Norm’s Place

By: Blonde Two

This morning, here at Norm’s New Zealand farm, it rained but, this being New Zealand, it was sitting in the sun weather again by the afternoon.  We decided that as the little (getting visibly fatter) cows needed moving to the next paddock, we would take an exploratory bimble around some of the perimeter of his 50 acres.  We do it quite often but this time I thought I would take you with me.

We set off down through Aunty’s beautiful garden, through a little wooden gate and into the “House Paddock” – so called because it is near to the house (easy so far).  The garden is very mature now with lots of trees but you can still occasionally see the odd cow wondering past in the paddock while you are eating your breakfast.  This is the view back up from this paddock towards the house and garden.

The little cows were in the paddock below this in “Creek Paddock” – there are lots of paddocks with creeks so you have to be careful you put the cows in the right one.  We took them a lovely bunch of cabbage leaves for a treat and then opened the gate to “Paddock-with-no-Name” so that they could go on through to pastures new (how nice to use that phrase and really mean it).

I have learnt over the years that cows are tricky creatures and are much more likely to come through a gate if you don’t look at them – so we stood for a while avoiding eye contact.  They came through eventually despite no help whatsoever from Tasman the “Cow Dog” (Huntaway/Border Collie cross).  Tas comes from a long line of excellent cow dogs but has the unfortunate affliction of being scared of cows.  One of the cows stayed behind to eat the cabbage leaves and, despite desperately wanting to, refused to join the others because a) we were looking at him, and b) He was scared of Tas who had decided to lie nearly in the gateway (lovely pet, hopeless cow dog!)

Next we wandered down and opened the gate so that the cows could have “Red Shed” paddock as well.  We took the opportunity to check the creek – blocked in places but running well in others, and the pine trees – too big to stay there but too big for Blondes to chop down.

As we walked back up to the house, we looked at lots of boundary and sections of creek and stopped for a break and a sit down near to “Hare Creek”.  I have only just christened “Hare Creek” today because we had a most delightful time watching a pair of hares playing.  I am not sure if we have hares on Dartmoor or not but they are intriguing creatures and were having a bit of a boxing session.  Sadly, this picture only captured the creek and not the hares.

It was so peaceful at “Hare Creek” that Norm and I are considering taking a bench down there tomorrow to make a more permanent seating area.