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Roger Rabbits with |
What has Donald J Trump got in common with “Stew” the wether sheep whose pronoun is ”it"? Well, lore has it both Trump and Stew are draft dodgers. Fancy that!
Trump dodged the draft when he was dubiously diagnosed with bone spurs, which medically exempted him from the Vietnam War.
“Stew” the castrated wether, dodged the draft which would have led to a different sort of meat works. A couple of lifestylers visiting the saleyards fixed on his wide-boy like charm, his long eye lashes and sculpted, sturdy haunches, paid $26 for him, and took him to his forever home as an organic lawn mower.
Draft dodger Trump acceded to the Oval Office. Draft dodger Stew, so named because that was his intended end, went to a nice shady possie under a tree where he got “pissed” every day from eating over-ripe, fermented windfall apples. And getting fat. All the time his siblings were being martyred at the abattoir in the interests of GDP. But this is no place for sentiment.
Purple or blue?
Because I’ve just read a cry for help and understanding from sheep farmers. “SOS” shouted the headline. “Save Our Sheep – farmers sound the alarm".
What are we to believe? I thought farmers were enjoying what Roman poet Horace would call a “purpureus pannus” – a purple patch. Strong prices for red meat and the like. But it might be more of a blue patch, the colour of angst and worry.
Because the newspaper yarn said since 2007 the national flock has shrunk 40% – we lose a million sheep a year. Really? Where have they all gone? Metamorphosed into pine trees apparently.
Or perhaps, like Stew, they’ve wandered off to forever homes. Perhaps they got wind being “harvested” didn’t mean picking peaches and apricots in a summer orchard, and that a Sunday outing on a stock truck was a one-way deal that inevitably ended badly and bloodily.
Baffling stuff for those of us who’ve never owned a Viyella shirt or RM Williams, and whose closest connection with the land is winning Powerball so we can afford to celebrate with lamb shanks and a new merino sweater.
I recall the day when we boasted 66 million sheep in NZ – 22 for every man, woman and child. Don’t know where in the recesses I plucked that fact from. But they were wonderful days of plenty. We would eat sheep, shear sheep and wear sheep with nationwide abandon. We were awash in mint sauce, clips of crossbred and feelings of wellbeing.
Pongy school socks
But now Federated Farmers is warning if the decline in sheep numbers continues on the current trajectory, there’ll be no sheep left in New Zealand in 20 years. What? They’re part of our national identity – as Kiwi as marching girls and meringues.
And even those of us who don’t own Red Bands or John Deeres, are hearing you sheep farmers, because it impacts us all.
This, now, is the moment for sentiment because we were raised on legs of lamb, loin chops and lamb’s fry. I had my cabled ming blue sweater knitted one loving purl at a time by a mother using all New Zealand wool, my toxically pongy school socks were darned with New Zealand wool and I padded around a warm family home laid with 100% New Zealand wool, premium Axminster. Life was good, the country was good.
That was the golden age of the 1950s and 1960s when a NZ leg of lamb cost between 10 bob and a pound – between $5 and $10 in current moolah – depending on lots of variables.
Then the head chef would do her loaves and fishes act with the leg of lamb. Family of six for a roast Sunday, cold lamb salad Monday, the bone stripped bare for Shepherd’s Pie Tuesday, a sandwich for school in between and the dog got two days gnawing out of the bone. Good value in a leg of lamb.
Overdosed on ‘lerv’
But things can change in 60 years. Nowadays a whole NZ lamb leg, bone in, grass fed, 2.5kg, is $21.95 a kilogram – so about $50-plus for the leg.
Someone on the living wage would have to toil for a couple of hours to buy one. There are cheaper cuts – fatty, scraggy neck chops that camouflaged in a casserole. Now four for about $16 – they’re a treat. And four ropy shoulder chops for $17 – slow cook them for a week to render them edible. It’s difficult to balance your pride and loyalty to the sheep industry, with your budget.
Finally, an erotic epilogue. One evening the lifestylers tethered Stew to a trampoline in the backyard and by morning he’d dragged it out down the drive and onto the road. Stew didn’t have “bollocks” but he had balls.
He was sent to end his days up the road in a paddock with a whole lot of ewes. Don’t know if his emasculation prevented him from fully enjoying his new circumstances, but he died three days later. With a smile on his face. Perhaps he blew a “foo foo valve” from excessive activity, perhaps he over-dosed on “lerv”.