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Photo by Geoff Walker

Dear Readers,

I can hardly believe it, but I’m having to backtrack on a bold declaration made in a previous column. Early this year I declared full of certainty that while Jas the puppy could bark and jump and beg, she would never, ever make me play. I backed up this emphatic statement by saying that I’m 13 years old, which puts me in my 70s in dog years, well past the time of playing just for fun.

Obviously I jump up and down with excitement when it’s food time, when my boss gets home, when my boss takes me for a walk or when I find her in the garden. But these situations don’t qualify as playing.

Playing is what Jas the puppy does. It involves jumping, spinning and dancing for no reason whatsoever. Why, I used to wonder, does Jas think dropping into what you humans call the ‘soliciting play’ position will make me play? Just in case you’re not clear, soliciting play when done by dogs involves poking the front legs forward, dropping the chest on the ground (which happens when the front legs are thrust forward) and poking one’s backside in the air

This ingratiating position also involves vigorous tail wagging, although this barely rates a mention as vigorous tail wagging is automatic for dogs when we’re pleased. On the odd occasion I’ve felt pleased and have tried not to wag my tail, it’s been an epic fail. That tail of mine has a mind of its own.

Anyway, on the fated day when I played for no reason whatsoever, I’d followed my boss Rae into the paddock when she went to give the horse a snack. Already, I was acting strangely because I often only follow her part way to the horse.

You can’t kid me that this counts as a walk. A walk is when she devotes her attention to me and I follow her. Walks are mostly along the beach and moving bulls. They used to include paddocks, but I’m now suspicious when she goes into the big paddock by the house because she might just be going to visit or catch the horse. Last week, I was suspicious as usual, then I realised my boss was off to gather mushrooms. I had to run to catch up.

Anyway, on this day she’d fed the horse and was walking home when this unearthly desire to play overcame me. It was as if I’d been taken over by the character of Jas the puppy who was standing nearby. I jumped, I lunged, I spun around and I dropped into that ingratiating solicit play position and begged my boss to play. She grinned and I thought she was going to laugh at me but she jumped and frisked and lunged and ruffled by furry neck and together we played in the paddock. Golly, it was fun.

For once Jas didn’t play at all. This silly and thrilling moment was just for me and my boss. Then the feeling passed and even though my boss patted me on the head and told me she loved me, it hasn’t happened since.

It was, I’ve decided, a moment that may never be repeated. Note my use of the word ‘may’. Once I’d have said never but now I’ve learned never to say never. Oh, perhaps I’ll amend that because I know myself too well – I’ve learned almost never to say never.

Your friend, Floss.

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Special notebook – made with love and Batley House skirting board

It was surely a world first. A bloke who contacted me to buy a copy of my book asked for a hunk of the house as well.

“Sure,” I replied. “I’ll see what I can find.” Dave suggested weather board, but a scavenge in the wood heap in the back paddock turned up something I thought would be even better. As I inspected the piece of skirting from the bathroom, back when it was white and that old-fashioned pale green, I wished for the creativity to do something clever with it. A small hole added to its rustic charm. The farmer says it accommodated a water pipe.

I posted it with a copy of ‘Love at the End of the Road’ and, soon afterwards, Dave reported that the gift had been a success. He knew this because when Vicky received my book and the notebook he’d made using the wood as a cover, she was overcome with emotion. The reason for her tears – Vicky lived here in the 1960s and 70s when children from families in strife stayed at Batley House which had started its life a century earlier as a home, boarding house and store.

A few weeks later, Dave, Vicky and her sister Michele visited. Twice they’d been to Batley, but had been hesitant about returning to their former home. This time, here they were in our living room remembering not just what the house had been like back then, but what their lives had been like.

When they arrived in 1967, Vicky had a special honour. Lance and Olive Field, who had foster children and cared for children from troubled homes during school holidays, drew the line at babies – except for Vicky. She and her four siblings were wards of the state. Their father was in prison and their mother wasn’t coping. Of course, they had to be together.

“We loved it here,” said Michele as they remembered being called to meals by a bell and siren, the massive vegetable garden and the loving care and guidance provided by Lance and Olive. There had been excitement chasing possums in the night, and thrills sliding down the bank in front of the house on a wet plastic sheet. One boy, going rather too fast, flew high and landed on the road. The children loved to swim. One day Lance had screamed, “Get out of the water.” The kids, not used to hearing his voice raised, obeyed – and just as well. A five-metre shark cruised along nearby.

Lance and Olive showed the children nothing but kindness. The only time he got angry was when he put a stop to the mischievous kids’ attempt to dig up the grave on the hill behind the house.

“We thought it was a Maori princess,” recalls Michele. It’s the grave of Grace Masefield, a daughter of the first settlers who died in 1874.

Batley House was the only place the five children stayed together. In other homes, Vicky, Michele, their two sisters and brother were separated and sometimes endured harsh conditions.

“We felt privileged to come here,” they said. “We didn’t have a home. When we thought of a home, this is where we’d think of.”

And now, almost half a century later, Vicky’s notebook is a permanent reminder of the place she and her siblings call home, the place where they were cared for and loved.

Love at the End of the Road is now an ebook: /Rae-Roadley/e/B013Q6NKWY

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The suspected lamb whose bloody birth was seen by a passerby who assumed the sheep had ‘sprung a bearing’.

Spring has sprung, the grass has ris’, daffodils are blooming and lambs have bloomin’ popped out everywhere.

But unfortunately it’s not always a lamb that pops out but what farmers call a ring or bearing. In fact, it’s a prolapsed vagina.

The farmer reckons about three of his sheep a year suffer this misfortune which, generally, can happen just prior to lambing, often if a sheep is fat, has a full rumen, a full bladder and the lambs are about grown. The sheep’s internal accommodation is packed to the max – then some. Pop!

The Ministry of Primary Industries begins its webpage on the subject, thus: “Bearings (prolapses of the vagina) in ewes can be a problem every year as lambing approaches, even on the best-managed farms.”

There’s a delicate balance – insufficient feed in the weeks before to lambing can also be a culprit. Scanning can determine which sheep are expecting multiple lambs and need more food – but not too much.

In basic terms, the solutions for a prolapse are: clean it, let the bladder empty, shove everything back inside the sheep and hope it stays there – or euthanasia.

In the two cases I’ve seen the vagina didn’t stay put, despite the use of a special contraption and both had to be killed.

Case number on was a pregnant ewe and case two was Ashley, a too-fat former pet lamb. I made very sure no bits of little Ashley ended up in our freezer.

The worker’s grand-daughter had named her two pet lambs after the Olsen twins. After weaning, Mary-Kate joined the flock while Ashley hung around our garden gate and scoffed.

Last week at nine pm, the farmer took a call from someone who’d driven past earlier that day. She said she’d seen a sheep with its ring out, had left a note in our letterbox and asked whether the situation had been handled.

The caller was off a farm, she said, and she and her friends were appalled. Plus, she insisted, she saw the farmer drive past the suffering sheep without stopping, and she’d be in touch with the newspaper and SPCA if the sheep wasn’t taken care of.

Ashley’s friend Mary Kate sometimes got tangled in weeds.

As I said in Love at the End of the Road,  farming is a high-vis business, and it’s Murphy’s Law that the day an animal dies/gets caught in a fence/breaks a leg/springs a ring is the day you’re off the farm or busy elsewhere.

The caller got so worked up, the farmer found no air time in which to say he wasn’t driving the ute she’d seen. The wife of a former farm worker who’d been to visit was at the wheel, and other visiting farmers hadn’t spotted the troubled sheep either.

The farmer’s next question, after the indignant caller hung up on him, was to me. Had I seen the note she’d left, given I’d just cleared the mailbox – after dark and during a TV commercial break?

Nope, sorry. As I love after-dark missions, we headed off with headlamps to see if we could spot the sheep and check the other farm mail boxes. We failed on all counts.

The farmer and farm manager scored another epic fail the next morning. But while they didn’t find a suffering sheep, a ewe with newborn lambs was in about the spot of the perceived crime. It had been a bloody birth and the ewe was still trailing the ripped amniotic sac.

The farmer concluded the appalled group might have seen a ewe giving birth – when the placenta appears first it can look like a prolapse.

Farmers appreciate passersby who take the time to report problems – when they’re kind, well mannered and don’t jump to conclusions or act like know-it-alls – even if they’re right.

I can confirm living on a farm doesn’t qualify anyone to be a farmer. Once while driving from the farm, I was politeness itself when I phoned the farmer to report a suspected dead bull. There it was, lying on its side and still as a rock with birds hopping about on its bulbous tummy. When the farmer checked it out soon afterwards it was standing up and eating grass.

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This brown scum that thrives in our wet winters is called Nostoc Commune

Anticipating cultured conversation after a local theatre performance, we retired to the bar for a night cap. But as this is a rural area, talk was all about an entirely different type of culture – a strange gooey, gunky and shiny brown growth.

I’d first spotted it while being a marshal for the Rally of New Zealand. After poking it with the toe of my boot, I decided it resembled seaweed or pond scum – except it was flourishing in roadside gravel. A while later, there it was again – gleaming (in a rare spot of sunshine) on our drive.

That night after the play, I was in the company of many seasoned farmers – who had all spotted its recent arrival, but knew nothing about it.

“I’ll do the research,” I said, “and let you know.”

Northland Regional Council’s biodiversity specialist double-checked with NIWA’s algal experts who confirmed it’s Nostoc commune, commonly called Blue Green Algae.

A mind-dizzying visit to Wikipedia and thereabouts taught me it’s a type of cyanobacterium (blue bacteria) which can live in salt and fresh water, soil and, as we know for a fact, bare rock.

As well as finding out spirulina belongs to the extended family and that there are countless types with long and scientific names, I also know this: “They are Gram positive prokaryotes. They are photosynthetic and have pigments like chlorophyll a, carotenoids, along with phycobilins. They have autotrophic mode of nutrition.” And on and on. Knew you’d be fascinated.

The Nostoc thriving in Kaipara may be the strain known as fallen star or star jelly. It can fix nitrogen, reclaim soil and is so hardy that, after lying dormant for ages, it grows again when exposed to water.

You can, apparently, kill it with various things: salt, vinegar, copper sulphate, dairy alkali cleaner XY12 (full strength or one part to two of water) or possibly glyphosate or algae killer.

As some strains of cyanobacteria are highly toxic, I’d recommend you do more research before you use Nostoc as a food supplement which is what they do in China.

Several people have since told me they reckon it grows where glyphosate (better known by the brand name Roundup) has been sprayed. More research is underway. Stay tuned.