Review: High Heels and Gumboots
By Mary-Anne Stone, Plains FM
Rebecca Hayter’s, High Heels and Gumboots [is] an account of the seven years Rebecca spent proving to herself that lifestyle farming on her own was something she could learn from scratch starting in her mid 50’s, and learn to love.
I’m about the same age now that Rebecca was when she upsticked from her corporate gig in Auckland to create a coastal lifestyle dream for herself just out of Takaka on a farmlet she names Oceanspirit. I too am reinventing myself after an early retirement from corporate life. No doubt all those parallels enhanced the pleasure I took from the book.
However I challenge any reader not to be taken with Rebecca’s frank vulnerability, plucky can-do but slightly haphazard enthusiasm and good-natured humility. The book is full of humorous and deeply moving stories about animals and vehicles; weather and tools; the quality of land and trees and wetlands. All marvellously well-written and engaging. And Rebecca is both entertaining and generous sharing what she discovers in herself and in the eclectic but inclusive Golden Bay community along the way.
Some of the same sometimes whacky, widely diverse, but always generous and dependable community spirit was now embracing our friends in their venture to establish a new base in Awaroa. The tractors, boats, tasks, and learning curve that were absorbing them as they settled into their new home all seemed very familiar having just finished Rebecca’s book.
Visiting them, I felt an even greater respect for her tackling it on her own.
I believe she documents all the rich rewards, frustrations and routine drudgery of the lifestyle-farming “dream” down to a tee. This is a book that will satisfy the romantics and the prosaic alike in its portrait. Again, I busily recommended it to everyone I encountered, confident of its wide appeal, and grateful for this easy connection to offer.
The book is dedicated to her mother who served as rural GP for the Takaka community for 50 years, often at the expense of her availability as a mother. It’s a tribute based on a new peace and respect she finds towards her mum; a gift from her time embedded at Paton’s Rock gaining an appreciation of the realities of rural community life and the demands on rural general practitioners. It is cool insight, which Hayter offers to help foster much needed mutual, rural/urban understanding across our motu. Kia ora!
Books that make you look closer and love places you know even more deeply are a treasure. When they also challenge you to stay ready for and open to be changed by life’s adventures, well, they start to feel like friends.