Sexy Weekend (On the Farm)

Guess what guys. I finally went to the sheep farm. It was sweet as!

The farm, Glenmac, is a little ways outside the town of Oamaru, which is a few hours south of CHCH. We left on Friday afternoon, and on the bus, Alex decided to nickname our farm stay Sexy Weekend. Because he’s Alex. In Oamaru we met up with our fourth person, a girl named Ellen from the University of Otago in Dunedin. She is super cool! Ellen is a senior bio major at Butler in IN, and we bonded over music and being domestic. She also is really involved in Young Life so she’s familiar with IV. We were great roommates for the weekend!

A guy named Bruce had driven Ellen up from Dunedin, and he took us the rest of the way to Keith and Kaye’s farm. Bruce works as a shuttle driver along the eastern coast, so he told us a ton of cool stuff on the way to Glenmac. I immediately liked Bruce because he was wearing a hat with his family tartan on it, and I have one of those too! (Our tartan is prettier though. Sorry Bruce.) When we got to Glenmac it was already dark, so we just went ahead and ate dinner, which was amazing. One of the ways that IFSA sells Country Life Weekend is by going on and on about the home-cooked food. I was like whatever, big deal, I can cook my own delicious food. But I’ve been a little homesick, and you cannot underestimate the emotional power of a meal cooked by this sweet lady who’s telling you about her grandkids. Being at uni, I forget that there are families out there and people who sit around on a Friday night talking and drinking coffee with a rugby match on TV. Honestly this was the first cup of coffee I’d had in New Zealand that didn’t have a perfect foam replica of the Eiffel Tower or something on top, so instant coffee or not, it really warmed my heart. (Yes, I got emotional over a cup of coffee. So sue me. Coffee reminds me of my mommy.)

Ellen and I had a fight over who got to wash the dishes and she let me win, and we discovered that Kaye had this sick dishwasher that was in two halves and you could run them separately. Note to self, when I get my own house, I will need one of those. After dinner, we watched some rugby until everyone went to bed, and then the four of us stayed up well past midnight talking and drinking coffee. When we finally did get ready to turn in, I came back from brushing my teeth to a very confused Ellen:

“I had just taken my contacts out, but I think Alex just came in here in his underwear and told us to go look at the stars.”
(See, I told you it was sexy weekend.)
Because the angle of our window only afforded us a great view of some trees, Ellen and I went tiptoeing around the house in search of something better. In the living room, we peeked out the window and caught our breath. Not only were there a ton more stars than we’re used to, they were so bright and twinkly. Being out in the middle of nowhere, night-time means total darkness, especially with the new moon, and we were taken aback by the stars’ intensity.

We weren’t sure what time to be up, because Kaye had just told us “not too early,” but we had no idea what that meant. As a result, the next morning Ellen and I were lying in bed whispering like little kids on Christmas morning, “Do you think we can get up now?” “What do you reckon the boys are doing?” When we did venture out, we found Dale and Alex headed out the door to transport hay with Keith. Ellen and I decided that running outside in our sock feet on the wet grass to take pictures of the farm was a great idea (we are not the brightest). When we had eaten and dressed, we investigated the dog situation. Keith and Kay have at least five sheepdogs that are off limits, but they do have one regular pet dog named Penny, and we played with her while we waited for the menfolk to return. She was too cute! After the boys got back, we rode with them to Keith’s neighbour’s field, where he was storing some hay. We helped load a few loads into the truck, and then stuck around the pasture to take pictures while the guys drove the hay back to Glenmac. I had been excited about finally seeing sheep up close, but let me tell you something, sheep are a letdown. They are really skittish and apparently two girls in our early twenties are downright terrifying. So Ellen and I never got close enough for a decent photo, but I did take a bunch of the landscape while lying in my paintball stance. You get cool shots from ground level!

After such a taxing morning of doing pretty much nothing (ok, the boys had worked), we had last night’s leftovers and some soup for lunch. At this time of year, sheep shearing is over but lambing has yet to begin, so there wasn’t a whole lot for us to do on the farm, which was disappointing. When Kay offered us a choice between a forty-minute ride to watch a sheep-shearing competition and a few hours’ work in a nearby vineyard, we opted for the latter. The thought of voluntarily riding in a car with the prospect of tomorrow’s long bus ride back to CHCH was not appealing. We walked the 3 or so km to the vineyard, and we had to cross a stream. Dale and Alex put rocks into the river for me to step on so I wouldn’t get wet, but I did anyway. Fail.

Three of the other people staying at Glenmac over the weekend were investors in this vineyard. The main one, a man named Wal, was glad to have our help. There were thick plastic sleeves that had been protecting the vines, and Wal had us pull them apart and put them inside each other to save space. When we had finished that, he set us to work on the sleeves still on the vines. After a few hours of this, it was starting getting dark, so Wal loaded us into his truck for a drive around the plateau the vineyard sits on. The scenery is gorgeous in every direction. It’s incredible.

That night, one of the other men visiting Glenmac cooked a dinner of pork in ginger and soy and I don’t know what else but it was fantastic. I was tired and cold, but a hot delicious supper, a glass of Riesling, a shower and a little Norah Jones had me fast asleep in no time. Of course, first we watched the All Blacks absolutely whomp the Wallabies, Australia’s national rugby team (who are running neck and neck with Maryland and Richmond in the Stupidest Mascot Ever contest). It still makes me cry a little inside when I think about missing football season back home, but I really like rugby. It moves a lot faster than football. In rugby the play is continuous; we don’t have to stop and hold a conference every time somebody runs a play. And interceptions are frequent and not a big deal, so as a spectator it really cuts down on all the times I have to curse Riley Skinner during a game. Anyway, at 4 am Alex woke Ellen and me up to go outside and look at the stars again. We found a few familiar constellations, like Orion and the Southern Cross. It was super cool. After a mug of hot chocolate, we called it a night again.

In the morning, we packed up and Keith drove us up a hill so we could see how beautiful Oamaru is, wherever you look. It was amazing. We took a ton of pictures. Back at the farm, we said goodbye to Kaye and Keith and set off with Bruce. He stopped so we could check out some huge rocks on the way into town—first the Elephant Rocks and then the whale fossils. Bruce said that part of Narnia was filmed in the whale fossil place! Alex, Dale and Ellen are all into science, whereas my knowledge ends somewhere in Biology 101 with me falling asleep in class. So while they were looking at the cool rocks and plants and making intelligent remarks, I was contemplating the fact that the James McAvoy’s lingering presence made sexy weekend much sexier, Mr. Tumnus or not.

Ellen’s bus left at noon so we had to drop her off first, which was a bummer. Our own bus wasn’t coming til three, so Bruce took us to the beach to see the Moeraki boulders. Dale and Alex were super excited about them because apparently they’re alive and growing, or something, whatever. Instead of trying to understand, I found some cool shells on the beach. Bruce made fun of me because I thought it would be a good idea to pull a Briana Lane and throw myself down in the sand. Unfortunately the sand was quite wet (surprise, we were on a beach) and I got soaked. But the pictures I got in my paintball stance are sweet as, so it was worth it. (Rachel’s teaching me how to take better photos, but I’m a bit of a lost cause because having lost the instruction book, I know absolutely nothing about my little Nikon except that Ashton Kutcher advertises them.) So after the beach, Bruce took us on a drive through historic Oamaru, which was really interesting. Bruce knows his stuff. He put us on a double-decker bus to CHCH by 3, and I slept all the way home. It was lovely.

Coincidentally, Wal lives in CHCH and drives down to Oamaru to work on his vineyard every weekend. I got his number and I’m planning to go back with him sometime next month. I think Keith and Kaye just like having people around, because they jumped at having me over again. So I’m excited about that!

Y’all need to be more aggressive with Rachel, telling her to post on the blog. She has all these adventures without me and then she doesn’t write about them. Do not stand for this, people!

a whole lot of love-
Carie Mac