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Spark staff, from left, Rachita Dahama and Gurpreet Jaura planting the coastline at Batley on the Kaipara Harbour.

People power to plant the edge of the largest harbour in the southern hemisphere is being provided gratis by one of our country’s largest companies.

Spark NZ, through its charitable arm the Spark Foundation, enables its staff to spend a day a year contributing to a worthy cause. Last week, 11 Spark people turned their attention to waterfront land at our place where hundreds of native saplings sat ready to be planted.

Mark Vincent, the initiator of Otamatea HarbourCare, which has a goal of planting many kilometres of harbour waterways, had grown them in his nursery with the help of volunteers. The week before Mark had attended another planting day, this one with children from diverse backgrounds. Although they were horticulture students, they turned up in school uniforms. No gumboots in sight.

We were luckier, despite many of our guests having begun life in other countries – or their parents had. Most were quietly spoken, making communication a test; when a young man waved a paper cup and said ‘Rubbish bin’, I thought he said ‘Aspirin’ and offered him a Panadol. We worked it out.

We also struck luck with the weather. Friday dawned still, clear and beautiful. Our guests arrived when the tide was in and began taking photos of our calm and glittering Kaipara Harbour.

While eating pikelets and muffins (cooked by the farmer’s mother), we introduced them to the place – they were beside the Otamatea River, the central arm of the harbour and in a house that began life in 1866. And that’s one reason Mark chose Batley for the first Spark Foundation day – we’re on the waterfront and the house and area abound with wondrous stories. The first settlers, for example, had seven daughters but only one reached adulthood. Twins were still born, three girls drowned and another died of pneumonia and is buried on the hill behind our house.

After planting, we served lunch to our rather exhausted guests. Practice has taught us that soup is the answer when feeding a large or unknown number of people. It can be eaten standing up if necessary and can cater for all diets. We served pea and ham, seafood chowder and Thai pumpkin.

While we were from different worlds, we women bonded over the pumpkin soup. It’s simple and delicious. First, split your pumpkin. This doesn’t need a knife or the slightest effort. Drop your pumpkin, with force, on a hard surface like your concrete drive or path. It will break in two, easing the business of cutting it into pieces.

Already another batch of pea and ham soup is in the freezer and I’m primed to crack another pumpkin on our concrete courtyard. Our second group of Spark volunteers is due soon.

Margaret’s Thai Pumpkin Soup

(I name recipes after those who give them to me – our visitors took away a recipe for Rae’s Thai Pumpkin Soup.)

1.5 kg pumpkin (I bake the pieces, cool then peel them).
2 onions, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
4 cups chicken stock (use vegetable stock to cater for vegetarians)
1 Tb red curry paste (Gregg’s is good and the only one I use)

Simmer the lot, whizz till creamy then add a can of coconut cream. It is especially lovely with coriander sprinkled atop its surface.

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Here I am looking dorky in my Elizabethan collar and with my leg in a bright green bandage.

Dear Readers,

Who’d have thought one little lick could have started all this? Dogs lick. It’s what we do. Then I licked again and again until – and I was fascinated by this – a lump formed. I’m just regurgitating what the vet said here. I usually only regurgitate after I eat grass, but these are unusual circumstances which are, apparently about flea treatments. Because I’m special and sensitive, some of the usual stuff doesn’t quite work.

Anyway, here I am looking like a dork. I know this because the lady at the vet centre who I used to like looked at me and smiled and said, “Oh Floss, you look so funny.” Just because people can’t speak dog lingo, doesn’t mean I can’t understand every flipping word they say.

My boss, who I’m also cool on at the moment, has been heard marvelling about my good nature because when she gets me out of my cage to pee and poo I can’t wait to get back in. I don’t do this because I’m nice. I do it because I don’t want to be seen looking like a dork and I can avoid Jas the puppy. They call my neck gear an Elizabethan collar which confirms that the royal family, who my boss finds fascinating, are dingbats.

My leg, meanwhile, has a few teeny problems because I’ve ended up with insufficient skin to contain it. Ugggh. Doesn’t bear thinking about.

The only excitement during my incarceration has been thanks to the farmer. Soon after I’d had my right foreleg bandaged he came home with his right forepaw in plaster. What a guy! He fell off a truck while loading wool bales – just to make me feel better. Some bone that links his thumb to his wrist, apparently.

Then, when the farmer let me out to do ablutions, he forgot to put me on a lead. I was off up the back paddock at a gallop – finally in a private place to do what should be done in private. Then there’s the dodgy door he made for my pen. I had many long hours to check out that door before the day of my escape.

As usual, my boss was walking Kate and the annoying puppy along the beach. But I could no longer overlook her disloyal behaviour because she was with her friend Fluffy. Some people get us mixed up and call me Fluffy. I love that.

Then Kate barked, “Come on, Floss. It’s fun on the beach.” That did it! I ripped some slats off my door, wriggled out and was off, peg legging it along the beach, not giving a dog’s biscuit who saw me.

Finally, on the same day, the farmer and I set off to get our appendages released from prison. He came home bare pawed, but I was still bandaged – and furious.

One night, I bent my horrible collar, gripped the end of the bandage with my teeth and pulled like you wouldn’t believe. I was free!

I love going in the car, except once again I found myself at the vet centre with the lady who tells me I look funny. Turns out I knew best. They let me come home with no bandages, but I’m still locked up. Something about my skin being very fragile. Let me tell you, it’s not nearly as fragile as my patience.

Your friend Floss.

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100th Birthday Bash at Batley was a blast – 130 or so, finger-food picnic, treats for the kids, glorious sunshine.

The Roadley family – about 130 of us – recently celebrated a century on a block of land whose first owner holds a dubious honour in New Zealand’s short history.

Thomas Spencer Forsaith, who in 1839 signed on to buy 2000 acres on the shores of the Kaipara Harbour, will hopefully always retain his record of leading the country for the shortest time ever. If not, presumably politics will be in the same upheaval as in 1854 when Forsaith led a group of politicians who held control for a mere three days.

The following year, the Government concluded that while Forsaith’s land purchase was legal, he was entitled to only 823 acres rather than the 2000 he’d attempted to snap up 16 years earlier for waistcoats, trousers, fowling pieces, sugar, flour, tobacco, iron pots and other essentials of the era.

On 11 November 1912, Albert Roadley (the grandfather of Rex my husband, better known on this blog as ‘the farmer’) and his brother Jack bought the land, known as Forsaith’s Grant.

By then it belonged to Joseph Masefield whose life hit a milestone 150 years ago on 12 November. In 1862, Joseph and his wife May, arrived on the William Miles, one of the ships carrying settlers who’d signed on for land under the Albertland Settlement Scheme. Within a month or so, Masefield had a supply store at Batley, then named Oahau.

Both Masefield and Albert Roadley travelled to the Otamatea River – one of the arms of the Kaipara Harbour – to check out land. Neither liked the property they’d set out to buy, however they both spotted land at Batley while on board a steamer and decided they liked it.

Picnicking people at the party.

The run of significant November dates continues: 10^th – Celebrate a Century party; 11^th – Roadleys buy land at Batley; 12^th – Masefields arrive in NZ; and 13^th – 1820, Ngapuhi rangitira Hongi Hika is introduced to King George IV in London.

Hongi deserves a mention because he and his warriors killed the father of first person to get legal title to the two blocks of land which, along with Forsaith’s Grant, comprise today’s 1000-acre farm.

By 1820, Ngapuhi and Ngati Whatua had ceased their battles, but Hongi was plotting revenge. As he returned from England, he traded gifts from the King for muskets, then in 1825 he and his army headed south on a mission. When the fighting was over, Haututu was among the dead and, in an ultimate insult, his body was consumed at his kainga, just up the river from the farm, by victorious Ngapuhi.

It’s easy to look back and give the facts of history nothing but a passing thought, but in this context they have much more meaning.

At our celebrations, many members of the extended family met for the first time because we figured that when you’re celebrating a century you can spread the net wide. And we feasted both in 2012 style, with guests bringing a fingerfood picnic to share, and like the very first settlers, the Maori, we enjoyed the bounty of seafood-gathering missions.