Pot Shots at Morning Tea

Farming has undergone a revolution during the past few decades, but one tradition remains unchanged: if you’re a woman who’s not a shearer or shed hand, you feed the shearers. In our case the catering usually only involves morning tea as we don’t farm many sheep and they’re usually shorn in small mobs.

The time for morning tea is always specific - it was originally set at 9.30am then, after Tony our shearer had consulted with the farmer a second time, it was changed to 9.45am. 

The specificity seems odd because although sheep remind me of fussy old women with bad perms, they don’t wear watches or make appointments to be shorn. Some people would say that’s because they’re too stupid, but I beg to differ. At sunset our pet lambs could wriggle out their pen on the lawn and return to their night quarters in the laundry, another couple escaped from every paddock we put them in and commandeered the day bed on the terrace.

Anyway, good shearers are precious, so I’m always prompt. But without fail, I’ll stand around while Tony and whoever else is shearing squeeze in another few sheep. It’s as if the prospect of a break challenges them to push on for a while longer.

If you’re wondering what the farmer does, he’s propped on the end of a broom with which he makes perfunctory flicks at the wool as it’s peeled off. To be fair, he packs the bales and has good excuses:  he’s never been any good at shearing (his words) which wrecks his back.

The last shearers’ morning tea took an interesting turn when I told a joke - a blonde tells a ventriloquist she’s annoyed with him for making blonde jokes. When he apologises she tells him to butt out - her tirade isn’t directed at him, she’s talking to the little guy on his knee.

Our laughter disturbed a possum which emerged from his cosy corner in the wool shed and incited boyish exhilaration; he’d been seen before but no-one knew where he was hiding.

I fetched a gun and, while Rex took aim, there was an air of competitive tension. Would he miss or get it in one shot? The first shot was a hit that made the possum attempt to run for cover, the second was a miss and the third was a close up to get the creature out of its misery.  It was messy - and loud. Our dogs Kate and Floss were found hiding in my car.

Then everyone lolled about for a while longer while, as farmers’ wives have done since Kiwis started farming sheep, I gathered up the remains of morning tea - and the gun.