In Which Kat and Destiny Brandish Gardening Tools at Farm Animals

After two plane rides and several hours on buses, we reached Tuatapere, the town at the end of the world. This is the last town to see daylight in New Zealand, hence the name of our help exchange destination—the Last Light Lodge.

The Lodge is a café-hostel-campground-farm type deal, owned by Craig, a 40-ish Kiwi guy who always wears a newsboy hat and cooks amazing food. His daughter Sophie, who is fourteen and best we can understand had at some point lived with her mum in Christchurch, lives with Craig, as does his French girlfriend, who has a beautiful French name that no one can pronounce and so is called “V”. A waitress named Jaz works in the café and a handful of help exchange/woofers (willing workers on organic farms) stay on the property and do odd jobs, like cleaning up the rooms after the guests leave, painting, and gardening.

About halfway through our three-week stay, Ryan showed up. Ryan is Craig’s friend who came to be an assistant chef. He lived for a while on Brick Lane in London, which is one of the seedier parts of the city (but home to a delectable, all-night bakery for those willing to traverse the streets after dark). Ryan is the sort of fellow who owns several guitars and can only play one song. His wardrobe consists of four old band t-shirts worn in a rotating cycle, most often with a pair of red skinny jeans.

This brings us to our first farm animal—Jack-Russell-Albus-Yoda-Chewbacca-A-Bunch-of-Other-Names-We-Can’t-Remember, the kitten. Kitten was generally playful and congenial, and he developed a habit of falling asleep in our laps when we were attempting to work on our laptops. Ryan, for reasons as yet unknown to anyone save himself, liked to grab kitten, place him under his shirt front, and walk around with him like that. It was just as odd as it sounds.

Our next farm animals are the chickens, which lived in a fenced area behind a storage shed. Everyday, someone would take the bucket of scraps collected in the kitchen and put it in the chicken’s feed trough. This person also checked for eggs in the nests in the coop. About once every couple of weeks, someone had to go into the chicken coop and remove the excrement left by the chickens in the nests and on the floor. While it is easy enough to put food in a trough surrounded by chickens, and not too terribly difficult to take eggs when the chickens are in the coop, it is rather hard to clean out the coop with all the chickens in it. Our first plan of action was for Destiny to clean out the coop while Kat kept the chickens at bay with a rake. This proved unsuccessful. Our next plan was for Destiny to distract the chickens (colloquially called “chooks” here) in the fenced-in area by waving her arms and crying “chookie-chookie-chookie!” During this masterful distraction technique, Kat placed a piece of wood over the door into the now empty coop, so that the chickens could not come in. This worked significantly better.

While we only had to clean the coop once, we did have to wrangle chickens again when, for no discernable reason, we found one wandering in the garden and another walking around outside the pen. After cornering the chickens and trying very hard to be neither pecked nor scratched, we managed to return them to their home. There are, sadly, no pictures of us carrying captured chickens. Just know that it was about the coolest anyone has ever looked while carrying a live chicken.

Toward the end of our stay, while hanging up laundry, we were interrupted by a squealing sound and the sudden appearance of a pig the size of a chubby shih tzu. Said pig, in a portrayal of quaint docility, followed Destiny around to the café, where Ryan apparently tried to catch it. When Ryan did succeed in apprehending the pig, it, in a moment of panic, began to squeal, and Ryan, in a moment of panic, dropped the pig. This resulted in a wild chase (down one of the three streets in Tuatapere) with Destiny and Kat trying to coax the pig with slices of bread and Sophie attempting first to attach a leash to the pig’s harness, then to put the harness back on, after the pig managed to wriggle free. Finally, Sophie threw her jacket over the pig, scooped it up, and carried it back to the lodge, where she kept it as a pet for two days until its owner returned for it.

The moral of this story: a covered door is better than a rake for keeping chickens where they belong.