“What on earth is that?” exclaimed the tradie when he spotted the Muscovy duck sauntering past our gate last week.
I laughed. We’re used to reactions like that when visitors first see the oversized birds that live in the paddocks around our farmhouse.
Muscovy ducks aren’t the most common farm birds in Southland, but they’ve become a bit of a hobby for us in the last few years.
So what are Muscovies and how did they get to the farm just as I’d managed to become pet-free? Here’s how it happened.
Rewritten and updated for lambing in 2019
Farming is an eight-days-a week job. It’s our livelihood but it’s also our life. So, when our kids were young they helped out on the farm whenever they could. When the lambs arrived we needed them most of all because, in Spring, farming is a family affair.
Each year, when lambing began the kids fought for the chance to drive around the sheep with Dad. It was great fun spotting the new lambs in each paddock. They slid merrily out of the Toyota truck to get the gates and raced to return straying twins to their mothers.
Continue reading “Lambing Time: A Family Affair”Every day in August – and now in early September, I stride back and forth across the paddocks helping to shift electric fences. Each one takes about half an hour so I have had plenty of time to reflect while I get my daily exercise.
These days we’re a well-oiled electric fencing team, my farmer and me. But this wasn’t always the case…
Continue reading “Electric Fencing Ups And Downs”
Kids and puppies are inseparable when they’re young and they inevitably end up teaching each other a few valuable life lessons.
Even though our kids have long ago grown up, our son decided that I needed to keep honing my puppy-raising skills.
So, here’s a quick look at some of the cutest babies currently on the farm.
Shane Matheson trains racehorses — pacers to be precise. I could say he does it in his spare time, but he really doesn’t have any.
I’ve never been to a racing stables before but I’m fascinated by the whole horse training process. So it was thrilling to visit Shane and his partner Lisa at their Balfour stables to find out what makes a racehorse trainer tick.
It’s September, which in Garston means spring, one of the busiest seasons in the farming year.
The trees are covered in blossom; daffodils abound; there is a ton of ground preparation to do before Terry can sow the new crops. But foremost in our minds right now are all our pregnant sheep.
Mamma Mia, here we go again: it’s lambing time on the farm.
Continue reading “Life On The Farm: Lambing 101”
