Oh! My work is sooo hard

seriously hard, hard work for Young Farmers staff.

I work my fingers to the bone,

my butt stuck to the chair,

RSI is on the way from typing endless emails,

walk the sole off my shoes from endless airport corridors

while I travel to the big smokes of New Zealand

to raise money so I can get
more staff,

more opportunities,

more funding,

more links,

more everything

for my organisation. 

Mine is a hard, hard life.

Then some days I get to drive to Dunedin via Oamaru,

with Louly Worm

and because Rozza and Rosie are late

we get to sit in the sunshine having yummy

fresh spring asparagus, bacon and feta salads

before taking a wander to visit the Oamaru Gallery

then realise we are a bit late

and race to the ute

and off to Totara Park to check it out for the

Ovinpideas!

Or as we lazy Kiwis are calling them

the World Shepherds Challenge!

11 teams from around the world

coming two by two.

Aged between 16 and 25.

We have Irish, Americans, Canadins, Aussies, Safas,

Argentines, French, Poms, Scots,

and a bunch of other people from rugby playing countries.

Totara Park just south of Oamaru is so worth stopping at.

(it's on the left about 5 minutes south)

Seriously it is bucolic and like a film set

This is Rosie and Rozzy working.

Louly and I were wandering

around enjoying the sun

and the view,

until Rosie asked me to take photos of the sheep....

This is Merv the Merino

Just joking, his name may not be Merv.

He is for wool and meat.

Merino mutton is yum!

This is a Border Leicester,

maybe named Lester.

This breed is described as,

and I'm laughing as I copy this,

"large and long-legged, with classic Roman nose"

IT"S A SHEEP

not a supermodel.

I mean super as in a large, leggy Italian bambina*

rather than a lanky pommie chick from the East Midlands.

Just had to have this little Romney lamb in here.

I love Romneys.

I miss having lambies

but this year they are worth too much

to flick the orphans off to townies like me. 

And then we found the old slaughterhouse.

This is not a real carcass

but it is real wool.

Louly and I walked in to the dark from the squintingly bright sunlight.

I had finally broken my sunglasses in Queenstown the previous weekend.

And as we stepped in voices started,

sheep bleated, dogs barked and hogs oinked.

Yes the hogs oinked.

Outside used to be a huge pig sty with 240 pigs

who ate all the sheeps guts fresh from the sheep

The offal would fall out of the sheep,

gently no doubt

and sluice down the channels

and out the hole in the wall

and into the pigs troughs.

Yum, yum pigs bum I bet.

This of course is not allowed these days

but back in 1860 something it was the done thing.

They also only killed 240 sheep a day.....

cause they were slackers!

Maybe they were Luddites who were technology adverse.

Now I feel mean for disrespecting the pioneers.

They weren't technology adverse because the sheep

from Totara Estate were among the first to be exported

frozen in refrigerated shipping.

Another world first - ok I can't remember if it actually

was a world first

but either they would have been frozen the longest cause

we are so far away from the mother country.

To finish an arty photo cause it was a rather long visit

and I get arty when I'm bored.

* Bambina is actually Tuscan not Roman Italian but who cares.