The fundraiser the locals have for the upkeep of the nearby hall is an annual motorbike trail ride, up over farmland and through bush. A few hundred people turn up, which is quite the sight (and sound) out here in the middle of nowhere, where the number of vehicles to pass by on any given day can be counted on one or two hands.

There were so many entrants this year that we were asked if they could use a couple of our paddocks for overflow parking. It was odd seeing throngs of people on our driveway; the kinds of numbers usually encountered at an event in town. Unlike city crowds, however, these visitors picked up after themselves and left without a trace.

Most riders were decked out in colourful gear and almost half wore helmet-mounted GoPros.

We didn’t really fit in with the hustle and bustle, but from behind a camera you can seem to belong anywhere, so we observed from behind the security of our lens. We snapped some action shots around the hall, but unfortunately most of the real action itself was up in the hills and trees. There were, however, one or two show-offs which our camera took a liking to.

There was a kiddies’ track, too, which was routed over a neighbour’s hilly land.

Look at those little tykes go!

They were as kitted-out as their enthusiast parents, and actually pretty impressive riders for how small some of them were. It makes me think about how sheltered a lot of suburban kids are. There were just as many girls on bikes as boys, which was nice to see.

So wee!

When the main track for adults opened up, they raced by in noisy vibrant swarms.

We caught some of them getting a little air at the start of the track before they disappeared up into the hills.

It was a pretty bizarre occurrence to have happen out here next to our little slice of paradise, and once the crowds had all gone home it seemed like it hadn’t happened at all. The countryside was reset to its default tranquillity. It may have been a crowded noisy event, but at least it only happens once a year, and it’s actually kind of exciting to see some thrill-seekers in this otherwise perpetually meditative environment.

Some of you may not know this simple fact (e.g. city-slickers): Hay is livestock fodder for over winter (or in a drought) when there isn’t enough pasture to go around. This may seem like common knowledge, but you’d be surprised. Whilst assuming this in the back of my mind, I realised I knew nothing at all about haymaking.

Warning: The following material contains a lot of hay. Sufferers of hay-fever beware.

I recently learnt that it’s usual for farmers to close up a number of paddocks over summer to let the grass go to seed. The seed heads in the grass contain abundant nutrients, distinguishing hay from plain old straw. It’s then cut, turned, and baled – all with the use of a tractor and three separate pieces of perplexing machinery, respectively, in tow.

Two of our paddocks were “shut up” for hay for a couple months, and for the past week the farmer who leases our land has been popping out every day to process it. Part of the lease arrangement was that we’d get to keep the majority of the bales but we hope to sell quite a few of them.

In the area, where hay is plentiful, a bale goes for around five bucks. Back up in Auckland these are usually twice the price, and when they’re scarce potentially triple. Perhaps we’ll pay the Auckland pony clubs a wee visit in a transport truck over winter… Hay-ho!

Here’s our farmer doing the first part of the process, cutting:

The attachment being used is basically a giant lawn mower except with two big spinning blades instead of just one.

Afterwards, it looks lovely all in rows.

And here’s the farmer the next day, turning the hay with a different attachment, which helps to aerate it and dry it out:

These instruments of farming confound me. They appear at once simple and puzzling, yet their design is so effective that there has been few improvements in almost a hundred years. When I look at something like this, and how well it does the job it was intended for, I can’t help but be awed by the idea of ancient farmers who, for thousands of years, achieved the same result with little more than hand tools and horse-drawn cart.

Lastly, before baling, he turns the mowed hay again and this time combs it into tidy rows:

Time to bring out the hungry baler!

This thing eats people. Seriously. A local told us the horrifying story of a recent baler “mishap” in which one unlucky fellow got his shirt snagged on the spinning PTO driveshaft and was sucked through, only to be spat out in pieces. Needless to say, he did not survive. Right around Christmas, too. Not cool, baler. Not cool. I will be giving this bastard a wide berth.

We actually bought this old machine from the previous owner of our farm. We figured we’d be needing it and we might as well save ourselves the trouble of sourcing one elsewhere and dealing with the transport. It’s pretty beat up and needs some spare parts, but apparently it does the trick. It seems the thing to do when you have missing parts is to substitute them with the likes of a soda can, such as in this tractor hub cap. Whatever works, fellas…

There were a few hiccups before they got it going. Namely threading the baling twine correctly and plopping dollops of grease here and there. The whole thing, we thought, seemed like a giant sewing machine. I suppose it’s more like a parcelling machine, you might say, since it compacts hay into neat cuboids and strings them up with twine. The farmer had his brother with him to help out. As you can see by their attire, these are real country gentlemen.

We had no idea what they were actually doing. We’d catch a word here and there, but I think we’d better study this thing’s manual. In depth.

“Ah, there’s your problem. The jig-hickey isn’t wound onto the watchama-bob, and your doodad’s gone all giddy.”

Once it got going it was entertaining to watch our very first hay bales being tidily pooped out the bum-end of this contraption. I was eager to lift one to see what kind of weight I’d be having to heave a few hundred times. I’d say each weighed about twenty kilograms.

In preparation I’d lined the barn with some junk wood to keep the bales off the floor. The last thing you want is moisture wicking up from the ground and rotting them all. Apparently I’d put them in the wrong direction, however, because when I came back later I’d found that someone had repositioned them to run short-ways. Not sure why. I think it perhaps has something to do with how the bales would be stacked.

On the first day of baling a bunch of neighbours turned up to help. This was surprising to us city-folk. Apparently that’s just how things are done. Baling is so weather-dependent that you can’t risk your bales getting wet, so it’s all hands on deck if there are ominous clouds looming. Even in good weather it seems that help from across the road is expected. It is a momentous task, after all, and many hands make light work. So long as there’s a beer for everyone at the end, we were told, they were happy to assist.

I tried my best to pull my own weight, especially since they were going to be our bales, but I felt like I was just getting in the way of the pros. Like I was butting into the middle of a very efficient assembly line. They had done this a hundred times since youth, and they had a rhythm and process that I felt my cumbersome ineptitude only hindered.

When the second paddock was baled a couple days later, I was more confident in my hay-hauling abilities. It was quite fun, actually, jumping on and off the trailer, heaving the bales aboard in a joint effort to get them stacked in the barn. Bloody hot work in the middle of a summer day. Char was free to help with a couple of loads over her lunch break, too. She took to it with greater knack than I. Farming’s in her genes.

The first paddock filled almost half of our barn. The bale count was two-hundred-thirteen. The lease farmer took a trailer-load with him, and we sold fifty to our neighbour.

The second paddock gave us another two-hundred-eighty-one, putting our tally close to five-hundred.

Even our kitty, Mica, came to investigate the new jungle-gym. Beware, nesting swallows.

Amusingly, Mica was leaping across rafters when she suddenly miscalculated. Next moment there’s this little kitten hanging on for dear life by her front paws. I lunged out to save her, but I wasn’t fast enough. She fell to the floor of the barn from four metres up, hitting a piece of timber with a thud on the way down. Half-laughing and half-concerned, we rushed to peer over the edge. She looked up, confused. We jumped down and inspected her for injury. Needless to say, she’s a cat. Nine lives. A few minutes later she was happily shitting in the paddock and bounding through the long grass.

Next summer we’ll probably have to do all this ourselves; cutting, turning, baling, and stacking. We have a few friends in mind to come help us with, what will undoubtedly be, a sluggish and laborious effort. You know who you are.

Do I write about wood a lot? Well, that’s because we have hoards of it. Dealing with it all has taken up large portions of my time lately. So hold on to your hats, because here’s another wood-related post! You’re welcome.

You may have seen the log holder we got for sawing fat rounds, or in the case of this photo, awkward offcuts of excess sapwood:

But I needed something to hold the thinner offcuts such as this lot:

…Something that would allow me to cut lengths fit for our fireplace. I’d seen a few designs around, so decided to wing it with some timber I found lying about in a paddock. This is the rig I whacked together:

The idea here is to have each H section thirty centimetres apart, so when the wood stacked across the H’s is sawn I end up with ideal lengths. Here, maybe some pictures will explain better:

So first I trim off the ends, just eye-balling the lengths.

Then saw down between the H’s.

It actually worked better than expected. I thought the long strips, being so thin, would bounce around from the aggressive chainsaw. Surprisingly, the sides of the H’s along with the weight of the pile held it all together no problem. Only a couple of the top pieces jiggled a bit.

First lot done!

Three loads later and I had finished this particular pile, which had been dumped by the chicken coop from the milling. Why not with the rest of the wood near the barn, I’m not sure.

There’s plenty more where that came from, so my time constructing this handy device won’t be going to waste.

As a bonus, I found some delectable thick slabs of macrocarpa hiding beneath the pile, which just needed their shoddy ends chopped off. Score!