by Te Radar
My feelings of abject stupidity are heightened by the fact that I know that, despite my protestations, this humiliating bovine-based failure will make it onto the telly and be witnessed by the nation. This is only slightly less demeaning than the knowledge that it will also be seen by my mother, the woman who has taught me nearly everything I know about cows. She will find my inability to get a cow into a truck a source of great and ongoing amusement.
After much frustration, Hamish the cameraman, Frank the soundman, and Jane the director all abandon their posts—leaving the camera rolling, of course—and together we all heave Coco from behind, as the driver hauls her from the front with her halter. Begrudgingly, she totters up the ramp and into the truck, where she stands looking at us as if to ask what all the fuss was about.
I love cows. I was brought up with hundreds of them on a dairy farm, and as much as they were productive economic units, they were also our friends. They have such wonderful and diverse personalities. In a herd of cows there will always be those who stand out.
Like any group of women they have a rigid hierarchy and social structure. There are the bullies, and there are the bullied. There are ones who are friendly and ones who are totally disinterested in you. Generally, I’ve found the latter are the more numerous ones, both in cows and humans.
As a child, bringing the cows in for milking meant that I had a great chance to observe their foibles. There would always be several who would distinguish themselves from the mass of the herd with odd little personality quirks.
Penny had a penchant for eating your pen if you should be in the paddock using one; number 214 would walk down the steps into the milking pit where you stood, and wait to be patted; Rosebud, a bright ginger minx, simply loved to be loved. When she died of a mysterious illness, my father was so upset he got drunk. It was the only time I recall him drunk when I was a child. Such is the force of their personalities.
And now I have my own herd. Happy days are here.
With Harriet and Coco safely stowed, all that is left is to wave a cheery goodbye to the lifestylers and return home.
Naturally, having been reluctant to board the truck, the cows are now reluctant to leave it. I need to convince them that the grass is in fact greener outside the truck, and that as the cost of the truck is continuing to mount, now is a good time for them to disembark.
They finally poke their noses out, survey their new domain, and stagger down the steep ramp and into a lush pasture that has not been grazed for some time. Judging by the fact that they immediately begin eating, they are clearly unmoved by their recent move.
Off they wander, grazing as they go, safe and sound.
As the rain continues to fall, the man with the truck and the crew all depart, and I am left alone with my cows. Eventually, they too decide that they will leave me alone, and clearly keen on exploring their new environs, they wander down the hill, while I hole up in my tent.
As the rain eases, I think it prudent to check on my new herd. I shouldn’t have.
Harriet and Coco are now standing at the bottom of the hill, next to a line of trees that had previously been concealing a creek. The trees are no longer concealing the creek, as it has risen dramatically and is now a swift torrent of brown water flowing across a wide swath of the bottom of the paddock, deep enough almost to submerge the top of the fence posts.
The cows have wandered onto a small mound that is now completely surrounded by the floodwaters, and they are marooned. This wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the fact that the creek appears to be continuing to rise.
Brilliant. I’ve had possession of my herd for only a few short hours, and it appears they are to be drowned.
That the camera crew is not here to record my misfortune serves only to compound my misery, because as tragic as the event would be, it would no doubt make for wonderfully dramatic television.
Much to my consternation, Coco seems intent on plunging into the swirling waters, which will most likely sweep her into the fence where she will become entangled and probably drown. There’s little I can do except suggest to her in a reasoned tone that this might not be the best idea.
I am certainly not going to plunge in and attempt to save her, as having a cow drown is certainly less humiliating than being drowned trying to save a cow. No doubt I could cling to her and she might carry me to safety, but I’m not sure Coco will be as obliging as cow number 569, the bovine hero of the great Manawatu flood of 2004.
As the flood washed across the district, Kim Riley, a local farmer, was caught in a similar predicament to mine, except that she found herself enduring it in the early hours of a very dark morning. Attempting to move her 350 cows to safer ground, she and the cows were caught in the turbulent floodwaters and swept away. The swollen river twice submerged Kim, and unable to swim to safety, she kicked off her gumboots and struggled to remain afloat as she was swept along.
Suddenly cow 569, which Kim described as ‘an ugly old thing’, hove into view, allowed Kim to clutch onto her neck, and together they struggled to safety. The feat made headlines around the world, and Kim went on to write an internationally bestselling children’s book about the incident, entitled simply Cow Power. There was even a sequel, entitled Baby Cow Power, about the calf that cow 569 bore several months later.
I suspect that, if I try an audacious rescue attempt for my cows, all I will end up with will be a small footnote in the obituary section of the newspaper, or worse, in the quirky news section. If I am very lucky, I may become a trivia question in a pub quiz somewhere that asks: ‘What animal was comedian Te Radar trying to save when he died?’
All I can do is return to the tent and hope for the best.
The following morning, the waters have subsided, and Harriet and Coco are standing around, chewing their cud, as if nothing had ever happened.
5
Itsy-bitsy spider
I am examining and selecting pieces of timber from the various piles that are lying around, and am aware that I may well appear on national television as some kind of dainty-fingered fraidy cat.
I cautiously pick up the bits of wood with my fingertips, or nudge them over with my toes. The reason for this is simple: while I have never heard of a fatality caused by cockroaches, huhu grubs or slaters, I am leery of the whitetail spider. Its bite is far worse than whatever noise a spider may make.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m no arachnophobe. I used to keep spiders as pets. I liked having them around to catch insects, and I enjoyed watching their webs develop into increasingly elaborate structures over a period of time. I would quietly approach them to marvel at the size of the beast that dwelt within. But where I saw fascination with nature’s varied marvels, other people saw bad housekeeping.
The whitetail spider is different. It’s a brash interloper from Australia, a place that seems to exist only to evolve creatures whose specialities are lurking and inflicting pain. Dangerously fast and fearless, the whitetail seems to have no qualms about running at you rather than scurrying away.
Considering that the whitetail eats other spiders, it does little to endear itself to me. Not only is it a nasty creature in and of itself, it is also throwing off the natural bug control system that we take so much for granted.
Shame on them.
A whitetail-inflicted injury is the thing I fear most on the farm. A broken arm or severed limb seems tame compared to a gross flesh-rotting wound. While there is a large body of evidence that says the whitetail’s bite may not actually cause the festering wounds of rotting flesh attributed to it, I’m not taking any chances.
I’ve seen the photos of the injuries purported to be caused by some kind of spider bite. The wound generally begins with a red welt, and then within a few days becomes a swollen purple carbuncle that rapidly turns black and begins oozing rotting flesh. I can only imagine the smell.
Maggots may then need to be brought in and applied to the wound to eat the dead flesh in the hope of stemming the spread of the decomposition.
I’m not sure which is worse—rotting to death, or having maggots attempt to stop the rot. I’m inclined to think that I would cleanse the suppurating wound with fire. It would be agonising, but at least it wouldn’t be maggots.
My fear is compounded by having been nearly killed by a whitetail spider. I discovered one in my car one day as I was barrelling along the motorway, and had I not been so adept at shooing it out the window, I could well have perished.
I suspect that had I been killed mid-route, either by the spider’s bite or by careening into the median barrier due to girlish spider-induced flailing, it would have caused much wonderment afterward as to how the accident happened. I could only hope that some sharp-eyed forensics type would have noticed the strange welts and drawn the right conclusion.
I have no idea how the spider got there. I was a little concerned that perhaps someone who I may have inadvertently wronged had placed it in my car. Was I the victim of a botched assassination? Do I know something I shouldn’t? But what?
It is the thought of whitetail spiders that is foremost in my mind as I fossick through the piles of timber in an attempt to find enough useful lengths to complete my First Big Project.
I guess I should be thankful that the whitetail is the only terror. In the woodpiles of other countries there would be all manner of nasties, like snakes, centipedes or wombats. In reality, my greatest danger is being savaged by a rusty nail and contracting tetanus.
While life under canvas agrees with me, I am determined to make life easier and safer for myself by knocking up a sturdy shack. I need something into which I can install the potbelly stove in order to cook during the day, and to generate some warmth, lessening the number of hours I spend wrapped up in my sleeping bag. A shack would reduce the risk of a raging tent-shaped inferno.
It’s a damp October afternoon as the crew and I all trudge into the field and stare at the spot that I have declared will make an appropriate shack site.
I have been led to believe (by she who shall remain nameless but whose authority I do not question) that I need no form of council permission to build anything that has a floor area under 10 square metres. The shed is to be constructed solely from materials scavenged from around the farm, and I am basing its construction around two central resources.
The first is the roof, for which I will use the fibreglass canopy that currently covers the firewood pile. While it is doing an excellent job of keeping the firewood dry, I believe it will do an even better job of keeping me dry. This will be the centrepiece around which the entire building will be constructed.
I intend to construct the framing of the building from the iron strips that currently make up the kitset shelving in the shed. They will function like adult-sized pieces of Meccano, and will be the ideal components for the structure.
I was a Meccano child. Not for me the simplistic plastic brickwork of the Lego set. I had the gift of nuts and bolts and pulleys and levers and steel strips and girders and plates and spanners and screwdrivers.
It is my belief that if you love your children, be they boys or girls, you give them Meccano. Learning basic engineering principles is a skill that will last them their lifetimes.
For windows for my shack, I will use several doors that have large panes of glass in them, which are currently lying against the wall in the chicken house.
All I have to do is make sure the posts are in the right place, construct and secure the steel framing, somehow get the canopy up onto the roof, scrounge some tin for the walls, fit the doors as windows, put in some kind of floor, install the potbelly, cut a hole in the roof for the chimney, then light the fire and relax next to it with a refreshing cup of tea.
How difficult can that be?
As the spade cuts the first sod from the earth, it occurs to me that I shall have my shack knocked up in a jiffy. As it turns out, I don’t knock it up in anything approaching jiffy-ness.
This is my first introduction to the fine art of Building for Television. It’s not for the hasty. Shots need to be lined up. Actions need to be repeated from different angles, so delays occur while the camera is repositioned.
As a rule of (an only slightly battered) thumb, I calculate that we will need to add at least a third more time to any job when a TV crew is filming it.
What is even more frustrating is that the whole elongated process of building will, no doubt, be compressed into a very short montage sequence. How they get things crammed into a weekend on those reality building makeover shows I’ll never know, but what I do know is that I will never submit any property I own to one of them.
As we progress, there are long, animated conversations on the necessity of various pieces of safety kit. Should I be wearing goggles when hammering? Surely not, I think—the idea of a nail hitting my eye seems ludicrous.
I continue to think this no matter how many times a nail strikes me in the face over the course of the next few months.
Do I need gloves? A hard hat? A coloured safety vest? These are not questions that face the amateur builder to quite the same degree, but seeing as we are doing these things on television, the crew consider that I should be seen as setting an example to the nation. I will be a role model.
I haven’t considered these ramifications. The crew argue that viewers will assume that what I am doing is the correct way to do things.
I don’t tend to do things the correct way. I do them my way. But it will make things difficult if we include the ‘Don’t try this at home’ disclaimer for a series that is supposed to encourage people to emulate me in becoming more sustainable.
So I put on the goggles and the earmuffs, and wear the coloured safety vest for a while. It is quite a fetching ensemble.
I set to and begin to dig the holes for the poles. The poles aren’t poles as such; they are simply the best-looking fence posts I can find.
After digging down a few inches, I find the topsoil gives way to clay. Orange and sticky and heavy, it clings to the spade, to my boots, and to the posts that I use to try to knock it off my spade and boots. It is so waterlogged that digging is virtually impossible, and the holes fill up with water faster than I can drain them.
As a result, the posts aren’t planted quite as deep as they could be. They end up at the minimum depth I think I can get away with in order to make it look as if they are deep enough, without resorting to cutting anything off the top of them. I am fairly sure that the weight of the building will hold it down so that it won’t blow away.
Then comes the simple task of bolting together the lengths of shelving supports to create the framing.
Everything is progressing well, until it is time for the roof raising.
Sometimes my four-dimensional visualisation skills let me down. I had planned to lift the roof on, and then try to turn it over to fit it. Thankfully, Shawn is on hand to see me right, and he politely points out that what we actually need to do is turn the roof over so that it is the right way up before we put it on.
Sometimes, when someone points out the correct way of doing something, it is almost impossible to conceive how you managed to even contemplate doing it any other way.
With a stiff breeze threatening to blow the roof away, Shawn and I, ably assisted by his stepson John, raise the roof.
All that is needed is for me to bolt the roof on before the increasingly gusty wind blows it off again. Fortunately, I have an abundance of bolts. Unfortunately, I haven’t thought to ascertain the length I require. None are long enough. Leaving Shawn and John clinging to the roof to hold it down, I scuttle off to see if I can find some longer bolts.
By the time I return from failing to find any longer bolts, Shawn and John have the roof tied down with strops, and look as if they are sharing some kind of private joke with the crew.
‘Job well done,’ I say.
‘Not quite,’ responds Jane, looking at the vacant areas where walls and floor should be.
‘Oh yeah.’
I crack on.
One of the great things
about working for Jam TV is that they choose their crews well. Everyone pitches in. When we’re not filming something, the cameras and sound gear go down, and hammers and saws and shovels are picked up.
Within short order, the doors are fitted as windows, tin is nailed to three of the four walls, while the fourth is constructed by the judicious use of a garage door left in the barn. Then the pallets are laid on the floor, Jane lays a little carpet on them, a large concrete paving stone—upon which I’ll put the potbelly—is positioned in the corner, the potbelly is placed on that, and above it I cut a hole in the roof through which to put the flue.
After two days we are now nearly done.
As I couldn’t find enough flue lying around, Bevan the cameraman, Frank the soundman, and I use all of our combined ingenuity to manufacture one. We take a length of tin, roll it around a post, use trailer tie-downs to ratchet it into a circle, and pop-rivet it together to create a new chimney section.
We stare at it in a chuffed manly fashion, before filming the moment when I drop it into place. Then it’s simply a matter of filling the stove with wood, lighting it, and relaxing in its warming heat.
Not a bad few days’ effort.
I have built my shack. I am sure my forebears would be proud. There are only two minor problems.
The first becomes apparent the next time it rains. It appears that I am suffering a rather nasty case of Leaky Building Syndrome. Water pours in around the chimney, running down the metal to sizzle on the hot potbelly. Quite a lot of water. I can’t figure out what to use to block up the gap that won’t catch fire due to the heat from the chimney.
The second problem is that it appears that I have broken the law.