Deborah Coddington - The Good Life on Te Muna Road

The day begins with six peeps from our bedside radio.

A t Redbank, the only way to accurately predict the weather is by peering out the window. Will it be kind today? Is the sun already hitting the roof of the old winery? Or is a southerly gathering in those faraway hills down the end of the valley, turning the skies black with cheek-stinging rain? At Redbank, who cares? Just me, if its cold and nasty. Ill be the only one groaning and wishing to slip back under the duvet.

The vineyard is relentlessly cyclical dormant in winter, bursting with growth in spring and summer. But no matter what time of year it is, the animals are chirpy at first light: the cat beating on the bedroom door, roosters crowing since pre-dawn like a muezzin calling good Muslims to prayer. Soon a thrush will be singing his heart out, grateful for the newly planted hazelnut hedge. But none are more alert than the dogs, waiting patiently in their runs for the back door to open and for me to come and let them out so they can bound into their happy day.

Its a picture of rural bliss, youd think, living where we do in Te Muna Valley (which roughly translates as secret or special place) bucolic, peaceful, stress-free.

Aah, would that it were so. Take Te Muna Road, for instance: scarcely four kilometres long yet teeming with problems. Some residents are not happy. The South Wairarapa District Council has been stretched for money, so requests for the tarseal to be extended beyond Escarpment Vineyard seem to have been ignored.

New Zealand Post refuses to continue rural delivery any further than the first few kilometres at the Campbells end, despite repeated letters to the chief executive. The company compensates by providing free post office boxes in town, drawing the exasperated response, Thats not the point.

And theres more. Meridian Energys CEO Mark Binns has relented and says the government-owned corporation wont now build what was to be New Zealands largest wind farm along the ridge beside Nga Waka a Kupe. But we remain vigilant, nonetheless. According to local iwi Ngati Kahungunu these spectacular hills, which frame one side of Te Muna Valley, are the upturned canoes of Kupe. But the state-owned enterprise has already spent thousands, if not millions, of dollars scoping the project, so will they let it go?

Then there are the traffic hold-ups. Whenever longtime farmer John Donald, now in his eighties, comes puttering out of the first gate on the road, he holds his old grey Ferguson tractor steady at five kilometres per hour. He creeps along, stock crate up the back carrying a sick ewe to goodness knows where, oblivious to the cars that become banked up behind. The Little Grey Fergie, as the model was always known, was only manufactured from 1946 to 1956, and by now John Donalds is more rusty than grey, but it still chugs along.

At the other end of the road on the Te Muna farms lives the Campbell clan Ian and Helen, with their two sons Matt and Simon and their wives Chanel and Kerry. Ian, with his face like a crushed-up piece of tissue paper, has a wicked sense of humour. He and Matt frequently move mobs of sheep or cattle from one end of the road to the other slowly. Ian finds it hugely amusing when first thing in the morning, not long after one of his mobs has left manure all over the tarseal, my husband, Colin Carruthers, whos probably spent half of Sunday polishing his beautiful car, gets into said mean machine and drives through the muck, splattering sticky effluent all over the spotless chrome and blackened tyres.

Ian sits there on his quad bike, woolly hat on his head, big grin on his face, waiting for Colin to pull alongside. Colin presses a button on his Aston Martin and down glides the window: Got a hose? he drawls, face like a dropped pie.