will buy it apparently.
And so our next plan is to investigate getting into a Farmer’s Market. We know which one we want to get into but the question is how? We worked out a basic business model this weekend and then Googled the various costs.
For us to enter the Farmers Market arena will mean set-up costs of up to $20,000.
Maximum profit would be $20,000 per annum.
So it would mean every Saturday at the market for a year before maybe 18 months before we made anything. After that the profit’s ours, we’d have assets to sell when we’ve had enough and the extra money on our mortgage would mean we would be mortgage free in 7 years. The interest savings alone would equal around $16,000.
We both agree that it’s worth the risk (?) / challenge (?).
This isn’t about getting rich for us. It’s about ridding our corner of the world of unethically farmed pork.
So now we have a lot of planning and investigating to do. The biggest challenge I can see will be getting past any NZFSA hurdles thrown at us. I’ve emailed a number of questions to them to ask what is and isn’t possible. If we can meet the requirements we next go to the Market owners, and if we pass their inspection we need to get permission from the local council to sell meat. If all that goes according to plan we then need to sort out a deal with an abattoir and a butcher. Finally we then need to approach a bank for a business loan. Worst case scenario is we put it against the mortgage.
So now the aim is to be in the market in September or October.
Written down it sounds simple but I’m expecting a big fat “No” from someone along the chain. What we do then depends on what it will take to get past the “No”.
We’ve spent the last year floundering around looking for a break but ultimately the issue is that this is a hobby. It’s not our main line of work and therefore we can’t dedicate hours to the cause or produce pork in the quantity that would enable us to fight and win many battles.
The Cult of Aaron and Lisa
It’s happened; we’ve become our own cult. Woe betide any poor soul who comes around to visit as they are bound to find themselves assaulted with vast amounts of information about the corruption of the food industry and the food we eat.
The more I read the more I am horrified by what has happened and what is continuing to happen in the food industry. I have spent years being conned and manipulated by large corporations with absolutely no interest in my health or wellbeing.
Almost everything I’ve been led to believe is a lie and it’s all designed with one goal in mind – global domination by a few very large, very scary corporations. The ultimate goal of these corporations is to eliminate every small player in the market and to own everything within the food chain, from the soil to the supermarket shelf. These companies want to siphon all that money off our shores and into their own foreign bank accounts. They are trying to ensure that the food we eat is so nutrionally poor or unhealthy that we are forced to gain health from other sectors – weightloss clinics, nutriosinists, gyms, pharmaceuticals, supplements, etc. Not only do these companies want to be the sole producers of food, they have also started buying up and own most of the above sectors. Nestle own Jenny Craig for Christ’s sakes!
These companies are giving huge amounts of money to Food Safety Authorities in various countries (including New Zealand) to create rules to to make it difficult for people like me and Aaron from selling the food we produce.
Having read an enormous amount of information about the global food trade I now know why doing what we want to do is so difficult but I don’t understand it. I don’t understand why big corporates are so hellbent on market domination to the point that they want all small players eliminated. Yes it’s money, it’s all about the money but why do our few paltry dollars that we could make make such a difference to them?
Fuck them. I mean seriously, Fuck Them! No way am I going to allow those bastards take away my right to eat nutritious, unadulterated food. No way are they going to stop us selling good food.
It caught us by surprise.
Death continued to hang around as our chicken bravely battled on. She seemed to get stronger and stronger by the day and seemed to be walking quite well.
“This isn’t going to last is it?”
Aaron agreed. He was as unconvinced as I at the chicken’s once again miraculous recovery.
It was HelpXer Kuri’s last day with us and she asked if she could see the sheep. The sheep have been on the other side of the stream for several weeks. We generally check on them twice a week and it was a good excuse to go for a wander and make sure the lamb was still doing well.
Kuri, the dogs and I walked behind the stream and out into the open paddock. The sheep were in the shade under the macrocarpa. I did a head count and then I moved around the tree and did another head count. Tulip was missing.
And then the wind shifted direction and both the dogs and I caught a whiff of something rotting. The dogs took off across the paddock and I after them.
“Stay here Kuri!” I yelled behind me.
I got to the stream edge and looked down.
It was bad; 3 or 4 days in the hot sun bad.
What had once been Tulip floated on the edge of the stream, bloated to hell and down to bone where the eel’s had been feasting. I couldn’t recognise her at all as Tulip
I turned around and Kuri was walking towards me. There was no way in hell she’d want to see this and the dogs were getting excited by the stench. There was nothing I could do and so I quickly walked back the way we’d come, taking the dogs and Kuri with me.
I expected to feel distraught but what I’d seen floating just didn’t look like Tulip at all. If it had just happened or she was stretched out in the paddock I think I would have felt differently but instead all I felt was acute embarrassment. For some reason I didn’t want a vegetarian HelpXer to know our sheep had drowned.
To be honest I can’t figure out how it happened. The stream is so low now with the drought that the water is barely ankle deep in most places. Although she may have fallen (?) in in a deep place there were plenty of places that she could have got out. She must have jumped, slipped, fallen into the water and then panicked and floundered in one spot until she exhausted herself. Recently shorn she didn’t even have wool to weigh her down. It would have been an awful end.
She was due to go in the freezer next month.
So Death got bored waiting for the chicken and took our ewe instead. It seems an unfair exchange to me but what am I going to do about it?
She’s Wearing What?!
Troy and Jacqui got married on the 29th.
Aaron and I drove down to Auckland early morning. Aaron spent the morning with Troy and I with Jo. I took 3 outfits from my wardrobe and I tried them on at Jo’s. I’d lost too much weight for the little black number, I’d put on too much muscle for the long brown dress and the purple top and black pants didn’t match.
Once again Jo emptied her wardrobe for me. I tried on various outfits and narrowed it down to 2.
I decided on the black and white halter neck, Jo preferred the brown and gold.
I ummed and ahhed, ummed and ahhed and then had a shower, did my hair and face and put on the black and white one. Suddenly it looked blah. I put on the brown and gold and it was a winner.
We arrived at the venue and went straight inside to get away from the heat of the sun. We stood around talking to various people for about half an hour and then suddenly my sister was waving me over with a slightly mortified look on her face.
She pointed at the doorway just as my sister-in-law walked through in the exact same dress as me. She laughed and saw the funny side but quite frankly I was mortified and promptly died a thousand deaths.
How often do I ever go anywhere that affords me the chance to dress up? And to find myself wearing the same outfit as my sister-in-law???
And so now my overriding memory of that day, apart from the unbearable heat, is of the dress, and not even the bride’s!
So Much Pork
We are in a bit of a quandary. Aaron has calculated that we could have some 40 piglets on the property between March and July.
That’s a lot of mouths to feed. 17 buckets per mealtime he’s worked out.
That’s a lot of pork to sell. How? Where? To whom?
I don’t think the deal with the German butcher will happen. He wants an abattoir and the more we think about trying to build one with no money the less likely it seems. We know someone who will build it and we can only hope they will allow us to utilise it. But that won’t make the German the money he wants and if we sell our pork to him it’ll it be at break even price for us.
Is it worth it?
And so we are slogging our guts out, producing great pork but floundering in terms of selling it. The meat regulations are so restrictive in New Zealand. The laws are designed to make it easy for the big corporates and virtually impossible for the small player. Ethics and old-fashioned quality count for nothing.
What did the man from the NZ Pork Industry tell me? - Free-range pork is of inferior quality and not worth producing.
No one will buy it apparently.
And so our next plan is to investigate getting into a Farmer’s Market. We know which one we want to get into but the question is how? We worked out a basic business model this weekend and then Googled the various costs.
For us to enter the Farmers Market arena will mean set-up costs of up to $20,000.
Maximum profit would be $20,000 per annum.
So it would mean every Saturday at the market for a year before maybe 18 months before we made anything. After that the profit’s ours, we’d have assets to sell when we’ve had enough and the extra money on our mortgage would mean we would be mortgage free in 7 years. The interest savings alone would equal around $16,000.
We both agree that it’s worth the risk (?) / challenge (?).
This isn’t about getting rich for us. It’s about ridding our corner of the world of unethically farmed pork.
So now we have a lot of planning and investigating to do. The biggest challenge I can see will be getting past any NZFSA hurdles thrown at us. I’ve emailed a number of questions to them to ask what is and isn’t possible. If we can meet the requirements we next go to the Market owners, and if we pass their inspection we need to get permission from the local council to sell meat. If all that goes according to plan we then need to sort out a deal with an abattoir and a butcher. Finally we then need to approach a bank for a business loan. Worst case scenario is we put it against the mortgage.
So now the aim is to be in the market in September or October.
Written down it sounds simple but I’m expecting a big fat “No” from someone along the chain. What we do then depends on what it will take to get past the “No”.
We’ve spent the last year floundering around looking for a break but ultimately the issue is that this is a hobby. It’s not our main line of work and therefore we can’t dedicate hours to the cause or produce pork in the quantity that would enable us to fight and win many battles.
The Cult of Aaron and Lisa
It’s happened; we’ve become our own cult. Woe betide any poor soul who comes around to visit as they are bound to find themselves assaulted with vast amounts of information about the corruption of the food industry and the food we eat.
The more I read the more I am horrified by what has happened and what is continuing to happen in the food industry. I have spent years being conned and manipulated by large corporations with absolutely no interest in my health or wellbeing.
Almost everything I’ve been led to believe is a lie and it’s all designed with one goal in mind – global domination by a few very large, very scary corporations. The ultimate goal of these corporations is to eliminate every small player in the market and to own everything within the food chain, from the soil to the supermarket shelf. These companies want to siphon all that money off our shores and into their own foreign bank accounts. They are trying to ensure that the food we eat is so nutrionally poor or unhealthy that we are forced to gain health from other sectors – weightloss clinics, nutriosinists, gyms, pharmaceuticals, supplements, etc. Not only do these companies want to be the sole producers of food, they have also started buying up and own most of the above sectors. Nestle own Jenny Craig for Christ’s sakes!
These companies are giving huge amounts of money to Food Safety Authorities in various countries (including New Zealand) to create rules to to make it difficult for people like me and Aaron from selling the food we produce.
Having read an enormous amount of information about the global food trade I now know why doing what we want to do is so difficult but I don’t understand it. I don’t understand why big corporates are so hellbent on market domination to the point that they want all small players eliminated. Yes it’s money, it’s all about the money but why do our few paltry dollars that we could make make such a difference to them?
Fuck them. I mean seriously, Fuck Them! No way am I going to allow those bastards take away my right to eat nutritious, unadulterated food. No way are they going to stop us selling good food.
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