High Heels and Gumboots

Sheep are smart

A flock of sheep is like water slowly breaking through a small dam. It begins as a trickle, then gathers momentum. You can’t stop the flock, so it better be going where you want it. Or be open to changing your mind. 

Mid-life enlightenment

I loved my job as editor of Boating New Zealand magazine, but there was an increasingly strong pull back to my roots in Golden Bay. When I bought 10 acres on the beach at Patons Rock, it defied all kinds of logic, but that didn’t worry me because I don’t analyse life decisions that way.

Massey Ferguson 135

Massey Ferguson 135 waited patiently as we worked over her anatomy. We identified clutch, brakes, engine stop, gear lever and throttle. We finally graduated to spinning the PTO which spun the mower blades.

Complicated stuff like the dual range-shift lever and the differential lock pedal ‘especially advantageous where traction is poor’ we left for the advanced class.

Cinnamon and Honey

Even if there were no eggs, I often let the hens out early because they loved it. They scratched, reversed and pecked where they’d scratched. I used them like baby tractors to clear a new vege bed. They roamed the garden like ladies with baskets at a market, comparing the price of bugs, the sheen of seeds. When Romeo found a source of worms he crowed to share it with the girls.

The second drought

Storms arrive with warning and definition. Droughts play the long game. By late January, I knew that the fine summer weather was lasting too long. The paddocks were spiked with dry-gold stems; trees in the orchard were dropping leaves and shrivelled fruit. If someone had offered me the choice between a paddock of green grass and a diamond, I would not have chosen the diamond.

Beach access only

On a wild night, I met the full force of the storm as I drove down on to the sand. The rain was a deluge on the windscreen. I knew there were logs above the high-tide mark so I aimed low. The ute was bumping gently, which meant I was crossing the creek. The bumping continued. I wasn’t crossing the creek; I was driving down its length towards the sea. Shite.

Call of the wild

In one of my most ridiculous moments at Oceanspirit, I crouched behind the hen house, gripping the axe and wearing a motorbike helmet in case the bird attacked my face. Something made me look up.

It was the predator bird, a camouflaged warrior of the forest. It perched on one talon; the other coiled in the soft feathers of its belly. I ditched the axe for my camera and sent a photo to the Department of Conservation for identification. It was a native falcon/karearea and therefore protected.

Native birds at Oceanspirit

Living alone on an isolated property reignited my fear of the dark. I remembered the day I had first entered the house and known it had been built with love. There were only good spirits around me: the pīwakawaka and tūī singing their songs, the kānuka and mānuka whose pink and white flowers scattered my outdoor décor, the weka who drummed to their chicks as the extinct moa had drummed to theirs.

A woodstove, a pet lamb...

In Auckland, I had endured winter. At Oceanspirit, I learned to love it. The woodstove I had been nervous to light was now the heartbeat of the house. Its smoke smelled like a tramper’s hut in the mountains.

DIY retaining wall

I knew what I had to do: dig a trench, build the wall in front of it, lay gravel in the trench, lay down the perforated pipe encased in weed barrier (aka Grandma’s stockings) in the gravel. But I didn’t understand why. I googled it and kept bumping into ‘hydrostatic pressure’.​

Mother's day

My mother, Dr Tamsin Hayter, was a GP in Golden Bay for nearly 40 years. My time on a lifestyle block in Golden Bay was a chance to reconnect with the local community, learn a lot more about my mother's work there and develop a better understanding of our differences. This photo is of Tamsin and me when I was about 10.