by Te Radar
A few months prior to the Helensville show, it was decided that for the Homegrown episode that celebrated the dairy cow, I would return to my old primary school and finally enter a calf in the Calf Club event.
This seemed like a good idea to everyone involved, except me.
I could only begin to imagine how weird it was going to be to parade around the ring as a 36-year-old man in competition with school children. It wasn’t like I was the prodigal son of the district, returning with my own fatted calf. I didn’t even have a calf.
Rather than trouble Mother with grooming one, a local woman, Mrs Irving, who was organising the event, offered to provide me with one she had prepared earlier.
Mrs Irving’s son, Bevan, had been a childhood chum. Her daughter, Cindy, was the first girl I ever kissed. Admittedly, ‘kiss’ may be too evocative a word to describe the quick, chaste peck that it was. Nevertheless, Cindy loudly denied it happened whilst we stood in the line to class afterwards. Or maybe she told people and I denied it, I can’t remember. It was too traumatising, especially as she was the last girl I would kiss for several years.
Mrs Irving led me to the calf, a small Jersey that I named Minxie.
In order to get Minxie up to show standard, I had to remove a large quantity of what I can only describe as clumped organic matter from her rear flanks. Mrs Irving laughed and pointed out places I had missed.
So there I was, the glamorous and sophisticated metrosexual media personality, making a triumphant return to his old primary school, camera crew in tow, washing the dried excrement out of the hair of a calf with his bare hands. This was not really what I had in mind as a school reunion.
Thank you, Mrs Irving.
At this point, Mrs Irving, not unattractive herself, decided to show me a little technique known to the inner sanctum of the Calf Club world as ‘the lady tickle’.
There is no truly polite way of describing the lady tickle, so I shan’t bother with the niceties. The lady tickle involves stimulating an area directly below the calf’s vagina, causing her to urinate spontaneously, thus ensuring that she would not do so over me as I groomed her, or in the ring while being judged.
I know! I was shocked too. There are so many levels of abject wrongness in this that I don’t quite know where to begin charting them.
I wondered why I hadn’t known this sooner. It was a technique I would go on to use many times on my cows in order to stop them polluting the milk bucket. It never ceased to amaze camera crews with its inappropriateness.
With the tickling mastered and the grooming completed, I tried a little preliminary leading. Minxie seemed quite content to saunter along beside me.
What could possibly go wrong?
Well, calves are calves, and calves will eventually grow into cows, and we all know what cows are like.
It all began well. Minxie strutted briskly forward, but at the corner took unkindly to the odd 270-degree turn she was asked to execute, and decided that she did not want to walk any further. I didn’t want to haul her forward, as dragging a calf bodily around the ring by its halter is never a great look.
As a child I had found that when I was required to get a recalcitrant calf to where it needed to go, pushing it backwards did the trick. This wasn’t an option in the ring. Calf Club judges, like dictators, like their subject to be easily led.
A battle of wills ensued, and we finally completed the circuit and exited the ring to a smattering of polite applause, thankful the worst of it was over.
Only it wasn’t.
Derek, the director of Homegrown, then decided we needed more shots, and I would have to do it all over again.
The only person looking forward to this less than me was Minxie.
She once again stopped, hauled herself away, and became bovinely belligerent. Thankfully, Mrs Irving sprang to the rescue again, surreptitiously prodding the calf firmly in the rump with her judging pen, prompting it to move forward.
Again, a smattering of applause.
Could this get any worse?
Yes. It could.
I lined up with Minxie and the other entrants in the centre of the ring for inspection. Compared to the other calves, Minxie was a straggly mongrel. The judges in their white coats, armed with their clipboards and furrowed brows, analysed and inspected us. I hadn’t been scrutinised this intimately since boarding school, when we had to parade next to our beds before breakfast to make sure we were correctly attired and our areas were clean. I hoped Minxie’s areas were still clean.
After much consultation, the results were announced.
I did not win, which came as no surprise to me.
What did surprise me was that I was disqualified on a technicality.
Quite why no one had mentioned that taking your hand off the halter was cause for instant elimination I will never know. Usually I am asked to take my hands off things, not leave them on.
I hadn’t realised there were so many rules.
I did, however, experience the belated but exquisite delight of being awarded a nice shiny satin ribbon for participation.
Those who bemoan the awarding of prizes merely for taking part can say what they like. I think it’s a good idea.
Back at the Helensville show, the rain has arrived with a vengeance and the people haven’t. It is, quite literally, a washout.
Umbrellas are being turned inside out. Gazebos are being blown down. Tempers are fraying in the huge queues for coffee. People are trudging around in raincoats and gumboots. It’s too wet for the sideshow rides. Young women in jodhpurs take their lives in their hands riding their horses in a perilous equestrian rink. There’s a run on bacon butties. Organisers are walking around looking increasing glum.
The only place that is packed to the gunwales is the indoor produce and craft display areas. People stare at the exhibits as they trudge lethargically past them. The room is hot and a little cloying, as the heat of people’s bodies dries the moisture off their clothes. It is steamy, almost subtropical, with an aroma of wet wool and hotdogs.
I am pleased that people have been driven indoors as it will give them a chance to marvel at my success. A plethora of certificates are placed next to my entries, proclaiming me to be a grower of award-winning produce.
Admittedly, the second I receive in the parsley section is tempered by the fact that there are only two entries in that category, but my watermelon and lettuce both come second from a pool of three, and my eggs come third from 12 entrants. The judges comment on the superior yellowness of their yolks.
Silverbeet does, it seems, have a use, as the more of it the chicken eats, the yellower the yolk of their eggs.
I also receive an honourable mention for my corn, which the judge has assumed is some kind of entirely new species. It isn’t. It has just been afflicted by me.
As I had suspected, there is one old chap who takes out a prize in nearly every category. In some categories he even receives more than one placing. The diligence and dedication of a lifetime of growing is to be seen in the cluster of certificates that bear his name: Sam Sansen.
I can’t imagine how many hours he has put into getting his produce to its prize-winning state. From butter beans to zucchinis, he is the champion. I am shocked to see that his name is even plastered on prizes in the best blooms section. Is there no end to his talent? Flowers as well as vegetables? The audacity of the man.
As I haul the caravan back out onto the highway, I know that I will sleep easy tonight. I’m an award-winning grower of vegetables. Those certificates will be going straight into my CV, right next to my Calf Club participation ribbon.
26
Two little pigs
Thankfully, I am not the only one who is caught eating out of the pig bin. While it would be remiss of me to mention that the other person was Frank the soundman, I wouldn’t like you to labour under the misapprehension that we were caught with our snouts in the pig trough as such.
It’s just that Mel the producer will often pick up for th
e pigs day-old bread from a rather nice bakery, which seems to produce an abundance of French sticks. These are not, even at a day old, remotely stale. Can we be blamed for eating them? Everyone loves a fresh French stick. And how much more sustainable can that be? It isn’t as if the pigs are being hard done by.
If being caught eating their food degrades my dignity, it is nothing compared to how the pigs ransack their own. I have two on the farm, called Willy and JT, and neither of them has a scrap of dignity. None. Not a skerrick.
There are people who love their pigs, but really, as is often quoted, the pig is a dirty animal.
This fact is reinforced on a warm summer afternoon when I decide it is time to give the chicken house another of its irregular cleans, as a roost full of chickens does produce rather a lot of manure.
A large quantity of this has fallen down behind the netting at the rear of the coop, onto the piece of four-by-two that runs along the bottom of the wall, about 15 centimetres above the ground. The resulting gap leaves enough room for a little ventilation, and provides a convenient place to scrape the fowls’ foulings onto the ground outside so that I can then collect it and place it in the compost.
Even as I begin tentatively dabbing at the pile with the spade, I suspect I might be making a mistake, as this wall backs onto the pigpen. Sure enough, within seconds, as the chicken manure falls behind the wire and into the pigpen, two inquisitive snouts appear, sniffing and snorting, and then snuffling the tailings as if they are a prized delicacy.
It is a sight of enduring horror. From that point on, I know that no matter how good Willy and JT will eventually taste, the sight of their unbridled enthusiasm for chicken stool will for ever taint my enjoyment of their meaty little bodies.
It’s little wonder that some cultures won’t eat pig.
It’s also little wonder that some people get it into their noggins that you can feed animals manure. I once saw a study produced by the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations which was introduced with the words: ‘This study describes the potential of nutrient recovery from animal wastes in integrated animal feeding systems.’ The study declared that animal wastes represented a vast reservoir of cheap nutrients, particularly for ruminants such as cattle. They even had a name for it—wastelage.
Now, while this no doubt makes sense to the scientist, it just seems to be a little beyond the pale for the ordinary person. Of course, it’s nothing compared to the feeding of leftover cow meat to cows, which is one of those practices that causes one to ask: ‘Who on earth ever thought that was a good idea?’
Quite a lot of people apparently. It’s a real meat-go-round, as cattle are fed to pigs and chickens, which are then fed back to cattle.
Here may be a good time to point out what I believe is the single most important change in thinking that we need to have when it comes to food. Until now, the prevalent mantra has been ‘we are what we eat’.
This slogan is something of a deception. The prevailing theory that we need to understand in our modern consumer-oriented world is that ‘we are what we eat eats’. And we always have been.
I realise that from some scientific perspectives, the process of turning excrement into stock feed can be considered acceptably safe. I also realise that from some scientific perspectives, the process of feeding cattle to cattle can be considered acceptably safe.
It’s just that the concepts themselves, from a layman’s point of view, seem unpalatable, and indeed unacceptable.
I have enough people telling me I’m full of wastelage without being fed animals full of it as well.
Except that now my animals are full of it. Or at least the pigs are.
Bother.
I first encountered Willy and JT at the pinnacle of their cuteness. They were eight weeks old, pink and frisky, in a pen in Shawn’s woolshed with around a dozen of their siblings and their mother. She was a behemoth. Standing thigh-high to me, and longer than I am tall, she was a solid, low-slung mass of meat and teeth. And quite possibly about the most fearsome animal I have ever encountered.
As she seemed to take exception to me poking and prodding her offspring, I thought it prudent to retreat from the pen and point at the pigs from behind its reassuringly solid walls.
Pigs are an incredibly dense animal. Even as piglets, there is little give in them should you poke one, and poking the piglets was about the only thing I could think of doing to try to assess which two I wanted to take home to fatten up.
‘You want one with a nice long back, like that one there,’ said Shawn, pointing at a piglet that bore an uncanny resemblance to all the other piglets, and which quickly disappeared again into the anonymity of the squirming mass.
I bowed to his judgement, and Willy and JT were mine.
I have sworn to myself that I will attempt at all costs to avoid what I have long considered to be the most embarrassing cliché of the rural television programme: the hapless farmer chasing the fugitive pig. I now know why these scenes are in programmes.
While they have wonderful personalities and, apparently, the intelligence of a dog, the two things that seem to occupy the vast majority of the pig’s time are eating and escaping, no doubt to a place where it expects to find more to eat.
For much of the time, I feel like the commandant of Colditz, trying to stay one step ahead of a diligently determined foe whose sole goal is to loose the bonds of captivity and run free.
The first time they escape is the first time they are ever out of a cage, and for a short while it is delightful to witness.
I love watching young animals that have been reared indoors experience their first taste of freedom. Calves are particularly hilarious. On my parents’ farm, calves were raised in barns for the first few weeks of their lives. When we released them they would swiftly realise there was nothing stopping them, and off they would run. They had what could only be described as unbridled glee at the sensation of finally being able to cover some distance. There was a sense of palpable wonder in their discovery of their new environment. They would run and run and run until they ran into a fence. They would then shake themselves off, and run some more.
So it is with Willy and JT. Around and around they run in the orchard. I wouldn’t have minded, but I have yet to complete the escape-proofing of the orchard, and if they break out from there, the world is their oyster.
And so I find myself being filmed chasing pigs.
There can be no daintiness involved in catching them. They are deceptively fast and exceedingly elusive. They also have a wonderful defence mechanism: they scream a scream of primal guilt-inducing terror as soon as you grab them. One would think that you were killing them.
After much frustration, I finally manage to grab Willy by the back leg and drag him bodily back to the pen. Swinging him inside, I shut the door and scurry after JT, who is standing panting at the other end of the orchard.
As I am closing in on him, there is a pitter-patter of little feet as Willy dashes back past me. Somehow he is out again. It is at this point that I discover how they have escaped. They have chewed a hole through the concrete wall. I hadn’t expected that level of commitment. They are cleverly satisfying both of their desires simultaneously.
I leap at Willy as he passes, then, as JT thinks that I am distracted by his sibling and attempts to flee, I grab him too. Now I have a hold of the legs of two strapping piglets who have no intention of remaining held if they can possibly help it. This is not a vast improvement on the situation.
They both decide that running in opposite directions might help, before turning and running the other way, which causes me to become entangled in my own legs.
I am a knot of man and pig. There are yogis the world over who practise for years to entangle themselves as thoroughly as I find myself entangled. And all the while the pigs are squealing their ear-splitting squeal.
Determined not to let them go, I somehow manage to drag them back to the pen and lift them unceremoniously inside. As soon as I release
them, they stop squealing and stare at me with a look in their eyes that says, ‘What did we do?’ before snuffling around the edges of their pen, looking for something to eat.
Over the course of the next few months, they will escape innumerable times, resulting in the same madcap chase to get them back. It is a few days before they are due to be harvested that they escape for a final time. This time they manage to upset a bucket of paint that is being used to paint The Chapel, which they then proceed to roll in before trotting off to flomp down in the sun.
Jane hasn’t noticed the upset paint, but her toddler has, and if it is good enough for the pigs to wallow in, it is good enough for him. If there is one thing that can be learned from this, it is that paint is quite difficult to remove from a child whose screams rival even those of the piglet.
Pigs seem to be able to consume with ease as much food as you can source for them. Thankfully I have a lot of visitors who regularly come out to the farm. Producers, crew members, researchers, partners of friends of people involved—all are only too willing to bring out their unwanted scraps. I have also approached a couple of cafés in Helensville, and so the routine of collecting the pig buckets begins.
It is something of a demoralising experience.
This demoralisation doesn’t come, as you might expect, from having to repeatedly turn up at the cafés to cart away their buckets of waste, while casting longing glances at the people eating their eggs benedict, as the heady aroma of fresh coffee fills the air. Instead, it comes when the buckets are emptied and I have the opportunity to stare at the delicacies that the pigs are eating. They get to dine on a lot of the things that I don’t: burger scraps, falafels, bread, paninis, all manner of café leftovers. Sometimes there are even large pieces of cake in the bins.
There is also a certain irony in the fact that the pigs take a lot of looking after and eat a great deal, at a time when the price of pork is at an all-time low. It has fallen below the cost of chicken to become the cheapest meat available as foreign pork is being dumped on the New Zealand market.