Farm for Life: Mahi, mana and life on the land by Walker Tangaroa

Author:Walker, Tangaroa [Walker, Tangaroa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780143775713
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand
Published: 2013-04-08T00:00:00+00:00

10.

THE BEST MĀORI FARMER IN THE WORLD

After I’d been working for Wayne and Debbie for almost a year, Mum got really sick. She got a big infection inside because they’d put this needle in and pumped the blood back into her. Only the needle wasn’t in the vein, so they pumped all of this blood into a cavity inside her body. She got really sick, so I flew up to see her. She started coming right, so I came back down to Lochiel. That was so hard as it felt like the last goodbye every time. I never knew if I’d see Mum again.

When I got back, I agreed to work for Wayne and Debbie for another year. They were amazing to work for. Wayne taught me all about efficiency. When I’d been working for Ian, he gave me all the time in the world to do my jobs, but he was running 290 head, whereas Wayne was running 450. The other difference was Ian had three of us working for him, but in Lochiel there were only two labour units — me and Wayne. That meant that I had to find more efficient ways of doing things so that I could get all my jobs done in a day. It was a good lesson. He taught me about timeframes, and he explained why. ‘We’ve got to get this done by this time because we’ve got to milk …’ Things like that.

It was really good for me as it gave me a good structure to work around. I was on a 12 and two roster during calving, then 11 and three the rest of the time. That meant that I’d work for 11 or 12 days in a row, then have two or three days off. I’d work the morning on Saturdays when I was rostered on, so I could go and play rugby in the afternoons. One of the big differences I found in Southland was that here they get contractors in to do heaps of jobs around the farm, whereas up at Ian’s we did everything — all the fencing, all the fertiliser, any digging we brought the Bobcat over and did it all. Here they’ll just hire someone to come in and do it. The main reason is that a lot of the dairy farms down here are recent conversions and on a really big scale.

Once I’d got to know Wayne a bit better, I told him a bit about my story. I said, ‘Have you seen Once Were Warriors?’

He said he had.

I told him, ‘It was sort of like that. I saw heaps of alcohol abuse, drug abuse, verbal and physical abuse. Kids were getting hit all the time and it was Monday to Sunday drinking. There was heaps of poverty, kids not going to school because they had no shoes, that sort of thing.’

Wayne couldn’t believe it. ‘Nah, that’s just a movie, T!’

‘No, it’s not. That’s based on families up north,’ I said. I was pretty surprised that he didn’t think it was real.

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