Them was Hard days...

[cirianz]

Up first thing in the morning, dodging over the holes in the path over the gully, up the back paddock. Looking after the stock. Out in a snow storm, winds gusting around, visibility down to -1, wearing nothing more than a slithery dressing gown, a baggy jersey & gumboots. Snow up to my ankles as we tried to mend a broken chain with nothing more than some old pliers, a screwdriver & an old warratah as a vice... Ahhh, them was hard days they were...


Well... it was the morning...
& it was snowing... a bit...
& there was some snowflakes on the top of my gumboots... around ankle level...
& it shouldn't've been snowing in mid spring anyway!
But the rest was true (froze my butt off I did!)
came out the front door this morning to find the goat waiting down the bottom of the steps.

So... do I qualify as a real farmer now... huh?

 

[Covenant]

I'm sorry, but to qualify as a farmer you must be able to stick your arm up a cow's nether regions without loosing your wristwatch, and you must also be able to eat a kilo of tripe for breakfast .... allegedly.

Covenant

 

[cirianz]

ROTFLMAO

Well, no cows in our herd of goat or flock of chickens (we've got 2 now ) so guess I'm doomed to civilian status

 

[Anon_F]

British Farming be the Best

I'm sorry, but to qualify as a farmer you must be able to stick your arm up a cow's nether regions without loosing your wristwatch, and you must also be able to eat a kilo of tripe for breakfast .... allegedly.

Covenant

Checking that a cow is in calf is not the most nicest task, ask any vet student, you have to be very carefull, oh and you take your watch off before you do it!!! Hand goes up and you check to see if you can feel for the calf, if you get a hot feeling up your arm your about to get sprayed with manure!!

cirianz you qualifiy as a farmer well done, i'm proud of you
cirianz suggest you look at http://www.nzdwu.org.nz

Britsih Farmers get slagged off left right & centre, now i'm not a NIMBY and i've been their done it & got the tee-shirt. A farming life is not all about sitting on your arse all day in a tractor or in yer land rover, ask Murdoch or Exmoor!

Working for both of them is hard, bloody hard. But you get on with it you do the job, agricultural wages are low. And working on a farm if it's dairy is up @ 0500 to milk, or if your farm is crops ploughing until well in to dusk seeing where you are by the lights on the tractor.

Of course the good point was the young farmers rallies Oh and of course drinking ale & cider

http://www.nzdwu.org.nz/

 

[floppybootstomp]

Oh, ok, you're on the first rung my girl

We have several awards here, report to the main centre Thursday morning, 10am, and you will receive your bronze farmers award.

When you've learnt to consume 5 pints of scrumpy without falling over; drive a tractor at 3mph in a single lane roadway and cause a three mile tailback; stop moaning about having to get up at 3am everyday; stop referring to townies as aliens; shooting everything that moves apart from your own stock and finally learnt how to fill your boots.

Then you may qualify for the platinum award

 

[Covenant]

BTW

What's a warratah?

Covenant

 

[cirianz]

Yeah, know about the work, stayed on a dairy farm with my dad for a bit when I was 15yo. Downed the whole 'romantic' image of the farmers life within the first 24 hours. Like you said, bloody hard work. More than I would've imagined. Really don't think I've got what it takes to hack it myself. Got a great amount of respect for those that do though.
Most of the farming in NZ is high country sheep farming & that's another kind of hard sh*t. When I was a teenager me & my sister used to bike out to Earnscleugh Station to ride the stock horses there (must've been bloody keen, was 2hr's plus on dirt roads each way just to get there). We were just in the foothills there, but even there the high country has a breathtaking beauty that is indescibable. Once it's touched your soul it's always there.
But the real high country sheep stations... When John & I drove through Danseys Pass we ran into a couple of the farmers. The road was still officially closed but was passable by that time. The families up there & elsewhere in the highcountry are generally snowed in from mid Autum to spring. Spoke with one family who were out getting wood. Mum, Dad & a young girl about 7-8yo. Taking advantage of the nice day, wrapped up against the snow & the ice they were dragging through, sawing & carting trees blown down in the previous year's storms for firewood. All slogging it hard as, kid & all.
Even higher up in the mountains we saw another guy. Sitting on his horse up on a ridge. Just watching us 'city folk' dodging the ice, holes & mud (mud on ice is deadly when you've got a 'cliff' on one side. & you can't use chains on ice) on the road. The thaw was early this year so I expect he was out checking for injured stock & for lambs. Early lambing up in the mountains can wipe out your whole year's stock.

Over here farmers come in for a bit of flak too. Some sort of notion of rich farmers sitting on their asses raking in the cash. Maybe there are some like that somewhere... but I've never met any. Every farmer I've ever known works his/her ars* off often doing really sh*tty work in sometimes appalling conditions struggling to keep the banks fed. Their capital is in their land not their hand. But there's not many who sell out & cash in that capital.

I love having our wee scrap of land with our goat & our semi-wild chooks (we reckon they wandered down from the wild chooks up the hill & decided to stay). A chance to play with the dream without having to slog through the realities I suppose. But I'm too much of a wuss to be a real farmer I think.
Mind you... that cider does sound tempting

 

[cirianz]

BTW

What's a warratah?

Covenant

Ummmmm.... 3 way angle iron used for fencing... has holes along one of the protrusions to run the fencing wire through. About 6 foot in length but usually about half of that is underground.
I'm not doing a good job of describing them... any real farmers over there know the British name for them?

John's got a 3 point scar on his calf where one went through his leg once back on the wee farmlet him & his exwife had. Bit messy it was apparently.
Just had to dig a bunch of them out of the fence line down the back paddock here. We've got the goat on a running wire while we shift the fence. will make the paddock quite a bit smaller but we're going to build a bridge over the path I mentioned earlier (last year's floods left holes in the path & it's not polite to break wedding guests.) & we're going to flatten out that section of the paddock & make a holding pen for wedding guests... I mean a social area for people to chat under the trees.


Ummmmm.... does that answer your question

 

[cirianz]

Oh, ok, you're on the first rung my girl

We have several awards here, report to the main centre Thursday morning, 10am, and you will receive your bronze farmers award.

When you've learnt to consume 5 pints of scrumpy without falling over; drive a tractor at 3mph in a single lane roadway and cause a three mile tailback; stop moaning about having to get up at 3am everyday; stop referring to townies as aliens; shooting everything that moves apart from your own stock and finally learnt how to fill your boots.

Then you may qualify for the platinum award

lol, just read your reply out to John on the phone (he's at work) he sez...

"OK, done that... so, what do we do tomorrow?"

 

[Covenant]

I think so.

Your place sounds ideal. Over here we would call it a small holding. Just a couple of acres - enough to support a couple of sheep or some chickens etc and perhaps enough veg to be reasonably self sufficient. I worked on my uncle's farm in the Summer Hols from about the age of 10 so I actually do know a little about livestock, and I also know I wouldn't like to do it for a living now - it's far too much hard work for a very limited reward.

Covenant

 

[cirianz]

I don't think we would qualify as a small holding.
We're only about an acre & much of it is not suitable for farming
(until the previous owners built the deck then 2 steps out the front door would put you over the edge & into the gully)
Over here anything less than 30 acres is called a 'hobby farm' (or, if you're trying to sell one then it's a 'lifestyle block')
We would definitely have liked to buy a bit more land but around here that was way out've our reach. Plus, most've the land around here is in native bush. Well, with a few exotics mixed in but it's hard to describe. Even with exotics the bush 'round here isn't anything like British/European forests. NZ Native bush is a sub-tropical rainforest so that might give a better idea of what it's like.
It is very varied around here. out my window, across the bay I'm looking straight at Rolling green hills that would look quite at home in England or Ireland. Although a lot of that land has been divided up & is for sale as 'lifestyle blocks' at the moment

 

[cirianz]

Over here anything less than 30 acres is called a 'hobby farm' (or, if you're trying to sell one then it's a 'lifestyle block')

I believe it's quite different in Brittain. As I understand it Brittain uses a form of intensive farming that makes us look very wasteful of land. I remember studying it at highschool & being quite blown away by it. Evolved over centuries of increasing population pressure it is one of the most efficient farming systems in the world if I recall. Although I'm afraid the details of what we were taught have gotten lost in the passing of time unfortunately.

 

[Covenant]

Your place sounds idyllic, do you get inspiration for your artwork from your surroundings?
Half of my wifes family live in Australia, and one of them has a place comprising of a 200 acres or so of rough woodland, streams and gullies etc.
We were fortunate enough to visit a couple of years ago - fantastic place, no neighbours, just peace and quiet. Trouble was, it's quite hazardous to walk through what with all the spiders and snakes, and probably crocs for all I know.
I think I prefer England 'cause it's a little safer, although I wouldn't mind visiting NZ, it seems to have some really spectacular scenary judging by Lord of the Rings

Covenant

 

[cirianz]

Definitely. My last painting "After the storm" was a painting of what's just outside my kitchen window You can see it on my deviant art site through the link in my siggy if you want. I changed the rocks a bit though to make it look more natural... like in a forest. It's actually an old drystone retaining wall.

Luckily NZ has no snakes & only 2 poisonous spiders (one imported from australia) & our landscape & bush are very different from Australia. My Mum is Australian & so most of my rellys live over there. We used to move back & fourth a bit when i was a kid to keep in touch. Where abouts was the place you were staying?

Oh, & if you're ever living over here don't try & grow a frog pond
John spent years gathering tadpoles & frog spawn to have frogs in the pond he built when he lived in Invercargill & they'd all turn into frogs & disappear, much to his frustrated puzzlement.
Apparently British frogs don't climb trees

 

[Covenant]

Even through my crappy old monitor I can get a sense of the world your paintings inhabit - you have a talent I envy.
We stayed in Sydney on holiday then did the Cairns/Reef thing. We moved on to Wedderburn near Campbelltown where sister in law has a spread, and ended up in a place called Duras where I was bitten by a racoon.
What I noticed was that all the beaches (outside of the main centres like Sydney) were empty. Try getting on a beach over here in fine weather and you're fighting for a square foot of space!

Covenant

 

[floppybootstomp]

Frogs in the UK only go to ponds, usually the pond they were born in, to spawn every Springtime.

After the spawn is laid and fertilised, Mr & Mrs Frog bugger off, back to live in the greenery away from the pond til the following year.

They will only ever make very occasional trips back to the pond apart from to breed.

And that, for frogs, is pretty much the same the world over, tree climbing amphibian or not.

So tell John not to despair, twas nothing personal

 

[muckshifter]

I had frogs once ...

* they taste like chicken *

 

[Covenant]

I had crabs

 

[floppybootstomp]

I had crabs

Inquisitive lil buggers ain't they?

Caught one on my ankle once. I named him 'Scott of the Antarctic' in honour of his exploratory nature before crushing him between fingernails

 

[Covenant]

Well, I caught mine on the beach and me Mum made me put them back in the water.