Down on the farm with the Neesons

The farmhouse and two of the wool shed- covered livestock yards.

The drive to Taumarunui took hours, it didn't particularly look far on the map, as I sat in the back of my cousin-uncle's shiny red Holden I watched as the countryside flashing past changed from the flat pasture land of the Hauraki plains the rolling hills and then to what we'd call mountains back at home. Now and then we saw the summit of a volcano through the clouds, Auckland and parts of the Coromandel reminded me a lot of southern Devon and Cornwall, now I felt as if I was somewhere different altogether, unfamiliar and foreign.

We stopped off for some dinner in McDonald's as it was the only place in town open at that time of night, several local people were there too, having something to eat and drink, sitting around and chatting. I asked how long it would take to drive to the farm. I expected fifteen minutes.

"About an hour" Lyn said.

She wasn't lying, the car headed off down the 'Forgotten World Highway' crossing numerous small bridges (ONE. LANE. BRIDGE. as it says on the road) and beginning to take tighter and tighter turns up and down increasingly sheep hillsides. The tarmac ran out after around twenty  minutes to be replaced by loose gravel, the road narrowed to a single carriage width and stayed there, we continued further into the darkness. Eventually we crossed a small bridge where Alex said that his farm basically began, the bush along the side of the road and the darkness over the hills stopped me seeing too much. We went to bed pretty much as soon as we got in, when I woke up I looked out of the window and saw this:

Tell a lie, same view, different day. The wheelbarrow is just back from ford concreting.

The farmhouse stands on the top of a hillock in some stunning country. Paddocks stretch away in all directions, the Ohura river flows lazily past this time of year in the bottom of the steep ravine across the road, surreal shades of green for this time of year come from native trees that contrast to more recently planted imports with their leaves falling for the autumn. The grass clings to the steep hillsides except where the livestock have worn down a little track and the papa is exposed. The first impression of the place was that it is so incredibly quiet here; there are no major roads for a long, long way, no through roads, no neighbours for 10km, not even airliners passing overhead. Instead the sound of livestock, the river and the wind through the grass and trees is the background noise. Nowhere I've ever lived has been this isolated and quiet. It's good, for me right now, it is good.

I wrote to my cousins a while back asking to work for them for a while, I wasn't sure what work I would do or could do, I was pretty much looking forwards to taking time to learn something new be it skills or knowledge. I was also looking forwards to staying in one place for a while and getting to know a side of the family that I had never met. I was glad that the first major job was not too unfamiliar, a ford across a creek had been destroyed by the heavy rains eroding the soft rock beneath. The whole gang turned out to prepare the ford, mix the concrete and to put the stuff in the correct place and shape.

Concreting the ford with Tim, Callum and Alex

 I found myself wheeling concrete back and forth one afternoon, then the next day mixing and barrowing the stuff around, the next day the same again. The raw cement ate away the moisture from the skin, got into the eyes and mouth and collected in the bathtub after the nightly showers. The wheelbarrow handles gave me blisters on my hands, blisters that subsequently burst and cracked to be filled by concrete. 
However, I'm not moaning. I am happy: There is so much to be satisfied about in this type of work. Sure I got nasty blisters that stung like hell for a while (especially with that lovely calcium hydroxide sloshing over them) but every barrow-load I mixed, shifted or troweled actually went into building something that would be useful and last (hopefully) for a while. For the most of the fords construction it was just Tim, Callum and I working, we broke up the task into sections based upon tractor-trailer loads of builder's mix and cement bags and an honest day's labour. We drove our vehicles to the job every day in the cool morning air, dew on the grass soaking shoes and lower legs on the way. In the tired dried-sweat evening we would pack the tools away, put the site into a decent sort of state, clean the tools and set off along the dusty paths leaving great cream coloured pumice dust clouds behind on our way back to the farm and a cold beer. I decided I like concreting.

The ford in action after completion, upstream is to the left, you can see that the temporary culvert has been blocked and water is beginning to collect behind the dam, soon to flow over.

However, the best thing about working on a farm is that the work varies. Being a lamb and beef farm most of the day-to-day work involves moving livestock around. The act of collecting livestock from a paddock (actually a section of grazing land, not just a field) is called mustering, my cousins muster their paddocks with dogs which work in small packs to herd the livestock to where they have to be. One man and his dog this ain't.

The landscape created when soft ash and clays are eroded by heavy rain.

Mustering a hill paddock requires good control over a group of dogs at a distance of around 1,500m on an average. 'Filthy bush-mongrel' sheep tend to hide among manuka and scrub and in the trees along the ridge line. Someone has to go to the top on the hill and run them off towards the rest of the rest of the herd, again and again for each little group of animals. This is why dogs are essential for this type of work. To cut a long explanation short they do all the running about, because they cannot see far at times due to scrub and the fact that they are dogs the shepherd does the thinking for the dogs and communicates via a series of shouted and whistled commands. Dogs are livestock farming, a good shepherd looks after his trained hound companions first, then himself. They even have their own little trailer:

The 'A' team on their way to muster a paddock, Stig, Boss and Kai, bow!

The paddock Tim is shown mustering is across the Ohura river from the farm and downstream, it overlooks the falls and the confluence with the Wanganui river and miles and miles of hills and woods. It truly is a spectacular place to work. Just imagine doing this every day.

Driving to the river crossing, several months with little rain has made the river quite low.

I'm sat on the back of Tim's quad bike at this point, not on piggy-back as it appears. Something I noticed is that both Tim and Alex continuously scan the landscape when they're out and about. This is very useful for spotting sick animals or animals where they shouldn't be, things like fences that need mending and the condition of the paddocks.

Small groups of sheep were scattered over the hillsides, altogether there were around 200 there,  the grazing stretched from the river all the way up to the ridges on top of the hills. The change in elevation was at least 400m. Dogs are essential here as in order to push the scattered sheep into a herd and along the lane to the shearers they must go to the top of the ridge ('run to the top!'), bark to get the sheep moving ('speak!') and push them along ('move 'em up!').

The Huntaway dogs move some sheep along.

Sometimes a few sheep hide in the scrub where the dogs cannot see them, then the dogs have to go all the way back up and chase them down.

Controlling the dogs as they muster the sheep is a challenging job on good days, in bad weather it must be pretty damn frustrating. Sheep who break off from the main herd are a problem and slow the mustering down as the dogs have to be recalled to the shepherd and sent out again in a new direction to round up these awkward characters. The dogs get tired and as the morning goes on the temperature climbs until heat exhaustion is a possibility for them and the sheep on their way to the wool shed.
There is something odd about sheep psychology, they behave much more predictably in large groups, in smaller numbers they are more likely to vanish into some undergrowth and on their own they have a tendency to stay put.  

Some lambs who emerged from the Manuka after we passed by.

Tim gets the dogs to move the sheep out of the gullies on the left towards the path to the right.

Lambs are much more difficult to muster than ewes; another two to send the dogs back for.

Not a bad day for that kind of thing...

Occasionally a sheep will stop and refuse to move, sometimes they are not well and collapse soon afterward. This 'playing dead' may have evolved as a last-chance defence against predators or just as a physical manifestation of what we would call depression due to poor health. In any case they collapse and stay there in a state of shock. As we had left the dog trailer at the foot of the hill we had to put this sheep on the bike.

The dogs clear the ridge of reluctant sheep, Stig had never worked this far out before and in doing so well earned himself an extra biscuit for tea.

The north-facing slopes heat up fast.

The sheep move towards the bottom gate, down and along the contours of the hills.

Mustering the lambs for shearing is a tremendous effort over three or four days where everybody has a job to do, by the third day everyone is quite tired but the job must be finished. By now the sheep had been driven downwards to the track above the Ohura river, Alex had been clearing and adjacent paddock and had arrived downhill from us in order to put the herds together to drive them up the track to the wool shed across the river.

The lambs join the mob from the other paddock and are moved by the father and son team on Alex and Tim.

Alex waits with his dogs to head off the lambs and get them going in the right direction.

The combined pack of dogs push the lambs along the track.

I must say, this is my favourite picture

What happened to the sheep who dropped? He went in the dog trailer of course together with another one who collapsed on the way, a quick look at their gums showed they were both very anaemic; a sure sign of barber's pole worm. Not to worry- nothing a dose of wormer won't fix.

'well, this is awkward'

A team of shearers was working away from early morning in one of the wool sheds, they work very, VERY hard and are well looked after by Lyn and Monique who send out food at regular and predetermined intervals for breaks ('smokos') and lunches.

The shearers sweaty vests are changed and hung out.

The shearing gang consisted of four shearers at work at any one time, two sweepers to collect up the wool into a pile and another to pack it into to the waiting wool-sacks and compress it. The atmosphere inside the shed is hot, noisy and smelly while constant activity means there is a feeling that the process is almost fully mechanised while instead it is in fact very labour intensive. The gang work as machines, or perhaps bees all day.

The Shearers at work

This guy sustained a rate of one sheep sheared every 1m5s all day long, the four shearers got through at least 300 sheep a day each.

Wool going into the wool sacks for compression.

Sheep waiting in their pens for their date with the clippers!

With the shearing done the work is was not over, Callum gave each a dose of wormer (drenching), counted them and then they had to be put back in a paddock some distance away. These were long days indeed.

To my surprise you can also muster cattle with dogs, thankfully for us as the landscape would be difficult for two-legged creatures to chase cattle around on. However the process is a little different as the cattle are not particularly scared of the dogs instead seeing them as a nuisance and a threat to their calves. As a result they are a little more stubborn than sheep and often charge the dogs. However they still have a strong herding instinct and this can be exploited to get them moving in the right direction. The skill of the shepherd is not just controlling the dogs to gather the stock from the paddocks but to understand the behavior of the animals; knowing when to put pressure on them by getting the dogs noisy and close to their heels or when to take the pressure off by backing off. The most impressive handling I've seen is where the dogs are called off and the natural behavioral patterns of the cattle drive these huge beasts exactly where we want them to go.

Alex Neeson at work.

The dogs moving cattle along.

The cattle are being mustered towards the path of least resistance, in this case the track along the river to the right.

Some cattle can be a little crazy and lash out (as I've found out working in the cattle yards when half a ton of beef gets a little tetchy) as well as go pretty much where they want to go. Not surprisingly some of these tendencies seem to be heritable and some of the herd are known for their 'madness'. I find this fascinating as there are many parallels between the human inheritance of traits such as aggression. A sheep and beef farm is  a good place for observing human nature.

The cattle cross the ford, yes, it's a ford, the river is super-low due to drought.

Huntaway dogs drive the cattle up the lane to the covered yard.Woof.

Around the S-bend

And into the yards.

Luckily for me there is more going on than moving livestock around (as I can't do that). There are numerous repairs to undertake and land to manage, as well as fords to build there are culvert pipes to lay, tracks to improve and fences to repair. Fencing itself is an art-form of unrivaled precision. Fencers must pride themselves on the even-ness of the distribution of their batons, the uniform nature of the wire, the spacing and angle of the staples.....

I did it for a couple of afternoons in the hot sun on a dusty, thistle-y hillside. I can see how after a few days of doing that you would be over it. Oops, apologies for the kiwi-ism.

Callum moving the fencing trailer with the air compressor for the staple gun into position. Callum is wearing blue underwear.

The thistle fence line awaiting it's batons

The finished article, thistles bashed.

The wool sacks are loaded on to the lorry.

Ready to go! Lamb's wool.

Living and working with the NZ Neesons was an excellent idea, I can't remember where I got the idea, but it was a good one. I love making all of the obvious comparisons that living with them allows. The best part is working alongside them, I think that gives me the best insight into who they are, what makes them tick. I'm here in New Zealand until mid-August so I have plenty of time to consider my next moves. I think I'll need it.