On a New Zealand Sheep Farm

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.