Kaikoura, afternoon

I just saw an advert on tv for this. I'm going to the supermarket now to buy as much canned food as possible, 20 litres of bottled water, a torch, batteries, and a retro game boy circa 1996 with Donkey Kong land 2 and 3.

Kaikoura, morning

We saw a whale this morning. Well, there was some splashing.

Animals

Millie is a greyhound poodle cross, and she runs very fast. That makes things interesting when she's chasing me around the house like she started randomly doing this afternoon. It was alright though, I chased her a little too.

This little bird flew through the window and took some time out with us. Half an hour later it flew back out. 

Millie and the other crazy poodle cross Bella chased this wild cat up the tree. The cat was mangy and gross.

The Factory

This morning I went inside the factory. Luckily I saw a film a few weeks ago that had footage of slaughterhouses so I was at least a bit prepared. It was just as gruesome as you would expect. After putting on the sanitary coat, hairnet and boots we went in. The animals are penned outside the night before, ready for killing that starts at 6 am. They were working cows when I was there. In the first room the animal is killed, by a boltgun to the brain (the sheep and pigs by head to toe electrocution). One man does the killing. After death the cow then moves along the conveyor belt and falls down a shoot into the main room. The room is metal, cold, noisy with the clanging and whizzing of machinery, busy. The cow spills out through the trap door onto the floor, still quivering. If the cow is still alive, trouble. But not an often occurrence. Five people work the cutting. First, the cow is hung upside down, its neck cut to let the blood flow and then its esophagus tied. The blood splashes onto the floor and then drains through a grill. Then, its head is cut off. He knows exactly where to cut the joints, efficient, quick. Reflex spasms cause the cow to jolt about. The cheeks are cut from the head but the rest is not used. The heads are stacked. Then the cow is lied down, two men skin it. The feet are cut off. An electric saw is used to cut its chest open and split it into two halves attached by the spine. The organs are removed - one giant sack, prepackaged by nature. Some of the organs will be used. Then the cow is hung up again. The inspector makes quick tests to check for disease, then the final cutter finishes preperation and uses another electric saw, hung from the ceiling, to cut down the spine and split the body in two. The carcass is then removed from the cutting room into cold storage, hung to tenderise. Some carcasses are then sent to butchers, the rest are divided into various cuts, for preorder, retail, or for the factory butchers. Sausages are made from the off cuts. The blood, skin and solids from the cutting room are filtered underground. The liquid is carried to a dispenser that sprays onto a field. The small solids flow out of a pipe at the back of the factory into a compost area, drying in the sun and picked at by birds. The large solids are collected and packaged for site removal. The factory processes 100 cows a week, 700 sheep and 200 pigs. This is a small sized slaughter house, some process upwards of 100 cows a day.

Later I was taking the dogs for a walk in the fields across the road from the factory. In one field I climbed a large mound of earth and only when I got to the top I saw there were hundreds of bones all over. And the wind turned and I could then smell the stench, somewhere between shit and rotten flesh, and I could see that this was not a mound of earth but the final destination of those large solids. The meat and skin had all long rotted back into the ground but the smell persisted. I held my breath to take some pictures, left quickly and went home. And that evening for dinner, beef gulash. Delicious. 

PS All kiwi beef and lamb is free range, none of the meat is intensively farmed. From what I've seen the animals live a happy life (until they get zapped).

Horse

Cheviot Hills

Shepherd's Delight

Yes yes, they are corny sunset pictures. deal with it.

Gore Bay

Today was the country show: tractors, burgers, dodgy ferris wheel, local crafts, llamas and horses. My job was helping in the showjumping paddock, picking up the rails when knocked off by the less adept riders. I was pretty busy. At about midday the loudspeaker commentator announced 'please could whoever decided to take the commentary box binoculars please return them. If we can't read the horse numbers we're going to have a tough time knowing who's riding'. The binoculars were not returned. After the show we escaped the horses and drove to the beach.

New Zealand

Here I am. I'm on a farm near Cheviot, a family-run slaughter factory. The weather is changeable - today began freezing cold, then became sunny and warmer, then a hailstorm hit, and who knows what next.

Light

Heffron Park

Chickens

The new chickens have arrived at 66. Lets see how long this batch last.

Cowboys

Spencer Tunik

Yes I was there for the naked photo shoot in front of the Opera House. We got up at 3am on a chilly morning and joined 5200 other tired people (well actually some were still going from the night before) to wait, to wait, to wait, and finally to strip naked and get into silly poses for Spencer Tunik (I'm somewhere toward the back on the right - the official picture will be far better). The moment when people started stripping was definitely the highlight - I thought the event would be gimmicky but taking part changed my mind. There was a real communal, friendly atmosphere and we all cheered each other on - it was yes liberating. After shooting outside we went inside the building for more posing. At one point one guy was spotted still wearing his shirt and was duly jeered and heckled. Another guy got chucked out for lewd posing (he was one of those still going from the night before). And we all had a great time.

Of course it was in the news a lot.

Mardis Gras

We were talking on the bus last week about maybe doing body art for mardis gras when a girl stepped in and told us she was a make-up artist and could paint us at her house. It worked out pretty good and a bottle of wine and a whole lot of gin later we were marching in front of 400,000 people and tv cameras. We were probably in a million photos including on the news, good times.

Shakti & Shiva

The chickens - Shakti & Shiva - were settling in pretty well at no. 66. That was until we took in two rescue dogs. Even though the little dogs seemed quite sweet, the chickens didn't survive one night, and were dead by the morning. Tragic stuff, but we weren't going to dwell too long: they became the centrepiece of our sunday bbq. Yum.