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.

From farmeress to fryer

For about four months, including the Christmas season, Mary and I (committee members) cooked three nights a week and catered for events at the Maungaturoto Country Club.

Within an hour or so of my first session as a volunteer cook I’d started two fat fires and cut my thumb. The fires (small) happened when I was filling the fryers with new fat. Tip: melt some in a saucepan first and pour it into the fryers before you turn them on, hence fat won’t drip onto hot elements and ignite. (I know you’ve always wanted to learn this.)

As the first cooking day loomed I mentioned to Rex that I should get new trou so I didn’t wreck my good ones and he suggested chef’s pants. I ordered black and white checked jobs from aptly-named Black & White Trading and when they arrived learned Rex had said ‘cheap pants’. Me and my dodgy hearing! But never mind, our baggy (and daggy) creations are cool and comfy.

As I write this we’ve had no disasters. Came close when we ran out of chips, but as my catering partner Mary said, it would only have been a disaster if we’d had no spuds to make more chips with.

This reminded me of my stint as a chalet girl at Madonna di Campiglio, a ski resort in Italy, and my most embarrassing cooking experience (and it wasn’t even my fault) which surely could never be surpassed.

Three of us and an Italian-speaking liaison person ran a chalet for 30 guests. Each day we’d each make starter, main or dessert, divide it in thirds and have a ‘dinner party’ for 10 on each of the three floors.

Guests stayed a week or two then left en masse. When each busload rolled up we’d serve LO Soup made of whizzed up, jazzed up leftovers. If it came out a dark colour, we’d slosh in red wine. Pale soup got white wine. LO Soup was best eaten at 1am after you’d endured a flight from London and a gruelling seven-hour bus trip into the mountains.

Actually, it was tasty and we never had a complaint - until Julia arrived. Even though the ‘can you cook’ test wasn’t rigorous, Julia appeared to have used other talents to get the job. In fact, we had bets about who she’d ‘hit it off with’ each week. Sometimes we all won. No . . . just kidding. Anyway, Julia whizzed up chicken without removing the bones (amazing but true!). We discovered this when guests started picking bits of chicken bone out of their teeth. We didn’t let Julia near LO Soup again and put her under strict surveillance.

As I’m not thinking much about farming at the mo, my dog Floss is confused. Three nights a week I leave home as a human and, her top-to-toe sniff confirms, return as a massive French fry.

It’s such a busy time that one morning we couldn’t find some cattle that had should have been moved to a new paddock the evening before . . . until we noticed half a dozen heads peeking round a bluff. They’d got fed up waiting and had taken off in an unexpected direction.

Not unlike me and the deep fryer – it’s a really unexpected direction.

Here chook, chook

(For overseas readers: in New Zealand we call hens 'chooks' - thus this is a tale about hens.)

Who cares about calling birds, French hens, turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree? Once I got a conventional chook for Christmas, but not in the way we usually think of Christmas chooks.

Blackie, a strapping Plymouth Barred Rock who’d outlived seven chooks, needed a companion. I’d bought her along with two Silver Laced Wyandottes whose feathers have the lacy pattern associated with Wild West music hall singers and Flamenco dancers. I named the Wyandottes after girlfriends who were flattered until the shortcomings of the system became evident when Rex’s dog Mo attacked one. I washed her wounds, dried her with a hairdryer - and changed her name. As she couldn’t walk, I’d sit her in the sun; a few bursts of fly killer kept flies away. Amazingly she recovered only to come to a sad end months later thanks to Kate the puppy who I suspect sensed her vulnerability and has since learned not to kill chooks.

I rebuilt my flock with brown shavers from an egg farm, but over the next couple of years the other Wyandotte and a young shaver disappeared in the long grass. It was a mystery. Stoats? Another chook got egg bound and died, one got fly blown (her horrible death shook my confidence as a chook farmer) and an old girl quietly passed away.

The remaining wobbly matron used her wings for stability, but had a can-do attitude and good appetite. Eggs were a distant memory. Plenty of pragmatists suggested I “dong her on the head”, but I liked the feisty old girl.

When she died two days after we’d gone on holiday, the considerate housesitters put a rock on her grave so she wouldn’t be exhumed by the dogs. But the phone wouldn’t work - they’d cut the cable and had to dig her up anyway.

Blackie lived alone until a friend offered me her white chook just before Christmas. Persecuted and pecked by brown shavers, she was living in solitary confinement for her own safety. After she moved in, Whitey was nervy and neurotic, emerging from her pen only for food and water. Blackie, who’d roamed the garden and enjoyed luxurious dust baths, remained closeted with her. What about eggs, you might be wondering. Again, they became a distant memory.

If only I’d got a partridge in a pear tree - at least we’d have got pears.

Reflections on the River - taken 22 Dec

Our community's Christmas gift to you

Please accept these fun and games as our community’s Christmas gift for you, your child’s school, your community or your sixtieth (seventieth?) birthday party. While these activities debuted in our community, the concept, which has already been embraced for two school gala days, was the brainchild of some committed individuals.

Each year our town’s Christmas Parade winds up at the local sports complex, Maungaturoto Country Club. Each year the club puts on entertainment for kids and Wesley Cullen organises games. Each year Fonterra donates kid-sized containers of milk which are given to anyone who puts out a hand. Some years there are activities and amusements which cost a fair bit of hard-earned cash. But not this year. This year was different.

This year, Kenny Finlayson and Terri Donaldson dreamed up a bunch more activities and, along with Wesley and others, set up and oversaw a grand total of 10 games. Any child who played six games swapped their stamped card for a reward: Fonterra’s milk.

The games were: Knock ‘em Down Blocks - throw a ball at a pile of blocks; Basket Case - throw a ball into a basket; Hook the Big One - a fishing contest (plastic bottles were fake fish); Horse Shoe Throw; Sporty Skills - hockey (dribble a ball through cones), soccer (bounce a ball on your foot), cricket (bowl stumps out - kiwis are suddenly very good at this).

In Sumo Wrestling two kids, each with their arms and body wrapped in a small mattress secured with a bungee cord, bumped each other until one fell. Pole Jousting involved two kids balanced on a wide piece of pipe, hitting each other with pillows until one toppled.

Surprisingly, plenty of people risked a cold shower in Dunking Machine. The foolish suckers sat under a delicately balanced bucket of water while people threw balls at the bucket. This cost money, and fair enough too. Two bucks bought you three chances, unless the local cop was on the chair when, naturally, it cost more.

Even the organisers were amazed at people’s willingness to play. “Some people got away dry,” reported Kenny, “and most people were keen to do it.”

The upshot was that for almost two hours the Country Club’s rugby fields were packed with people, including parents urging their children on.

“It was great to see the parents getting involved with their kids, and lots of people had a go at different things,” says Terri.

By the time the games were over, 240 milk drinks had been distributed along with three buckets of sweets donated by the Kaipara District Council, night was falling, and both Ruawai and Paparoa primary schools had said they’d like to use the signage and games for their gala days.

You, too, can play these games which, unlike most kids’ activities these days, cost almost nothing to assemble and nothing to play.

Happy Christmas and a happier New Year.

Animal Farm is a busy place

Life on the farm is certainly different from city life – and most the differences stem from animals that aren’t cattle and sheep.

One evening three gunshots rang out and two dogs that should have known better - Kate and Weasel, a visiting Jack Russell – rushed inside where they cowered and trembled. The farmer and a visitor had knocked off the possums that were stealing lemon peel (they had been leaving peeled fruit on the lawn).

The next day when I picked up the deceased possums I found Kate munching a joey. It was ghastly seeing its tiny naked body with curled up hands and wee dangling legs disappearing into Kate’s mouth as she crunched its bones.

Another day Kate and Floss raced into the bush and a rabbit raced out. Kate grabbed it in her mouth, flipped it over and, with a quick nip, left it paralysed. This dog also does sweet little nose kisses with two of our cats.

I lay the rabbit right side up in the hope it was merely paralysed with fear (yes, I know they’re pests), but it didn’t move. Kate took it home and thoughtfully left it in the garden. The farmer put it out of its misery.

Then Floss burrowed into a mound of kikuyu and emerged holding in her mouth what looked like a bird’s nest but was a terrified hedgehog curled in a ball.

Then, when I returned from a few days away, I found two swallows that had been killed by the cats positioned imaginatively on the brick mantelpiece above the fireplace. I bet you’ve never thought of that as an interior design concept.

The farmer had found them in what he now calls ‘the bird room’ since it’s where four swallows (and counting) have met their demise. Their deaths please him because they poo and nest all over the house.

Sadly, bigger animals die as well. The latest was a young white-faced bull that broke its hip and had to be shot. It’s hanging up somewhere (don’t ask) and makes a generous contribution to dog tucker.

Every few days hunks of meat arrive. Their dissection is a job for the farmer who sometimes leaves buckets of meat in the laundry for a day or two (I call it aging). That’s another interior design concept you won’t find in a magazine.

This is a boon for Kate whose reward for sneaking inside has only ever been morsels from cats’ plates. I arrived home one day to find her on the back door mat chomping on a massive chunk of beef.

And finally we’re raising calves. I met the second bunch when they were still on the truck, having stopped to say hi to the farmer. He ignored my white running shoes and said, “Great, you can help with unloading.”

I obliged and, in doing so, created a fashion statement that won’t catch on in the city.

Floss thanks you for the comments on her blog