By Lucy

I drove down a country lane, flanked on both sides by towering Douglas firs and bushes taller than my head, heavy with bright red tropical flowers. A trim lawn flowed away on either side.

Eventually I came up to a large, white country house. There was a 20-something year old man slumped in the front seat of a beat-up pick-up truck. He stepped out as I turned the bike off and opened the visor on my helmet.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for Simonetta or Gary.”

“Hmm, Gary’s truck is here…” He went around the side to a side door. After a moment, he came back out. “They aren’t here. You’re the new… helper?” He searched for the word.

“Yeah!”

“I think… you’re over here.”

He led me across the parking lot to a small cabin.

It was in alright shape. The floor, ceiling and walls looked good. The small pile of leaves on the floor gave me cause for concern, as did the woodstove that appeared to be the only heat source.

The guy disappeared. I looked around and decided, given the obviously unmade beds and the small pile of things on the table, I’d just place my bags down and not unpack them. Maybe he was mistaken. Still, it’s not the worst place. It would be quiet – no stomping feet or music late at night. After a long day of farmwork or carpentry, I could settle down next to a roaring fire and type away.

There was basically no service in the cabin and with no Wi-Fi password, I decided to head back towards the road until I found some decent cell coverage to pass the time. I was frozen and wind-blown from the road, but it seemed I had miles to go yet today. I found a sunny spot with a bench, perfectly facing Mt Hutt and a field of cows with calves.

About an hour later, a white car drove down the lane. It stopped next to me and the window rolled down. “Are you Lucy?” An older gentleman asked from the passenger seat.

“Yes!”

“Ah, ok! Simonetta’s not back yet! Do you know where you’re staying?”

“Umm, yes, the young man showed me a cabin…?”

“Ethan. Ok, then! Just hang tight, I’ve got calves everywhere!”

Then he was gone again.

Escapee calves? I wonder if there would be fresh milk, straight from a cow. I was only told there would be chickens.

The clock ticked on to 4, then 5. My phone started dying and I walked back towards the cabin, to unpack my charger. Now I was really bored.

Around 6, Gary came back and went into the side door. He invited me in as well. He turned on the TV and flaked out on the couch. I sat awkwardly on the opposing couch and pet the small black cat that camped out on my lap.

Before 7, the door flung open and a woman stomped in, not even taking her shoes off. “I have had a day! Come here and help me with these.” She said to Gary, handing him two large containers.

“Lucy is here.” He said.

She glanced at me. “Give me a minute, I can’t even right now.”

Ok. I just stayed on the couch with the cat.

After ten minutes, she came back in. I jumped up and folded my hands in front of me, trying to look presentable. “Right! I just got off the plane and drove right here! I’m tired – I hate short flights – I have to start dinner… you showed her the cabin?”

“Ethan showed me the cabin, but I wasn’t sure… the beds aren’t -” I started.

“Let’s get you sorted then!” She took off and I scrambled to follow her.

As we stepped into the cabin, she started rattling things off. “The hob is broken, I keep asking Gary to fix it. You won’t need it, though, I cook lunch and dinner. Your garbage bin is under here, I’ll get you a bag. Oh dear, there’s a mug missing, the last group must have broken one and not told me. The sheets are here, you’ll only need one set – “

She handed me a set of sheets – duvet cover, top sheet, and pillow case. The bed already had a mattress sheet on it. She kept talking, grabbing a cloth and wiping things down. I made the bed automatically, putting my pillow towards the small desk so I’d have a place to put my tea down and reaching distance to the light switch.

“This is your palace, the place is yours for three weeks. Then two strong boys are coming in, we’ll probably move you inside and have them out here. I make dinner, but everything you need for breakfast is here. Cereal is in here, tea and sugar are there, I’ll grab you some milk, bread, butter, and jam… am I missing anything?”

“How do I operate the woodstove?” I asked.

“Oh, you won’t need it tonight, it’s supposed to be 18 degrees tomorrow!” She paused and looked at me seriously. “I haven’t told Kelly or Ethan yet, but we’re selling the place. I’ve decided. It’s too much for us at our age. So in addition to the house in Akaroa, you’ll also be helping fix this place up for sale. Right, well I’d better get that lamb in the oven, dinner will be late tonight… come at quarter to eight.”

Then she was gone.

I won’t need the woodstove tonight? I was freezing in broad daylight earlier! That being said, I am always cold, always the last one to give up my full-length pants, and I did just come from humid, 30-degree-plus Thunder Bay, so maybe I was slightly not acclimated. Still! It was currently 8 degrees and likely to get colder as the night went…

I asked Paul and Kevin for tips on how to use a woodstove. Kevin laughed and took a minute to remember I grew up in cosmopolitan Barrie. Paul told me it was easy as long as I know how to build a fire, and gave me basic tips on controlling the air flow.

I am actually confusingly good at building a fire. I say confusingly, because I hate camping, and I am afraid of fire to the point that it’s half the reason I never started smoking. But as long as I’ve got a match, I’m good. It was especially funny at the Vagabond’s place, I was always the one starting the bonfires because even with a BBQ lighter and a can of gasoline, he could never get it going.

This cabin was not helping get out of my headspace. It kept reminding me of the cabin we stayed at in Lake of the Woods. Would he like it here, feeding the chickens and starting the woodstove in the evening? Well, he spent 2 years in rural Africa… I wish I had asked him more about what it was like there, how off the grid it was.

At quarter to eight, I went inside. There was a roaring fire in the woodstove there (hypocrisy?). Gary was still flaked out with the TV going.

“It’ll be a few minutes more!” She called from somewhere deeper inside.

I sat down on the couch. A few minutes later, Ethan joined me. A little after 8, she hustled into the room with plates.

Basically, we eat in the small “staff” kitchen off the main one. Simonetta sits at the head of the small table. Dinner was fall-off-the-bone roasted lamb in a thick gravy, with roasted potatoes and boiled green beans. It was all yummy and I ended up using my potatoes to scoop up the leftover gravy on the plate.

She asked me about myself. I’m getting used to having a boilerplate “this is Lucy” speech. It seems endemic to the lifestyle.

Gary is a standard “born in New Zealander”, it seems. Ethan is an America, from Oklahoma, who must also be a carpenter or carpenter adjacent because he’s also helping with the house. He has curiously little curiosity for someone who moved 17’000 kilometers away from his home state for work. When I asked how long he had been there for, he answered that his three months was supposed to end three months ago. I pointed out he must like it here to stay for 6 months and he said “the price is right”.

Simonetta is the most interesting person here. Her accent goes on a walking tour of Europe, switching from vaguely Germanic to thickly Scottish to something else I can’t quite grab, only rarely returning to Kiwi. Despite this, she doesn’t talk about herself much.

After dinner, she grabbed me a jug of milk, half a loaf of bread, and a tub of margarine. “Pay no mind to the dates on the jug, we freeze our milk, and it’s still good for two weeks past the date anyway. I don’t have any jam jars… I could grab a small jar and put some marmalade in it?”

“That’s ok.” I said uneasily. Does she expect to make a bowl of cereal and some toast with jam for breakfast?

“Are you sure?”

Wait, you deny me warmth, but jam is necessary? I declined profusely and eventually I was allowed to scurry back to my small unheated cabin, with instructions that work was to begin at 9:30 tomorrow morning.

There would be no computer tonight. How to survive ’til morning? It wasn’t below freezing, so I wouldn’t die, but comfort is a thing. Of course, you’d be surprised how easy it is to produce heat. A small candle in enough to heat a vehicle (in case you get stranded in snowy weather). Of course, there was the woodstove, but I had searched the cabin and found no matches, or wood, and I wasn’t about to wander the property in the dark looking for firewood.

The hot water ran readily. Could I run the hot water in the shower to warm this place up? How late would that last?

My eyes fell upon the empty bottle of iced tea I had. A hot water bottle!

Of course, the hot water bottle would only keep me warm as long as I was under the covers. It would be a chilly run for the bathroom. I closed the bathroom door anyway, to keep what heat I could muster in a smaller space.

I slept well, all things considered. It was the first time in months I had slept in a building that was my own, with no one stomping above me, no shared bathroom. Knowing I had nowhere to be until 9:30 and the room was too cold to be comfortable, I just stayed curled up under the covers. The hot water bottle worked well and as long as I was in bed, I felt comfortable.

The morning was much better. My cabin gets the full morning sun, so it heats up quickly with the blinds open.

My breakfast options were limited for such variety. The oats I wasn’t going to bother touching – I had no idea what kind they were, and oatmeal (or porridge) can be touchy first thing in the morning. The cornflakes were an unsweetened European kind. I grabbed the Weetabix and poured myself a bowl of milk, and threw it in the microwave.

The milk tasted… off. Slightly sour. I added more sugar to the bowl and ate it anyway. I was unlikely to make myself sick on it, but if I did, another day off work. They poisoned me!

I put on two pairs of pants, two pairs of socks, a t-shirt, my sweater and hat. It was a bright, sunny day, but chilly and very windy. At 9:15 I waited dutifully outside, unsure of where I should be. Should I knock on the door, wait inside the staff kitchen? The door was slightly ajar… I stuck my head in.

“Ah, Lucy, there you are. Let’s get these eggs sorted first.” Simonetta said.

There was a mountain of eggs on the counter, but it doesn’t take long to slot eggs into cartons and soon it was done. The kitchen was large and beautifully maintained, one of those old timey kitchens that needed two cooks to maintain. She gestured to a space between the island and the sink. “When I’m cooking, this is a line you do not cross.” I nodded; no need to tell me twice!

She led me into an attached room, which was part walk-in cupboard and part office. Then out into the main hallway, with impeccably maintained old wood furnishings and heavy curtains. She stopped at a bookcase, which carried a large number of preserve jars.

“Nearby in Hororata, there’s a festival in early October, the Hororata Highland games. This area was settled by the Scots – it’s quite famous.” She sniffed. “I sell my preserves there, but it’s a bit too much for me. With selling the house, this will be my last year. Clear out all my stock. You’ll help me with that.” She glanced sideways and I couldn’t tell if it was a question or a statement. I nodded. I had no objections.

I noted the labels on the preserve jars were written in Italian. The missing link of her accent… and her name… “You weren’t born here, were you?”

She sniffed again. “I’ve been here 42 years and I have the passport to prove it. But no, I was born in Italy. Northern Italy,” She added when I opened my mouth, “Near Switzerland. Then Scotland. And here ever since.”

She continued on, showing me the rest of the house, including the sumptuous dining room. But my brain was still curious. Near Switzerland… so, Lombardy? And without knowing her age, the 42 years meant nothing; she could have been born in Italy and moved to Scotland within a year of her birth. Certainly the Scottish in her accent was stronger. But she clearly felt enough of a connection to Italian to label the jars as such, unless it was a marketing gig – Italian being exotic here.

Also the irony, I travelled 17’000 kilometers to work in New Zealand, and ended up working for the only Italian within at least 100 clicks. I wonder why she doesn’t like to talk about it. I wonder how fluent she is in Italian, and if she could help me learn.

“I have customers for dinner tomorrow, you’ll waitress.” She said, again neither a question nor a statement. I nodded. I could dress pretty and smile, sure.

We moved outside. She pointed to random odd jobs that needed doing – a garden that needed weeding, a spot on a door that needed painting.

We came to the chicken coop. Or, more accurately, the three chicken coops side by side. I’m still unsure what the separation is, or why.

All the chickens were pressed against the fence closest to us, like hungry zombies. A few were outside the fence and followed us. “Ah, these ones are stupid. They escaped somehow, but the food is inside the fence!” She walked up to the gate. “A little bit of distraction, hm?” She smiled, before grabbing a handful of pebbles from the ground and lobbing them over the fence.

The chickens moved as a single entity, running towards the thrown pebbles. We opened the gate and sidled in. They quickly figured out the ruse and returned. I was glad for the leather shoes and two pairs of pants – chickens will experimentally peck at things, including your legs, but I only barely felt the pecks.

She opened a medium sized bin. “These guys get two scoops of food.” One scoop she distributed into a few pans scattered around the property. The chickens ran for the food like they were three days without it, scrambling over each other in a mad rush! The second scoop she threw upon the ground.

Next she pointed to some pans on the ground. “The food is dry, so they need lots of water, unless it rains.” We filled the pans from a tap in the ground. “Now, they should all lay their eggs in the nesting box, but sometimes they’ll lay them elsewhere. Just take a look around before you go.” She ducked her head into the hut and returned with about 6 eggs. “Also, there’s a rubber one in there, so they don’t forget.”

The next coop had easily double the number of chickens as the first one, maybe 40. The pebble trick worked again. We edged our way through the mass to an area fenced in by chicken wire. There was a wooden hatch, which could be lifted to reveal eggs from the coop. There was also a pile of plastic bags of feed, and empty bags.

“The empty bags get cut in half, and they go in here-” She gestured to the coop. “To keep it sort of tidy. These get 3/4 of the bag of feed.” The feed was again distributed into a series of pans on the ground. 40 chickens running and screaming for breakfast is a sight to behold.

The third pen was through the second pen. Here the water tap was located; there’s a bucket in here for pouring the water through the fence and into the other pen. This pen also held roughly 20 hens. There didn’t appear to be a rooster.

Once all the chickens were fed, watered, and had their eggs taken, we walked back up towards the house. A young woman was standing outside in shorts. So, it is just me that’s cold.

“Ah, this is Kelly. Kelly, this is Lucy, our new helper. The guests in the Stablehand have left, can you show her how to turn it over? And then weed this path a bit so we can spray it.” Simonetta disappeared inside.

We walked down to the cabin called the Stablehand quarters, presumably so named when there was a stable and horses, and someone was needed to tend them. The stable is currently a garage. Kelly showed me how to make the beds and tidy the rooms.

Then we grabbed a wheelbarrow and weeded the gravel path around the front and behind the main house. She stopped me and pointed to a spiky plant. “Careful, that’s stinging nettle. It will… sting.”

As we worked, we chatted. Apparently people stay here for work quite often, occasionally just for a single day. She talked about how much she’d love to have a good snowfall – they usually get 2 inches at most, and then it melts. A chicken walked up and clucked in our faces, and when I commented that I was surprised Simonetta wasn’t concerned something would kill them, it clicked.

What would kill them? There are no endemic predators here. There are no wolves, coyotes, foxes or large cats. There are some stoats, brought over by the limeys. There are some birds of prey, but evidentially not around here. I was worried about being on the bike after dark, but there are no moose or deer to hit. There are no large, poisonous spiders or mosquitoes. The weather barely creeps below 0 in the winter or above 20 in the summer. There are occasional earthquakes, floods and cyclones, but not regularly. There is nothing here – no danger, the most neutral place on Earth.

It’s not even entirely the limeys fault. When the Māori first settled the island, they killed off around half the native species. What was left was some sort of natural Eden, but it was hair-raising in how unnatural that seemed. If this was a movie or book, this would be when I discovered a sinister cult on the island. After so much time in Thunder Bay, the great frozen frontier, chock full of things fit to kill, it was jarring.

Around 1, we breaked for lunch, and had tea and sandwiches. We did some laundry and took it down to the line to dry. Around 3 it was folded and away, and there wasn’t any more work for us, so Simonetta released me. Dinner is at 7:30.

I grabbed the wheelbarrow and went to the woodshed. The wood was precariously stacked taller than me, and I thought about the irony of a carpenter dying in a firewood avalanche. “Here lies Lucy, 29, died of tree revenge“. I filled it with lots of woods. Some small pieces for tinder, medium pieces for building the fire up, and a couple of large pieces to burn while I was sleeping. That done, I flaked around the cabin a bit, trying to coax the wi-fi into behaving, before I hiked out to the road for better cell reception.

Then I kept walking. Google maps told me there was something within half an hour walking distance, but when I got there it was just a fork in the road with a “community centre”. I did note I was glad I had come from the south by accident – the north road is an uphill turn, thick with gravel, that is certainly too treacherous on this bike.

As I walked back, Gary drove by on the ATV, waving at me as he went.

I was starting to… feel uneasy about my choices. I hadn’t wanted to be shivering my butt off on a farm, kicking chickens aside every morning and drinking milk that tasted off. I didn’t want to freeze at night because I was in a tiny, unheated shack, cut off from the internet. I didn’t want to be back in Thunder Bay, waiting for the snow to find me, either.

Just a few more weeks, I told myself, as I watched the sun set behind the Southern Alps. Soon it will be summer and I’ll be sweating again. In three weeks I’ll be moved into another part of the property, or working on the house in Akaroa, and this will be just another memory.

There was perspective to be gained here. It might be heated at Wolfgang’s, but I’d run out of money fast this winter, and I didn’t want to work outside in the legendary Thunder Bay weather. Would I rather suffer a few cold nights here, or work outside every day in a foot of snow? No contest.

As the sun disappeared completely, a new level of chill descended. I went back to my tiny wooden cabin and climbed into bed, listening to music until dinner.

It doesn’t help that at every turn, the cabin reminded me of the week at Lake of the Woods. The Alps, like the Alps that run through northern Italy. My Italian boss. If I had paid for kicking chickens with our relationship, it didn’t feel worth it. And yet, what was my alternative? To wait until he abandoned me again, deaf to my pleas, like he always had?

At 7:30 I went inside dutifully for dinner. Dinner was slightly late again, so me and Ethan talked about motorcycles a bit. It still amuses me how people assume that, because I showed up in the middle of nowhere with a bike and a backpack, I must know what I’m doing.

The TV was playing the 6 o’clock news. One of the news features was about a man, who had lived here for 10 years but been denied citizenship because he had a kidney condition “and would be a public health burden”. He had been granted a special dispensation to acquire citizenship.

I looked down at my hands. They denied him citizenship for a kidney issue? They’d never want me, riddled with cancer as I am. Whatever optimism I had drained out of me. I would always be unwanted, no matter what I did.

Dinner was some sort of breaded cutlet (chicken? veal?), boiled mixed vegetables, and mashed potatoes. They didn’t taste quite like they would in Canada, but I enjoyed them and wolfed mine down as soon as it wouldn’t burn my mouth. After dinner, Simonetta made a fruit salad with just about every kind of fruit in existence.

Decisions, decisions… Did I have a little bit not to be rude, or risk it?

Risk it. It was delicious, and the cabin was mine to defile. I wouldn’t have to worry about disturbing anyone’s sleep as I ran to the bathroom.

Two small bowls of fruit salad later, we had all made plans for tomorrow. Paul and Ethan were leaving early. Simonetta was leaving, not to be back ’til 1. I had to tend to the chickens, clear the potato patch and plant the potatoes, before she returned, and the day was mine otherwise.

As everyone filtered away to bed, I asked for and received a small box of matches.

I stepped outside. There was definitely a wintery chill to the air. Snow tonight.

I looked up, and gasped.

The stars. Kilometers away from anything, all the stars. The black depths of space, scattered with a thousand points of light.

There are no pictures for it. You have to see it in person.

I went back into my small cabin. Fire first. It will take a while for the heat to circulate.

What did Paul say? Open the intake all the way.

I tried a couple times to light my little pile of kindling, but it wouldn’t take. I needed paper.

Ah! The pamphlet in my Xylimelts!

A few scraps from that lit easily, and took the kindling with them. I stacked the smallest wedges of wood on top of them, closed the door, and smiled as the fire grew. I started a woodstove, all by myself.

I listened to the wind whistle around the eaves, and thought of the sky full of stars and the good meal in my belly.

Maybe it’s not so bad here.

There’s a joke in Canada about “white man’s fire”, a fire that is big and impressive but burns through wood carelessly and doesn’t provide much heat. I stoked the fire until it was proper hot coals, then followed Paul’s advice again; stack some large pieces on top and turn the air intake down to minimal, so it burns slowly throughout the night.

It felt slightly naughty to be going to bed with a fire going mere feet away. I watched the flames flicker and dance until they lulled me to sleep.