Rugby, Chicken Pox and Rainboats

So following on from yesterday's rugby theme, it appears young Jimmy is definitely destined to be an All Black.  His latest thing is to put a large rubber band around his none to small boof-head and say "rugby, playing rugby".  He looks hilarious.  He has started on his own version of the haka which involves saying "pakahia" over and over again, which I am not even sure is a word and could possibly be offensive, and stamping his feet and throwing his arms from side to side in a "hi ho hi ho its off to work we go" fashion.  Hmm, I wonder if it will catch on for the 2027 Rugby World Cup, or even for the 2011 Rugby World Cup.  Its got to be better than what the Feelers are doing with Right here, Right Now.

Well what better way to start a morning than with a dose of the chicken pox.  Xanthe is now a poxie girl, as opposed to a moxie girl (those of you with little girls will know what a moxie girl is).  Ran out of baking soda so she has been having the oatmeal bath...warm bath with a couple of handfuls of rolled oats chucked in will apparently soothe the itching.  Unfortunately the bath water looks like somebody has yakked in it.  Gross.  However, it seemed to do the trick.  I am also putting tea-tree oil on the blisters.  The nurse in our local health centre, who is a bit of a nut job, suggested I put Janola on the blisters to stop infection because Janola kills germs.  I googled that gem of information out of interest and wasn't able to come up with anyone else recommending it.  Must just be a Coastie thing.  Think I will give that little tip a miss and continue with my own remedies.

Lucky for us Jimmy is off to his Grandparents house in Waipukurau tomorrow.  Scott's parents have kindly offered to have him for us for a week or so.  It didn't even take too much arm twisting on our behalf.  Will be great for him to have some one on one time, and for us to have a much needed break.  It will give me a chance to concentrate on the girls a little more with their schooling without the constant interruptions that two year old boys inevitably create.  He has today coined a new phrase...rainboats.  He came rushing into the office, having dressed himself, and said he was off to play in the rainboat.  He kept shouting "Look, look at the rainboat".  Have attached a couple of pics of the rainboat (rainbow) in question and the attire that he felt was suitable for playing in the rainboat.

I could update you all on how the Correspondence Schooling is going but I am over it for one day, having spent quite a few hours arguing with Madeleine about her attitude and work habits.  Thought I might be able to get some plants in the garden late this afternoon but Scott, bless him, had other ideas.  Have just finished typing up the reports to go with the budgets for the AGM for the Farm Partnership...he of course told me he needed them by 8am tomorrow!! Must ask for a pay rise....although a rise on nothing will still be nothing methinks!

First swim of the year

Okay so Friday the work for the kids from the Correspondence School turns up.  Three huge banana boxes and some other assorted paraphernalia, and there was me worrying there wouldn't be enough.  It was just as well Walter the intinerant teacher for our area had paid a visit last week or I wouldn't have even known where to start.  He gave me some sound advice...don't open it in front of the kids, just sit down and work through it by yourself, start at the start and put everything else away.  Their teacher in Wellington has sent four weeks work through so you have to sift through it all and start with the unit with the lowest number and work your way up.  Unfortunately for me the units aren't exactly clearly labelled, they have ridiculous codes PX9671 and PX9762 for example, and the maths units for Lizzie and Xanthe have the same names but different codes.  Its all fairly straight forward once you get your head around it all though.  I think the most difficult thing is going to be the fact that the integrated units for the two younger girls are different.  Integrated units are kind of like a topic study but incorporates several curriculum areas.  So, Lizzie's is on colours and there's all these activities which all relate back to colour.  Xanthe's is whanau and family.  There is absolutely no cross-over whatsoever between the two units so I have to try and fit in on Monday hiding under the bed with Lizzie and working on doing things in the dark and writing stories about colour, while talking with Xanthe about whanau and writing letters to special people.  I'm sure I'll manage.  Didn't think carefully back when pro-creating about having two of them so close together...19 months between them.

Madi's work will be fairly easy as she can do alot of it independently.  I thought to myself that as the science unit is only 6 hours worth of work or thereabouts we would just do a science "day" at some point.  Turns out it is a plant and seed study and we have to keep a journal, so science every day it is then I suppose.  Not looking forward to all the art work she has to do, purely from a mess perspective given that I am the dogsbody who will clean it all up.

Had the first swim of the year yesterday (Friday) down in the mighty Waiapu.  The river is still running quite high after the nearly 300mm of rain earlier this month, but the Kouka Creek has made a nice pool where it flows into the main river and created its own channel.  Took the three girls and Scott's cousin down to the creek by the house where the girls thought it was a good idea to cover themselves in clay from on the bank.  Plenty of people would pay good money for a clay body wrap I am sure.  So the creek by the house doesn't have a huge amount of water in it so the thought was chuck them on the back of the ute, along with the dogs, and take them down the road to the slightly bigger creek where they could clean themselves off.  Thought we'd have a gander at the river while we were there and found the worlds best swimming hole.  Wish I'd taken the camera.  Its about 100m long and doesn't move a whole heck of alot so is pretty safe.  Very deep, well over my head in spots.  Kids had a great time.  Iwa the three legged dog managed to swim across to the other side and even the Jack Russell, who never swims, made an outstanding effort and followed her mate Iwa to the far shore.  Little known fact, that I will bore you all with, the Waiapu is the second most silt laden river in the world after the Yangtze in China.  It used to hold top spot apparently.  Basically this means that per cup of Waiapu water there is more silt than almost all the other rivers in the world.  Hard to believe when you look at the Whanganui or Wairoa River in Dargaville as a comparison for clarity.

Its now Sunday and its raining.  Typically it wasn't forecast very well by the Met Service, I am sure they think that only 5 people live past Gisborne so its not worth worrying about.  Given that we are two hours from Gisborne and three hours from Whakatane, it would be nice if we got the occasional mention.  Its like putting Auckland and Hamilton or Palmerston North and Wellington together and calling it one region!  Not much on the agenda for today.  Spent yesterday shifting our friends from Ruatoria to Gisborne, four ute and trailers did the job nicely.  We even got to have takeaway pizza which for us is a very rare treat!  Scott will be miserable all day about the fact that the All Blacks lost the rugby last night.  He is blaming it all on Stephen Donald who we believe should never have gone on the the tour.  Fortunately for my television watching pleasure, provincial rugby is just about finished so we will all be allowed to watch something else from Thursday to Sunday!!!  Can't wait for the next All Black's game where they might give the outstanding Sonny Bill Williams a run. 

Finally...I'm doing it.

Well, as if I didn't already have enough to do, I have taken on another project.  My life is probably a little different to most I guess, but then no two lives are the same!!  Quite a few of you know me really well, but some of you may not, so I'll give you all a potted history that will leave you snoring in your seats.  I'm 34 years old and was born in Upper Hutt.  I did my primary schooling at Conifer Grove Primary School in South Auckland (interesting education!), 3rd form at Diocesan and then the rest of College at Feilding Agricultural High School after Mum and Dad moved us to the Manawatu.  Mum and Dad are still living down there in Kimbolton, which they claim is just so lovely...I'm not convinced.  I have younger brother Jamie who has quietly made his way into horticultural career in Auckland.  He refers to himself as a country boy in city man's undies, or the other way around, I can never quite remember.

To cut a long story short, I met Scott in the Kimbolton Fish and Chip shop nearly 12 years ago.  For those of you that don't know, Kimbolton is a one-horse no shop town in the Northern Manawatu of New Zealand.  It is surrounded by farmland and is an agricultural strong-hold.  Scott was a stock manager back then on a 1000 acre sheep beef and deer farm.  Our first date was him inviting me to watch him play rugby for Oroua...wow, what a lucky girl I was, he really pushed the boat out there to try and impress me.  I'm obviously easily pleased as I decided I'd keep him around.  Little did I know back then what throwing my lot in with his would mean and where we'd end up!!!

My High School has an end of year magazine called Sheaf.  For the 7th formers (year 13) of that year, they take a profile  picture and then do a wee thing called "will be remember for" and "most likely destination".  Now I'm not going to tell you what my will be remember for was, as it won't make any sense and is to long to try and explain (plus its embarrassing and my parents may read this).  Anyway, the most likely destination for me, and remember I didn't write it, was "farmer".  Quite a true prophecy as it turns out.


So, Scott and spent a wee while traipsing around various farms in the lower North Island while he worked his way up the ranks including an absolutely horrific stint in Dargaville on a dairy farm...which I will revisit in a later blog.  Plenty of good keen persons met along the way, lots of rugby clubs benefited from Scott's prowess on the paddock (sarcasm) and we've managed to cram in having four little people.  Madeleine is now nearly 10, Lizzie almost 7, Xanthe 5 and Jimmy is 2.  That kind of brings us to the present day.

So what are we doing now?  Well, we are in Ruatoria, near East Cape, the Eastern most point of New Zealand and the first place in the world to see the sun each day.  We manage a 3,500 hectare (8,000 acres or thereabouts) station with around 16,000 stock units (animals) to take care of.

Ruatoria has a pretty bad rap really, but probably deservedly so.  Back in the 1980's a group of local Maori formed a gang of sorts called the Ruatoria Rastafarians or "Ngati Dread".  Their religious beliefs were a mix of Rastafarianism, the Ringatu Religion which is based on the teachings of the Maori Prophet Te Kooti and some of their own interpretation of Maoritanga, along with worship of Marajuana (weed).  They basically terrorised the town for a number of years with shootings, be-headings, and lots and lots of burning.  Insurance companies would not insure any building on the Coast at that time.  The Rasta's believed that land was wrongfully taken from Ngati Porou and should be returned and had a distrust of the white man, authority and anything that didn't go their way.

I could go on and on but basically it was a really scary time and nobody wanted to live in Ruatoria or even travel here.  It had such a bad reputation and still does to some degree.  There are still lots of Rastas around, all with the tattooed faces and dreadlocks that symbolise their religion.  Kinda weird to be a pakeha in a place where pakeha's were seen as the devil in the not to distant past.  The Rasta's have all matured over time, as you do, and are now heavily involved in the local community, perhaps in an effort to "pay back".   The local fire brigade is almost all Rasta's and its a bit scary when you need the fire brigade and whole lot of fearsome looking facially tattooed chaps turn up!!  We even have one of them on our staff, which has been an enlightening experience.  If you had told me a few years ago that I would be living in Ruatoria I would have laughed my head off.

So, why the blog?  Well, a couple of reasons.  First is that alot of people have suggested I do it.  Second, there isn't a rural woman's voice "out there" giving a perspective on what its like to live in a remote area and be a farmer's wife, let alone one who is trying to teach her kids via Correspondence School!!  We have some pretty weird stuff go on in our lives on a day to day basis that is probably quite different to what alot of other people get up to so its nice to document it.  I will be blogging about the good and the bad, farming, hunting, kids, schooling etc so I guess you could say it will have a little something for everybody....kinda like the $2 shop, although hopefully not as naff or cheesey.


Its certainly been a busy week this week with the helicopter here spraying 220 hectares of gorse, which is a drop in the bucket, hunters here chasing wild pigs last weekend, kids getting set up with Correspondence School and Scott's cousin Will arriving up here to stay for a while.  Not to mention the Vet, the Stock Agent, the Merchandise guy from Wrightsons etc etc etc.  You get the drift.  Of course there is always the kids just doing what they do best as well, which in our case is making mischief and creating havoc.  Jimmy downed a whole can of beer on the weekend, as you do when you are a two year old, and nearly set the house on fire on Wednesday.  I won't go into detail this time but watch this space in future if you're keen on a mixture of Barry Crump, Footrot Flats and Boy with a little bit of the Beverly Hillbillies and Super Nanny (my kids needing Super Nanny, not me being Super Nanny) thrown in.