Off the Radar

by Te Radar

  The third is my pride and joy.

  Lying near the garden shed in the old homestead gardens are the remains of some kind of wheeled cabinet. The wheels are of the castor variety, but their ability to swivel has been impeded by rust.

  I have a plan.

  I build a large boxed garden with some of the timber that Pete has salvaged. Along the top of the timber I lay a track made from pieces of the ever-useful shelving system to form rudimentary U-shaped rails. It is in these tracks that the castors run.

  The wheels sit underneath a large rectangular cage, and allow it to slide on and off the garden, allowing me access while rendering it impervious to stock.

  It also provides a rugged frame upon which I fix shade cloth to keep the worst of the weather off the plants.

  It is, in my humble opinion, a triumph. I have succeeded in totally protecting the gardens planted in the middle of the paddock from the predations of animals.

  At least, I do so in theory. After all, stock can’t be blamed for nibbling tender greens if the enclosures are left open through carelessness, can they?

  No. They can’t.

  Whilst planting these gardens I try to remember to leave the little plant tags next to the plants in the forlorn hope that I will be able to identify them at a later date.

  I’m sure there will be people who are aghast that after months of gardening I still can’t identify everything I have planted.

  I know. It shocks me too.

  Having the gardens right outside the caravan, so close that I literally fall over them—as suggested by Betsy Kettle as a central tenet of permaculture—is magnificent. It’s difficult to ignore what is happening in them (but, as I have proved on many occasions, not impossible).

  While the chickens form an effective barrier around the gardens by preventing the approach of slugs and snails, there is a more devious enemy: the white butterfly. It flitters by on its meandering trajectory and lays up to 400 eggs at a time in my crop. These hatch into tiny caterpillars, and within a short time, if I do nothing, the tiny caterpillar will be a much bigger caterpillar courtesy of my food stocks.

  Having successfully managed to get crops to grow, I am not keen to share them with this predator.

  I was always a little squeamish about caterpillars, but if there is one thing I have learnt it’s this: there can be no mercy for those that will try to starve me. I’m now fearless in plucking the plump green caterpillars off the brassicas (the cabbages, broccoli and kale) and placing them in the increasingly ticklish pile in my other hand.

  The chickens love the little brassica-filled caterpillars that I feed them in the early evening.

  All I need to do now is maintain the nutrient base of the soil.

  Hence the watering can debacle.

  I hadn’t realised that being a human fertiliser factory—or putting the man into manure—would prompt so many issues and quandaries and complications. The questions keep me awake at night.

  What is the maximum output that I can produce in a 24-hour period? If I drink more water to increase production, am I in danger of flushing whatever nutrients are in my system straight through, so that the plants prosper at my expense? Should I take vitamin supplements, and if so, what would be the best? Would drinking more beer help?

  And then there are the practicalities.

  Urinating into a watering can is an endeavour that sounds easier (though no less horrifying) than it essentially is. The hole in the top of the watering can is generally not as large as one supposes, and it isn’t for several damply frustrating days that I realise that the best option isn’t to perfect my aim, but merely to hold the watering can closer to the source.

  I know what you’re thinking.

  I never thought I would have become an expert in this sort of thing either.

  All I can hope of this ordeal is that the knowledge I have gained is of some use to you.

  Now all I have to do is convince myself, and any potential dinner guests, that the lettuce has been washed really well.

  22

  Making an ass of oneself

  I never imagined I would actually commit the sin of coveting someone’s ass. However, there is a first time for everything. As the other floats for the Helensville Christmas Parade begin to take shape around me, I begin to suspect that in lieu of an ass I should have borrowed some children, as they seem to be the predominant float accessory.

  I have only ever been to one Christmas parade before. I shan’t name the town, as its parade, while not lacking in community spirit, had been a little lacklustre. To a large degree I was the parade (well, me and some kids on their bikes), so I was unaware of quite how seriously some people take their Christmas parade floats.

  I have decided to enter the Helensville parade with a float that has a ‘Sustainable Christmas’ theme. Note that when I say that I have decided to enter the parade, what I really mean is that Jane has informed me that I will be entered in the parade and that some kind of sustainable living theme would be appreciated. By appreciated, I deduce she means mandatory.

  The evening before the big day, I laboriously shovel rotting sawdust into my trailer as a base upon which I will create my idyllic sustainable garden scene.

  Despite the physical exertion required to fill the trailer, the shovelling takes considerably less time to complete than does the tying down of the cover, a procedure that takes far longer than it should due to the exceedingly elaborate nature of my cover-fastening technique.

  A quick raid on my garden the following morning sees it pillaged, as I select some of the better examples of my produce to plant in the trailer. This presents something of a challenge, as I want to have good produce on display while retaining the best produce for the event that will be My Upcoming Christmas Family Lunch Fiasco.

  This is yet another of Jane’s good ideas that I have somehow managed to mangle.

  She’d thought, quite rightly, that it would be a good idea if I were to invite my family for Christmas lunch, and to feed them a wonderful meal that I had grown myself.

  So I invited them.

  What I hadn’t considered was that my family is now a lot bigger than it once was. No longer is it simply my parents, brother and sister. My siblings are now both married and have whelped large broods of brats. There is also my grandfather and various in-laws.

  By the time I realise what is happening, I am startled to discover that I will be catering for 17.

  And me.

  That’s 18.

  Oh dear.

  As I fossick for enough produce to take to the parade, I have grave doubts that I have grown enough food even to get me through to Christmas, let alone feed my entire clan.

  Once the produce has been selected, it is a simple matter of packing the Land Rover to the gunwales with all manner of bits and pieces and tools that I think I might need when constructing a work of art as monumentally grand as the float I am planning, before heading off.

  At the assembly area in Helensville, there is a healthy sense of bonhomie amongst the participants. The end of the year is nigh, and the horrors of the last few shopping days till Christmas are still a wee way off. It is as if we are contently drifting through the pre-Christmas phoney war.

  There are floats with angels and floats with pigs, and some floats with pigs dressed as angels. Someone has even dolled their youngsters up as Mary and Joseph and given them a real donkey.

  How can I be expected to compete with that? All I have is a slightly-too-tight, terry towelling, shorty Santa suit, and a red elf hat with a white pompom on the end of a spring attached to it.

  With no time to lose, I set about recreating a veritable mini-Eden on my trailer. Into the sawdust I replant a lettuce, which by now is looking somewhat limp, followed by a potato plant that looks even worse. Not even a good dousing with water will perk them up.

  I have also brought a small taxidermied goat from my personal collection of taxidermied animals that adorn the confines of my now infequently visited home in
Henderson. I plan to stand it on one of my bonsai lawns at the base of my chair as a companion. I believe a small animal will not only contribute to the sustainability theme, but will also be charmingly reminiscent of a biblical nativity scene.

  Quite what role I represent in the nativity scene is a moot point. Given that my sheep have disappeared, I can’t claim to be a shepherd, and if you’ve read everything up to this point, you’ll agree that I can’t really argue that I am a wise man, and the role of the ass has already been taken.

  Around the outside of the float I have strung strings of silver tinsel from battens I have fastened to the corners of the trailer, creating the appearance of a fence of festive barbed wire.

  It is only once I step back to inspect my handiwork that I realise two things.

  The first is that the trailer is so small that it appears ludicrous behind the vast bulk of the Land Rover. I have the only float in the parade that is less than half the size of the vehicle towing it.

  Secondly, I discover that I have industriously fenced the entire trailer, and thus have left no convenient way to get back into it. This might not have been so bad had the judges not chosen this moment to arrive, prompting me to crawl through the tinsel wire in an undignified manner as they stand regarding my efforts with what I can only interpret as a look of stunned awe spreading across their faces.

  After some po-faced scrutineering of the entire parade, the judges confer, and declare the winner to be a large truck with a Robin Hood theme, which features a live pig, albeit not one dressed as an angel.

  I console myself with the fact that winning isn’t really what the day is about, and that all I need to reward my efforts are the cheery smiles of the huddled masses of Helensville. This works until I realise that the judges aren’t giving out certificates that celebrate participation.

  Scandalous.

  I have recruited Demolition Pete to drive the Land Rover, and as the parade makes its way out of the assembly area and onto the road, I become concerned that he is going to have a tough time of it. The Land Rover’s clutch is a bit stiff at the best of times, and as the parade keeps coming to a halt for no apparent reason, it is clear that he is in for a good leg-based workout. All I hope is that by the end of the parade I will still have a clutch.

  When the convoy isn’t mysteriously halting, it is travelling along at such a great clip that the camera crew have trouble keeping up. I rejoice in the fact that I now have the chance to sit back and watch them sweat and struggle in the sun.

  Winding our way up the main street of Helensville, I become aware that I am getting a very cheery and vocal response from the more disreputable-looking elements of the crowd. Never have so many shady characters nodded and winked at me, and I’m stating this from the position of someone who is normally a magnet to the shadiest of characters.

  Perhaps they are concurring with my message of sustainability, I think, until it occurs to me that the public might actually be misinterpreting the many innocent mantras that I have attached to the float, notably the ‘Have a merry green Xmas’, and the ‘Grow your own green Xmas’ signs.

  Am I simply being paranoid? Maybe they really are saluting the audacity of my float-based brilliance. Surely people couldn’t think that what I mean is something a little more subversive than the mere growing of a sustainable lunch? And if they do think that, then is it any wonder the judges looked at me the way they did?

  There is nothing for it but to keep smiling and waving.

  A lot of people ask how difficult it would be to be the Queen, when all you really need to do all day is wave at people. I can now confirm that waving at people can be very exhausting, and I have employed a technique that requires as little effort as possible, based on one I have seen the Queen use—the raised, slightly cupped hand, on minimal rotation method.

  If anyone knows how to wave a wave, it’s her.

  As the sounds of the adoring crowd fill my ears, the sun beats down on my legs, rendering them a little pinker, and the smell of an overworked clutch fills my nostrils. Children lining the roadsides make the most of suddenly being allowed to take sweets from strangers. I hope there won’t be a repeat of the incident where children from Kaikohe mugged Santa.

  I wave at the camera crew as they huff past me in order to get another shot.

  As the parade halts again for reasons apparent to no one, and I’m Ho! Ho! Ho!-ing in the general direction of a group of children, the crowd suddenly starts laughing and pointing at me.

  I always feel uncomfortable when this happens, and I have no idea why, until I turn around to see the last of my float’s lettuce being eaten by the donkey.

  ‘Merry Christmas,’ I say.

  23

  Turkling

  As my nieces and nephews, clad in their Christmas Day best, peer into the plastic pet carrier at the quivering baby turkey, they ask: ‘Where’s its mum?’

  ‘She’s over there under that tea towel,’ I say. ‘We’re having her for lunch.’

  While some children may have been shocked by this, my four-year-old nephew, Rory, points at the tiny turkey in the cage and says: ‘Can you grow this one all big so we can eat it next Christmas?’

  ‘We sure can, buddy,’ I reply.

  If I had known that the turkey that has given up its life for Christmas lunch had babies stumbling around in the long grass at its feet, I would never have shot it. As it was, I didn’t know, and within the space of a few moments, the baby turkeys were orphaned in order to feed my family on Christmas Day.

  There had been three babies. One ran away and couldn’t be caught; the second suffered collateral damage from the shotgun scatter and had to be put down; but the third showed some fighting spirit, and Jane decided to take it home and put it in her hot water cupboard as I had nowhere warm to house it that was anywhere near comfortable, or appropriate.

  The reason I had to go turkey shooting is that I somewhat under-estimated how much food I would need to feed the masses that have turned up to help me celebrate the Christmas experience. The turkey and her children have been casualties of my Good Host Anxiety.

  It is a few days before the fated Christmas lunch, and as most of the rest of the country flees to the supermarkets and the malls, falling over each other in a consumer-oriented buying spree, I am strolling around a sun-drenched meadow with Shawn, looking to supplement my Christmas lunch with a little free-range turkey.

  I don’t know what you would pay for an organic turkey in the supermarket, but the three I shoot are free. The only food miles I use are the ones I walk to get to the birds.

  There are no food miles in the main course either. It is more a case of food metres, as the source is my own paddock.

  We are to have lamb, which is good for my guests, but not quite so good for the sheep. This is a dish that will require no trip to the butchers to stand in front of the freezers, oohing and aahing at the price of meat. I have lambs, and all I need to do is hustle them from the pasture to my plate.

  The rules of the home-kill industry are no doubt well intentioned, but are routinely ignored, if they are in fact known at all. Under the regulations of the Animal Products Act, those who can have a beast slaughtered are those who have ‘actively engaged in the day-to-day maintenance of the animal’ and the meat ‘must only be used for consumption by the direct family, or household, of the person, or a farm employee and their family or household’.

  So, those of you who receive someone else’s home-kill are breaking the law.

  This has to be one of the least followed laws in the country.

  However, as we are filming it all for TV, it means I need to get a professional in, and so within a short while the home-kill folks show up. He is tall and thin, and she isn’t. They arrive in a large 4WD, towing a big trailer containing the carcasses of other people’s stock that has already been dispatched that day.

  This was the way I had always known meat to be collected. As a child we would often help to round up the selected cow, generally a young
heifer that was sleek of flank and shiny of eye.

  Mother would take us down to watch as they shot the cow, hung it up at the back of the truck, then speedily skinned and gutted it. This would all be done next to a hole that we would have to dig, into which would be put the ample innards. We would take the liver, kidneys and heart home to cut up for cat food.

  As a way of making polite chitchat with the home-kill folk, I ask what else they have killed recently.

  ‘We did some ostriches a while ago. They’re difficult—small heads, ya see,’ he says.

  Within a very short space of time, I go from pointing out the unfortunate sheep to holding a large bucket of offal, skin, liver, kidneys and heart, all darkly purple and warm, and the home-kill folk are disappearing back up the driveway to continue on their killing spree.

  As the Christmas season is a time when a man needs all his wits and strength to survive, the following morning I slice and dice the liver, kidneys and heart, and coat them in a little flour, before gently frying them along with a couple of eggs that I collected that morning, over the roaring potbelly in my cookhouse.

  Sitting in the warmth of the early morning sun, I look up the hill to where the other sheep are standing, and hope that they too will taste as good. I need my strength as I have a cow to milk.

  As a child, Christmas was entirely based around cows. They rightly took priority; after all, they were the ones who were paying for it. They had to be milked before we could open our presents. If we were to leave the farm for Christmas lunch, we had to be back in time to milk them again. Late lunches were the worst, as all you wanted to do was sleep off the gluttony, but that wasn’t an option with the hundreds of cows waiting.

  Judy’s bountiful udder will once again provide me with cheese. This time though, I don’t have to contend with the hungry mouths of Campbell and Sainsbury, and for my efforts receive a good pail of milk. This is taken back to The Chapel, where my big shiny new barbecue proves adept as a vehicle for the creation of cheese. I am not sure how many people have created cheese on a barbecue, but I can highly recommend it. Using the simple techniques that Sabine has shown me, I soon have the feta on the go.