Scary Gary and bloody lamb's tails
November 2, 2005Annie’s Cottage, 43 kms northwest of Napier, New Zealand.
7:48pm
Woke up it’s a Chelsea morning.
My father will be happy to know I finally gained an appreciation for Joni Mitchell beyond her semi-nude album covers. It is her I listen to now as I try to muster up a couple hundred words to summarize my time spent here on the sheep farm.
Help me I am think I am falling.
A half bottle of Marlborough Pinot in, I am teetering on the edge of poetic waxing about livestock and the farmer and the living off the land, and how pets can sometimes be food and wading in sheep dip in rubber boots surrounded by green mountains and hydro poles hovering like scolding parents. But I won’t. I will just typically blather on about what happened in the last couple of days.
I was a free man in Paris.
Monday was chock full of nothing. The weather sucked. Hud ‘s cold hit its pinnacle, leaving Stephanie and I sleepless and a little bored. We are surrounded by nothing remember. So book reading (Middlesex by Jeffrey Eudnides, my new favourite book) and puzzle piecing and tea drinking and general frustration by a boy who lashes out at his forced nomadism by utter disregarding unremarkable parental authority. We did manage to feed lazy eyed sheep and a beautiful pony named Honey. Poor pony. Talk about a life of envy. Ugly horses must laugh and high five horse shoes, neighing to each other, “least I’m not a pony”. I guess ponies do the same thing about donkeys. That’ll do donkey.
River.
After feeding, the sun broke, so Hud and I swam in the algae-filled pool and Steph checked e-mail via the satellite wireless internet connection at the main house about 500 metres from our pad. Gary showed up and I said hi. He barked hello, scaring me again with his natural testosterone presence. The dogs and I cowered and went about our business. I could have posted from there, but why bother, the lack of connection to the real world was a little refreshing. It is different from when it was mere months after I left. I still miss everyone, but the level of emotion has dulled. I am sure come holiday season, the familiar bell of the sharpener will echo in my mind.
My father, Mir, and even Tony will be a welcome respite from the wonderful strangers. They will represent not just themselves, but everyone from back home.
Coming in from the cold.
Yesterday was spent in Napier, Art Deco capital of the world. An odd title, but apt, as in 1931, a massive earthquake literally decimated the entire city, leaving them with the decision of what style to rebuild their city. They chose Art Deco, and the downtown is built in such a style.
They also are very proud of this title, and very keen to preserve it as a tourist destination, because we knew about it very quickly after landing in Auckland. It was interesting, but not breathtaking. It was very clean though, and had a playground that should win awards. The playground tour continues. We ate our picnic lunch and watched our booger filled boy enjoy every ladder and steering wheel and slide in the whole multi-coloured joint.
Both sides now.
After Napier we drove to Cape Kidnappers, home of the largest gannet colony in the world. What’s a gannet? I haven’t a fucking clue. Lack of preliminary investigation made us unaware the only way to get to the Cape was a five hour walk or take our car on the beach at low tide. It was almost impossible, and I questioned taking the mighty all wheel drive Suburu onto the beach, but Steph quickly made it apparent I would be doing it alone, and do to the same fear I have for my wife as I do for the sheep farmer Gary, I let it go and got back in the car.
Urge for Going. End of Joni.
We were frustrated and a little tired, and Hud was in full whine mode, coughing snot, asking every five minutes when we would be home. I lost it a little at the fruit market and ended up using the f-word in front of him for the first time. I was depressed about all the way home. He did not even hear it, but I hate losing that much control in front of his liquid face.
We reached the farm without further profanity or incident and all of us went our separate ways as sometimes, we all just get sick of each other. Funny thing happened though, as dinner time approached, I grabbed on one of our cd’s we burned and popped it in the portable stereo. I flicked on the bbq and Steph unscrewed the plain skin Chardonnay we bought for eight bucks the other day in Havelock North. We pulled up a couple of chairs and watched our son dance and play in the sand as we sipped and talked and laughed and casually touched each others arms and faces, and fell in love for the thousandth time on this trip, wondering how we dare get uptight and upset at each other considering our lives and lifestyle.
This drinking and eating and then dancing
continued until the sun turned bloody
and we took pictures
and we knew it was time to be responsible again but we were okay now so we put Hud to bed about an hour later than normal. We talked a little more and then slipped into bed for reading four or five words before kissing. Really kissing.
Today we did laundry and organized tomorrow’s road trip. Its about 300km to Wellington from here, and on these windy roads that could take anywhere from 4 to 6 hours. We did take a drive later on with the idea of doing a hike in the bush, but Hud fell asleep almost right way, car like valium and all, so we just drove and sucked in the scenery of the Hawke’s Bay farmland.
After dinner we went to the main house to settle or bill and have a glass of wine with Kirsty from the bottle we brought the night of the lamb tail cooking. She sat us down in the kitchen and Hud played with 10 year old Amanda on the trampoline outside next to the dead mouse. Kirsty told us good south island tales and a bit about her giant house which used to be a hotel one hundred years ago. She is in her mid forties, with sun wrinkles around thin lips and a burly British way about her. And after a glass and a half of red, amidst the wonderful scent of her leg of lamb and the kumara she was cooking for the Belgians and Brits staying in her house, we felt connected, and left, putting another notch in our friendly NZ people belt.
So what’s to summarize? It was a great farm experience for all. People were great, sheep are dumb, and I am not becoming a vegetarian.
Big city Wellington tomorrow. Capital of NZ and home to one of the world’s best museums.
Oh, I like flowers now as well, maybe I will get into gardening when I get home.
So gardening and Joni Mitchell, and I already liked Scotch and evil tobacco.
Flyfishing and alimony may be next.
Love you dad.
Love to all,
J.
October 30, 2005
Annie’s Cottage, 43 kms northwest of Napier, New Zealand.
9:36am
Started my walks here on Saturday. It’s Monday here and after skipping the first morning here due to geographical ignorance, I took a chance and went out at sunrise to walk to a sheep water container at the top of a giant green hill in the middle of a paddock. It was stunning, of course, with views to the mountain range to the west of us, where snow sits on top, reminding me of home.
A lot and a little has happened in the last couple of days. This place is beautiful, but too isolated, making Steph and I realize a life this bucolic is not for us. We still have no idea what we want. Actually, we probably know what we want, it’s where we want it that often causes scratches of the head. It’s difficult to compare locations here to locations back home. Locations here are unique to the world. So the small beach town we drove through with pretty almost affordable houses, or the city with the beautiful harbourfront where everyone seemed friendly without pretension, they just don’t exist near the circle of family of friends we hold so dear. So everything else would be settling. That is frustrating.
Being this close to my wife has allowed me to become susceptible to her disease. The desperate virus of wanting it all.
After my walk, after a miniature breakfast, after writing 1,500 words of the novel, we packed a lunch and drove down to the river Kirsty showed during the farm tour on the day we arrived. I wore flip flops, not thinking this was going to be a long hike. As we descended the three-foot hill to reach the rocky river’s edge, I hit a slippery patch of mud and went down hard. Hard enough for me to take stock and ensure no limbs or bones were snapped. They were not, it was more the shock of someone of my size falling quickly on my ass. Steph immediately asked if I was ok. I told her I was, and she replied. “Good because that was really funny.” At least she asked first.
During the last month, the Hawke’s Bay region where we are currently located, received a lot of rain. There was mild flooding and the river we were standing next to was running high and brown, still ridding itself of the flood water. Oh and it was cold as well. Nice and river cold, not like that easy ocean cold I dunked my head in three days before.
So we sat, on the smallest rocks, the ones less anally intrusive, and ate a big lunch which included a salami and cheese, a ham and cheese, a bean salad with carrots, celery, red onions, feta and yellow pepper. We forgot to buy vinegar, so the dressing was a little oil, a little sweet chili sauce and a squeezed orange third to add some liquid.
Turned out pretty tasty. I cut up some other cucumber, carrots and celery and brought the last of the hummus. Three apples, two green and one red for Hud, and lots of bottled water made for the perfect picnic. Oh, and one Oreo each to cleanse the palate with chocolaty goodness.
The sun was high and hot, so we all lathered on sunscreen and made our way up the bank to further investigate this fast moving river. The bank we were on became a cliff, and I wanted to at least dunk my head anyway, so we crossed at safe point, me carrying Hud and then going back to hold Steph’s hand. Made me feel like a husband and a father and a man all at once. These are rare feelings for someone who sometimes cries at sunsets.
We walked about a kilometre further, all of us doddling along really, in 20 foot intervals, Hud finding a random bone, me throwing big logs in the rapids to watch them disappear, and Steph up ahead, trying to see where the sheep we thought were lost went, until we decided to make our way back to the car, but not before searching for crayfish in a smaller creek near the river. No luck. No eels either. Bummer. Then we drove back up the hill towards the farm, we had to make it back in time for the docking.
One of the things I find interesting about life on a farm, and not rub my chin beard, mock intellectual interesting, is how emotionally detached it is to the people that work it. Docking is a great example. Docking is the process of removing the tail of a lamb with propane-heated snips so when the lamb ages, shit does not gather and lump, making shearing more difficult. Now remember where I am, in New Zealand, on a 1000 acre farm, with 1600 sheep churning out wool for our sweaters, and lambs for our lamb chops, so when they herded the 110 lamb and their mothers, through a line of narrow stalls, where Gary, the patriarch of the farm, stood at a gateway, while his entire family (not really, will explain later) and his three dogs terrified the animals through alternating chutes, to separate the lambs from their mothers, the lambs were squeezed into such a small pen, that a number of them were trampled and gouged on the wire fence that it looked like a bizarre wrestling cage match, except with this, all the blood was real.
This is not a good day to be a lamb.
Next up, the tagging of the ears and cutting off the tails. The two sons, age 14 and 12 respectively, had the task of picking up each lamb and shoving them into a machine that resembles something out of a Marilyn Manson video, ass first, legs spread, rendering them helpless while Kirsty tags the lamb’s ear. It’s basically a hole punch with their farm logo. Ouch number one. Then Gary, pulls the lamb by the tail down to where he snips it off with a what looks like a staple gun, but it’s actually a big pair of white hot snips that cuts and cauterizes at the same time. He proceeds to pull the lamb through the machine and drops it to the ground. The lamb, stunned, ass on fire, ear searing, brays until it hears the familiar response bray of its mother somewhere in the pen.
This happens to 110 lamb.
I know the number because Gary ordered one of the boys to count them. Did I dock?
Yes. I grabbed the snips and cut two lamb’s tails off. Why? Because I needed to feel nothing about it. Did I feel nothing? I felt as much as I did when eating a delicious leg drizzled in mint sauce. It did feel like what I imagine cutting a finger off would feel like. So it had that going for it.
As we were leaving Kirsty invited us up later to eat the lamb tails. Yep. We went. Steph and I both tried one. I tried two actually. They cook them on an open fire, in a net, wool still on them, until they are charred black. You pick one up, peel off the char, revealing a fatty meaty muscley bone. It tasted what I imagine a finger would taste like.
But this Gary is a great character. He is not the father of the kids. The father died five years ago. He was his best friend. He stepped in somewhere to be with Kirsty and the kids, and also run the farm. He probably bought into it as well. He is a chauvinist, probably a racist, and growls and barks at the dogs as if speaking their language. He is a hard man with a full salt and pepper head of hair and a tired, wired face that’s seen too much sun and not enough love. He ate at least 20 lamb’s tails and guzzled a bottle of white wine (beer gives him the gaut) before we left for the evening. The dogs cower around him. So do I.
Yesterday we drove to Hastings, a city back on the coast, to go to a farmer’s market.
We bought chicken meatballs, a flat white(coffee with milk) a long black (espresso), lime and chili dressing for the chicken, a hunk of caraway cheese, a gingerbread man, a baguette, a quart of strawberries, and fresh juice. We sat and ate it all (not the meatballs, we had those last night) right in the middle of the open market. It was actually nice to be around people (country chic people at that) again for a while.
The rest of the day was spent touring around Havelock North to stock up on liquor and then up a mountain to see the whole of Hawke’s Bay.
There was a paraglider in the air, and I overheard one of his mates say a world record was broken there last week. 140 kilometeres a guy traveled on a paraglider. Amazing.
Hud has a little cold, but he is fighting it and it seems he is enjoying the time with us again, without the silly distraction of his friends. He seems to be on a dad kick lately and that is fine with me. He wavers between the two of us all the time.
Take your time with dad time little man.
Love to all,
J.
October 28, 2005
Annie’s Cottage, 43 kms northwest of Napier, New Zealand.
8:13pm
We all make choices. Choices affect lives. Sometimes these choices are right, sometimes wrong. Lives are made more interesting because of these choices. My choice to leave Canada on this year-long journey was embarked upon not to add interesting to my life curriculum vitae. I thought, with my past, I was pretty interesting already. Besides, I had other reasons for going on this trip, reasons with depth, with meaning, a life defining adventure with wife and son in tow, seeking answers to all the questions I had yet to ask. That sort of thing. But today, as I watched a rough guy on a four wheel ATV, with three dogs listening to his every whistle and holler, try to corral about 500 sheep into a new paddock,
Iknew, just as a by-product of my choice, my life had infinitely become more interesting.
I am on the front porch of a three-bedroom bungalow style converted farmhouse. There are over 1600 sheep, 800 deer, and 700 heads of cattle surrounding me as I write this. They are not within the confines of this house’s fenced yard, but stretched across many hundreds of acres of the farm we are staying on for the next six days. It is presently dark, so the vista I know is there, waiting for the morning sun to return, to once again steal every breath lucky enough to glance its way.
It may get boring to read about my ramblings about the wickedly green patina this country seems to have, but imagine drowning in grass, as if every blade was short and perfect, as if you were standing in the centre of the Greek guy’s lawn down the street from you, just amplified in square footage by ten thousand. It so green you forget what regular green looks like. Add dots of sheep and cattle and deer and miles and miles of fences, some dangerously electric, some barbed and equally terrifying. Add a couple of rocks, some tall straight pines, and a river running through it all, and there you have where I sit right now.
Last night, our first night here, was oppressively quiet. This after the sheep stopped braying, the pig hunting dogs down the road stopped barking and the constant clicking of the electric fence battery became lost in its own consistency. The quiet was thick, like an invisible blanket over your head, and it made for a tough first night’s sleep. But I should backtrack a little before I start with what happened today.
A night at the Germans. That is how we spent our last night in Onemana. It was their oldest son’s 5th birthday party. Now I like kids, but there is always little things about some kids that I find annoying and often quite disturbing. The birthday boy is one of those kids. He constantly tests boundaries, which is fine if the boundaries are don’t climb on that ottoman, or keep your hands away from the bonfire. But, because his parents do nothing to stop their two kids from doing anything, his limits become, please don’t juggle those flaming chainsaws, or keep your recently salivad tongue out of the electric socket, or, and this is scarily no exaggeration, please don’t wonder off from the party, up a hill, and into a neighbour’s yard a kilometere away right next to a river. Now this only disturbs me, and I write this with every ounce of selfishness in my body, because Hud idolizes this little devil of a child. So when Steph relayed this tale to me after I returned from getting beer (because of the six pack they bought for the 20 people ran out within seconds, (I had three)), I was terrified and wanted to grab a piece of the steak I brought and get the fuck out of dodge or dodgekopf as it were.
Thankfully, there were a number of parents at this party able to buffer my rage with equally disturbing tales of the German’s three and five year old kids found miles away, or paddling in their dingy up the river, or driving their stick shift van to the store. We all laughed and cheers the beer I just bought, but sadly, the accident jump is big enough to be tragic, and it I hope it is just less tragic enough to scare them into setting some rules for these kids. It makes me dislike the Germans on a different level then just making fun of the breastfeeding or the fact that dishes from a week ago were piled in the sink when I arrived. This was a party of at least 10 adults and 13 kids. Other things were surreal as well. They served the cake first. Before dinner. One kid was bragging he ate 5 pieces. One kid left a log the size of Florida in the toilet then ran away, sans wipe. Another time, another kid was taking a loud dump, and his mother handed me her five-month old daughter as she went to wipe. She never met me before. She handed me her child like she was a glass of sweet white wine. It was all very insane.
I have to admit, there were two other couples at this party that were funny and as befuddled as I about this wickedly weird scene. One guy even lamented how upset he was we did not meet earlier as we could have hit the links together, something I was looking to do from day one. We left just after eight. Hud strung out on sugar and evil.
That was how we spent our last night in Onemana. Made leaving the next morning that much easier.
Travel day was cool. We stopped halfway in Taupo for a soak at their large heated pool complex. We stopped in Napier for groceries and then drove the hour to the farm where I am now.
Today, Kirsty, the owner of the farm took us on a tour of the farm, which included watching the shearing of about 500 sheep. Very neat. She took us to feed a pony and the crazy ewe with a wayward eye. She also drove us through her old orchard (a loss leader, being converted into a fattening paddock for the sheep, different grass), she took us down the river with a swimming hole and a place to have a picnic. She dropped us off at around 11:30, us now less ignorant of the workings of a sheep, deer and cattle farm.
At around 4 we tried to go for a walk, but the puppies from next door kept following us. I love dogs as most of you know, but I had to scare a blue streak and give them a little foot nudge to stop them from following us. That didn’t even work so we just went to main house to see 10-year old Amanda, who was to show us a lamb and calve they keep as pets. She was there, eating a grapefruit and watching Sky TV. We have one channel and it’s fuzzy. She took us out back to meet Snow White, the lamb and Rex, the calve. Hud pet them both and Amanda told us about the boys she liked, and said she was mad at one of her friends because she dissed her, so she bitchslapped her. Ahhh hip hop, thank you for such wonderful additions to childhood jargon around the world. We told her we hoped to see her tomorrow at the “docking” which is where the lambs tails are chopped off and then cooked over an open fire. The last words she said to us as she disappeared to watch another hour of the Disney channel on her flat screen was…
“See you tomorrow,” her small hand covered in sheep shit. “I’ll be the one with blood all over me.”
On the way back, we were walking up the road and noticed to our left that Jason, the farm hand, was herding the recently shorn sheep into another paddock across the road. Well, it wasn’t going well, and the sheep started stampeding directly toward us. Jason screamed “Get back!” So we immediately scrambled up the bank to get away from the sheep. Little did we realize that he was talking to his dogs, screaming at his dogs actually, to get in front of the herd and direct them back up the road. This went on for a while as he cursed out his dogs, and even one time, witnessed by Steph, picked up one of the dogs and punched her repeatedly in the head. Bitch slapped indeed. We had to keep telling ourselves we are in a different world and these are working dogs, not pets. It’s easy to judge as us city punks looked on, as he eventually managed to corral the herd into the correct paddock.
It was an awesome thing to watch, these dogs work this herd. One is a barker and one just stares. Their sole purpose in life is to ensure these sheep go where their owner is telling them. Telling them with a series of whistles and random barked out instructions. It was remarkable and made the whole week staying here worth it on the second day.
The rest of the week will be very low key. We will go to the docking tomorrow, Hastings market on Sunday, Napier one day, wine tasting another (total Chardonnay region) and hikes in between.
My novel writing, diet vacation is over tomorrow, the goal is 2000 words a day which should leave me very close to done by Dec 1. It’s a lofty goal, but should be attainable.
If I could just stay away from this damn journal.
Love to all,
J.
posted by Jason @ 7:18 PM
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