Cancer had changed my mother, a little. Any ailment made her fear the worst. Her severe back pain especially, she feared, was the disease coming back to ravage her; and test after negative test failed to convince her otherwise. Then the professionals thought to fucking X-ray her and noticed her fractured pelvis – which turns out to be a fairly common side-effect of intense radiation in that area. Oh yeah, the fractured pelvis! Sorry, we forgot to check for that.
*
A few months after her final radiation treatment my mother was given the all clear. We’d been surrounded by so many sick people throughout her treatments that we couldn’t believe how lucky she was to make it through without a graver prognosis. Nothing quite solidifies the love you have for your mother than seeing her go through something as terrifying as a cancer treatment. And similarly, nothing like witnessing it first hand makes you reflect on your own health more intensely.
Tales of the Unexpected: A Farmer’s Life
For the first five years at Block Eight (and let’s face it, for many before that), Jeff and I were renovation junkies, living in the shell of each villa as it was built. Who needed creature comforts, warmth or a clean plate to eat off when we could just rough it and live like street bums? As each was completed, we moved into the next. Thus we lived and built our way around the various construction sites, stepping over tools and materials, making do without a flushing toilet or electricity, and braving bitter winters first in Orchard View, then Barrington View, followed by Tree Tops and finally Water View, until all four of the villas plus the house had been completed. If ever there had been a princess inside me, she was long dead. Daddy’s Gold Amex had been destroyed many years before. I eventually stopped pining for luxurious items like a clean glass to drink from, a warm shower, water from a tap and a fridge tall enough to hold a bottle of wine.
By the final villa we had honed the interior designs and the online listings and photographs. Our guests love them: the compliments and thank you notes are constant, the five-star reviews almost universal. It’s so rewarding to realise that our dream has been worth pursuing and we love sharing our beautiful corner of the world with those who come to stay. The income from the villas is steady and provides enough to keep the property going and keep the wine in production.
Of course growing grapes for wine was never as straightforward again as it had been in 2014. To say Bacchus blessed us for our very first season would be putting it mildly. The Semillon is the most hardy and resilient crop and we’ve managed to get a harvest out of it every year – some years the quality of the grapes is better than others but that’s all down to the weather. The Chardonnay is not quite so robust – its thick leaf growth and tight little grape bunches make it particularly susceptible to mould and mildew, which can decimate the crop.
After the paltry five hundred kilos of fruit in 2014, 2015 was a bounteous year with over eight tonnes but then just when we thought we were on easy street, in 2016 mould attacked the fruit and we made the decision not to harvest a single grape because of the cost of labour involved in manually sorting the good bunches from the bad. In 2017 we were back, this time with ten tonnes of fruit, a brand new label designed by Chris that can only be described as a striking Eden-like floral image and then, in 2018, thanks to the drought, the kangaroos took care of most of the leaves at the beginning of the season and whatever grapes did make it through to harvest time, the starving birds made an absolute feast of, so again we picked not a single grape.
The income from the villas also helped us make our own olive oil.
The olive groves have always been at the bottom of our list of priorities. Grapes and accommodation have consumed so much of our time and resources that the olives, those robust and carefree trees, more or less look after themselves. The most we ever do is spray them if they become infested with lace bugs, we de-sucker them and keep the grass around them low. But we never prune them, never fertilise them and rarely water them, which (we’d been told) were imperative in order to harvest any crop.
In March 2017, as I went through the grove mowing the grass, I was amazed to see for the first time in five years that the trees had produced fruit, and a lot of it. I called Peter from the Olive Association who also owned the olive processing plant in Lovedale – the same guy we’d called for advice just after we moved in – and asked him to come and take a look.
‘There’s definitely enough here to harvest,’ he said, as we walked around the groves. ‘The fruit looks good. You boys have done an amazing job on the grove, it looks one hundred per cent compared to how it looked five years ago.’
‘Ever eaten a raw olive?’ he asked. ‘That’s a mistake you’ll only make once!’
After he’d left, I couldn’t help myself and took a bite out of one. It was part earwax, part Drano with a healthy dose of rotten avocado thrown in.
‘Ever eaten a raw olive?’ I asked Lucy during her next visit. ‘They’re delicious!’
She put a green one in her mouth and immediately spat it out. ‘Oh Dad, that is absolutely disgusting!’
‘Which colour did you try?’
‘Green.’
‘Sorry sweetheart, I thought you knew. They’re the unripe ones, you need to try a black one instead.’
And she did!
It can be so much fun being a dad.
*
A few weeks later, we harvested our first crop of Frantoio olives for oil. A machine with claws at the front came to shake the trunk of each tree and catch the fruit in a skirt extended around its base (see, skirts do have a place on a farm, Phil!). By the end of the day we’d collected six tonnes of fruit – to us, it felt almost like a free crop. But of course there were costs, from harvest to processing, bottling and labelling. Olive oil, it turns out, is quite an expensive game.
Much like the first time we ever tasted our own wine, my eyes filled with proud tears the first time we tasted our own oil. You can’t compare it to the rubbish sold in supermarkets. It has a fruity full flavour at the front of your palate and a wonderful peppery kick at the back. Block Eight had another feather in its cap.
Helga Hagatha Van Hoggett
‘I’m thinking of getting another pig,’ I said to Vicky on the phone in July of 2017. We often call each other for updates – me on the kids, and she about the latest news at the property – and she is never surprised by one of my whims.
Jeff overheard the conversation and when I’d hung up the phone said, ‘I didn’t know you wanted another pig.’
‘I just miss having the boys around,’ I said with a shrug. ‘I can’t explain it. Obviously I wouldn’t get a boar this time . . . I was thinking I’d get a sow and name her Helga.’
‘Why “Helga”?’
‘I don’t know, it just seems right. “Helga Hagatha Van Hoggett” rolled off my tongue with very little thought.’ It was as if she already existed.
I didn’t really want to go into detail but Rodney and Billy’s absence had left a hole in my heart that went all the way to China and, much as I loved Winston and Wesley, only another piggy could come close to filling it.
As is his way, the next day Jeff was on the internet looking for a pig to buy me as a surprise, but sows were hard to come by and none were available within an easy drive of our property. Then he had a brainwave and called Trevor at the local pet shop where sometimes pigs were for sale. Over the years we’d got to know Trevor at the Branxton Pet Shop and his love for animals shines through in everything he does, like converting his shop’s yard into a petting zoo for kids to come and feed and pat the farm animals. We know he sources healthy animals from reputable local farms where they are given good lives and not taken from their mothers too soon, so aside from Spencer and Kate the pea fowl, he’s also sold us quails and chooks. It also helps that he is rather easy on the eyes. I’m sure quite a few local mothers visit that shop often, ‘just to show the kids the bunnies’.
‘Yep, I’ve got one,’ Trev told Jeff over the phone.
Not knowing any of t
his, I walked into our villa carrying cleaning equipment.
‘Are you ready?’ Jeff asked.
‘I’m not up for another trip to Bunning’s today,’ I said, ‘you can go on your own this time.’
Jeff does all of the building and fixing on the property and for him it isn’t unheard of to go to the hardware store three times in one day, choosing different locations so the staff members don’t comment on his frequency. Third time today! You must be busy . . . or forgetful! His cushion fetish had been replaced by a love of tools . . . but then I still bought cookbooks so there were no grounds for complaint. Though it must also be said that guests at Block Eight love poring over the cookbook collection as they sip our wines on their private decks so my little obsession has not gone to waste after all. And in his defence, Jeff’s newfound love of building has saved us tens of thousands of dollars in labour – maybe even more than a hundred thousand but then, it’s hard to put a value on my contribution of cookbooks that capture the hearts of our guests, isn’t it?
I did try to help Jeff build whenever I could. He’d worked with Pete at loads of off-site jobs and Pete had taught him a hell of a lot about many facets of building, ever the patient mentor who wanted his grasshopper to produce work of sheer perfection. I would have loved being a fly on the wall at those building sites – ocker Pete with his footballer’s build and gay Jeff with his eye for precision and desire to rid the world of prejudice. Pete’s wife, Ange, and I wanted to sign them up for The Block, knowing they made for an unlikely but very engaging team. Pete and Ange were another pair of locals who embraced Jeff and me. They invited us along to many family get-togethers and insisted we go to their house for Christmas and Easter meals. Pete was a never-ending source of advice for Jeff, who frequently called him up just to ask if ‘this way or that’ was the best way of doing things, often to be given a completely different method. Ange and I bonded as the builders’ wives and made jokes about the boys whenever we could. We felt genuinely loved and accepted by them.
‘You know,’ he told Jeff one day, ‘I’m really glad you two are here at my family table, mate.’
Jeff took all the knowledge Pete shared with him, along with hours of YouTube viewing, and invested in the tools that would allow him to do most of the building work that remained to be done on Block Eight. He’s turned his hand to carpentry, plastering, tiling, plumbing, roofing, stone masonry, concreting . . . you name it.
‘Can you just cut this down to one-forty for me?’ Jeff asked one day when I was employed as his labourer – and I was butch enough to know that meant millimetres.
I was once scared of power tools (never a good thing to close your eyes when dealing with them but perhaps I should have learned that on the cricket pitch my one and only season, when I shut my eyes at a speeding cricket ball heading straight for my face), but gradually I’ve come to know my way around the saw, nail gun and others fairly competently. I handed Jeff the piece of wood, proud that I’d got the measurement just right.
Jeff put the wood in place, looked at it strangely.
‘Are you kidding me?’ he asked. ‘You’ve cut it at an angle!’
‘No I haven’t!’ I objected.
‘What’s this then?’ He held the piece of wood up to the light and the angle was difficult to ignore.
‘I’m sorry . . .’
‘Why don’t you go and weed the vegie patch? I may as well do this myself.’
‘I’m sorry!’ I said again.
‘I just thought you could cut me a piece of wood, that’s all, but it’s okay, don’t worry about it . . .’
I skulked off to the vegie patch, defeated. But then I turned on my heel and marched straight back into the shed to confront Jeff.
‘You don’t understand,’ I pleaded. ‘I cannot cut in a straight line like you! I have an affliction, Jeff; it’s beyond my control!’
‘You have a . . . condition . . . that prevents you from cutting in a straight line?’ he asked, deadpan.
‘No, an affliction. You’ve seen me with scissors and I can’t cut straight. Now you’ve seen I can’t saw straight either.’
‘Okay . . .’
‘Well . . .’ clearly losing this one, I looked about the shed for ammunition. ‘Well . . . you try writing a bestselling guide on how to use eBay! So what if I can’t cut straight? I’m so sorry I’m such a burden to have around. We each have our weaknesses – now you know mine.’
‘Oh, I’ve known yours for quite some time,’ he said snarkily.
Back at the villa, talking about a second trip to Bunnings I said to him, ‘I don’t get it. When I bake a cake I read the recipe thoroughly, write down the list of ingredients then go to the shop and buy all those ingredients at once. I don’t make things up and keep going back to the shop for all the stuff I’ve forgotten.’
‘Building doesn’t work that way,’ he said with a shrug. ‘You wouldn’t understand. Sometimes I don’t know what I need until I need it.’
‘Doesn’t make any sense to me at all . . .’ I said.
‘Doesn’t have to! But we’re not going to Bunnings again, anyway. We’re going to Branxton.’
There’s also a hardware store in Branxton that Jeff often goes to for last-minute building emergencies. ‘Nah, you go. I’ve got more cleaning to do.’
‘But Helga’s waiting for you!’ Jeff said excitedly.
Needless to say the mop and bucket were promptly dropped and my Crocs were replaced with less comical shoes for Trevor, though I had been known on occasion to wear them out in the real world.
‘I reckon this one’s a real corker,’ Trevor welcomed us in his Steve Irwin-lookalike uniform. ‘I get a lot of pigs through but she’s gonna be a ripper.’
There she was! Helga was incredibly small for her age. She had fine black stripes down her back and the rest of her was dark brown. The pink patterns on her belly and inside her hind legs reminded me of giraffe markings. Helga was living in a small wooden crate with hay for a floor and a male piglet for a playmate. She was about the size of a chihuahua.
I picked her up and held her in one hand, pressing her snout to my cheek. She squealed a little bit, but nowhere near as much as other piglets I’d handled.
‘She’ll soon settle if you hold her every day,’ Trevor said, but she’d already quietened in my arms and I think I did detect just the slightest hint of him being impressed with me. Lucky I hadn’t worn the Crocs on this occasion.
The male pig in the pen began to fret so I took Helga away, trying to block out his cries. Trevor placed her in a comfortably sized box with hay on the bottom but as soon as we got her in the car I picked her up and held her against my chest. She settled almost straightaway, a good sign that she was going to be a good companion, comfortable with humans.
After the ten-minute drive, I decided it would be good to get Helga to appreciate her new home right away.
‘She’s been in that wooden crate for a while,’ I said to Jeff, ‘Maybe we should let her down on the grass, get her used to some land beneath her feet again?’
‘Do you think that’s a good idea?’ Clearly he didn’t!
‘She’ll be all right, I’ll look after her.’
I put Helga down on the grass and watched her get used to the soft sensation. Her trotters were so tender, pink and smooth to the touch. I was marvelling at how her nails were different colours, some black and some pink, when without warning, she bolted. A piglet, even one as small as a chihuahua, can move very fast. Helga was sprinting and we set off after her from our standing start. There wasn’t a chance in hell we were going to catch her but we chased her anyway. Jeff and I were running flat out and she was still tens of metres in front of us, squealing with fear and disorientation.
Then I realised: Helga was running directly for the dam.
This is it, I thought, she’s going straight into the water and she’s going to sink to the bottom. I mentally prepared myself to follow her in fully clothed – it was all very Baywatch only without the musc
ly bodies, big boobs and red budgie smugglers. No pig was going to drown on my watch!
Helga hit the water and thankfully stopped in her tracks – it was still winter and the dam’s temperature was a little chilly. She took an immediate left and started heading for the bush where the creek runs through – it is densely treed and has very long grass so she would be lost to us within seconds. Another horrible thought flashed before my eyes – Helga will perish out there, scared and alone.
‘Come on, Todd!’ Jeff yelled. ‘Keep up!’
I started to worry that we were chasing her away. Maybe if we stopped running after her she might miraculously decide to stop too but, whenever I slowed, she showed no signs of fatigue. Just as I feared the worst, she turned ninety degrees and ran straight toward the house again. Fortunately for us she headed to a little gate, which meant she was coming to a dead end and I lunged for her and took a firm hold, careful not to panic her any more than she already was. Helga was out of breath, cold and wet, great big heaving lungsful of air came from her tiny frame.
I put her inside my jacket, wrapped my arms across my chest and held onto her tightly. Within seconds she began to relax. Helga was safe and warm, enclosed.
‘Yep, great idea,’ Jeff said and we took her inside to get her used to her new home.
It was clearly inevitable I would be making some mistakes with Helga but hopefully nowhere near as many as I had made with Rodney and Billy.
So there we were in the middle of winter 2017 with a new pet pig and living in the basic shell of a fifth villa – this one, for the time being at least, was to be ours to live in permanently (though probably not ‘forever’). Electricity came in via long extension leads from the shed, the toilet was a very basic outdoor portaloo and the only running water was a cold tap over a laundry tub. Man, this was living! Our internal walls were cobbled together and the floor was bare wooden sub-flooring. It didn’t seem that having a pig indoors would create all that much extra havoc.
Thirty Thousand Bottles of Wine and a Pig Called Helga Page 19
