As part of our transition to country life our plan is to ease into livestock rearing by starting with the most user-friendly animals - chooks. We ordered a flat-pack hen house which came with not so much instructions, but numbered microscopic diagrams, the interpretation of which was in the eye of the beholder - rather like fine art, but way more frustrating. Anyway, once completed and in place, we were ready to pick up our chooks (I was instructed to order '4 young pullets o

I have discovered that living in the country can lead to some interesting conversations. The smallholder that lives next to us raises deer, which my four-year old daughter insists on calling reindeers - and we don't have the heart to correct her. 'Reindeers' are therefore not infrequently the topic of conversation. Take this exchange between her, myself and my 8 year-old son yesterday for instance: 4 year old (looking out car window): What is it called when a reindeer is die-

Decisions made by men more than a century and a half ago led to me facing an unpleasant ethical dilemma a few days ago. That is, should I subject animals to an untimely but rapid death, or a prolonged and (I can only imagine) painful one? The animal I am talking about is the Australian brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula), introduced to New Zealand in 1837 for the fur trade. And it was a decision I was confronted with when I approached the regional council to have bait s

It was mid-autumn when we moved to our new home in the Pohangina Valley, and the valley has been ablaze with autumn colour - one of the advantages of living in a colder climate where seasons are more delineated. This has been one of my favourite scenes: a vista from our drive, across the farmer's paddock out to the Ruahine Range. I love the vibrant contrast of colour: the red of the solitary pin oak, the green of the pasture and bush, against the backdrop of blue-tinged mount

About three weeks ago my family and I made a very big life change. We moved from comfortable, convenient, leafy suburbia on the Kapiti Coast to a 7-acre block of land in rural Manawatu. This involved moving ourselves out of our 213 m2 4-bedroom, double-garaged home into a garage-less house of exactly half that size. There is a very good reason for us doing this: it wasn't the plan. The little Manawatu house was built as a holiday house, a weekend/holiday getaway. But after bu