Tally Ho!!

Many photos:

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Next stop on the Great Kiwi Adventure was some wwoofing at a little place between Dunedin and Queenstown known as Tally Ho; home to Stuart, Barb, Josh, 24 horses, 350 sheep, 6 dogs, 23 chickens, 15 ducks and counting. When we arrived baby animals were springing forth left right and centre - we bottle fed 4 baby lambs, watched ducklings hatch, helped to find homes for 3 puppies and went to bed every night wondering whether the pregnant mares would set off their birth alarms before morning and trigger a mass torchlit exodus into the fields to help with the birth. As luck would have it, the most eagerly awaited foal-ly arrival turned up at the eminently civilised hour of 10am - early enough for us to be around to witness the birth and the foal's first steps, but not too early to celebrate with a nice glass of vino... As if I wasn't proud enough just being there, Barb bestowed on me the honour of naming the beautiful baby miniature horse after me - Mona Lisa. I am assured the Mona part is for poetic effect rather than casting any aspersions on my attitude to farmwork...

Living and working at Tally Ho was a little slice of rural paradise. Aside from the constant cuteness of lambs, ducklings and foals to brighten our days, we got to sample the unlikely-to-be-repeated experience of working in a wool carding factory. For the uninitiated (of course, I knew exactly what wool carding was before I arrived...) this involved manning the giant wool carding machine into which clumps of wool were fed, then brushed and teased between giant rollers until they emerged at the other end in beautifully uniform lengths of wool which were fed into the balling machine before being bagged and sold at the Tally Ho shop to people clever enough to be able to spin them and knit them into woollen wonders. Barb tried to turn me into one of these people but although I genuinely enjoyed lots of the time I spent on the spinning wheel, the rest of the time I spent loudly cursing at the knotted, broken or uneven fibres confirmed to all within earshot that this was unlikely to become a lifelong pastime for me. I am immensely proud of my very own handspun ball of Tally Ho wool though.

One of the best things about wwoofing at Tally Ho was the faith Stuart and Barb had in us and consequently the things they (perhaps unwisely) trusted us to do. Like, for example, injecting lambs with medicine, wrestling runaway sheep to the ground, making horseblankets for the miniatures (this involved a sewing machine, nuf said), and driving a 4x4 across steep and muddy fields. We certainly learned a lot in those few weeks.

But my favourite part of our stay at Tally Ho was getting to know Barb, Stuart and Josh and being made to feel like we were part of the family. An epic shopping spree with Barb, being taught the art of Skip-bo by Josh, dining like royalty every day, our weekly trip to the local pub for a fish & chip supper, hanging out with Mr Peel and admiring his crown green bowling prowess - by the end of our stay I for one was more than a little teary eyed as we waved goodbye to the farm. And then there were the miniature horse shows, but that's another story...