The days are full, and I am tired at the end of them. Catching up today, Sunday, but the farm chores don’t take a weekend off.
On Thursday I drove to Whangarei, about an hour away, to meet my friend, Lesley, for lunch. Lesley and I met in our early twenties when we were both working at the NZ Treasury. Really splendid to still have a connection and to be able to pick up and move forward whenever we have the opportunity. It was a long lunch … I stopped in to see the progress on niece, Lizzy’s house on the way back. And, of course, she offered me a cup of tea, because that is the way things are done here.
Back to the farm. Helen now has about 70 little calves. While I was in Whangarei, she went to the local stock sale. She bought another 30 or so little calves that she will grow through care and good management. For now, the care part is very intensive. There is milk powder to be mixed with just the right temperature warm water. There are feeding troughs, but the calves have to be managed in small groups to ensure that each calf gets enough, but not too much. The risk with little calves is that they will eat too much, which their stomachs can’t handle, so like the strategy with Lambi, small and steady. This small and steady feeding happens twice a day and the whole process takes a few hours, twice.
And speaking of Lambi, he now has a friend, who we are calling little Lambi. I tried to offer the more creative name of Midnight, but it hasn’t stuck. Little Lambi’s origin story is that his mum had 3 lambs and he was not thriving. As an aside, now is not the normal lambing time, this occurs in August. These babies are the result of an escapee ram.
Little Lambi is a lovely black wool wee thing. He arrived with no interest nor seeming ability to suck. He spurned the first few attempts to feed. We held him and tried to hold the teat in his mouth, and eventually he got it! So now there are two house lambs to be cared for. Nice for them to have each other’s company. At first, I had to feed them one at a time, but now they (and I) are pros and I can manage a bottle in each hand. Last night, they spent their first night outside, but they still require a middle of the night feeding.
There is lots of the farm that I haven’t got to yet – pigs, peacocks, chickens, cows. Helen moves at least twice the speed of me. I went with her to move the stock, which happens every couple of days as they chew down one pasture and need fresh grass. My job is opening and closing gates and occasionally blocking the passage of animals. The stock that we were moving were young heifers (young cows). Helen grew these with milk and now their feed is grass. She will keep one or two to add to her dairy herd. Most will be sold when they reach a year or 18 months or a saleable weight.
The advantage of commuting to work on the ATV is that you can stop for mushrooms, which are plentiful at the moment.
And lest you think that the kitchen activity has slowed, farm workers have voracious appetites. Now is feijoa season. I love these, but you really need to know someone with a tree. Feijoas, are a guava-like fruit. The feijoa is the fruit of Acca sellowiana. It comes from the highlands of southern Brazil and grows in other parts of South America as well as New Zealand. The fruit matures in autumn and is green. It about the size and shape of an egg, has a sweet, aromatic flavour. You eat it, by cutting in half and scooping the flesh. The skins can be used to make a kombucha like drink and also feijoa jelly, which is excellent with cheese and on Helen’s homemade bread.
My contribution was to make muesli Florentines (photo next time), a recipe scored from friend, Murray, at Otanerito. Helen and I took a batch to the church tea last night. The request is usually stated as, ‘ladies, a plate please’. Helen goes to mass at Ruawai – about 45 minutes drive from here – on Saturday night. It’s like a whirlwind watching her come in from feeding the calves and get church-ready in less than 5. There were about 20 people at the service. The priest was to be coming from somewhere distant. After 20 minutes past the service start time of communing with each other, the congregants decided to get on with the service. Church was held in a Community Church, the Catholic Church having been sold to cover the cost of a new roof on a larger Catholic church in the parish. We got to the gospel, the priest arrived, got vested and took over. He assured the congregants that he could just pick up and there was no need to repeat what’d been done.
Communion continued after the order of service with a cup of tea, our Florentines, and many other treats. I was surprised by how interesting the conversation was to me. Turns out that some of the calves that Helen bought had come from one of the farmers at church. They had a son-in-law from the US. Another couple was Malaysian, had lived in Singapore, before retiring to New Zealand. Another conversation was about John Steinbeck’s book, The Red Pony, and another about dwarfism in bulls. One of Helen’s friends who is a kumara (NZ’s sweet potato) farmer gave her some fresh kumara. More about what we do with those next time.