The weather becomes more and more unsettled every day. Frenetic does not even begin to cover it. I wake up just before 7, when the sun comes up, and after ten minutes of steady climbing, the wind begins. The clouds roll in, and it rains. And then the sun comes back out, and there is blue sky where thirty seconds ago there was only a thick, grey cover. And then the pea soup rolls back in. And then the wind dies down. And then I have to go to the bathroom and make a cup of tea and pretend this weather doesn’t make me crazy.
Fall! Fall in April! What a world. The nights are cold. The sun is not as strong; the everpresent fear of burning has mostly subsided, and I am back to wearing everything in my backpack most of the time: teeshirt, ice breaker, zip up sweater, down vest, two pairs of wool socks. I look like a sofa cushion.
I spent the past two weeks wwoofing at Soggy Bottom Holding, outside of Hamilton, in a place called Ngaruawahia. Nah-roo-WAH-hee-uh. Sure. After tiki-touring northland, puttering around auckland, hiking in tongariro, hitching to/recovering in whanganui over a period of three weeks, two weeks of farmstay house arrest was very much welcome. I had my own accommodation– a little sleepout overlooking the hills of the waikato. My own bathroom, kitchenette, and queen sized bed. Let me repeat that: my own queen sized bed.
No one else sleeping in the room. No creaking bunk beds. No one closing or opening the drapes at night. No fire alarm. No one waking up at 4 am to talk to their boyfriend on the phone. No bathroom down the hall. Can I get a witness?
This is what I did on the farm: helped make new stock fencing, helped rip invasive trees out of the ground, puttered around the garden (tilled beds, planted fall brassicas, pruned herbs). Spent a lot of time feeding the animals– the property was 60 acres in the hills, and they kept rare breeds of cattle, pigs, sheep, goats, and ducks. I drove around on a quad bike that looked like the pope mobile, zipping around the dirt tracks with giant sacks of feed or cases of expired cheese in the back to feed to the pigs. They ate 50kgs of pig food a day. There were three or four lots of piglets while I was there, and I spent a fair amount of time giggling at piglets trying to eat slices of cheese. It was the kind of farm, though, where I gathered that giggling was frowned upon, so I only did that on days when I fed the pigs by myself.
And I spent a lot of time in the butchery, helping mince meat for sausages, pack and label sausages, and with other small odd jobs that a hapless suburbanite can do without fucking up too horribly. One day I packed all of the cuts from two sheep that were butchered… so now I can say I know the difference between shanks and fillets. Hooray?
I did a few unsavory jobs too: I had to burn a dumpster of scrap meat in the incinerator, piece by piece. I can also now say that I have fallen in a dumpster of old meat. Twice. Nice.
But I rested, relaxed, fed cheese to piglets, watched the sun rise and set while the weather was still settled, and for two weeks I was a little part of a little family on a little farm. Cue: theme to little house on the prairie. And then I left for Raglan.
