Posts Tagged ‘adventure’

Mountaineering

Saturday, March 28th, 2009

The previous post reminds me of a nail-biting drama I got into in the days of my mom’s illness when Mozilla and Rheema sometimes wandered outside the boundary fence.

For a short time in 2005 I had Home Help.  One day while someone was in the house with my mom, I went out to check part of the fenceline and tighten up the battens to stop the wanderers.

Sure enough, Rheema was on the outside.  I fetched feed and a long lead rope, and managed to tempt her and get hold of her collar though the fence. “That’s the easy part”, I thought, attaching the rope to the collar. The next problem was getting her back inside.

I climbed over the fence. We were on the southern boundary and I knew that if we carried on towards the west the good 8-wire hi-tensile gave way to the old netting fence, and I might have a show of lifting her over that. She was pulling away to head off in that direction so I thought “Ok, she knows her way around here, I’ll let her lead me.”  Mistake number one …

Under The Mountain - Orotere

Under The Mountain - Orotere

We trundled off in the scrub and teatree above the road. She led me sidling along the bank until suddenly I pulled up sharp.

We were below the fenceline, on a track just wide enough for our feet, with sheer bank now above my head on my right and dropping off very fast to our left.  Fortunately, there were trees and shrubs on the bank, but looking down to the left of my feet I could see the centre white marking lines on the State Highway peeping through the branches from uncomfortably far below me. The roof of a car whizzed by. I suddenly realised how steep the bank really is at this point. Big shock.

Orotere in thr Morning Mist

Orotere in the Morning Mist

I must say I broke out in a cold sweat: I am not good with heights.  With a goat on a rope up ahead of me on the track, and barely a footprint’s width below my soles, turning back didn’t look like a very comfortable option. I stood there for a few minutes, sweating.  Home suddenly seemed very far away. How long before the helper realised I was in trouble? Probably not until she was due to go home, if at all …

Swallowing hard, I looked up at the bank on my right.  There was a root on the edge of the drop, above my head.  Not a very big root, but at a pinch it might hold me.  I reached up and worked some of the soil out from the bank behind it.  When I had enough space for a grip, I got hold of it, took a very deep breath, and mustering up all the effort I had, still clutching Rheema’s leadrope in my other hand, I pushed off from the path and managed to pull myself up and flop the top half of me down on the small flat shelf above.  I wriggled my legs up and just sat there for some minutes shaking like a leaf.

I looked down at Rheema, standing sure-footedly below me. Totally at home in her surroundings – of course. A goat, after all, is a goat. When I felt a bit less wobbly, I got up and led her back the way we had come. Once we were more on a level and I could get hold of her again, I took the leadrope and the collar off so she couldn’t get hooked up in the scrub and left her to it.

“Another day…”  I thought.

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Piglet Mayhem

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

PatriciaThe other hilarious episode – though it didn’t feel hilarious at the time – happened on the first night Natasha was here with her piggies.  I had spent a great deal of time beforehand trying to ensure the piglets would not be able to get to Boris’s adjacent pen or anywhere else where they might come to harm. They were about 8 weeks old.

The wooden gate leading out of the back garden to the shed area has a short run of rail fence alongside it with Boris’s steel gate on one side and, on the other, a steel gate into a paddock where I often put Murphy.  I laid a fencepost under this wooden gate so the little piggies couldn’t slide under and there was some deformed steel square mesh under the short run of fence alongside the gate itself. So the piglets would be well contained -  I hoped.  I had rigged up all kinds of netting wonders further down to make the rest of Borus’s fence as secure as I could.
Natasha and Piglets

Late in the evening I fed Natasha and the piglets down by the house.  Then I went up the top to feed Boris and Murphy, taking a roundabout route as I didn’t want to advertise to Natasha and Co what I was up to.  I need not have gone to the trouble – they just followed their noses and arrived regardless, as soon as I had put out the feed for the other two.

I was out there filling water troughs in the gathering dusk when – horror of horrors – suddenly a little piglet popped out from under the fence, like chewing gum out of a wrapper, and dived under the steel gate to try and grab some of the food Murphy was dropping as he ate. When I got closer I saw they were also trying to get through my 8 wire fence along the side, but that seemed to be withstanding the assault.  I nearly had a fit because just that afternoon my neighbour’s wife had helpfully said to me “Mind your horse doesn’t stand on the piglets.”  Murphy being what he is, I paid attention.

Rushing forward, I opened the gate, scooped up the piglet and put him back with mom.  Seconds later another one (or the same one?) popped out and headed for Murphy again.  As fast as I grabbed them and threw them back in they kept popping out.  EEEk!  I had visions of my little piggies being stomped on by Murphy’s big feet or ground up in Boris’s gnashers – because they could have walked under his gate, too.

Over by the small sheds I have a stack of No1 fenceposts and I rushed over to grab one and put it under Murphy’s gate.  Then back to get two more, to put under Boris’s gate.  These posts are heavy, and there I was in the fast gathering darkness romping around lugging fenceposts and lengths of timber to try and stop these naughty little piggies from getting where they shouldn’t be. They were making it out through the deformed steel squares. Though I’d thought they would be too big, they were still able to wriggle out, so that had to be blocked as well.

You could have heard me a mile off cursing the fact that dramas always seem to happen last thing at night when you’re dead tired and can’t see.  Finally, the holes all seemed to be blocked and the excitement died down.  I went up to check with a torch later.  Natasha had made herself a nest in the litter under the trees close to Boris’s fence and she was curled up peacefully with the piggies sound asleep between her legs.
Natasha with Drinking Babies

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Pigs on the Open Road

Friday, June 27th, 2008

PatriciaNot that I wasn’t warned.  Just the week before getting the little piggies I’d been reading the first of a series of articles by a lifestyler journalist in one of our farming papers, entitled “The Great Pig Learning Curve”. (YEA!)  The writer had bought a couple of Kunekune piglets for his wife.  As soon as they were let out, the piglets took off across his paddock, under the gate, up the drive, over the road, under the neighbour’s fence and into a piece of swamp, where the neighbour managed to catch them with a rugby tackle.  One can imagine the mess.  History repeats itself, moreover.

Come to think of it, I have a couple more stories to tell….

The day I went south for the camera, I took with me Ashley, the young commercial pig breeder who gave me Boris.  He wanted to look at some Kunekunes for sale over towards Dargaville and I was keen to look too.  Ashley ended up buying a white sow piglet and four young 12 month old black sows. We duly loaded them into the back of my Utility for the journey home.
Shirley

I have to say my Ute is unique in the world.  It’s an old Subaru with a canopy on the back and instead of a rear tailgate – which rusted out in the days when I used to take goats to shows – it has a strong steel grille that I bought second-hand because it looked kinda useful, before I even realised it would be such a perfect fit on the vehicle.  The grille slips down between the moulding of the body, and the bottom of it traps nicely into the slot between the body and the back bumper-bar.  It has stood the test of time with goats and dogs – in fact my dogs travel with it every time I go out and it provides them with great ventilation.
Ute

It was a hot, sunny day and we were cruising along the Dargaville-Whangarei highway on our way home when Ashley, who luckily was keeping an eye on happenings in the back, suddenly yelled out “The grille’s gone!”

There was traffic not far behind us.   With visions of piggies spilling out onto the road like black Jellybeans out of a packet, I planted foot and pulled off to the side as quick as I could.  Ashley leapt out of the nearside door and rushed to the back.  What the drivers of the cars behind thought, heaven only knows.  Fortunately, the piggies were still inside.

Ashley yelled out – “You stay here – I’ll go!”  “No you stay!” I answered.  One thing I was sure of – ANYTHING was preferable to trying to hold back 5 curious young sows in a four foot wide-open gateway.  And I didn’t want to be the one responsible for losing his investment.  So Ashley crouched down, arms spread out to keep the pigs from leaping off and disappearing into the pig-fern (where else?).  I took off hot-foot back down the roadside to find the grille.  Again, the passing traffic was probably highly amused.

There it was lying a hundred yards back.  Once we got it fitted back in, I looked round for something to tie it down with.  It’s a big mistake to clean out a farm vehicle – all those useful odds and ends like baling twine, bent nails and paper wrappers had only that morning fallen prey to my “clean-up to visit the big city” mania, and now I badly needed that baling twine…

We had to make do with a dog lead and one of Ashley’s shoe-laces – not exactly ideal, but we hadn’t too many choices.  Climbing back on board, we speculated as to how on earth the grille could ever have come out, trying to remember who had actually put it in place before we left.  I couldn’t understand it.  Then it dawned on both of us:  the pigs had simply stuck their noses out through the steel mesh and heaved the grill up, using the great power they have in their necks and shoulders  (a bit like Natasha with my netting fences).  Not quite as easy as it sounds though – I sometimes struggle to get that grille in and out: you have to get it “just right” or it won’t co-operate.

But it was no problem for the piggies.   “The Great Pig Learning Curve”? You’re not joking!

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