So it's official...I'M BACK. After a brief hiatus, I have decided that I will reinstate the blog. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, the children have now returned to school and are no longer on Correspondence which has given me a whole lot more time than I had before. The second reason is that we have now moved into a new farming position with lots of interesting things to blog about.
I suppose I should bring everyone up to speed with the journey so far. Having finally left Ruatoria (phew) we have returned to Southern Hawkes Bay/Northern Wairarapa to manage Owahanga Station. To give you an idea Owahanga is situated on the Coast near Pongaroa, sandwiched between Akitio and Mataikona beaches. It is 7200 hectares of coastal paradise owned by a Maori Incorporation, Aohanga. We are farming sheep and cattle with around 19000 stock units. There is 3000 hectares of bush and scrub land which holds wild pigs, deer and far too many feral goats. It has 14 kms of private coastline, not accessible to the public. It has two rivers, the Owahanga and Mataikona, which form the northern and Southern Boundaries respectively. I am sure some of you will google earth it.
The three girls are all attending Pongaroa School with Jimmy attending Pongaroa Early Years, which is the local kindergarten. It is 29 kilometres or thereabouts into Pongaroa but we are EXTREMELY fortunate to have the school bus pick them all up (including Jimmy) right at the gate. I will share more on the school bus in a later blog.
The other interesting aspect to our lives at present, which will provide plenty of blog material, is that we have started hosting foreign tourists through a site called HelpX. Basically the tourists come and stay with us for a period of time. We provide meals and accommodation in exchange for work. Our first helpers have been Ian and Carolina from Chile who we have absolutely loved getting to know. They are newly married and have finished their university education and have come to NZ on a working holiday to improve their English. We have learnt so much about Chile that we did not know (I had to do a wikipedia search before they arrived so as not to look like a moron) and have been able to introduce them to farming, pig hunting, fish and chips and scone making. As I type they are outside water blasting the outside of the house and laughing alot. Jimmy is "helping" them. I have plenty more to say on the subject of helpx helpers...again best for another blog....I do not have time today!! Ian and Carolina are leaving on Monday and Markus and Sarah from Germany are arriving. We also have Jossi and Oggi from Germany arriving next week as well. I am setting myself up for a highly paid job in the Hague with all my international relations experience!
Speaking of time (or lack of it), I was thinking this morning about the life of farmers and their wives. To give you an idea Scott got up at 4.00am and was gone by 4.30am. The shepherd that lives at the far end of the station, 14kms away, needed to leave his house at 3.30am to get to the yards at the right time. I hate to think what time our stock agent Crashy had to leave his house at Wanstead to get here before 5.00am!! I was up at 5.00am making scones for everyone. I then had to do a rubbish run with all the rubbish, shift some furniture from one of the station houses to another, run several messages up to Scott in the yards, reply to emails for him, answer his telephone calls, feed and sort out a puppy, deal with the dog we have in isolation, start mount washing, change sheets, set Ian and Carolina alight with the water blaster. That is all only part of it. I find it is best not to sit down too much or think about all you have to do or you will never get anything done. I will blog again tomorrow with some material about our helpers, and a bit of pig hunting. For now, I need to go and put out another load of washing while it is still fine.
Welcome back to my blog about our crazy life....stay tuned!!!!!
