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I tried to ignore my boss’s skirt.

A Blog by my Dog.

Dear Readers,

My boss recently went on a cattle moving mission dressed like a real girlie girl – and being a female, I’m qualified to comment. Oh, the shame!

I was, of course, wildly excited when cattle broke through a fence and got onto the beach. Not only is this illegal, but they hardly ever get onto the beach these days because the farmer’s done miles of coastal fencing. Pity, because dealing with cattle kicking up sand is fantastic fun. They’re excited and a good stiff ocean breeze gets them even more worked up.

We were in the ute on the way to sorting out the bulls when my boss spotted the place where they’d broken out – although there was a clue: one bull with its foot caught in the wire was bucking and jumping.

The farmer dropped my boss Rae and me then drove on down the beach to get the rest of the cattle – and that’s when I noticed the boss’s skirt. I kid you not, she wore a flimsy, pretty wrap-around skirt. Full length. It was flapping all over the place. Cattle, as you know, only like people in jeans. I took off after the ute, figuring if I ran really fast I’d catch up and . . .

“Floss, come back here,” called the boss in the voice she uses when she knows I’m not inclined to listen. Damnation!

Turns out it’s also the voice I can’t help obeying. Why is that? If there’s a question in the universe I’d like answered, it’s that one. I slunk back, sat beside her and thought, ‘Why did you have to wear that dumb skirt?’

Pretty soon, the farmer was herding the cattle towards the boss who was holding a stick with one hand and the flapping skirt with the other. This wasn’t going to go well.

But the clever farmer urged the bulls off the beach and up the bank to the break-out spot – where they gathered in a muddled huddle. No way would they jump the single low wire into the paddock. Bulls are odd like that – happy to jump over a wire to get out, won’t do the reverse.

Meanwhile, the farmer moved quietly around the bulls which were all gaping at my boss and her skirt. I knew their attention was making her nervous.

“Stay there, bullies,” she called before yelling at the farmer, “I’m going to get the ute,” and took off at a gallop – or as much as a gallop as she could manage, what with the flying skirt and wearing gumboots. I followed. Couldn’t help myself.

After she got back and delivered a hammer and nails to the farmer, he lowered the troublesome wire and the bulls ambled into their paddock.

On the way home my boss’s words whistled past my super-sensitive ears: “Did the tangled bull free himself or did you do it?”

“I did,” said the farmer whose face had been twitching with amusement for some time (there was a lot to laugh at – my boss, her skirt, her nervy attitude, her ungainly gumbooted canter). “I wrestled it to the ground and unwrapped the wire. The judges gave me 9.5.”

I knew this was nonsense, but I don’t think my boss did because she just grinned and said nothing.

Yours truly, Floss

(Hope you enjoyed this – I do enjoy Floss’s point of view. I’d love it if you’d share this or comment here or on my Facebook page. Thanks.)

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Strangely enough, standing near bulls of this size and with this attitude is not my idea of fun.

My fitness programme – moving cattle every other day – is apparently ‘green exercise’, not because grass is involved but because it serves a purpose. However, like other fitness programmes, I soon didn’t want to do this one either.

After turning off the power, I’d pin down the electric fence in the technosystem and step aside so the cattle – six mobs of 17 – could step into fresh pasture. Being a few feet from the leaders posed no problem – until they grew and grew and grew.

Bulls put on about a kilogram a day, therefore I was moving an extra 700 kilograms or so of bull each week – an extra three tonne a month. Plus bulls get stroppy in summer and kick up their heels.

One day I turned around to find a bull was right behind me. The next day, a bull ran at me.

Hoping the farmer might move it (perhaps to the far end of the farm), I pointed him out. “Him?” scoffed Rex. “He looks like someone’s pet.”

The next day, another bull took a prancing charge at me. I yelled. It stopped. It pranced. I yelled. It stopped. It pranced. I yelled – the same expletive each time followed by the word “off”.

Then I heard the farmer call, “I’m here. I’ll save you.” He was running towards me, his arms outstretched. Sometimes he’s so silly.

“I’m not moving the bulls any more,” I declared. “I’ll build fences instead.”

After I’ve pinned down the fence, the bulls – which are keen to get onto fresh grass – step over the wire – while I rapidly step aside

Carrying about 30 electric fence standards and a reel designed by a man for use by men is the reason I was moving the cattle in the first place – it requires no muscle power.

Every day the farmer tried to coax me to return to cattle moving. Each day I’d say no before loading up and stumbling away to fumble through building the next fence.

“You need to get over your fear of bulls,” he said until finally he conceded: “You’re really not going to move the bulls, are you.”

“No,” I replied – not until May when the big boys will be replaced by weaners which will be more my size – until they grow.

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Country Calendar sound recordist Don Anderson (standing) and cameraman Richard Williams wasted no time feasting on the oyster farm.

“I’ve got eagle eyes,” trilled the farmer in a most unfarmerly fashion while strolling down the hall and waving something small and shiny.

“My watch!” I’d spent ages scouring the gravel road several kilometres from home where I was sure I’d lost it months earlier while moving bulls.

Remarkably, it was in perfect condition which was odd after weeks of weathering rain and vehicles.

I was having this thought when I noticed the farmer’s sheepish smile. Turns out he’d found it in his ute which he was cleaning, an event as rare as the times he arrives home after a hard day on the farm and says, “Don’t move a muscle. I’ll cook dinner. White wine or red?”

His domesticity was inspired by the impending arrival of a crew from Country Calendar, the television show that’s central to our Kiwi culture. It’s the country’s longest-running TV series, and is probably only pipped as the world’s longest-running show by Coronation Street which started in 1960, six years before Country Calendar.

Anyway, we were all of a dither, mowing, weeding, dusting and cleaning. And when you’re going to be on television and you’re female, you realise you own no suitable clothing and, in my case, hats.

After rushing out and buying a merino top, two friends immediately said it didn’t suit me and I returned it. I know my hats didn’t pass muster because I was wearing my favourite when the farmer said, “You look dorky in that hat.”

Fair enough. I’d told him he looked dorky in a particular pair of shorts the day before. These frank exchanges surely stemmed from pre-Country Calendar angst.

Some months earlier Kerryanne Evans, a director and reporter for the show, visited and we’d had another frank exchange while enjoying the farmer’s oyster fritters, answering more curly and personal, but gently put, questions than anyone else had ever asked.

She’d become interested in life at Batley after reading Love at the End of the Road about life on the shores of the Kaipara Harbour with the aforementioned not-so-eagle-eyed farmer.

Kerryanne visited when the harbour was bleak and wind ruffled. The next day was so glorious I took photographs of the bright blue harbour reflecting puffy cottonwool clouds and surrounded by electric green hills.

Soon after the filming dates were confirmed, things fell magically into line. The Mangawhai Garden Club planned to visit and agreed to do so while the crew was here, an Ohope Beach oyster farmer serendipitously timed his arrival to coincide, and some Otamatea High School students were to have a shearing lesson at the Country Club where Rex often helps at shearing time.

We located accommodation for Kerryanne, a cameraman and a soundman who’d spend five days here, then got busy tidying and straightening the house, farm and ourselves as much as we could, which in some respects, wasn’t much at all.

When Kerryanne asked if the Kaipara Harbour was always so grey and windswept, I emailed my blue-sky photos and she was most heartened. Then the week of filming turned out to be grey and windswept, perfect moody Kaipara Harbour weather.

Country Calendar, Saturday 11 August, 7.00pm, TV1.