We have now seven or eight hundred head of sheep. We had to buy our original store flock on credit, but the increase and wool has enabled us to pay that off long since. Similarly, grass-seed, some stock, and other things were bought on credit, which has since been liquidated. What we have is our own. We have had years of incessant toil, the hardest possible work, with plenty of food, but little comfort and no holidays to speak of. Two or three years more of it, and then we shall be in a condition to really enjoy the prosperity we have laboured for.
Except at shearing and lambing seasons, our Lincolns and Leicesters give us but little trouble. We did try the merino breed, but they broke through the fence and ran away into the bush, where we occasionally see traces of them, and have once or twice caught one and turned it into mutton. Shearing is a great business, but we are all accomplished hands at it now, and our bales are larger every year as the flock increases. Wool is ready money here, being an article that can always be negotiated at once with the Auckland dealers. Our wool is reckoned of even better quality than that grown on the great sheepwalks of Canterbury and Otago.
During a great part of the year we are milking ten to twenty cows daily, and, in spite of the seeming inefficiency of our dairy arrangements, we send a goodly store of butter and cheese to the township, whence it goes to Auckland and elsewhere. We fatten pigs, too, on skim-milk, maize, pumpkins, and peaches grown by ourselves. A score or two are usually to be seen on the clearings round the shanty. We are able butchers and curers; and Old Colonial excels in the manufacture of brawn, sausages, collared head, and the like. Most of the pig-meat is consumed by ourselves. In one form or other it is our staple food. But occasionally we sell a barrel of pork, or some flitches and hams, to such local buyers as the bushmen employed at the saw-mills.
Dandy Jack talks of introducing Angora goats. I do not know exactly why, but he appears to think the project a good one. He has long ago given up mere coaching. In fact, people began to have doubts about entrusting themselves to his driving, though I hesitate to record such a disagreeable matter. He joined our society some years ago, though he is not always with us, gravitating invariably towards all the races, horse and cattle fairs of the country. But he has set up as a horse breeder and trainer, keeping his stud on our clearings, and thus adding another industry to the various others of our pioneer farm. This is a good thing for us, as Jack's horses come in very usefully sometimes, for carrying or dragging purposes.