Good Days

Well, summer is long gone now. After a long dry spell, the last three days of May brought us more than 200mm of rain, making up for the lack of decent rain since February. The usually softly flowing stream became a roaring muddy river, our dam overflowed and created a new creek in the gully behind our chook house, and the low-lying paddocks and our driveway had surface flooding. Thankfully our house is up on a hill, and we stayed warm and dry inside. Other areas weren't so fortunate. Several rivers burst their banks and washed out bridges, roads, and paddocks. For several days, there were no open roads out of Fairlie. And even after the flooding receded, we could only get as far as Timaru - all roads north to Christchurch were closed (except via the west coast which would have turned a 2.5-hour drive into an 11 hour one). Thankfully they were able to put a temporary fix on the Ashburton bridge to allow traffic to flow again, just in time for our trip to Christchurch for an agility competition.

It was an unexpectedly eventful trip, beginning our journey on Friday morning in heavy fog. Barely ten minutes down the road, I was pulled over by a police officer to be told that I was driving "too slowly" and "annoying the drivers behind me." It was a winding, hilly section of road, speed limited to 100, and I was driving 80-85 due to the poor visibility. And the drivers behind me were only him and one other guy. There were places for them to overtake me if they'd really wanted to. But this police officer told me I shouldn't drive too carefully like that, because other drivers might get antsy about it and "do stupid stuff." Okay, sure. Later in the day and closer to Christchurch, I was going along the highway doing 100kmh - the speed limit - and a car still overtook me dangerously, forcing the oncoming vehicle to take evasive action before they swerved back into the correct lane, very close to my car's nose. So, the moral of the story: people are always going to do stupid stuff no matter what speed I'm going and I should just focus on driving safely. 

Despite the drama, we arrived safe and sound in Christchurch, did two amazing days of agility, Skuggi running the best he has yet. Three clear rounds - 2nd, 5th, and 6th. We wasted a bit of time on the turns which cost us higher placings but he's doing so good.

It's always a blast doing agility and getting to spend a weekend away in the city, but it's nice to get back out to the quiet country. The view from here is simply the best.

With winter upon us, the chooks have given up laying eggs. Or so we thought until we found a nest of three eggs outside the coop. Well done, Chicken, for making so much noise that led us to your hiding spot. We now sneakily collect a couple of eggs from that nest in the evenings, after the chooks have gone to bed for the night.

Winter Is Coming

This month has brought us our first taste of a real winter, with several frosty nights of -6 degrees followed by single-digit temperatures during the day. We added extra bedding to the chook pen and they were fine with the cold, though by morning their water had an ice layer about 5mm thick. It has still been very dry weather, just cold, though that is potentially going to change over this weekend and through next week. I'm so grateful to have a warm, cozy house to spend the winter in this year. 

In other news, I got a job! I'll be calf rearing on a farm 15 minutes away, starting in August, on the same farm where my dad has just started working. It will be great to finally get back into things after two years of frustrating unemployment.

We had a lovely family road trip to Christchurch on the weekend, taking the scenic route up through Rakaia Gorge. Such a pretty place!

Tomorrow is our last night of dog school before the winter break, starting up again in the spring. I'll miss it but it's almost too cold to be out there now, so it makes sense why they don't keep going through the winter. A couple of weeks ago it had dropped to 1 degree by the time I got back into the car after class. Brrr. 

I'll leave you for now, with this video of our "team training" agility at our friend's property last week. Always a great time!

Twenty Four Months

On this morning two years ago, my mum walked into my bedroom and gave me the news that my dad had been fired from his job, and we had two weeks to find somewhere else to live.

We'd been working at How Now Dairy for nearly one year, and doing our absolute best. I gave everything to this place. Late nights, hard work, in some horrid weather, and in what was quite frankly an awful work environment at times. Though technically only my dad was employed there, we all pitched in on the farm - we were expected to, and the boss gave us our own responsibilities (unpaid, of course), so when my dad got fired, in effect we all were. And to make it all so much worse, the house we were living in was part of the job as well. So not only were we left jobless, but we were also homeless. Working there was a challenge for many reasons, and I'm not supposed to go into details about those reasons, but despite how hard it was, I'm still so gutted by how it ended. 

To be promised everything, and end up with nothing. We scrambled to find somewhere to go, but two weeks is hardly enough time to come to terms with bad news, let alone figure out what to do about it and make something happen. There was not enough time. My dad frantically applied for jobs and my mum was in contact with someone who had a rental house nearby but in the end, nobody would help us. And so after fourteen days, one year to the exact day that we drove up this driveway to begin the job, we drove out again, with nowhere to go but to camp on our empty property two hours away. All nine of us and five dogs and five rats and a cat and our three cattle, one of whom was heavily pregnant. 

It was not supposed to end up this way. Our cow's beautiful calf was stillborn about three weeks after we left How Now. We were living in tents all through the winter. We sat on that land for a full year, getting turned down for jobs and denied houses. What was the worst was getting led on - people pretending they wanted to help and then snatching it all away, acting like it was our own fault and we were "choosing" to be homeless. As if we had any say in what was done to us. 

And then, at the end of it, after a year, we gave up. We couldn't keep going like that, struggling day to day and begging for help that we now realized would never come. So we sold everything. Everything but our dogs and the cat, and moved back to New Zealand with the tiniest hope that we could find something better. Thirteen years in Australia and this is how it ended. Betrayed and abandoned and being forced to leave my whole life behind. It was heartbreaking. 

I think about what I had to leave behind almost every day. My pet steer Logan, who I rescued from a dairy farm as an unwanted five-day-old calf, and had hoped to spend so much more time with him. I taught him to accept a rider and I had so many plans of what we could do next. I'll do none of it now. There was my pet rat Pixie and her sisters, all playful and adorable, each with their own little quirks and habits. I had friends, I had a life, and it's all gone now. It took me 13 years to build all that for myself, only to have it taken away in an instant by people's selfishness. It will take a long, long time to build anything like it again, and it's hard to find the strength to even try, knowing how fragile it all is.

We came back here to find something better, and I suppose, in some ways, we have. We live in a house again. My dad got a job. With all community COVID eradicated over here, I can safely go to dog club and I can compete in agility. But in other ways, it still sucks. Our landlord won't let us have pet rats. I still haven't been able to get myself a job, and that means I can't afford to raise another calf. These were the things that were keeping me focused on the future as I said goodbye to everything I loved back there. 

I am grateful, but at the same time, I am grieving.

Windstorms, Agility, and the Beach

Just some rambling, because I wanted to post more this year but there's been nothing really interesting happening. April 25 marks two years since we got fired from How Now and so began the downward spiral. But anyway. That's a post for another day.

The weather was very dry last month, and the lawn-mowing I was doing for the landlord hasn't been necessary very often. We got 10mm total at the beginning of this month, but that wasn't enough to get the grass really growing again. The weather has been comfortable for the most part, with steady sunny days around 20 degrees, aside from the day and a half of 60-90kmh wind we had last week. Thankfully, while there were plenty of reports of damage in town, it did no real damage to our property, just some small branches fell on the driveway, our trampoline shifted a little bit, and our tomatoes and our cape gooseberry plants were knocked over. They seem to have survived though. There were also a lot of leaves to sweep up - a side-effect of a windstorm in the autumn.

We competed at our club's agility trial last month, and Skuggi won 4th place with his clear round in the Novice class, finally getting the hang of weaves and contacts so that was exciting. Now we have no more competitions planned until June, when my mum and I will hopefully be heading back up to Christchurch for a weekend. 

Dog agility school is still fun and we've been getting the hang of some new things. It's been just the right amount of challenging for us. And most importantly, Skuggi loves going there. He gets so excited. He's so eager to get out of the car and he practically drags me over to the field, tail wagging while he carries his toy, so keen to get started. It's such a far cry from how nervous he was the last time we attempted a dog school, back when he was about a year old, and he always only ever wanted to go back to the car.

We also went on a road trip to see the Moeraki boulders a few weeks ago. It's been about four years since we last stepped foot on a beach at all, and although it was rather gloomy by the time we arrived at the boulders, we all had a fun time. We even got to see a bunch of wild seals playing and sleeping on another section of the beach, where dogs were prohibited.

Changing Of The Seasons

Welcome to autumn. It's been six months today since we moved into this house. That time has gone by so fast.

The garden here is huge and tending to it is a constant job. It was an overgrown mess when we arrived. We've put in more flowers around the house and built a decent vegetable garden below the driveway.  But there are still parts we have hardly touched. We harvested our potatoes and ended up with a huge box full of them. We have delicious sugar snap peas, cape gooseberries, silverbeet, a tiny blueberry plant, cucumbers, strawberries, carrots, some grapes, and some wild blackberries taking over the abandoned pool surround. And probably more things I'm forgetting. Soon we'll be planting things for the winter. And we built an enclosed shed for our chooks in case the winter is as bad as predicted. 

We did go up to Christchurch last month as planned. It was the longest drive I've done (nearly three times as much driving as I've ever done in one day before and full of new experiences as I got closer to the city) but totally worth it because Skuggi managed to get two clear rounds, winning third place both times. For a dog who couldn't manage more than one clear round a year when we were in Australia, to get two in one weekend was really exciting. Especially since that now makes it three consecutive competitions he's gotten clear rounds at - all of his NZ championship trials. I'm already planning another road trip for another weekend of agility, which hopefully will happen. If people could just have a bit of common sense we wouldn't keep going into lockdowns.

We went to the dog training club in Timaru last week to practice agility and had a great time. When Skuggi was a baby, we were part of an obedience club in Australia just to help Skuggi's socialization and learning how to focus on me with other dogs around. It went well and we enjoyed it, up until we graduated up to the next class, which had a couple of aggressive dogs in it that were trying to fight each other every week. It became too stressful for Skuggi, so we didn't go back after the summer break. At the club last week there were only three other dogs in our class but already a little scuffle happened between two of them while we were having our turn on the equipment. But Skuggi handled it well, coming back to focus on me quickly and play with his toy without getting too worried. So anyway, all going well, we'll be going there most weeks to train. With so little room at home for equipment, we really need this opportunity!

Besides that, not much has been happening. I applied for a job and I didn't get it. We took care of our neighbours' pet calves for a while after they moved away, just until they were able to move the calves to their new place. Which has been done now. I miss them already. We also got to work with the landlord's young cattle a little bit last week too. It made me remember how much I enjoy working with cattle. And especially how much I miss my Logan. 

Weather And Other Things

January went by too quickly, and I did not achieve anything of note. Well, I managed to get a glowing reference for my work at How Now to send out with my resume, so that was good, and surprising. Not that I've found any jobs to apply for. (yet, I'm supposed to add.)

But anyway. The weather swung to both extremes last month, with the 19th only managing to reach 12 degrees, and we had the fire going again. On the 26th we finally had our first day over 30 degrees this summer, when it peaked at 34 and we went for a swim in the lake (where Skuggi, for the first time in his life, was brave enough to attempt some proper swimming. Attempt being the operative word there, it was the messiest swimming style I've ever seen from a dog with an appropriate leg to body ratio). We had some decent rain earlier in the month, and a few lighter sprinkles later, including some pea-sized hail and a thunderstorm. The total rainfall was 67mm.

We got the shed fully stacked once again with firewood for the winter. There's a prediction for it to be an extremely cold winter this year, with intense frosts and sea-level snow, so it's good to have that ready to go. It's already been a much cooler summer than what we're used to. But I love snow, and our house is warm, so I'm keen to get more than just a day and half of it. We have a few more projects that need to get done before the winter, especially if it's as bad as they say, but there's something very satisfying about preparing for a harsh winter. It's been a few years since we've had to do so. At How Now in Shepparton, the winter wasn't bad enough to warrant any preparation (instead there was preparing for the summer and weeks of 40 degrees or more). And then on our block of land, there was nothing we could do even though the winters did suck. But enough of that train of thought.

I've been doing some agility training with Skuggi, getting his fitness up to start competing again. Doing the best I can with limited equipment and space. Hopefully this month I can get to the agility classes once a week and make use of their stuff. But he's running pretty well, I think, so we'll see how he goes when we next compete. The plan is to go up to Christchurch to do so next week (but don't hold me to that, we all know how plans like to fall apart and I've already had to miss one planned trial last week), staying in a cozy cabin and running some lovely jumping courses with judges I like especially. Some judges just make courses better suited to Skuggi than others - more of the soft turns and tunnel sends to allow me to get ahead, less straight lines and awkward distances between jumps that make him struggle with keeping the bars up. We've only done a handful of trials here but I'm slowly getting a feel for which NZ judges are my favourites, though for the most part the courses here have been better than Aussie courses anyway - no offense meant to the Australians. And I still love the more relaxed rules about rewarding your dog after the run. I've mentioned that before.

Here's a couple of videos. One of the dogs training agility, and one of what else we got up to in January.

Click HERE if the agility training video isn't visible.

Click HERE if the "month in the life" video isn't visible.