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Waikoha Smallfarm Happenings
Some smallfarm work is landscape management. Amidst the persistent
precipitation we have been experiencing lately, I have been slashing
some patches of blackberry along Waikoha Smallfarm's pond. This is
to free from it some of the native trees and bushes we had planted
there two to three years ago. It has made quite a difference to the
look of the pond and its surroundings.
We are hosts in the WWOOF Programme, Willing Worker On Organic
Farms, which brings travellers to us who exchange their labour for
food and board for a few days. Our latest Wwoofer, Sian (pronounced
"Sharne") was born in Wales, brought up in England, and educated at
university in Scotland. She has been tidying up the look of the
landscape as well - pulling large chunks of matted weed out of the
pond, trimming the hedge along the drive, undertaking some hand
control of dock and thistle, and weeding the vegetable garden.
Sian's university study of geography and resource economics means
that we have plenty to talk about.
She is also a
keen card and board game player which has led to some entertaining
evenings. Her favourite sport is orienteering so she is fit and
energetic and is enjoying many aspects of the smallfarm landscape
experience (when it is not raining too hard!).
Churchill the Dexter Bull
Animals are
also important landscape managers as well its inhabitants. We have
just made a significant addition to our Dexter herd. In early
December, Kenilworth
Churchill, a young Dexter bull, arrived from Christchurch, after a
three day truck journey. I first saw him as a calf in May 2000 when
I visited his breeder, Tyna Charles. Tyna's three children brought
some calves in and I took away a photo of Churchill and two others
with Tyna's daughter, Jess (see photo to right). My partner Heather
saw Churchill a few times after that and we both really liked him -
we liked how he looked as well as his calm yet spirited personality.
Heather spent some time with him some weeks ago and showed him at a
local Show. This meant that she has developed a confidence in
working with him (I am always nervous about bulls until I get to
know them well). It was a real bonus to find out that he came top of
all the Dexter classes at the recent Canterbury Royal Show.
Churchill is
black with horns and is now nearly two years old. He is short to
medium legged, about one metre high at the withers (just above the
shoulder), but may have a little more growing to do. He is a "fullblood",
not the result of a "grading up" process
from a cow of another breed. Both of his grandsires are Danish stock
reaching back to some of the best English lines, especially the
Woodmagic herd. Dexters had first been exported to England from
their native Ireland in 1882 - in the 1890s it was acknowledged that
English Dexters were far superior in quality to those in Ireland.
The Dexter became an increasingly popular housecow on English
country estates, mirroring its decline in Ireland. By the 1940s, it
is thought that no Dexters remained in Ireland. The greatest irony
in its history is that the cow of greatest practical value for the
poor Irish peasant farmer became the show cow of the English gentry.
Dexters were
first imported to Denmark from England in 1986 but further imports
were banned in 1990 due to BSE. Danish Dexter development has since
relied only on those initial imports. In 1997, there were 80 herds
and 589 Dexter cattle in that country. But I must not go on too much
-scratch a smallfarmer and you get a passionate fanatic about some
animal breed or crop or farming technique!
Churchill was trucked all the way from Christchurch to Waikoha
Smallfarm, a journey of about 900 kilometres (about 550 miles).
The trucker told us that Churchill had been a very calm and
well-behaved traveller, no doubt a tribute to his breeder and
trainers as much as his personality. He was a little on the hungry
side after his journey so we let him have a good drink and his
choice of hay and grass at the cattle yards before moving him one
kilometre down the road to Waikoha Smallfarm. Sian drove ahead in
the car to alert any oncoming traffic, Heather walked alongside him
holding his lead, while I bravely walked in the rear keeping an eye
out for traffic from behind. Heather managed him very well, even
though he seemed to be in a hurry to get somewhere. He led her
perilously close to the roadside ditch a few times. A bit of a
"talking to" put him back on the straight and narrow and thereafter he
managed to conduct himself with dignity and in a relatively straight
line.
Upon our arrival at Waikoha Smallfarm, the four Dexter/Jersey
heifers and Dun Wunda, our fullblood cow, all rushed over to see
Churchill. He bellowed a hearty greeting, and we let him loose. He
immediately made close friends with them all, but particularly with
Dun Wunda. We watched over them while he settled in, and the signs
were very good. Last year, we had an
 unsuccessful experience with
artificial ways of producing calves from Dun Wunda so we decided to
go the natural way this time round. Conception rates with artificial
insemination are often not all that high, so a live bull on the
place is welcome. Churchill is a beefy-type Dexter and putting him
over our Dexter/Jersey cross heifers will breed some of the dairy
characteristics out of their offspring.
We retired for the evening, well satisfied with the day's
achievements. At 1.30 in the morning, however, we were awakened by a
strange noise. I couldn't identify it and, after I figured out it
wasn't part of a dream, I flew out of bed, grabbed the torch and
took off outside in my nightshirt and gumboots. I found Churchill
wading up the middle of the streambed. It transpired that he had
been grazing on some foliage from a willow tree located on the other
side of the stream, had reached out too far and slipped down about a
metre and a half into the water. The irony is that willow is great
for calming nervous and stressed animals - in this case, it no doubt
had the opposite effect in the short term!
Churchill roared upstream for about a hundred metres, his little
legs churning up the water, looking for a way out. The banks are
only about half a metre high for much of the stretch, but too high
for young Dexter bull. He was just turning around to head
back downstream when I arrived on the scene. Meantime, the heifers
and Dun Wunda were running along the bank, occasionally turning out
towards the middle of the paddock then looping back in towards the
stream. I had to keep turning the torch on them to make sure they
wouldn't bump into me or the nearby electric fence. I ran back into
the yard to turn the electric fence off. Meantime, Churchill arrived
again at the place where he fell in, and turned around to head back
upstream again. When I returned to the scene, he had found the ford,
slipped under the electric fence and was reacquainting himself with
his girlfriends. A happy ending to a middle of the night adventure
set in the smallfarm landscape!
Which brings me
to children's books and other landscapes . . .
On to
Part Two
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