by Te Radar
They are refreshingly honest about it, as their brewmaster says: ‘There are four million people in New Zealand, and when we sell four million and one bottles, we’ll know someone has had one twice.’
It’s not a great beer, but if I had been on a boat for 117 days without any beer at all, no doubt it would taste fantastic. And under those circumstances, I might have had a second.
A few weeks have elapsed since the Spring Fling, and Rudolph, my new home-brewing friend, comes around to help me dispose of some surplus apples. There are only so many apples you can eat, so we’re going to turn the rest into a refreshing beverage.
It’s hard to believe how easy it can be to create alcohol. Creating good alcohol is a different matter though. The ability to turn something into an elixir is not a skill to be sneered at.
We juice the apples, add some sugar, and introduce some yeast to the mixture. Within a few minutes the yeast has burst into life, which is discernible by the bubbling froth that is emerging from the bottle.
Now all we have to do is wait. This is often the most difficult part of the process. That people can wait years, or even decades, for an alcohol to ripen flabbergasts me.
‘You know, you can turn anything into alcohol,’ says Rudy as we stare at the froth bubbling out of my brew, which I have called applecohol.
‘Jeez, Rudy,’ I say. ‘I reckon you’d be a good guy to know in prison!’
11
Breeding like rabbits
It is really only Shawn and myself (although to be honest, probably not even Shawn) that think my offer to take some problematic rabbits off his hands and transform them into a wholesome dinner is a good idea. Plump, healthy-looking critters with shiny blue-grey coats, they are mighty fine-looking rabbits.
The fact that they have been his daughters’ pets may have something to do with his hesitation. But they are now unwanted, as they have grown too big and are too much of a handful for the girls to look after.
I have only mentioned the idea because I heard a radio report that North Korea had imported several pairs of the giant German grey rabbit. They intended to breed these colossal rabbits in an attempt to help solve their food crisis, as a single rabbit could produce around seven kilograms of meat, or as Karl Szmolinsky, the east German pensioner who was behind the scheme, said, enough for a filling meal for eight people.
The plan to alleviate the fate of the starving North Korean masses tragically fell apart after the breeder alleged that the shipment of rabbits, rather than being used as the basis of a breeding programme, had instead been eaten by some of the country’s top officials. As terrible as this was, it did lead to a headline in a major newspaper that read ‘Godless Commies Ate My Monster Rabbits’. Little wonder the North Koreans are in the Axis of Evil.
Rabbits really are an ideal stock unit for the small landholder. Considered in the harsh light of practicality, without allowing saccharine images of Watership Down to colour our viewpoint, it makes a lot of sense. They breed prolifically (like rabbits, in fact), their meat is lean, and they don’t take much to feed. Were it not for their cute little eyes, big floppy ears and the endearing way they nibble their food, they would make ideal livestock.
Farming rabbits for meat is still considered a little repugnant, especially compared to hunting them, but it now appears that I am farming some rabbits of my own, although in a rather more free-range, less hands-on kind of manner.
I had always assumed, probably from watching Bugs Bunny cartoons, that the image of Bugs living directly under the carrot patch so that he could graze at will on the carrots growing through his ceiling had been created with a little artistic licence. But as I have discovered a rabbit hole that has been dug in my garden directly underneath my carrots, the notion is clearly based on fact.
The most astonishing thing about this scenario is that I even have carrots growing in the first place. They have been planted as part of a grand experiment. I am conducting field trials in an actual field.
When I first moved to the farm, I had grand plans for the paddock outside my tent. When looking at its vast grassiness, I’d foreseen rows of potatoes, tomato patches, and tall lines of corn waving gently in the breeze. I imagined gentle paths winding through my lush and bountiful Garden of Eden. I saw wheat and soybeans and pumpkins and watermelons and broccoli and garlic and capsicums and beetroot, and a small rice paddy.
I imagined summer afternoons where lines of sunflowers nodded their colourful heads towards me. I even saw a crude pergola fashioned from manuka, covered in shade cloth, with a picnic table underneath it, a book sitting open where I had laid it down so as to trudge back over to the lemon tree to get another lemon for my drink, past a little windmill that fed the reservoir tanks I had positioned on platforms to allow gravity to feed the irrigation hoses.
How hard could it be to create this simple vision of garden-based Utopia? It isn’t like I have a lot else to do with my time.
Of course, big dreams have small beginnings, and Jane decides that what we need is to make a start in the field with a series of three trial beds to test different methods of gardening.
The first is a hay garden. While it is supposed to be constructed with straw, all I have is hay, and I am a little dubious about it. Hay gardens are touted as an ideal no-dig garden, and the theory, as Jane explains, is that you wet the bales of straw or hay, allow them to begin to decompose, and a week or so later plant the seedlings into them. The composting bale will then provide the nutrients needed by the plants.
I throw some bales of hay in the wheelbarrow, and wheel them over to where I have fashioned a boxed border for them. Into the box the bales go, nice and snug, and all I have to do now is lug water over from the trough and give them a good dousing.
In retrospect, I should have built the boxes closer to the trough.
The second garden comprises decomposing sawdust. The sawdust provides the nutrients needed by the plants.
A truck deposits a large mound of sawdust slightly further away from where I need it, but one of the great things about having a television crew in attendance is that they can sometimes get a little bored with standing around, for as surprising as it may seem, there is only so much footage of me wheeling wheelbarrows that Jane requires.
If one is to make best use of the crew in this situation, then I suggest fostering a sense of friendly rivalry. Simply uttering the phrase: ‘Wouldn’t it be more fun if we made this a competition?’ generally does the trick.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Frank the soundman and Tom the cameraman are scrambling to best each other. With Brendan the editor mooching around as well, a vigorous battle quickly develops.
From a standing start, they shovel sawdust into the wheelbarrow, then reverse the barrow back before spinning it on its axis and flinging themselves after it in a madcap dash to where the garden is being constructed, empty it, and tear back.
The competition is fierce and timed runs are close. It all comes down to mastering the key manoeuvres: the reverse and turn, taking the corner by the gate correctly (too tight and they’re slowed down; too wide and a few extra steps are added in) and the final sprint for home.
Due to my innate athletic incompetence and natural lethargy, I stand back and egg them on. The more I encourage them, the more they are willing to better their opponent. A quiet ‘he said he could take you this time’ whispered in an ear, or a muttered ‘I thought you might have been quicker that time’, and within a few minutes I have three sweaty, puffing workmates, and the sawdust is where I need it.
A quick shot of me finishing the last load and doing a little judicious shovelling, and the sequence is complete.
Sawdust gardens are generally a little on the lean side when it comes to nitrogen, but we manage to track down some bags of used coffee grounds at a nearby café. We liberally sprinkle the grounds onto the soil. I have no idea whether they will work, but they lend the air a delightful aroma of coffee for a while, serving to remind me of the fact that I am not ab
le to visit a café and have one made.
I wonder aloud to Jane if could add coffee plants to my field trial. She says I should concentrate on what I have.
The third garden is more conventional. I intend to plant directly into the paddock. Surely the soil will provide the nutrients needed by the plants?
In order to create this soil garden, I could simply have dug up an area with a shovel, but that seems a little too labour intensive. Instead I hire a small, motorised rotary hoe to till the soil.
The blades of the rotary hoe can barely dig into the hard earth. All the hoe wants to do is to scramble its self-propelled self along the top of the ground at a great rate of knots, dragging me behind it. I have to lean back on the hoe to slow it down, while also forcing the blades down so that they can gain a little purchase.
In this manner, they dig deep into the soil, but then it is a delicate business engaging the hoe’s gears and lurching forward, as the blades want to climb back up out of the hole they have dug and run off down the paddock.
All of this is done cocooned in the deafening roar of the hoe’s motor. Being tethered like a slave to the smoking, rowdy hoe has none of the nostalgia of ploughing the fields with horses.
As well as the three gardens, I intend to make a start on my grand Eden vision by planting a large crop of corn, which should be easy to grow and its tall stalks will provide an element of privacy from the peering eyes of the neighbours.
If I thought digging the small area for the soil garden was difficult, it is nothing compared to the area needed to be tilled to plant the corn seed. After a few hours and many passes of the hoe up and down the strip, with hands itching from the constant vibration, ears ringing from the noise, and eyes weeping from the smoke, I complete the preparation.
This is not one of those jobs where you look back at the end of the day and see what you have achieved. Instead I look back and say, ‘Is that all I’ve done?’
Had I planted the seeds there and then, I would have been fine. The soil, freshly hoed, is soft and pliable. However, I suggest that we should probably graze the area off first with the landlord’s heifers.
I should probably have done this before I constructed the gardens.
The cattle find the tilled soil fascinating, and all they really want to do is stand on it. When they tire of standing on it, they dance little high-kicking cattle jigs on it.
When they encounter the garden with the coffee grounds sprinkled over it, they go crazy, licking the soil, and prancing around dementedly. Within a short period they have done a wonderful job of compacting all the soil back down.
Then it rains. Rather than softening the soil, it hardens it even more, so that when the time comes to plant the thousand or so corn seeds, I can’t even push my finger into the ground the required depth.
Using the steel handle of the potbelly stove door as a probe, I prod repeatedly into the hard soil to make holes for the seeds. Because I am using the palm of my hand for extra leverage, I soon wear the skin off the centre of it. Kneeling on bruised knees, I swap hands, and within a few moments wear the skin off the other palm. My bleeding palms make it appear as if I have developed stigmata. My garden is more a Golgotha than an Eden.
Even if I only get a 10 per cent strike rate, I will still have over a hundred corn plants. What could possibly go wrong?
Pretty much everything, it seems.
The main problem with having the gardens in the middle of the paddock is that the rest of the paddock needs to be grazed by my livestock. Simply asking them to refrain from eating my produce won’t work, so what is needed is a fence.
The electric fence is great for those who don’t have the resources or effort required to build a decent fence. I suggest to Jane that I could run an electrified wire straight from the electric fence unit in the shed to a fence around my garden.
While that will most likely deter the stock, the drawback is that there will be a fence right around my gardens producing a massive electrical output. Of course, as I will no doubt do a half-arsed job, I will have to spend a considerable amount of time and effort avoiding shocking myself.
One of the first mentions of the electric fence occurs in Mark Twain’s 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. However, it wasn’t a Connecticut Yankee but a Waikato farmer who revolutionised the electric fence.
I’m not sure whether Twain’s novel inspired Bill Gallagher’s decision to electrify his car. Bill stated that it was his wish to stop his horse Joe from rubbing himself against the vehicle (not his desire to stop Mrs Gallagher leaving the farm on shopping expeditions) that led to his combining Kiwi ingenuity with some Meccano to electrify the car. Reports say that Joe soon stopped his scratching, but they are strangely silent on the fate of Mrs Gallagher’s shopping expeditions.
Bill was nothing if not practical. After realising that electricity was a wonderful way to control animals, he promptly attached a mile of his fence directly to the mains.
He was no doubt disappointed when informed that not only was it illegal to attach a fence directly to the mains, but that it may also not have been the most sensible of ideas. Undeterred, he invented a battery-powered system, which launched a successful company.
The barn at the farm has an iconic orange Gallagher electric fence unit installed, where it click-clicks away rhythmically until we think it wise to turn it off, as no one wants an unexpected belt from an electric fence.
Attempting to work with wire that is electrified is an excellent exercise in dexterity and mental control. Reaching through live wires to attempt to untie or tie them is a lot more exciting than the likes of the game Operation. The annoying buzz that alerts you to your failure to remove the Water on the Knee is nothing compared to the body-jarring judder that one gets from the electric fence. That can result in Water on the Floor.
My grandfather used to love grabbing electric fences. In many ways I think it is the reason he has lived into his nineties. Every so often he would shock some more life into himself.
I think of him as I tentatively try to see if there is current in the fence by testing it with a blade of grass. Grass is a poor conductor of electricity, and by applying it to the wire it is possible to feel whether the fence is electrified.
I’d already had a bit of an electric fence failure on the farm. In the first few days I’d strung a portable electric fence across the paddock to keep the cows away from the tent, but then Shawn arrived, took one look at the fence, and asked me if I had checked to see if it was live. I said I had, using the aforementioned grass method, and that it was.
He then pulled out his flash little current checker, and checking the fence in several spots quickly ascertained it was not.
I had only tested it at the end where I had connected it to the other fence, assuming that the current would then traverse the length of the fence. It hadn’t. The problem, it seemed, was modernity.
When I was young, the portable electric fence was rugged and heavy and made from wire. Nowadays, the electric fence is lighter and made from some kind of plastic strapping with strands of thin wire running through it to conduct the current. It is an effective unit, but only when the current is turned on.
When the current is not on, the fence becomes a tasty chewing treat for cattle. Their mastication breaks the wires, rendering the fence effectively useless as a transmitter of current.
It struck me that here is a pertinent symbol of the fallibility and unsustainability of the modern world.
Jane won’t allow me to use the electric fence to protect my paddock gardens, as there is a more sustainable solution, which, unsurprisingly, entails a great deal more effort on my behalf.
Lying in rolls of various sizes around the property are lengths of wire netting. These will be ideal to keep out prying livestock, Jane says.
As I do not wish to dig in posts, I use a combination of warratahs (steel Y-shaped poles that are hammered into the ground) and bamboo poles that I have brought from home, as I have a large
bamboo hedge. Anyone who has a bamboo hedge knows just how infuriatingly sustainable a crop it is. It’s virtually impossible to eradicate. Thank goodness I have finally found it useful for something.
Within a short time, I have constructed a fence around my crops, and I stand back to survey my handiwork. Harriet and Coco wander over to survey it too.
Coco likes it so much that she approaches the fence, sniffs it, and decides it will also require viewing from the other side.
I can’t say she walks over the top of the fence exactly—it’s more like she actually walks through it. I have no idea how. It’s as if the fence does not exist.
Over the next few months I attempt to make the fence more cowproof, but it never works. Jane will use its failure as a constant source of ridicule, which seems unfair as she has so many other sources to choose from.
In the end it doesn’t really matter that the cows can get into the gardens, as there isn’t really much for them to eat there. The grass may be greener on the other side of the fence, but my vegetables are not. Coco does eat some of the hay from the hay garden, so perhaps it isn’t entirely wasted.
If the fence is inadequate at stopping cows, it is even less adequate at stopping rabbits.
I pull some of the small but perfectly formed carrots up from above where the rabbit has burrowed underneath them. They are untouched. The rabbit has gone to all the effort of digging a burrow under them, only to be disappointed by what it finds.
I can well understand its frustration.
12
Pansy acts the goat
I have suffered a devastating loss. My sheep have run away. Or they may have been rustled. I prefer the latter option, as I would hate to think that I have so traumatised them that they have upped and left of their own accord. I feel violated.