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.
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.
