As a child living on a station farm in New Zealand my favourite season was always Spring: Warmer days, tapestries of colour and baby animals. We could not always handle the baby animals but it was always fun to watch and admire them (and if our dads weren’t watching run after them). As we lived on a sheep farm and many of the sheep were having babies it was necessary that the lambs’ tails be cut off too. Unlike the nails on our fingers, we children learned that tails never grew back once they were cut off. We also learned that the tails were cut off in order to keep the area around their posteriors clean which helped to prevent the risk of infections and diseases. We called this procedure docking. This doesn’t sound very nice but such experiences were part of farm life where young children came to appreciate the wonders of nature in other ways.

During docking season the families on the station would gather around a bonfire each evening to cook the tails. As the sky fades to an ocean of red and gold, silhouettes of children can be seen playing together while parents keep watch like shepherds over their sheep. From time to time long thin strands are thrown onto the fire, catch flame and then quickly sizzle. Fathers skillfully lift the charred threads from the heat with twigs while mothers move gracefully among them peeling the layers (just like I can do now after many years practice of removing wrappers from a bar of chocolate) revealing to their children a delicious white meat so tender that it made grown men dribble and babies cry (or vice versa). Farmyard humour, rumbling laughter, gossip and chatter, and screaming happy children. I was the child running around with no shoes.

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