Shepherdess (Three women on the land) - First Season

(HOLLY ARROWSMITH'S 'LOVE TOGETHER')

# I sit on the misty mountain,

# look down into endless green. The trees are whispering.

# Oh, they say to me, 'Don't leave.'

# 'This is where you're meant to be.' #

Say 'go'.

'Go!'

Here comes Dad and Katie.

I'm a Southland girl, born and bred.

Hi!

I have four wonderful, crazy children and an amazing husband.

You got your dolly sorted for the farm, Katie?

Is she ready for some work in the sheep yards?

a shearing contracting business.

at Melrose, at the back shed,

but he can start at the four-stand later on in the week.

We run two gangs full time through December till the end of March, middle of April.

All the shearing for about 200,000 sheep around the area.

Adam asked me out

three weeks before he took off to the UK

for a shearing OE,

and then he went to Australia for the shearing season there.

If you wanna be in the industry, you kinda gotta follow the work.

And I thought, 'Right, stuff it, I'm gonna go to Australia.

'I'm gonna surprise him, like, ta-da! Here I am. How fun, how romantic.' You know? (CHUCKLES)

I hated it.

Probably can't imagine hating anything so much.

Go around behind them. Katie, go 'round behind them.

At the end of that stint in Australia, Adam said to me, he said,

shearing business.'

And I just went, 'Ugh.' (CHUCKLES)

'No, you know, like, I really love you, but is it― uh, is this worth it?' (CHUCKLES)

Maddie, clap. Say 'Hup! Hup! Hup! Hup!' Good job.

Adam and I have always dreamed of owning our own farming business.

enabled that real secure off-farm income.

We wouldn't have a chance at owning a farm business without that.

Until we had children, all we ever did was worked all day in the sheds together every day.

So we only knew working with each other.

We've had the odd row in the yards,

but every sheep farmer knows the sheep yards brings the best and the worst out...

in couples, I think.

Running a shearing business as a young mum, I actually feel like it's kind of empowering.

Get over.

(WHISTLES)

I think specifically the last five years, there's a lot of encouragement and changes

around women in the industry. They're every bit as good as any of the guys in the shed, if not better.

I feel like some days inside with the kids,

than what this maybe looks like,

with real little acknowledgement for it.

So I miss being a part of what's happening on the farm.

This one's trying to get away, Katie. Eee!

- I come from six generations of a shearing family.

Grew up in Southland. My parents were shearers

and travelled around shearing all over the country.

My mum still works in a wool shed.

Have you been learning a haka? Do you have a haka at your kindy? - Yeah.

Do you? What is it?

T-rex. It's a haka T-rex.

Oh, T-rex? Oh!

Your haka's about dinosaurs? Is it?

Wow!

Cool!

In my whanau, we have six adult children.

My husband has two children, I have three children,

and we have a girl who we've had since she was 13.

And what is it you're studying? - Aged care.

- Are you gonna look after me and Todd? (LAUGHS)

- No. - No!

We're kind of in that part of our life where the kids are gone, but they're coming and going,

and grandchildren bless us with their presence.

It's OK.

All three of my sons are shearers.

Shearing's had a huge impact on the kind of person that I am.

Everything I kind of do in my life now, and my life purpose,

is around supporting the people in the shearing industry.

I think that was taken in Dannevirke.

- Terrible. - Terrible! (LAUGHS)

I was just learning.

Cos we come from the family that we come from where there's expectations,

and for the boys as well, the rest―

the other side of their family have had a shearing run for more than 100 years.

So there's an expectation on them.

'Of course, you're a good shearer. Of course you're this. Of course you're that.'

Even if they couldn't, the expectation would be there because of their bloodlines.

It's bigger than just us. It's not only my father's legacy.

It's my mum's family's legacy as well, for generations.

Even with all the qualifications, all the things that I do now,

I wouldn't undo my time in the wool shed.

It taught me everything that I needed.

I worked as a social worker for a long time,

with the shearing industry, trying to help people.

Seeing all of the...

things that I've seen...

led me to, actually, our people need healing.

I'm gonna go and learn how to do that.

I am a traditional healer.

That's what I've done for the last four or five years now.

I'm just a baby in that world,

but I'm also ancient.

I'm a designer

and have a design store called a Small Prophet Design Shed

at the edge of the world in the middle of nowhere.

And I'm actually a farmer's wife and a mum.

Come on. Good boy.

I am very Welsh, very proud of it.

I never thought I would get to New Zealand. I mean, that was not in my wildest dreams.

Here, chickens, here, chickens.

Ugh.

They're not coming.

I was working at Sky, living in London, been there for 20 years, having moved from Wales.

I bumped into Rata Smith. He came to install a Sky dish.

I'd come home 6 o'clock in the morning, and I was about to go to bed.

I was in my cotton― brushed cotton pyjamas and a big jersey.

It was nearly Christmas, and Rata came to the door.

Maori, rugby,

farming guy ―

very outside my remit.

What you doing? Get out of the way.

And he had sort of a Welsh rugby jersey on, so we ended up talking away,

and he knocked my Christmas tree over, so the job took him like four hours instead of half an hour.

Cut a long story short, engaged in three months, married in a year.

I had three kids in quick succession, all born in the UK.

Come on, ladies.

Go, Moosey! Good boy.

Rata's father was getting a little bit older, and he needed some help,

I didn't have a clue.

I moved in with my Maori mother-in-law, and off we went.

20 chickens, one egg. Fan-frigging-tastic.

I did not want to leave the UK. I came kicking and screaming.

To leave your home and your friends and your career when you're 40, it was quite something, you know.

So, I have to admit, I cried every night for the first three weeks.

I cried for three weeks because ― you're gonna laugh at this ―

but there was only one streetlight. Where are the streetlights?

It was crazy. I'm, like, in the middle of nowhere, and there's nothing, and you can't see anybody.

And I just wasn't used to it.

- Maddie, you can go and scrape― you can go scrape that into the bowl.

Can I do― Can I do that one?

- Mum! - Shh. - Mum, I wanna flip it.

I'd describe our family as...

probably mostly crazy.

I need it, Tommy!

- Tommy, sit down. - Maddie, just a minute.

Like, our kids are nuts. Um...

I need it.

- If I have all of my kids in the supermarket―

you know the saying that's like, 'country kids come to town' ―

my kids take that to a whole 'nother level, like... (LAUGHS)

There is never a dull moment. There's never a quiet moment.

Tommy!

- Like, our home and our hearts are so full, overflowing, even, actually. (LAUGHS)

Becoming a mum is the best thing I've ever done.

Some people feel sorry for rural mums ―

you know, like, no kindy, no shop, no fast food. Like, how do you cope?

We're the lucky ones. We're totally the lucky ones.

Yep. I love seeing kids just be proper farm kids.

I met a healer in Dunedin.

She actually went to school with my grandfather, and she said to me, 'Oh, of course you're a healer.

'On your grandmother's line, they were all midwives and all nurses,

'and that was how they got into the homes when you weren't allowed to.'

But all of my life, I felt like the black sheep in my family

because nobody spoke about anything spiritual.

But it was an amazing feeling to know that it didn't just come from nowhere,

that it had come down through my lineage.

I have a wellbeing hub in Invercargill where we have five healers working out of,

demystifying traditional healing and being accepted in our community.

In my practice, I use full body massage and mirimiri as a way to move the mauri,

to move the energy

to shift trauma.

world, the physical world,

and the wellbeing of the person, the energies of those people on your table,

all come together into one space.

And the healing happens with the indigenous connection that we have.

It's slowly growing, the demystifying of what the Tohunga Suppression Act did to my people,

taking away our natural healing

and...

being able to do it in a way that...

It reminds them of what they know,

and helps them to grow.

So if we go with this, this,

Yeah.

And then the inside arms.

- I started Small Prophet really because I was missing that creative side.

I do all the farm accounts and the budgets and everything, but it really wasn't fulfilling me.

- That'll be our first pieces, I'm thinking.

- Ann and I, my business partner, we had a lady's thing to sell some clothes.

We'd made some furniture, and we thought, 'Oh, we can't just sell furniture. It's not gonna work.

'We'll get some clothes in and some jewellery.'