Watching My Meat Rotate, The Country -- August 2019

Last summer my friend Wayne helped me build a deck. When I say “helped” I mean I provided the concept and Wayne made sure everything was straight, level and square. And then he built it. Turns out I’m more of an ideas man than a handyman.

I flooded Twitter with progress reports of the build and everybody loved Wayne and my #DeckPics. The project was finished just in time for the farm’s Christmas dinner and, with a brand new deck complete with a paved barbecue area, I really had no choice but to buy myself a new barbecue.

Buying a new barbecue is a serious business, I’m not one of those “it’s summer let’s dust off the barbie” type of people. No, barbecue is a year round event no matter the season or weather. In fact I go through so much LPG I took Labour’s ban of offshore gas exploration as a personal attack.

If there was one thing I knew about my new barbecue it was that it wasn’t going to be a Weber. I’m pretty sure the Venn diagram of Weber owners and iPhone users is a perfect circle and I wasn’t going to be the one to upset that delicate balance.

Obviously I bought a Masport, a good Kiwi brand that’s been around for over a hundred years, and of course I bought a stainless steel model, the hardest known substance to keep clean when you live in the country on a gravel road. More importantly, dear reader, my stainless steel Masport barbecue has a hood, and in that hood there is a window, and through that window I can watch my meat rotate and sizzle on the rotisserie that came as an added extra.

“Put it on Trade Me,” my father said,”you’ll never use it.”

Never use it!? That rotisserie is my go to method for cooking 24-hour marinated rolled roast beef. I’ve cooked pork belly on that thing, I’ve cooked chicken, I’ve cooked lamb and I’ve even googled “what can I rotisserie next?”

There’s just something about impaling a couple of chooks on that stainless steel skewer, tying them up with butcher’s string while making the obligatory dad joke (trussed me, I know what I’m doing) and forcing garlic butter up under the chicken’s skin that is so satisfying.

Of course we can’t stop there, all that juicy garlicky chicken-y goodness that’s going to drip down from the slowly spinning meat must be caught, and what better way to catch it than with a tray of cubed and par boiled potatoes? A tray of cubed and parboiled potatoes that have been coated with garlic seasoning, that’s what!

My cheap little rotisserie groans under the weight of two stuffed chickens (if they’re not stuffed I recommend putting whole lemons inside to give the skewer purchase), but the three hour cook time on the lowest setting gives me plenty of time to post progress videos to social media.

I’m not saying a rotisserie is the battery operated appliance in your house that’s going to bring you the most joy, but it’s surely got to be in the top five and I think you should give it a crack.

I hear you can pick them up quite cheap on Trade Me.

Not Just A Southland Issue -- August 2019

Last week the Minister of Agriculture announced the members of his taskforce that will investigate the practice of wintering cow on crop in Southland, their brief being to “do a stocktake of the multiple initiatives that are already underway to promote good winter grazing practices and identify why those are not currently working for all.”

The issue has of course been brought to a head by environmental campaigners in Southland releasing drone footage of cows up to their hocks in mud along with pictures of cows calving in similar conditions.

The reaction from farmers on twitter has been starkly divided; Southland farmers believe it is an issue for their region to tackle without interference from central government or advice from outside experts, let alone from the lone environmentalist appointed to the taskforce. They are not interested in the opinions of non-farming urbanites whose only experience with wet weather grazing was that one time they got caught in the rain during a picnic. They seem surprised by the swift reaction from the government after such a brief spell of negative publicity and feel as though they haven’t had time to address the issues before having conditions, presumable unreasonable, forced upon them.

Famers from outside the region, of which I am one, expressed surprise too. Our astonishment was that anyone could be surprised by the announcement and that it was Minister O’Connor taking the lead under the Agriculture portfolio rather than Parker leading the charge as Minister for the Environment.

David Parker travelled the length of the country prior to the election talking about water quality, during which he showed pictures of cows in Southland collapsing river banks as they crowded to drink, and mourning the lack of willingness from Regional Councils around the country to use the considerable powers at their disposal.

This is far from a Southland issue, it’s a farming issue. If the public perceive an issue with winter grazing practices then we all come under scrutiny. When irrigation was under the spotlight the public didn’t differentiate between irrigated and non-irrigated farms, every farmer was tarred with the same brush, and the same is true now.

If I knew prior to the election that winter grazing in Southland was a fight waiting to happen, then the Southland Regional Council must have known well in advance of that. David Parker is not the kind of man to keep quiet when something is annoying him.

The whole point of Regional Councils is to use their local knowledge and expertise to develop guidelines specific to their unique environmental conditions, and when they do that there is no need for central government to get involved.

That it has now escalated into an animal welfare issue as well as an environmental one is not just the fault of a drone flying busy body, nor is it the fault of the public for forming opinions without all the facts, the blame lies largely with the Regional Council for not taking steps to address issues that had been clearly signalled to them for a very long time, failing all their constituents in the process, farmers and urban dwellers alike.

I know too well the frustrations of wet weather wintering and calving, but the farmers who think it’s acceptable to keep cows in those conditions must also shoulder their share of the blame.

Putting aside the futility of convening a taskforce to look into a practice that is ending just as they start their investigation, I hope the people of Southland work with the team to get the best possible outcome for them, the environment and their animals.