Tim Saunders - Under a Big Sky: Facing the Elements on a New Zealand Farm

First published in 2022

Text Tim Saunders, 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Allen & Unwin

Level 2, 10 College Hill, Freemans Bay

Auckland 1011, New Zealand

Phone: (64 9) 377 3800

Email:

Web: www.allenandunwin.co.nz

83 Alexander Street

Crows Nest NSW 2065, Australia

Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand.

ISBN 978 1 98854 794 7

eISBN 978 1 76106 495 1

Design by Megan van Staden

Cover illustrations by Sophie Watson

For Kathrin,

more than forever.

The hawk scoops broad arcs in the air, churning and turning over patchwork paddocks. Yellow eyes scythe the earth in search of the small and the dead as his shadow flicks over sheep and cattle. The roua River cuts a meandering line through open plains, clouds crumple against distant ranges. Buoyant air lifts the hawk in ever-widening circles, and I wonder if it is him that is turning or the earth itself.

We call him Khu, and he has kept watch over the land since before my family started farming here 115 years ago. I know it is not the same bird, but we like to think he is a direct descendant of the hawk that soared above my great-great-grandfathers head.

Khu rises towards the dawn sun as the moon slips beyond the far horizon. The farm is where it has always been. Clumps of macrocarpas, pines and poplars sway gently, flaxes and cabbage trees swaddle a wetland. Ducks spatter the waters smooth surface while magpies quardle ballads to the brightening day. White-faced herons creak like rusty hinges from willows. Fences slice straight lines across the flat landscape, interspersed with gates and culverts, and a digger has scraped fresh teeth marks in the dirt. Power poles reach skywards, and sparrows dot slim wires. There is nature here, although little is natural.

Khu spreads his wings between sun and moon, clutches the new day in rust-coloured talons. The red sky is smeared like blood over a waking world. From here he sees everything. Everything worth seeing. Everything he allows. There are stories laid out below him, and he watches them unfold as the loyal wind lifts him higher. Khu is pleased with what he observes. He tilts his head. His eyes are wide open. This is his domain.

And far below, we live our lives. We write our stories. We go about our business under sun and rain and clouds and wind. Under Khus gaze.

Under the big sky.

Echoes haunt these paddocks. I hear them on the wind faraway shouts and whistles, the bark of a huntaway that lingers like receding thunder. Ghosts have stamped their indelible mark on the land, and I catch them sometimes from the corner of my eye. Their signature is all around us, in everything we do. I follow scattered footsteps, their presence like the invisible breeze that ruffles the grass.

The wind is intangible, but I feel it. On my face, in my hair. Reaching down my spine. I feel the dry heat that bakes the ground and melts the ranges. I sense the creeping cold that draws colour from the leaves and traces a square of frost in the shadow of the woolshed.

My brother, Mark, and I are the fifth generation of our family to farm this slash of ground nestled halfway between the Tararua Ranges and the sea. Our father, 82 years old, is still actively working every day. He will never retire. Farming has been the only life he has ever known, and his passion for the land and the animals we farm runs deep within the soil we tend.

I wonder if I will be the same when I am his age.

Occasionally I see glimpses of my grandfather in the gaps between fence posts and grazing sheep, a blurred recollection as if the land has a memory of its own. Grandad died when I was three months old; I know his face only from photos. His vacancy is filled by shifting clouds and open spaces, by birds and cattle and stoic sheep.

Two hundred and ninety hectares of land, bordered by the roua River, is all that is left of what was once a much larger farm, eroded by circumstance and decisions and governments and banks. But we hold on to what weve got, digging our fingers deep into the soil like ttara roots.

The sun stretches five lifetimes across these paddocks. I watch it glide over the grass, warming the white-crested heads of sheep as they graze. Magpies shuffle in the macrocarpas that emerge from the dawn, Khu sweeps low across the wheat, his wings slicing that thin strip between night and day. Spur-winged plovers wheel circuits around the woolshed, their shrieks shredding the silence.

The pale moon slips down into the earths uncarved bones. There is work to be done. There is always work to be done.

My great-great-grandfather purchased this land in 1906. His son shaped it, crafted a life that continues with every new day. What he would think of the way we do things today? The horses that he loved, crucial for transport and ploughing and pulling and pushing, have been replaced by mechanical contraptions and combustion engines. Equipment is controlled by computer and guided by satellites. Genetics have altered livestock to survive specific conditions, to give predetermined numbers of offspring that are meatier, woollier, milkier.

Fertilisers help grow crops and grass that can keep up with demand as populations increase, and more food facilitates these populations to grow. Chemicals developed during human conflict now wage war on weeds and pests, creating larger crops to feed people. And when new weeds and pests arise from the ashes, stronger chemicals are developed.

Perhaps there would be little my great-great-grandfather would recognise today of the land he knew. The woolshed is still here, a towering sentinel built in 1898 by the farms previous owner using mata cut down and milled on the land. The stopbanks my forebears constructed along the roua River in 1906 remain, although they have been raised over the years. The river, however, has changed its course and refuses to be tamed. Some of the fence lines are the same, although the posts and battens and wires have been replaced. And some of the trees, their ancient gnarled trunks distorted by the wind, doggedly hold on in the relentless westerly.

The seasons are less clear. Smudged, and yet they still shape our farming lives. Take any decision ever made on the farm, strip it back and you will find the weather. The elements colour every day, and everything we do influences them. Air, water, earth. Fire. Farming cannot exist without them.

There is no denying the fact that who we were affects who we are, and who we are affects who we can be.

Echoes haunt these paddocks. Sometimes it pays to listen. Let them know we are still here.

I remember Dad swearing.

I remember the searing afternoon heat that shimmered the air over the wheat crop, distorting clusters of distant trees and sheds. School had finished for the day, I was free to do what I liked, and what I liked was to help Dad on the farm.

I remember the red combine harvester sitting squat and cumbersome in the middle of the paddock, its steel surfaces too hot to touch. My father said you could fry an egg on the steps if you wanted to. I wanted to. I needed to. It was the kind of challenge that couldnt be ignored. I made a mental note to visit the chook run later.