I just got blue tac the other day and then all of a sudden it was gone. I made this parody to You are my sunshine, to tell it to come back and be my putty again.

 

You are my blue tac,

My only blue tac.

You make me happy,

When I’m fidgety.

But unfortunately,

I left you on the,

Airport table,

Ooh ee.

 

You are my Blue tac,

My only blue tac.

You make me happy,

When I’m grumpy.

You’ll never know dear how much,

How much, I love you.

So please return my blue tac to me.

 

I was so tired,

That I forgot.

Your in the trash now,

With a stinky old lot.

But I will miss you,

Very dearly.

And now my heads down,

And I cry.

 

You are my stretchy,

Sticky thing.

And your so soft,

Ooh ee.

But now your sinking,

In the trash.

So just please,

Come back to me.

 

 

You are my Blue tac,

My only blue tac.

You make me happy,

When I’m fidgety.

You’ll never know dear,

How much I love you.

So bring my Blue tac back to me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Death defying drop

Moments grasping out of reach

Free falling freedom

The Kea sqwerked at me as I opened the car door to explore the chasm near Milford sound (not actually a sound, mind you, but a fjord, I am told). It hopped up to my car door on its hind legs seeming to beg for food. Maybe its near extinction can be blamed on this boldness along with its lack of fear. Naivete, as the cruel might call it.

New Zealand used to be a land of birds. There were no mammals until we people brought them on boats. No possums to kill the birds. No people to kill the birds. No rats or weasless to kill the birds. So they learned to be kind, to be trusting.

It is not the same as being fearless. Fearless implies courage, being brave amidst known danger. It is not the same as naivete, an almost stupidity as if you chose not to pay attention to the dangers around you. It is innocence. Simple trust and kindness. A hop and a sqwak and a look in the eye and a tap on your tush as you crouch down to take a photo. A “look at me” sense of pride, and a curiosity and openness to others.

New Zealand is more careful now. Immigration officials guard their borders jealously from inbound predators. As tourists we were warmly greeted but severely cautioned of the penalties for bringing in pests. Our shoes must be scrubbed of foreign dirt. Our overhead bins and our flight cabin was fumigated with poisons to kill any uninvited insect passengers. Dogs with keen noses patrolled the airports to catch intruders hosted by the Indian grandmother in front of us who hid home made dosas in her luggage. 

But well wishers be damned. A Chinese tourist managed to import a fruit fly that ravaged last year’s kiwi fruit crop. And non-native evergreen trees cover the mountain sides, at once a threat to native species and a cash crop critical for the timber industry and the nation’s builders. The Kea may be a beloved emblem of New Zealand’s past, but it exists not only because the world is protecting it, but because it is surviving as the world changes around it.

How to get ready for something you’ve never even attempted to do before.

1. Get the proper equipment on.
(Such as a harness, a jumpsuit, and a nice and not hard helmet.)

2. Get paired up with someone who actually knows what they’re doing.
(An instructor.)

3. Board the tiniest plane you’ve ever seen.
(That works.)

4. Get 12,000 feet away from where you feel safe.

5. Watch your sister do what you’re dreading.

6. And then jump out of a plane.

And then finally, you’re experiencing what you’ve been waiting for. Your forty-five seconds of free fall.

Read my next piece, The Feeling of Flying to learn the scariest things about free fall.

 

 

1. Falling fast towards the place where everyone Ends up, alive or dead.
2. Not being able to breathe through my mouth.
3. Falling at 200 km per hour.
4. Doing a side flip.
5. And finally, watching my sister do it.

 

“Hello and welcome to another round of Dream or Reality. Today we have Anika here, about to go on a plane with her sister and dad, to go three times as high as the mountains, and do her first ever skydiving free fall. Here is Anika before her once in a lifetime experience.”

Dream

Reality

Dream

Reality

Dream

Reality

Dream

Reality

Dream

Reality

 

Dream

Reality

Well, That’s Anika For You. Bye for today. Come back soon.

 

 

silliness!

Day 4 on the New Zealand sheep farm continues with our hosts Nic and Andy, their boys Alex and Jamie, and their parents (whose house we are actually sleeping and eating in) Jim and Margaret. We are lucky their parents are neighbors, and doubly lucky they had 4 spare beds in their homes and welcomed complete strangers into their home for almost a week. Andy has to work every day on his family farm, which he now runs (with help from his dad Jim), but is an amazing teacher, and constantly invites us to join the more fun parts of farm life and explains it all to us as we’re going, always with a smile and an inviting tone. The parents’ house was their parents’ house, where they grew up. Paloma sleeps in Jim’s childhood bed. But it has “all the modern conveniences” despite being old.

The connection is Ella, Paloma’s best friend. Ella’s dad is Glenn, Glenn’s sister is Nic. Nic married Andy. Andy brought them back to the family farm. And they invited us in. I’m not sure if they were initially expecting us for 5 days, but they kindly agreed to have us. So now, here we are together. I didn’t yet know the rhythm of our trip, and that 5 days would be a long time. But then I’m sure it will feel short in hindsight when we’re on our way to Hawke’s Bay tomorrow. I’ve noticed a few things so far.

Indoors

• The doorknobs only turn one way.
• The shower head is low, and I have to sit on my knees to wet my hair
• Water is scarce here – it is all collected rainwater – and we use it thoughtfully
• It has rained nonstop – well, with some brief sunny spells – and has been cold here, about 3-8 degrees
• I think we are using more heat than normal. But now we’re not cold at night! Space heaters and heated blankets get the job done.
• The laundry detergent doesn’t really rinse out entirely with the econo-rinse setting. But using almost no detergent works ok.
• Some of the furniture is 3 generations old, and some, like the kitchen table, looks brand new under all the coverings.
• There’s an awesome system for drying the laundry (if it’s too wet to hang it outside on the back yard laundry lines): dirty farm clothes get hung up in the car port to dry for reuse (why wash muddy outerwear every day?). Clean clothes first go on the foldable laundry rack and put near the wood stove. Next, they can get moved to the heater closet, and finished on one of the hanging rods in there, which is very dry inside. It’s basically full of clean, dry laundry. No dryer required.
• The kitchen is Margaret’s, but she’s been generous enough to share it with us as if that weren’t true.
• There has been a wonderful farm meal every night, bringing all 3 families together. Always the centerpiece is an amazing piece of meat (or 2, or 3) from the farm. We started with a lamb roast. One night we had 3 lasagnas! The veggie one was mostly ignored. 🙂 I cooked some farm beef as a bourguignon and made a potato/leek soup. Last night we had chicken, and farm venison (hunted by Andy and Alex), as well as some sausages (both venison and beef).
• The internet connection here is often better than the one at home!

Outdoors

• The ewes are making babies! Some of the rams made big babies, and sometimes the moms can’t get them out and they need help “lambing.” Pulling on the hooves helps them get unstuck from the cervix, and then you can pull them out by their hooves. I helped Jim with one of these lambs, but we had to chase the mom and catch her first. (A ewe that is giving birth – with a lamb hanging halfway out her back side – can run faster than I can. Crazy!) Once birthed, the lamb’s hooves are put into mom’s mouth so she can taste her baby, and remember it later.
• There are a lot of dead babies littering the paddocks. It’s sort of raw and hard to see that death is part of life, and part of farming. I guess after you get used to the idea, and realize that many of the dead are twins, it gets a bit easier. But it’s sad, and also not very economical to lose a lamb.
• A dead lamb fetches $1 for its hide. A live one will fetch $100 for its meat when it’s mature.
• If a lamb sits halfway out of a birthing mom for too long (like a couple days) it will start to rot and the mom can die. Andy drives around every day to see if any ewes and babies need help.
• New moms will get scared and sometimes abandon their baby. When we let the new mom+baby out of the shed where they stayed warm for the night, we had to put them together forcibly and then walk away to make sure they stayed together.
• It has been cold and rainy here, which makes it harder for the babies
• Sometimes a mom loses her baby and wants to raise one. Another baby may need care (perhaps a twin, perhaps a lousy mom?), so the baby has to be “mothered up” with a different, better mom to help raise it. Here’s how it’s done: the dead lamb of the foster mom is skinned, and the skin is tied over the body of the living baby lamb. Then the mom, smells her “own” lamb on the skin, and will start feeding the foster lamb. Once she has been feeding her foster lamb for a few days, the skin of her own dead lamb is removed, and she will keep raising the new one. This approach works for cows and calves too.
• Andy’s 4×4 truck – a.k.a a “Ute” (utility vehicle) can drive over nearly anything, including the deep, deep mud that surrounds many of the fields.
• Cows really tear up the earth. These cows eat swedes (rutabagas) in the winter, which is grown as a winter crop. The swedes were protected by an electric fence, and 2 days ago we removed the fence and let the excited cows into the field (some smart ones had already broken in). They loved the fresh greens. The mud they left behind was over 1/2m deep in areas!
• We’re on the windward side of an active volcano and the weather is tough – cold, and very wet.
• The local kids go to the ski field one day a week and learn to ski and snowboard. We saw them yesterday when we were sledding there!
• electric fences and tractors are the most awesome modern technology on the farm. and dirt bikes too, which are faster and cheaper than horses or utes for herding sheep.
• sheep dogs come in 2 varieties: noisy dogs that bark and move the sheep, and silent ones that run and stare down the sheep to get them to move. A shepherd and 3 dogs can move 3000 sheep.
• sheep come in 19 varieties! some grow better wool (merino). some grow better meat. some have twins. some shed their wool and don’t need to be shorn. Only a few of these breeds live on this farm, though.
• an experienced shearer can grab a sheep, put it on its tush so it relaxes, and shear all its wool in a couple minutes
• I helped a bit with building a new fence that is mandated by an eco law designed to keep cattle out of the rivers. Good idea to keep the water clean, but the government only pays for 1/2 the cost of the fence. It’s expensive for the farmers to comply with this new law
• In general farming is a tough business where you don’t get many days off and don’t really make much money. A lot of the success or failure of the business is at the mercy of the weather, which is out of your control

Overall I feel lucky we’ve gotten to experience a bit of farm life here in Raetihi. While it’s sort of “the middle of nowhere” by most local people’s description, I expect it will be one of the more memorable parts of our trip to New Zealand. I will certainly think of this place every time I eat New Zealand lamb from now on. 🙂

Now, for some photos.

Jim and I help this mama with lambing. The baby was too big to push out on her own. After we chased her down, Jim tackled her, and I held her down while Jim pulled the baby out by its hooves. The baby perked up after a bit, and mom was given a taste of its hooves to remember it later. A day later, they were doing well together. (I pulled a different lamb out of a different mom – but sadly, that one did not make it.)

The cows dig in to some swedes (rutabagas) after we let down the electric fence. Moooo!

This area is the carrot capital of New Zealand, so of course they have a “carrot park” in the local downtown.

It’s fun to ride on a motorbike with Andy!

This is how it feels to drive Andy’s tractor.

The local volcano features a ski field. We went sledding and bumped into the local 8th graders who had met our girls when they were visiting their class on Monday.

At the bottom of the volcano there’s a sort of almost-tropical rainforest where we took a hike. Big ferns abound!

We take the ute down to the river with the boys and skip stones on the water. They take our picture before we head back.

Our hosts joined us for a final meal at a local restaurant: From the left, Jim and Margaret, Nic and Andy, and their kids Jamie and Alex.

You begin with freshly caught crayfish from the island. As soon as the seafood melts in your mouth you immediately notice the delicateness and flakiness of the shellfish. It has a nice light mayonnaise-like sauce covering it, and an apple and celeriac slaw. Freshly picked dill and a nasturtium leaf from the garden rest atop the crayfish. Around this, you notice a sprinkling of salmon roe. You begin counting them and then get lost and start enjoying your first canapé. The fish eggs start off salty and briny and then suddenly get fishy. Your mom especially likes the small explosion in her mouth after biting into each egg.

The next canapé arrives — a hot cream-based mushroom and onion soup topped with a piece of crispy parma ham and micro greens from the garden. As the soup touches your tongue, you feel the warmth circulate through your whole body. As you take another sip, you decide the mushrooms were sauteed to perfection.

The mushrooms foreshadow the best bruschetta you can remember: a perfectly toasted piece of freshly baked baguette bread with a light coating of olive oil, a little bit of garlic, and a bunch of mushrooms with onions. On top, you find fresh chives picked from the backyard garden.

After this decadent dish, piping hot bread and newly churned butter greet you. You tear open the crispy exterior, and the hot bun in the middle softens the still cold butter. You top your hot bread with a sprinkle of Fleur De Sel and garden thyme.

You receive a small dish of rice risotto with a fishy tomato sauce — not your favorite, but your parents like it. As the dish touches your tongue, a warm tomatoey taste appears, and then as you are about to take another bite, a fishy feeling creeps onto your tongue. You find this feeling quite unpleasant, but your parents are both sitting there with their eyes closed and chewing like sleeping lambs. Your mom later tells you that that was her favorite dish of the whole meal. In contrast, your sister sticks out her tongue and pulls her spoon away from her mouth as soon as she smells it. Your parents glare and she takes a bite — a small bite, even for an ant. Your parents are somewhat satisfied so your sister goes back to her bread and butter with a sigh of relief.

Now, the entree. A delicate, medium rare, and tender sea bass topped with crispy, scaly skin. A salad composed of fresh and sweet pomegranate seeds, mint, and farro. Fresh micro greens and carrots on top of a butternut squash puree, balanced by some freshly squeezed orange juice. The dish is one of the fanciest ones so far, but you cannot enjoy it to its full potential because you are getting so full.

Finally, dessert. You get to choose between dairy free raspberry and coconut based ice cream or a thick and custardy panna cotta. You choose both. They arrive served in a nice ceramic dish painted the color of a dark ripe apple. On top of both, you spot freeze-dried fruit and crunchy sweet and salty freshly baked biscotti. You only end up having one bite of each because you are so full from the other six courses. It is a great way to end the meal, but you feel sad that you can’t enjoy it more.

After dinner, you venture to the garden and look at all of the freshly grown plants. There are so many! Kale to fava beans, herbs to rhubarb. Almost all of the ingredients in this meal’s every course were freshly picked from the garden today. You pick one more fava bean pod and quickly scurry across the garden to meet up with your family.