by Te Radar
During the summer of 1881–82, six butchers worked inside Totara Estate’s killing shed. This was before the era of the modern killing chain which, inspired by Henry Ford’s production lines, became the industry norm, so these men would individually kill and butcher up to 50 sheep a day. Nowadays, those who work on the meat chains tend to perform specific parts of the task—indeed, sometimes the exact same few, precise movements, all day, every day.
Today, the killing shed’s platform where the slaughtering and butchering occurred is quiet except for the charmingly ghoulish animatronic display that tells the fateful story of the progress of the sheep from the estate, through the killing line, to the waiting ships.
The tour of the killing house follows the same route the sheep took, from the kill floor, through to the superbly named Carcass Hanging Shed. This stone-walled building is really a simple room with wooden slats on the floor. Gaps between the slats, combined with ventilation in the walls, allowed cool air to circulate through the room. Even on the stiflingly hot day that I visited, a chilly breeze blew in from under the floor and no doubt up the long skirt of the woman in traditional costume who was guiding me on the tour, as we stared at the fibreglass replicas of sheep carcasses that now hang there.
Hanging next to these gruesomely realistic carcasses are a few of the original tins that contained some of the products that were exported. Quite what anyone would have done with a two-litre can of lamb tongues, or liver, I do not know.
Prior to the arrival of Captain Cook, there were no mammalian animals present in New Zealand other than a species of bat and rather a lot of seals and whales.
When he happened upon the place in 1769, Cook had with him in the cramped confines of the Endeavour a few sheep. For some reason he decided not to allow them ashore, and eventually sailed off with them still aboard to declare the country found.
On his second trip, Cook arrived with two merino sheep. The sole survivors of a flock of six, they had endured the epic trip from South America via the Antarctic Ocean. Lovingly nursed through illness, they’d survived the cramped conditions, the threat of the cooking pot, and lecherous sailors.
On 20 May 1773, while in Queen Charlotte Sound, Cook noted in his diary: ‘This morning I put ashore a ewe and a ram, for my intention is to leave them in this country.’ Three days later, he wrote: ‘Last night the ewe and the ram died.’
The poor creatures didn’t succumb to hunger or to the predations of hungry Maori, but rather it seems they simply ate some kind of poisonous berries, quite possibly those of the tutu. Cook wrote: ‘Thus, all of my fine hopes of stocking this country were blasted in a moment.’
Undeterred, in 1777, on his third voyage here, he released another pair. They too promptly died.
To be fair, it wasn’t an overly auspicious start. We should be glad, I suppose, that Cook was the captain of the Endeavour and not the Ark.
It was to be another 60 years before sheep were successfully introduced to the country by the Reverend Samuel Marsden. Known as the ‘Flogging Parson’ due to his reputation for punishing transgressors with a taste of the lash (and not for a penchant for onanism), he performed his first sermon here on Christmas Day 1814. Quoting from Luke 2:10, he said: ‘Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy.’ He could have added ‘and some sheep, and a few cows’, but regrettably he didn’t.
By 1858, there were 115,000 people living here, alongside 1.5 million sheep. With little else to do but breed, by 1865 there were over nine million sheep. By 1878 it was estimated that there were 13 million sheep, and it was the considered opinion of people of sound mind that the golden fleece the sheep were producing had an unfortunate by-product—the sheep itself.
Their numbers proved so problematic to farmers in the South Island that it was decided that the only sensible thing to do was to bring herds of them to places such as the high cliffs south of Oamaru, whack them on the head with a hammer, and throw their carcasses into the sea.
Someone once recounted to me a Maori proverb that goes something along the lines of: ‘Pakeha treat the sea like a rubbish dump, whereas Maori consider it to be their refrigerator.’ While I enjoyed the sentiment of this phrase, I didn’t have the heart to be a pedant, and say: ‘But Maori didn’t have refrigerators…’
There was a poignant irony in this proverb, because it was to be refrigeration that would save the day. I might have added that refrigeration would save the bay too, but we found new and better ways to pour yet more effluent into them, particularly from the freezing works that would spring up as the answer to the problematic sheep.
There was no way we could eat all of the lamb that was processed. Fortunately, there was a desperate need for it in the United Kingdom, where meat was scarce, and expensive. All we had to do, as someone whose name now eludes me once said, was to ‘sub-jugate the tyranny of distance’ and we would have a licence to print money.
And so it was in 1881 that, for the sheep at least, all roads led to Totara Estate. From there it was but a short rail journey to the wharf in bustling Port Chalmers, where the Dunedin, one of the Albion Line’s best and fastest sailing ships, sat waiting. Originally designed for the swift transportation of emigrants, it had been stripped out and converted into a new-fangled floating freezer.
Each day more carcasses arrived and were laboriously loaded aboard by hand. When there were about 1000 on board, the crankshaft, which powered the motors that powered the freezers, broke down. So the dockhands laboriously unloaded all the carcasses and sold them to the locals, making the good people of Dunedin the very first recipients of frozen, export-quality New Zealand lamb.
They eventually fixed the motor, and finally on 15 February 1882, the Dunedin set sail for England with 4500 frozen sheep carcasses, various cans of tongues, liver and other assorted sheep-based products, and two passengers.
There were supposed to have been more passengers, but a rumour had circulated that the crankshaft might break again, which could well mean the sinking of the ship. This naturally deterred a few people. Of course, if the crankshaft broke and didn’t sink the ship, the crew and passengers wouldn’t be able to eat 4500 sheep carcasses fast enough to stop a rather unpleasant odour from developing. This naturally deterred more than a few people.
The journey should have been straightforward, but the engine that powered the freezers was situated below deck, with a funnel that came up through the deck, and up through the funnel came clouds of sparks that had the bothersome habit of setting the sails on fire. Such was the extent of the problem that the ship’s captain, a man by the name of John Whitson, was worried that the masts would also catch fire.
Also, in order for the freezing units to work, they required a certain degree of air flow, which was fine until the ship became becalmed in the tropics. Captain Whitson did as any good captain ought to in this circumstance, and lowered himself into the refrigerated bowels of the ship in order to bash holes in the vents to allow more air to circulate.
This was not only cramped and tiring work, but it was also rather chilly, and he eventually passed out and began to freeze, resulting in the mate having to lasso his feet and haul him out to be defrosted.
The Dunedin finally arrived in England after a voyage lasting 98 days, with only one carcass spoiled. In an age before the concept of food miles was even dreamed of, this was considered a great triumph, and the success of the voyage paved the way for countless billions of sheep to give up their lives for our export returns.
Within 10 years, a fleet of 40 ships, some carrying up to 70,000 carcasses, were plying their trade between here and England, and we had become, as historian James Bellich wrote, ‘England’s protein factory’.
The story of the Dunedin doesn’t finish there, however. In the Port Chalmers Museum, there is, amongst its teeming haul of memorabilia, a middling-sized iron key that is reputed to be the key to the door of one of the crew’s cabins on the Dunedin.
The man whose cabin it was is said to have had some kind of premonition w
hile the ship was in port at Oamaru in 1890. Just prior to it setting sail for England, loaded with sheep, he quietly locked his door, put the key in his pocket, slipped ashore, and never returned.
The Dunedin set sail without him, and was never to be seen again. It is thought that somewhere off Cape Horn she struck an iceberg and was lost with all hands, and a lot of meat.
The key is said to be all that remains of the Dunedin.
I suppose we can only assume it is a key off the ship, for unless we find the remains of the ship with the door, or at least the lock to the door, intact, then fit the key and see if it turns, it could really be any key.
But it is nice to think it isn’t just any key.
Despite the ramifications of all this, and in a country whose economy was built on an orgy of wanton sheep slaughter, the actual process of the killing of a sheep is not something most people usually experience or even think about.
With guests due for dinner in a few days, it is something I have been thinking about experiencing for some time.
Despite all the hunting that I’ve done during the series, there is an essential difference between the adrenaline-fuelled action of sticking a squealing pig during a hunt, or shooting an animal from a distance with a gun, and opening the sheep’s pen as it stands there patiently watching you, dragging it out, and slitting its throat with a knife.
But that is what I need to do if I am to feed my guests. I couldn’t in good conscience talk to people about the disconnection between them and the meat they eat if I do not harvest my own.
The sheep have been left in the pen next to the chickens overnight, and when I go to feed the hens, the sheep look at me with large, quizzical brown eyes, as if to say ‘Why are we standing here? It’s weird.’
I feel a little sorry for them, and mumble, ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.’ I think it is an indication that maybe I am worried I won’t be.
You can’t really practise killing a sheep, and there is a lot that can go wrong and result in a botched job. Shawn has offered to show me the correct way to go about it on the first sheep, and then I will deal with the second.
In the end there is an odd formality and grim sense of purpose about the whole event. Shawn arrives. We set up an ingenious system of poles and pulleys that are attached to the side of his ute to make the dressing of the carcasses easier, and I go into the pen to secure the first sheep.
As I struggle to drag it out, Shawn says: ‘You know, if this sheep goes to the works, he gets to go on a long journey in a truck, stressed to the max, gets to the yards, they hose him off, he can smell all this death around him, he stands there while three or four thousand of his mates have to go in front of him, and they slowly work their way through to him. One would imagine that he’s not that happy about it by the time they get to him. It’s a lot better for him to go like this, happy in the paddock one minute, dead the next.’
It’s a good point, and one that has been emphasised innumerable times over the last 10 months as I’ve worked my way through my livestock.
While some people prefer to shoot the sheep first, others render it unconscious by hitting it on the head before slitting its throat. We are using the more traditional method of simply slitting their throats. This serves the dual purpose of simultaneously killing them and allowing them to bleed out, so that the meat isn’t tainted by the blood.
I lay the sheep down and Shawn takes me through the procedure. Within seconds the sheep is dead.
‘You see,’ says Shawn, ‘it’s all over before they even know what’s going on.’
And now it’s my turn.
I negotiate the remaining sheep out of the pen, lay it down and, holding it with my knee, pull its head back by the chin, exposing the throat. Even now it doesn’t struggle.
With the knife that Matt gifted me on the day I killed my first pig, I cut firmly across the exposed throat. The sheep’s neck is tougher than I expect, and instead of severing the neck in one swift movement, I experience the horror of having to take an extra few seconds to hack the knife through it.
I am completely appalled.
It’s not quite the swift, clean kill I was hoping for, but as the warm red blood hoses out, I finally sever the neck all the way to the backbone, and with a final pull of the chin I feel a definite crack as the neck breaks.
The sheep kicks its last and is still. The torrent of blood eases.
It’s done.
Slightly shaken, I look up at Shawn and say, ‘I think I was more stressed about that than the sheep.’
‘I think you were,’ he replies.
Turning to Jane, I say, ‘We’re definitely not going to see that bit on telly, are we?’
‘We most certainly are not,’ she says.
All that’s left is to skin and gut them, and then let them hang overnight from a branch under the totara tree.
If I had really thought about it, I may have found it a quirkily symbolic association with Totara Estate. But it never occurred to me at the time.
With their carcasses swinging gently in the afternoon breeze, I go to light the fire under my bath.
30
Christmas the turkey
I don’t want to be known as the man who killed Christmas. The little guy has won the hearts of everyone. Once again, being decidedly odd has saved a life, and they don’t get stranger than Christmas the orphan turkey.
There is no denying that he is slightly unhinged. The poor fellow is clearly going through a flush of adolescence, and nothing is safe from his passionate predations. Solar lamps, cans, logs, buckets, bricks, the camera tripod, gumboots—all have succumbed to his amorous advances. The only things that are safe are the chickens, who pay scant regard to his proposals of passion.
I’m sure he cannot figure out what is wrong. His displays are something to behold. From the moment he flutters down from his roost on the corner of the chicken coop, where he sits alone at night, his demeanour indicates that he would like to be loved. His chest feathers puff out, his tail feathers fan out, and his wattle changes from white, to bright red, to blue.
His snood, that long, floppy finger-like protuberance on his beak, elongates and dangles down over the side of his nose. It’s quite unsightly. He puffs himself up and lets out various calls, from the familiar gobble-obble-obble-obble to a noise that resembles a boy racer’s blow-off valve, a sort of rapid expulsion of air in an abrupt HUMFF.
Men find him repulsive. Women love him.
But no matter how much he displays, or how much he calls, or how much he flirts or prances, there is no one to answer his call.
He needs to move on.
He’s not the only one.
For the last few weeks, it’s felt decidedly end-of-termy around the farm. There hasn’t been any real point in starting any big new projects. No plants planted will mature before I leave. All there is time for is a period of introverted reflection.
Finally though, after months of struggle, I have done it. I am surviving solely on what I have grown.
Admittedly I don’t have as much variety in my vegetables as I would like, but I continue to eat exceptionally well. There is more than enough to sustain me through the winter, should I be staying that long. Each night I prowl the gardens, selecting fresh tender morsels.
I did realise at one point that the bitter leaves I couldn’t manage to tame weren’t a stir-fry vegetable. I was actually eating the wrong part of the plant. How I laughed.
While some people are meticulously diligent with their gardens, I have experimented with the hands-off, low-maintenance, allow-them-to-look-after-themselves types of gardens, and they are stronger for these strategies.
My theory has been that you don’t need to be a fanatic to achieve moderate success. The low-effort garden is a good method on which to base a sustainable lifestyle.
I don’t want to be seen on national television as a slave to my crops, because it seems to me that there are a lot of people out there who have the same aversion to effort that I
do, and television needs to cater to them. Fortunately, they are probably already in front of it.
For too long, we who don’t want to do much have been ignored, and I think I have redressed that balance.
To me, the farm has always been about what is possible for the guy who doesn’t like doing much, but who has a lot of plans and dreams and hopes and expectations. We can’t all be zealots.
It’s the sheer amount of work involved in running a farm that’s difficult. It is little wonder that monks shut themselves away in closed communities and live self-sufficiently. It’s not that they don’t want to take a break away, it’s just that there simply isn’t time.
I say that not as a complaint, but simply as a fact. Statistics indicate that the average length of time that people own their lifestyle blocks is somewhere around 18 months to two years. The lifestyle block really does block your lifestyle.
Still, as well as the vegetables, I’m eating goat and mutton and pork and turkey and chicken and fish and duck that I have produced or hunted. It’s immensely satisfying to do so.
I’ll be taking a freezer full of meat with me when I leave. That means I’ll be running two freezers at home and will be responsible for the associated drain on the country’s meagre electricity reserves.
I’m not eating very many eggs though, because I can’t figure out if the chickens have stopped laying or whether they are laying somewhere else. At one stage I discovered a clutch of 15 eggs under The Chapel as the broody hen had been stockpiling them. She hatched three. They were a delightful late-summer surprise.
The most important question though is simple: have I become more sustainable? The answer is a definite yes.
But in many ways, the effort of making a programme on sustainable living may have proved to be unsustainable.
