Fw: A visit to the farm

29 March 2009 Kia Ora! We are invited to the McIntosh farm. Yes, that McIntosh; Jamie's parents Kate and Alistair. Alistair, also called "Tosh", raises sheep and also has about 19 cattle. The trip to the farm takes about an hour from Invercargill. We traverse backcountry roads and through the foothills close to the Catlin Mtns. The comfortable 5-bedroom farmhouse, up a hill and accessed via a narrow tree and shrub lined lane, is tucked into a shady glen. Though the day is chilly and gray, we warm ourselves by a warm fire in a sunken parlour. Dinner includes delicious lamb chops (What else?!), served two steps up in the dining area. I ask Alistair if this is a sheep station. He laughs. "No, a station is at least 10,000 acres. We only have about 700 acres." Just a teeny place, you see! Alistair and Kate run about 7,000 sheep. After dinner, Alistair takes us on a tour of the farm. Anticipating this tour, I am prepared with my rubber calf-high Wellingtons (aka gumboots). We travel through multiple paddocks to the top of the farm and inspect just a small representation of that 7,000. In the sheep shed, Alistair shows us bales of wool from shearing that happened early this morning. Too bad the shearers were on their own schedule; I would have loved watching the process. Alistair demonstrates how the sheep are sheared and shows us the electronic technology by which each sheep is weighed as they pass through a shoot. Then they are divided into different pens based on weight. Some are off to market while others need to grow more. Back by the welcome warmth of the fire, we have tea and meet Pocket, the cat. Kate tells us the amazing story of Penny and Pocket, and Alistair gives us a children's book by artist and author, Gwenda Turner, written about this pair of remarkable animals. Briefly, the story is this: McIntosh daughter, Bianca, has an empathic fondness for animals. (She is now a veterinarian.) One evening on her way to a party, the 18-year old Bianca spied a piece of gray fluff at the road side. She stopped and picked up a tiny kitten with its eyes still mostly closed. She tucked the kitten into the breast pocket of her shirt (hence the cat's name), and Pocket was off to his first party. Arriving back at home, Penny, the family Jack Russell terrier, became very energized on seeing the kitten. She picked Pocket up and carried him back to her basket. Kate thought nature was about to take care of the kitten. But she hadn't anticipated what Penny was going to do. Penny adopted the kitten, allowing it to nurse. After a couple days, Penny, who had had a couple of litters, began producing milk. Even though Pocket's nourishment needed to be supplemented, Penny continued to nurse and mother the kitten, and Pocket thrived. Of course the novelty of a dog nursing a kitten made the newspapers and that is how the book titled Penny and Pocket came to be written. Cheers, Kiwi Traveler