Hello World!

A little while ago, my family and I stayed at Rangitikei Farmstay in New Zealand.  It is a sheep farm run by Andrew and Kylie who have two daughters.  The grounds are beautiful and huge,  (did I mention huge?!?) and are filled with sheep, around 4,000 actually.  The farm has been in the family for over 100 years!!

While we were there we watched a sheering and mustering demonstration. To those who don’t know what those are, sheering means we got to see the sheep actually getting their fur taken off.  Weirdly enough, they didn’t even mind it.  It took the shearer about 3 minutes per sheep.

Mustering the sheep was really cool.  Andrew took one of his working dogs, Tek, and showed us how they round the sheep up into the pens.  Tek was awesome. It was so funny because he literally ran on top of the sheep at times trying to get them to go where he needed them to and the sheep also ran on top of each other.  I definitely recommended both. It was very entertaining to see the sheep “frolicking” about.

Mom and Dad also went shooting. Daddy was pretty good, he hit almost all of them, and mommy was… close.

Even though that was fun, my favorite part was the animals. Along with the 4,000 sheep, they have one goat, 4 working dogs (Tek, Molly, Frizz, and Clyde), 2 pet dogs (Porky and Barney), a small flock of black pet sheep that are actually Kylie’s pets, 2 ponies (Bo and Dude), 3 chickens (who don’t actually have names, but I call them Snap, Crackle and Pop), cattle, and one particular cute cow named Daisy.

I had two favorite animals – one was the brand new puppies. The puppies were born two days ago, and their mother, Frizz, is staying in a small area near our hut. The puppies are super small, and very cute!!!

My very favorite animals are…can you guess?…The horses!!! They have three horses on the farm. One is a stock horse named Charlie Brown, that Andrew uses on the farm when out with the sheep and cattle.  One is Kylie’s personal riding horse named Tussock, and the other is a Clevesland named Tucks. They are all gorgeous horses.

We got to feed the animals, collect the eggs from the chickens.  Hold the little puppies and ride the ponies.  I was a little big for the pony, but it was still a horse, so I was happy 🙂

And each night we got to roast marshmallows by this great out door fire pit.  We even got to help them decorate their Christmas tree which was awesome since we weren’t going to be home to decorate our own.

Anyway, we love it here and can’t wait for the day we can come back.
Toodles,
Claire.