I have none!
My life is chaotic and out of control.
Nothing...nothing...nothing is going right this year. Eevry step forward we take is followed by a step backward. We have gained nothing on the block this year except exhaustion and a financial hammering.
The only positive is we have gained better health, exceptionally trim bodies and my biceps are positively bulging.
Times up...there's shit to do...
My Year of Hell
13 September 2010
Well that's what it feels like anyway.
This year has essentially been a year of hard slog. There's been no progress, just frantic scrabbling to try stop us sliding backwards. Endless amount of money has been sucked into a black hole as we desperately try to repair and maintain and...and... And well it's all just too much really.
For both of us it has pushed us to the absolute limits mentally and physically.
There are times when I think my body is going to break. It screams and pinches and aches and it ceases up.
As for my mind, well a funny thing happened the other day; the library at work launched a new health resource directory. An email suggested staff take a look at its health calculator. Pick a subject, answer 10 or more questions and it calculates your risk.
I picked the 2 mental issues - stress and depression. My stress answers indicate I may or may not have a stress-related disorder. (I soooo have stress disorder!) My depression answers were another matter altogether. Apparently I have a major depressive disorder and should seek professional help. "Ha ha-ha" I laughed. "Yeah whatever, what do you know?" I said and logged off. But then I started to think about it.
When did I last laugh? When did I last step foot outside my door and say "Damn, I love this lifestyle?" When did I last feel like I was living rather than existing? When did I last get through a day without wanting to just sit in a corner and cry?
We planned this year to be our hard slog year, during which time we would build up enough livestock to start a business. We've done all that but with disastrous consequences. A 6-month drought followed by I don't know how many months of rain has left us with nothing but mud. It's not just mud either; it's shin-deep, lose your gumboot mud. The pigs churn it up more and more and with each heavy rainfall that mud flows in great torrents down the hills and disappears into the stream.
We're losing land. We're watching truck loads of dirt washing away forever. It's an environmental nightmare, not to mention a huge financial loss as we pay to truck in what we've lost.
We now have fences that once touched the ground, hanging high enough in the air that the dogs can easily squeeze under.
On top of that we've lost so many animals. It's been a year of death. So many animals have died in tragic circumstances and we've then added to the mix by doing regular planned culls. Death is a constant companion it seems these days.
And the worst is yet to come.
We both hit a wall this month.
I arrived home on yet another rainy day to find Aaron slumped in the chair with a beer in his hand
“I can’t take this anymore”
And then a few days later I found myself sliding around in a pig paddock full of mud at 4am in the morning and I hurled the empty feed buckets across the driveway in exhausted frustration
“I can’t fucking do this any more! I can’t do it! I can’t do it! I can’t do it!” (Typical woman; it takes me at least 5 times as many words as a man to express myself.)
And so Aaron made a decision that I hadn’t even contemplated, that I feel desperately unhappy about, and yet I agreed to because I know it is the right thing to do.
We are ending the pig farming dream. The plan was to go into business this October but the plan has now changed.
The decision is to cull Mabel and Rose before the end of the year. Rose I am not terribly sad about as she is a bit of a grumpy girl, however I am going to struggle with Mabel. She is such a sweet pig but she is now about 6 years old and maybe only has 1 or 2 litters left in her.
She would not handle well a move to another farm and so we feel this is the only option. I don’t think I could eat her and in fact I know will struggle to eat Rose as well.
And then there are Emily and Olive. Such lovely girls. Originally destined to be porkers but saved at the end by our decision to expand.
I cannot and will not turn them into mince and sausages. And so we must find a home for them before the end of summer 2011. I know I shall miss them.
And so that leaves us with our original 4 breeders – Arthur, Joy, Phyllis and Stanley. 2 boars is too many but we are far too attached to these 4 to ever consider getting rid of them.
Perhaps Aaron might think differently. He tells me pigs are livestock not pets but that is only the way he thinks. As for me I consider the pigs on a par with the dogs. I love them all equally and if I could only choose to have one pet it would be a pig.
My expectation is that the remaining 4 will live long into their retirement here on the farm.
So now that the pig farming dream is over we are now returning to our pre-pig goal of becoming self-sustaining. Not completely of course but hopefully in food both for us and our livestock.
I got permission to reduce my job to part-time as of October and so I will be able to dedicate more of my time to developing the farm. The plan was that the pig business would replace the money I would no longer be earning but that has now changed. Now I will have to find other ways of replacing that money.
Health and Vitamins and the Global Food Trade
And so, for all this stress that we are under, the exhaustion, fatigue and mental struggles, I am incredibly healthy.
Amazingly (or perhaps not) I am not succumbing to viruses, infections or skin complaints.
The only issue is my weight. I finally have the slim body and toned figure I always wanted but it has come at a high price.
I am getting so much exercise on the farm this year that I am struggling to eat enough to replace what I am burning. I’ve had several people comment that I am losing weight, and although I don’t know if that’s true, I have noticed my waistbands getting looser and there are times when I can’t seem to eat enough to stop getting the shakes.
The muscles are getting a great work out but that too has had a cost. I ripped(?), tore(?), at the very least did some serious damage to my right shoulder while trying to scrubcut wet kikuyu at the start of May.
Straight away I noticed I experienced absolutely no discomfort if I took 2 x Omega 3 (sustainably fished of course) tablets per day. I can lift heavy things, carry heavy things and generally do the usual without a 2nd thought. As soon as I stop taking them it is like I have reinjured my shoulder. How bizarre is that?
I also started taking Vitamin C, B, D, E and Zinc.
For the first couple of months it seemed that not much changed but 4 months later and the dermatitis has all but gone. Only the bridge of my nose continues to be a problem area.
The wedding ring is finally back on but I am still nervous about putting the engagement ring on as the speed bumps soldered onto it stop it moving freely.
I’ve had no stress acne breakouts since May and my immune system appears to be in top form.
I feel healthy and I am convinced the vitamins are playing a vital role.
This last 12 months really has been one of intense research and knowledge gathering from books, DVDs, magazine articles and conversation. We now know some incredibly fascinating and scary things about food, health, organics, biodynamics and peak oil.
The Cult of Aaron and Lisa is alive and well and now more than just a little obsessive.
We now can’t eat anything without religiously checking the packets for ingredients. And judging by this last weekend, we’re now the party guests that friends might think twice about inviting.
We just can’t (and won’t) pop any old thing into our mouths now.
Is it sustainable? Is it organic? Is it Fair Trade? What implications does my eating this have on human and/or animal welfare?
We both looked at the party guest’s packet of prawn cutlets and then looked at each other
“What do you reckon?”
“Thailand. You just know that they’re from Thailand”
“What?! What does that mean? What’s wrong with them???” the party guest looked slightly horrified
“Uh..err…um, don’t worry, just eat your prawns and don’t worry about it.”
“No. What?! What’s wrong with my prawns?”
“Well probably nothing. They’re probably fine. They’re probably not from Thailand.”
The party guest turns the box around and around looking for the country of origin. She hands it to Aaron and he looks
“Product of Thailand” he puts the packet down.
“You have to tell me”
“You don’t want to know”
“Yes I do”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes”
“Prawns farmed domestically in Third World regions of Asia are responsible for the mass destruction of mangrove swamps. Poor prawn farmers create artificial ponds where mangroves once were and then to keep the prawns alive long enough to get to a saleable size they pump the water with a highly toxic cocktail of chemicals, growth hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, fungicides, etc. You’re not eating a prawn, you’re eating a chemical time bomb”.
Other guests eye us suspiciously and we know thwy're thinking "Are they for real?"
We end the conversation and the prawns get eaten.
It’s a good thing no one wanted coffee while we were there. I now know that every time someone drinks non-FairTrade coffee they perpetuate the poverty and financial hardship of a Third World family.
Nestle can easily make $30 per kilo for coffee but they frequently charge the grower to take it away. Apparently Nestle quite often decides it doesn’t make enough from coffee to justify paying the farmers.
And then there’s Soy Milk. For years I have slugged it back, smug in the knowledge that I am doing something good for my health.
Until now.
Soy milk is apparently a hormone disruptor. It has large amounts of plant-based oestrogen in it, which has been found to lead to premature sexual maturity in children.
I’m not a child so why would that be an issue for me?
It’s an issue because I started going through menopause at 37. I have no proof that soy milk played a part in this but I’ve read enough about it now to go cold turkey.
I’m gutted of course. I love my Vanilla Soy Milk. I’m on oat milk now. It’s not exactly great stuff but the ingredients label is basic and until I read how dangerous oat milk is I’m guessing I’ll probably end up sticking with it.
Well that's what it feels like anyway.
This year has essentially been a year of hard slog. There's been no progress, just frantic scrabbling to try stop us sliding backwards. Endless amount of money has been sucked into a black hole as we desperately try to repair and maintain and...and... And well it's all just too much really.
For both of us it has pushed us to the absolute limits mentally and physically.
There are times when I think my body is going to break. It screams and pinches and aches and it ceases up.
As for my mind, well a funny thing happened the other day; the library at work launched a new health resource directory. An email suggested staff take a look at its health calculator. Pick a subject, answer 10 or more questions and it calculates your risk.
I picked the 2 mental issues - stress and depression. My stress answers indicate I may or may not have a stress-related disorder. (I soooo have stress disorder!) My depression answers were another matter altogether. Apparently I have a major depressive disorder and should seek professional help. "Ha ha-ha" I laughed. "Yeah whatever, what do you know?" I said and logged off. But then I started to think about it.
When did I last laugh? When did I last step foot outside my door and say "Damn, I love this lifestyle?" When did I last feel like I was living rather than existing? When did I last get through a day without wanting to just sit in a corner and cry?
We planned this year to be our hard slog year, during which time we would build up enough livestock to start a business. We've done all that but with disastrous consequences. A 6-month drought followed by I don't know how many months of rain has left us with nothing but mud. It's not just mud either; it's shin-deep, lose your gumboot mud. The pigs churn it up more and more and with each heavy rainfall that mud flows in great torrents down the hills and disappears into the stream.
We're losing land. We're watching truck loads of dirt washing away forever. It's an environmental nightmare, not to mention a huge financial loss as we pay to truck in what we've lost.
We now have fences that once touched the ground, hanging high enough in the air that the dogs can easily squeeze under.
On top of that we've lost so many animals. It's been a year of death. So many animals have died in tragic circumstances and we've then added to the mix by doing regular planned culls. Death is a constant companion it seems these days.
And the worst is yet to come.
We both hit a wall this month.
I arrived home on yet another rainy day to find Aaron slumped in the chair with a beer in his hand
“I can’t take this anymore”
And then a few days later I found myself sliding around in a pig paddock full of mud at 4am in the morning and I hurled the empty feed buckets across the driveway in exhausted frustration
“I can’t fucking do this any more! I can’t do it! I can’t do it! I can’t do it!” (Typical woman; it takes me at least 5 times as many words as a man to express myself.)
And so Aaron made a decision that I hadn’t even contemplated, that I feel desperately unhappy about, and yet I agreed to because I know it is the right thing to do.
We are ending the pig farming dream. The plan was to go into business this October but the plan has now changed.
The decision is to cull Mabel and Rose before the end of the year. Rose I am not terribly sad about as she is a bit of a grumpy girl, however I am going to struggle with Mabel. She is such a sweet pig but she is now about 6 years old and maybe only has 1 or 2 litters left in her.
She would not handle well a move to another farm and so we feel this is the only option. I don’t think I could eat her and in fact I know will struggle to eat Rose as well.
And then there are Emily and Olive. Such lovely girls. Originally destined to be porkers but saved at the end by our decision to expand.
I cannot and will not turn them into mince and sausages. And so we must find a home for them before the end of summer 2011. I know I shall miss them.
And so that leaves us with our original 4 breeders – Arthur, Joy, Phyllis and Stanley. 2 boars is too many but we are far too attached to these 4 to ever consider getting rid of them.
Perhaps Aaron might think differently. He tells me pigs are livestock not pets but that is only the way he thinks. As for me I consider the pigs on a par with the dogs. I love them all equally and if I could only choose to have one pet it would be a pig.
My expectation is that the remaining 4 will live long into their retirement here on the farm.
So now that the pig farming dream is over we are now returning to our pre-pig goal of becoming self-sustaining. Not completely of course but hopefully in food both for us and our livestock.
I got permission to reduce my job to part-time as of October and so I will be able to dedicate more of my time to developing the farm. The plan was that the pig business would replace the money I would no longer be earning but that has now changed. Now I will have to find other ways of replacing that money.
Health and Vitamins and the Global Food Trade
And so, for all this stress that we are under, the exhaustion, fatigue and mental struggles, I am incredibly healthy.
Amazingly (or perhaps not) I am not succumbing to viruses, infections or skin complaints.
The only issue is my weight. I finally have the slim body and toned figure I always wanted but it has come at a high price.
I am getting so much exercise on the farm this year that I am struggling to eat enough to replace what I am burning. I’ve had several people comment that I am losing weight, and although I don’t know if that’s true, I have noticed my waistbands getting looser and there are times when I can’t seem to eat enough to stop getting the shakes.
The muscles are getting a great work out but that too has had a cost. I ripped(?), tore(?), at the very least did some serious damage to my right shoulder while trying to scrubcut wet kikuyu at the start of May.
Straight away I noticed I experienced absolutely no discomfort if I took 2 x Omega 3 (sustainably fished of course) tablets per day. I can lift heavy things, carry heavy things and generally do the usual without a 2nd thought. As soon as I stop taking them it is like I have reinjured my shoulder. How bizarre is that?
I also started taking Vitamin C, B, D, E and Zinc.
For the first couple of months it seemed that not much changed but 4 months later and the dermatitis has all but gone. Only the bridge of my nose continues to be a problem area.
The wedding ring is finally back on but I am still nervous about putting the engagement ring on as the speed bumps soldered onto it stop it moving freely.
I’ve had no stress acne breakouts since May and my immune system appears to be in top form.
I feel healthy and I am convinced the vitamins are playing a vital role.
This last 12 months really has been one of intense research and knowledge gathering from books, DVDs, magazine articles and conversation. We now know some incredibly fascinating and scary things about food, health, organics, biodynamics and peak oil.
The Cult of Aaron and Lisa is alive and well and now more than just a little obsessive.
We now can’t eat anything without religiously checking the packets for ingredients. And judging by this last weekend, we’re now the party guests that friends might think twice about inviting.
We just can’t (and won’t) pop any old thing into our mouths now.
Is it sustainable? Is it organic? Is it Fair Trade? What implications does my eating this have on human and/or animal welfare?
We both looked at the party guest’s packet of prawn cutlets and then looked at each other
“What do you reckon?”
“Thailand. You just know that they’re from Thailand”
“What?! What does that mean? What’s wrong with them???” the party guest looked slightly horrified
“Uh..err…um, don’t worry, just eat your prawns and don’t worry about it.”
“No. What?! What’s wrong with my prawns?”
“Well probably nothing. They’re probably fine. They’re probably not from Thailand.”
The party guest turns the box around and around looking for the country of origin. She hands it to Aaron and he looks
“Product of Thailand” he puts the packet down.
“You have to tell me”
“You don’t want to know”
“Yes I do”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes”
“Prawns farmed domestically in Third World regions of Asia are responsible for the mass destruction of mangrove swamps. Poor prawn farmers create artificial ponds where mangroves once were and then to keep the prawns alive long enough to get to a saleable size they pump the water with a highly toxic cocktail of chemicals, growth hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, fungicides, etc. You’re not eating a prawn, you’re eating a chemical time bomb”.
Other guests eye us suspiciously and we know thwy're thinking "Are they for real?"
We end the conversation and the prawns get eaten.
It’s a good thing no one wanted coffee while we were there. I now know that every time someone drinks non-FairTrade coffee they perpetuate the poverty and financial hardship of a Third World family.
Nestle can easily make $30 per kilo for coffee but they frequently charge the grower to take it away. Apparently Nestle quite often decides it doesn’t make enough from coffee to justify paying the farmers.
And then there’s Soy Milk. For years I have slugged it back, smug in the knowledge that I am doing something good for my health.
Until now.
Soy milk is apparently a hormone disruptor. It has large amounts of plant-based oestrogen in it, which has been found to lead to premature sexual maturity in children.
I’m not a child so why would that be an issue for me?
It’s an issue because I started going through menopause at 37. I have no proof that soy milk played a part in this but I’ve read enough about it now to go cold turkey.
I’m gutted of course. I love my Vanilla Soy Milk. I’m on oat milk now. It’s not exactly great stuff but the ingredients label is basic and until I read how dangerous oat milk is I’m guessing I’ll probably end up sticking with it.
Aromatherapy Massage Anyone?
19 July 2010
It’s a grey, drizzly Monday but the sun keeps coming out in half hour bursts. So, I’m alternating between indoor and outdoor jobs and slowly getting stuff done.
I’ve just been massaging a mite and lice deterrent into Emily, Olive, Mabel (and Rose when I can catch her). It’s a mix of virgin olive oil and essential oils – tea tree, rosewood, lavender, patchouli and peppermint.
The damp weather and our struggle to keep pig bedding dry has meant an influx of lice and what I suspect is pig scabies. Determined not to resort to chemicals I Googled organic treatments and found a variety of ideas for both humans and pigs, most of them almost identical. And so several times in the past couple of weeks I’ve headed down the hill with a recycled shampoo bottle full of oil and a pair of rubber gloves.
Emily and Stanley have a tendency to fall over at the slightest hint of a rub and so they were fairly easy to treat. With the slipperiness of the oil and the heady aroma of the essential oils, the piggies were clearly loving every minute of it!
Rose and Mabel were a little harder to convince. Rose just doesn’t trust humans in her paddock and Mabel is usually wary. There’s something about this skin treatment though. The first time I tried I actually managed to convince Rose to accept a massage and despite her attempts to resist it I think in the end she rather enjoyed it. My attempts since have been a little less successful but she at least allows me a good 10 seconds before she runs off.
Mabel on the other hand just has to smell the oil and she rolls over and allows herself to completely relax. In fact she was rather put out when I got up to leave just before and came after me and nudged the bottle and grunted. A couple of rubs later and over she went again.
It has to be said that a pig is far easier to massage with a slick of oil on their skin.
As for whether the treatment is working, it would appear so. Emily who seemed to be suffering the worst of the mites has skin now that only looks mildly irritated. Another treatment or two and I suspect everything will be fine.
I can’t see any more irritation on Mabel but Rose I’m not so sure about. I’m not convinced her condition is improving and she just won’t let me get too close to really inspect. She’s rubbed a large section of hair off her back and her skin is hard, lumpy and scaly. The only good thing about it is that it doesn’t appear to cause her any pain. It’s irritated though so I need to come up with a good solution. Perhaps just olive oil and tea tree oil by themselves or with a bit of calendula oil.
The pig bedding issue has become a bit of a nightmare this winter. Despite topping up over summer the pigs have all insisted in digging into it down to ground level, mixing chip with dirt. The subsequent wet weather has caused a huge headache. The pigs have created mini moats around their housing with their trotters. These fill with rain, the dampness seeps in the edges of the housing, add to that a rain-drenched piggie and the dirt in the chip turns to mud and suddenly the bedding is damp.
And then unexpectedly we very suddenly had to remove Mabel and Rose from their piglets.
Their piglets were 3-months old, Mabel had dried up and was just getting on with it but Rose hadn’t dried up and was suddenly getting very tetchy with both Mabel and the piglets. She was becoming quite manic at mealtimes, the food was plenty but clearly the lack of grass was taking its toll. She would attack every pig in sight at mealtime.
Aaron quickly erected a new pig house on the bottom paddock. We had nothing to put down as bedding except wet woodchip and so that is what we had to use.
Our local suppliers of woodchip can’t provide any that’s dry and I will only use our last 3 hay bales as a last resort. Hay is the worst bedding to use because it soaks up moisture straight away and then becomes rank very quickly.
A pig sleeping on wet bedding is a recipe for disaster. It might work for wild pigs but there’s a bit of difference between wild and domesticated free-range. Things were looking very dire for a good week there while we tried desperately to come up with an alternative. And then I started to think about how the sows going into labour often rip off low manuka tree branches for their nests.
So armed with secateurs and vege crates we waited for a warm, sunny day and started cutting lots of lush, feathery branches of manuka. Fortunately we have a huge supply of the stuff on our land.
We threw a large mound of tea tree into the house and moved the girls in. To be honest, I wasn’t totally convinced the idea would work but the next day I looked in the house and it was clear the girls had made the most of the tea tree, creating themselves a nice, cozy pig nest for two.
Since then we’ve been regularly pruning our trees and adding crates of branches to the various pig housing.
The pigs certainly don’t seem to mind the smell or the feel and tea tree has the added bonus of being both antiseptic and anti-parasitic.
The tea tree on damp woodchip actually stays quite dry we have decided our best option now is to bring in a truckload or two of damp woodchip. We will pile it into the houses on the already damp areas, which aren’t currently being slept on, and then keep topping up the actual nests with tea tree. Fingers crossed the chip actually manages to dry out a bit and keeps the mud down.
Everyone keeps saying this winter isn’t particularly wet but then why have we suddenly had this issue? It’s not like we didn’t top up the bedding over summer but clearly it wasn’t enough.
So that’s another note for summer – top up the bedding in the pig housing and when we think we’ve done enough, do it again so there’s twice as much as we think we need.
Eggsasperating!
Bloody ducks! 8 months of no laying and plenty of pleading and bargaining on my part, all to no avail. Admittedly the pleading has become more threatening as time passes by.
“You don’t want to lay? Fine don’t lay, but let me tell you that Duck a l’orange is looking pretty damn tempting right now.”
Being nice, being horrible, none of it has worked
And then last week the temperature plummeted overnight. It was 1°C and at 4am in the morning there was a frost that made my fingers burn with pain as I fed the piggies. Oh my god, there’s nothing much that beats that intense aching pain of cold. It’s like an ice cream headache in the fingers.
As for trying to wash the buckets after feed out, the top of the water in the bucket outside has an ice crust on it and the water beneath is so damn cold my hands lose their ability to grip properly. Thank god it doesn’t snow in our parts. I’d never cope.
But I digress, we had a frost and then hey presto, eggs! Half a dozen in one hit. A week later and the daily output is increasing; I collected 11 yesterday.
Suddenly I have a fridge full of duck eggs and I’m struggling to find the customers to buy them.
I have only 6 colleagues that will take them off my hands and so now I have to start advertising further afield. Ultimately I’d like to sell them at the gate but we need to set something up for that. We need to build a box to keep the eggs in and work out what we’re going to do about an honesty box. Murray and Patty used to have a jar and they reckoned they never lost the money. I guess it’s not a major as it would only amount to about $6 a day so it’s no great loss if someone does steal it.
$42 a week would cover our weekly cost for duck and chicken feed so at least we’d be breaking even while they’re laying.
Of course if we bumped off most of our roosters and some of our drakes we’d actually be clawing back some of the money we’ve lost over the last 8 months.
We haven’t done that deed yet. I’m not sure what it is about chopping the head off a chicken then plucking and gutting it that I’m not looking forward to…
Aaron Decides He Can Do More
After seeing numerous notices in the Kaiwaka Bugle begging for volunteers, Aaron finally decided he should enquire about joining the Kaiwaka St John’s Ambulance service. He rang Marj next door to enquire about the next meeting, went along to one of their weekly Tuesday meetings and that was it. He now has a uniform, has started going on call, attends weekly training, has started going to extra training courses and is doing study online.
The first event he attended the ambulance got to turn its siren on and they had to call in a helicopter. It was an exciting start to his new hobby/interest.
Already Aaron has decided to throw himself into it, volunteering as often as he can, and attending whatever training is available so that he can get to a senior level.
It’s all very community spirited and is a great way for him to network and to restore some credibility to the de Jonge name. I think it will in many ways finally establish us as a part of the community.
So Aaron’s getting out, meeting new people, being challenged and getting time out from farm and work.
As for me, well I get to pick up the slack. I’m even more tied to the farm than I was before. Those ‘urgent’ projects will get pushed back a bit more and there will be some jobs that will now take twice as long as there will only be me to do them.
Quite frankly I think it’s the worst timing to decide to get into this. I’m not sure how Aaron thinks he can keep everything going. Already he is struggling to do his full hours at work because of farm commitments and now this on top. I’m still working fulltime so I have nothing left to give. As for my desperate need of a break and some time out, that’s clearly not going to happen anytime soon.
It has to be said that sometimes I feel like I’m the one making all the sacrifices and getting fuck all in return. No doubt Aaron feels the same but at least he gets time out and time to socialise.
As work often takes him down to Auckland and beyond it is often easier for him to stay the night with friends or family than come home. At times it will mean I have to take leave to come home early and it usually means I have to get up earlier. Okay, so it’s not a huge sacrifice on my part but these things add up over time and at the moment the rewards for me seem to be zero.
Poorer Than Ever
The rewards are zero because we’ve thrown ourselves in the deep end and hiked the mortgage payments up to $4000 a month until the end of the year. That’s my entire salary and some of Aaron’s as well. That leaves us virtually nothing for anything but bills and livestock.
It’s all in a good cause because our fixed interest rates are quite low. Each month our goal to be mortage free within 10 years gets closer. On the other hand life is quite miserable when there’s barely enough money to get a haircut. I think it’s been 9 months since my last and my hair looks truly awful.
Aaron still has his wine club and book club giving him something to look forward to every couple of months, but my paltry $6 non-winning lotto ticket every week just hasn’t been doing it for me lately.
So I’ve gone a bit mad and now every Saturday morning I drive into Kaiwaka to the Italian La Nonna bakery and spend $10-$15 on bread. I was desperate to find something that I could look forward to each week and the bread is definitely filling some of that gap.
Their bread, while so-so when they first opened is now quite outstanding. No doubt they have a good ferment going and the flavour has developed over time as a result. The Olive bread is just exquisite and I have a hard job choosing between their focacia and ciabatta as a close second.
I suspect I sound like a spoiled child complaining about the struggle to pay off our mortgage when I know our parents and grandparents had just as big financial hardships. And yet how is it that people of those generations often managed to pay off their mortgages in their 40’s and often on one salary?
Aaron and I are apparently middle to high income Kiwis but it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it. Yes it would be fine if we paid our mortgage in line with the 30-year term but who the hell wants to still be paying a mortgage at 65?
I’ve been excessively careful with my money ever since I started earning and yet it’s never really stopped being a struggle. So what the hell am I / are we doing wrong??
We’ve got no savings, no retirement plan and no expendable income, so where’s my money?
It’s a grey, drizzly Monday but the sun keeps coming out in half hour bursts. So, I’m alternating between indoor and outdoor jobs and slowly getting stuff done.
I’ve just been massaging a mite and lice deterrent into Emily, Olive, Mabel (and Rose when I can catch her). It’s a mix of virgin olive oil and essential oils – tea tree, rosewood, lavender, patchouli and peppermint.
The damp weather and our struggle to keep pig bedding dry has meant an influx of lice and what I suspect is pig scabies. Determined not to resort to chemicals I Googled organic treatments and found a variety of ideas for both humans and pigs, most of them almost identical. And so several times in the past couple of weeks I’ve headed down the hill with a recycled shampoo bottle full of oil and a pair of rubber gloves.
Emily and Stanley have a tendency to fall over at the slightest hint of a rub and so they were fairly easy to treat. With the slipperiness of the oil and the heady aroma of the essential oils, the piggies were clearly loving every minute of it!
Rose and Mabel were a little harder to convince. Rose just doesn’t trust humans in her paddock and Mabel is usually wary. There’s something about this skin treatment though. The first time I tried I actually managed to convince Rose to accept a massage and despite her attempts to resist it I think in the end she rather enjoyed it. My attempts since have been a little less successful but she at least allows me a good 10 seconds before she runs off.
Mabel on the other hand just has to smell the oil and she rolls over and allows herself to completely relax. In fact she was rather put out when I got up to leave just before and came after me and nudged the bottle and grunted. A couple of rubs later and over she went again.
It has to be said that a pig is far easier to massage with a slick of oil on their skin.
As for whether the treatment is working, it would appear so. Emily who seemed to be suffering the worst of the mites has skin now that only looks mildly irritated. Another treatment or two and I suspect everything will be fine.
I can’t see any more irritation on Mabel but Rose I’m not so sure about. I’m not convinced her condition is improving and she just won’t let me get too close to really inspect. She’s rubbed a large section of hair off her back and her skin is hard, lumpy and scaly. The only good thing about it is that it doesn’t appear to cause her any pain. It’s irritated though so I need to come up with a good solution. Perhaps just olive oil and tea tree oil by themselves or with a bit of calendula oil.
The pig bedding issue has become a bit of a nightmare this winter. Despite topping up over summer the pigs have all insisted in digging into it down to ground level, mixing chip with dirt. The subsequent wet weather has caused a huge headache. The pigs have created mini moats around their housing with their trotters. These fill with rain, the dampness seeps in the edges of the housing, add to that a rain-drenched piggie and the dirt in the chip turns to mud and suddenly the bedding is damp.
And then unexpectedly we very suddenly had to remove Mabel and Rose from their piglets.
Their piglets were 3-months old, Mabel had dried up and was just getting on with it but Rose hadn’t dried up and was suddenly getting very tetchy with both Mabel and the piglets. She was becoming quite manic at mealtimes, the food was plenty but clearly the lack of grass was taking its toll. She would attack every pig in sight at mealtime.
Aaron quickly erected a new pig house on the bottom paddock. We had nothing to put down as bedding except wet woodchip and so that is what we had to use.
Our local suppliers of woodchip can’t provide any that’s dry and I will only use our last 3 hay bales as a last resort. Hay is the worst bedding to use because it soaks up moisture straight away and then becomes rank very quickly.
A pig sleeping on wet bedding is a recipe for disaster. It might work for wild pigs but there’s a bit of difference between wild and domesticated free-range. Things were looking very dire for a good week there while we tried desperately to come up with an alternative. And then I started to think about how the sows going into labour often rip off low manuka tree branches for their nests.
So armed with secateurs and vege crates we waited for a warm, sunny day and started cutting lots of lush, feathery branches of manuka. Fortunately we have a huge supply of the stuff on our land.
We threw a large mound of tea tree into the house and moved the girls in. To be honest, I wasn’t totally convinced the idea would work but the next day I looked in the house and it was clear the girls had made the most of the tea tree, creating themselves a nice, cozy pig nest for two.
Since then we’ve been regularly pruning our trees and adding crates of branches to the various pig housing.
The pigs certainly don’t seem to mind the smell or the feel and tea tree has the added bonus of being both antiseptic and anti-parasitic.
The tea tree on damp woodchip actually stays quite dry we have decided our best option now is to bring in a truckload or two of damp woodchip. We will pile it into the houses on the already damp areas, which aren’t currently being slept on, and then keep topping up the actual nests with tea tree. Fingers crossed the chip actually manages to dry out a bit and keeps the mud down.
Everyone keeps saying this winter isn’t particularly wet but then why have we suddenly had this issue? It’s not like we didn’t top up the bedding over summer but clearly it wasn’t enough.
So that’s another note for summer – top up the bedding in the pig housing and when we think we’ve done enough, do it again so there’s twice as much as we think we need.
Eggsasperating!
Bloody ducks! 8 months of no laying and plenty of pleading and bargaining on my part, all to no avail. Admittedly the pleading has become more threatening as time passes by.
“You don’t want to lay? Fine don’t lay, but let me tell you that Duck a l’orange is looking pretty damn tempting right now.”
Being nice, being horrible, none of it has worked
And then last week the temperature plummeted overnight. It was 1°C and at 4am in the morning there was a frost that made my fingers burn with pain as I fed the piggies. Oh my god, there’s nothing much that beats that intense aching pain of cold. It’s like an ice cream headache in the fingers.
As for trying to wash the buckets after feed out, the top of the water in the bucket outside has an ice crust on it and the water beneath is so damn cold my hands lose their ability to grip properly. Thank god it doesn’t snow in our parts. I’d never cope.
But I digress, we had a frost and then hey presto, eggs! Half a dozen in one hit. A week later and the daily output is increasing; I collected 11 yesterday.
Suddenly I have a fridge full of duck eggs and I’m struggling to find the customers to buy them.
I have only 6 colleagues that will take them off my hands and so now I have to start advertising further afield. Ultimately I’d like to sell them at the gate but we need to set something up for that. We need to build a box to keep the eggs in and work out what we’re going to do about an honesty box. Murray and Patty used to have a jar and they reckoned they never lost the money. I guess it’s not a major as it would only amount to about $6 a day so it’s no great loss if someone does steal it.
$42 a week would cover our weekly cost for duck and chicken feed so at least we’d be breaking even while they’re laying.
Of course if we bumped off most of our roosters and some of our drakes we’d actually be clawing back some of the money we’ve lost over the last 8 months.
We haven’t done that deed yet. I’m not sure what it is about chopping the head off a chicken then plucking and gutting it that I’m not looking forward to…
Aaron Decides He Can Do More
After seeing numerous notices in the Kaiwaka Bugle begging for volunteers, Aaron finally decided he should enquire about joining the Kaiwaka St John’s Ambulance service. He rang Marj next door to enquire about the next meeting, went along to one of their weekly Tuesday meetings and that was it. He now has a uniform, has started going on call, attends weekly training, has started going to extra training courses and is doing study online.
The first event he attended the ambulance got to turn its siren on and they had to call in a helicopter. It was an exciting start to his new hobby/interest.
Already Aaron has decided to throw himself into it, volunteering as often as he can, and attending whatever training is available so that he can get to a senior level.
It’s all very community spirited and is a great way for him to network and to restore some credibility to the de Jonge name. I think it will in many ways finally establish us as a part of the community.
So Aaron’s getting out, meeting new people, being challenged and getting time out from farm and work.
As for me, well I get to pick up the slack. I’m even more tied to the farm than I was before. Those ‘urgent’ projects will get pushed back a bit more and there will be some jobs that will now take twice as long as there will only be me to do them.
Quite frankly I think it’s the worst timing to decide to get into this. I’m not sure how Aaron thinks he can keep everything going. Already he is struggling to do his full hours at work because of farm commitments and now this on top. I’m still working fulltime so I have nothing left to give. As for my desperate need of a break and some time out, that’s clearly not going to happen anytime soon.
It has to be said that sometimes I feel like I’m the one making all the sacrifices and getting fuck all in return. No doubt Aaron feels the same but at least he gets time out and time to socialise.
As work often takes him down to Auckland and beyond it is often easier for him to stay the night with friends or family than come home. At times it will mean I have to take leave to come home early and it usually means I have to get up earlier. Okay, so it’s not a huge sacrifice on my part but these things add up over time and at the moment the rewards for me seem to be zero.
Poorer Than Ever
The rewards are zero because we’ve thrown ourselves in the deep end and hiked the mortgage payments up to $4000 a month until the end of the year. That’s my entire salary and some of Aaron’s as well. That leaves us virtually nothing for anything but bills and livestock.
It’s all in a good cause because our fixed interest rates are quite low. Each month our goal to be mortage free within 10 years gets closer. On the other hand life is quite miserable when there’s barely enough money to get a haircut. I think it’s been 9 months since my last and my hair looks truly awful.
Aaron still has his wine club and book club giving him something to look forward to every couple of months, but my paltry $6 non-winning lotto ticket every week just hasn’t been doing it for me lately.
So I’ve gone a bit mad and now every Saturday morning I drive into Kaiwaka to the Italian La Nonna bakery and spend $10-$15 on bread. I was desperate to find something that I could look forward to each week and the bread is definitely filling some of that gap.
Their bread, while so-so when they first opened is now quite outstanding. No doubt they have a good ferment going and the flavour has developed over time as a result. The Olive bread is just exquisite and I have a hard job choosing between their focacia and ciabatta as a close second.
I suspect I sound like a spoiled child complaining about the struggle to pay off our mortgage when I know our parents and grandparents had just as big financial hardships. And yet how is it that people of those generations often managed to pay off their mortgages in their 40’s and often on one salary?
Aaron and I are apparently middle to high income Kiwis but it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it. Yes it would be fine if we paid our mortgage in line with the 30-year term but who the hell wants to still be paying a mortgage at 65?
I’ve been excessively careful with my money ever since I started earning and yet it’s never really stopped being a struggle. So what the hell am I / are we doing wrong??
We’ve got no savings, no retirement plan and no expendable income, so where’s my money?
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