rivettingKateTaylor

Today, I love my job.

Yesterday, I loved my job.

I can’t remember what I did on Monday!

Oh yes, it was a horrible day weatherwise but I had a full calendar so I didn’t really notice!

Today, instead of my usual golf (which I am secretly gutted about, because it is a fresh, clear, sunny winter’s day) I am writing up the 10 or so interviews I have done in the past four or five days. And that’s mainly so I can go to a golf tournament tomorrow with a deadline looming!

Every now and then I am reminded about my new year’s resolution to write up interviews the day I do them, but it never seems to happen… so today, I relive chats that will end up as stories in an upcoming Dominion Post rural feature called Farming the Year Ahead…. Integrity Soils owner Nicole Masters (who is organising a soil conference in Wellington), Eketahuna farmers Ian and Janet Woodhouse (who are the proud owners of two pretty awesome QEII covenant blocks), Steve Cave from the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council about a new floating wetland they’re trialling on the Tukipo.

There’s Bruce Wills, a Te Pohue farmer who’s the new chairman of the Eats Coast Ballance Farm Environment Awards. And there’s a cool piece about the HBRC having a successful trial of fur harvesting as part of a possum control operation.

It’s the Bruce and Woodhouse interviews that I loved the most – not because of the stories themselves, but the venue!

It’s days like today that reminds farmers why they farm.

Seeing newborn lambs bouncing around in the sun is so much nicer that hunkering down with woolies and wetweather gear watching them drown/freeze. Standing on an exposed ridgeline marvelling at the view (whether it be the distant coast from Te Pohue or the Tararuas (?) from Eketahuna) … standing upright without fear of becoming a human handglider I mean!  

There’s nothing better than taking the notebook and camera bag and hopping on the back of a four wheeler on a sunny winter’s day – especially when the stories you’re writing are stories people want to tell (and others want to be told). Positive stories. Pat NZ farming/farmers on the back stories.

The WTO apple issue has reminded me of when I worked for the Herald Tribune and got a whole lot of stick from apple growers on one side of the fence because I was giving pro-deregulation people as much coverage as those who were in love with the former Apple and Pear Board.  I was barreled down the phone and cornered at barbecues. I hated it (talk about shoot the messenger).

Every now and then, having an opinion in a blog atmosphere like this, will spark comments and/or negative feedback. That I can handle because I am defending my opinion.

But I love the fact now that people will open the HB Regional Council’s Big Picture newsletter, Federated Farmers’ National Farming Review or the Dominion Post’s Farming The Year Ahead feature and like what I have written (touch wood).

Another reason I love my job? I am a freelancer, which means I write for a range of  clients from my own home.

So making sense of my shorthand this morning (why don’t I write them up the day I do them????…..) will be interspersed with feeding lambs, hanging out washing and hopefully having at least one coffee on the deck in the Hawke’s Bay sunshine.