NZ12
Farm Stay
Tonight’s
sleeping arrangements were rooms on a farm. It was one of the reasons
we spent all day following Fred; we had no clue where our end destination
would be for that day. We definitely did not follow the written instructions we
were given in the homemade booklet we received, and our GPS was useless for
this leg of the trip. Only Fred knew the way.
We
all stopped in a parking lot someplace at the end of the day and a bunch of
cars were parked in the parking lot with people milling about. I cannot really
tell you the name of the town. Fred met some of those people on the parking lot
and then, a man walked up to us and said:”you are with me”!
His
name was Vince, but he had an accent that was so deeply NZ, that I had a
difficult time understanding much of what he said.
It
was now our job to follow Vince who drove in his car to his house. With us were
2 other fellow riders: Mike Pollock (Mick) and Glenwood Coulter (Glen) who
would be bunking at the same farm. So we were 4 motorcycles following Vince’s car
which was leading us to his farm.
The
total ride from the parking lot to Vince’s house was about 30 minutes or so and
we kind of managed well enough but for the last 5 or 6 km, the tarmac ended. Now
we had to ride through ball-bearing-like, loose gravel that was deep and not
easy to ride on. Wow! Nobody prepared us
for that! Vince was OK, he was in a car, but the 4 bikes following Vince now
slowed way down. 1st or 2nd gear was the best we could
manage, so we lost Vince who knew the neighborhood and just went home. We rode
on of course, there was only this one road to ride on, but what would have
happened if we had an accident. Why were we not told that we would be riding on
gravel like this? I am not talking a dirt road; we can all ride those but deep,
loose, marble like gravel is a different matter. We all had a tough time riding
in this. Now, Mick was an excellent rider but I lost him behind me after just a
few hundred yards onto the road. Glen was with Mick so I did not worry too
much about them, but then there was Carol and me, struggling through these kms
of gravel road. I was worried about Carol but we finally made it to the house.
Gravel Road By Truck
Vince
was standing at his entrance gate waving us in. Surprise, the
driveway up to his house was even worse gravel and it was uphill, up a hill?
Shit!
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| All Four of Us Made It |
Well,
Carol and I made it but we had a bit of the shakes when we parked the bikes
behind the house. We used up all the adrenaline we had.
We
waited a bit and then Glen and Mick showed up, too. Neither of them seemed too
happy riding this road, either.
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| View From Our Bedroom |
For
Vince this road was his kind of road, I guess he does not know how hair raising
our ride-in really was. Well, he was in a car, in a car this gravel road does
not matter much.
We
were given a room in the basement of the house with a view of the
valley and Mick and Glenn had other rooms also in the basement. Yes, everything
was very clean and tidy, but I felt I had invaded someone’s private space. I
don’t remember their last names, Vince and his wife (name?).
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| Hans With Vince's Wife |
It
was a bit before dinner-time when we arrived, I would say about 6 pm or so, so
we had a snack on their deck behind the house and just settled down for a night’s
chat session. Vince is about my age and the farm he lives on is a wonderful
place, but it is desolate. There are no neighbors I could see. Well, no, down
the long view valley was another farm but it must have been 4 km away, there
really was nobody around Vince’s place that I could see.
He
and his wife take in visitors to have someone to talk to, I guess. Both are a bit
older and while Vince had been a sheep farmer all his life, his wife worked as
a hospital administrator in a town nearby. Both were pleasant people and Vince
knew his job, his sheep. All around the farm house, built on a hill, were
meadows, meadows as far as the
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| Vince, Hans, Mick, Glen |
the eyes could see. He had many with grazing sheep.
It was idyllic, pastoral, soothing to be there. There was nature all around, no
sound other than the wind gently rustling the leaves of trees and/or bushes
near to the house, and nothing else. Vince had a rather large swimming pool in
his backyard, but mostly it was a modern house, a modern farm. I did not see
stables, did not see barns, and did not see animals other than the far away
creatures in the fields.
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| View of the Pool From the Deck |
We
sat and chatted about this and that. Vince lamented about the price of wool, of
raising sheep in general. The whole operation of sheep, whether growing them
for wool or as a meat product no longer paid well. Vince, in his head,
calculated the return on his investment on a per head basis. The net yield of
wool per sheep compared to the money spent on each sheep did not equate a good
return. Vince was a business man. The same calculations happened when you raise
sheep as meat producers, rather than wool, he said. Being a sheep farmer in NZ
no longer makes for a way to become rich. You can live off it, but it’s not a
really great business, all according to Vince. He put the blame on the
Russians, who, in the past, used to buy all of NZ’s wool, just to produce their
army uniforms. After the collapse of the USSR, the modern Russian uniforms are
now, like in most other countries, made out of synthetic materials. The demand for wool, worldwide is way down,
Vince lamented. And as far as meat production is concerned, he blames the
newest trends of NOT eating meat as his main adversary.
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| Sheep Barn - From the Deck |
I
got some good insight into Vince’s life. When the USSR still bought wool, most
of Vince’s money came from selling to the Russians. Vince sold and shipped and
then some months later he was paid by the government of the USSR.
Well,
at the end of Dec. in 1991, Vince had a huge amount of money due from the then
Russian Government. He never received any payments however. The USSR was
dissolved on Dec. 15 in 1991 and people like Vince got shafted big time.
Bummer! Now where can Vince sell?
I
heard similar stories from the people raising sheep in the Pampas in Argentina
and other places but what could I say?
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| Another View From Our Bedroom |
So
I changed the subject and asked Vince how he got started on this land, on this
farm. Well he said:” I was born on this farm in 1947”. His father received all
of this land as a thank you for serving in the NZ army during WWII. Each
soldier who returned from the war in 1945 drew a ballot from a lottery and the
winners were then given 400-acre farms. Sure the land was in nowhere land,
but it was viable farm land. There were many ‘winners' and Vince’s Dad got
lucky, after WWII Vince’s Dad became a sheep farmer.
While
Vince told me about his Dad’s luck, I could not help but think what my father
got for serving in the German Army during the same war. The world distribution
of assets is not fair.
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| Another View From the Deck |
To
Vince, this rather huge piece of property is his life. This is where he grew
up, where he worked and where he spent his life. Yes, we had internet on his
farm, so Vince is not behind the times but it’s a different kind of living in
his world. Vince seemed happy in his secluded life; His wife, too. I would have
had a hard time being a sheep farmer, but then… I did not grow into his kind of
life situation, either.
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| Dinner Was Very Good |
Later
on we had a nice, very tasty dinner that Vince’s wife had prepared and yes, we
had mutton for dinner. We, Carol and I, had brought a few bottles of red wine
which we gave to our hosts and the evening went rather quickly from a nice chat
to being dead tired.
We
slept well.
In
the morning we woke up early. We had set the alarm, because it was time to find
all the other people of our group.
I
had thought Vince would show us were we would meet our group in the morning but
he just gave us general directions and we were on our own.
Leaving
the house after a self-serve breakfast of some cereals and rolls, we were faced
with the gravel road again. What to do?
Well,
I suggested I ride Carol’s bike out to the tarmac and she hitch a ride in
Vince’s farm truck. Then Carol would wait there, Vince would drive me back to
his house and then I would ride my own bike and go with the other 2 riders
(Glen and Mick) to meet Carol a bit later. That kind of worked out OK, but the
road was still a rough ride. I am not a friend of off-road riding that is
perilous.
All
is well that ends well. We had had our
Farm experience.
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| The Whole Group Made It |
Now
it was time to find Fred who had said to meet him at the front of a wool store.
We had no way of knowing exactly where it was, we only knew what Vince told us.
Right, left, right, right!
Right?
