Judith's Jottings: I'm no farmer or Miss Bull for that matter

My parents' farm at Kakaramea, near Patea, taken in 2004 - the year it was sold. Photo / Judith Lacy

Opinion: I was always Miss Bull. It was logical - Mum and Dad were dairy farmers and I was the only girl. So when it came to the Happy Families card game Mum was Mrs Bull, Dad Mr Bull and my brother Master Bull.

Miss Bull didn't look anything like me. She was skinny, had freckles and long red hair she wore in plaits. She also looked so at ease on the farm.

Cats were more my thing but they didn't produce enough milk solids to support our family!

My first farming memory was hiding under the dining room table as Dad and the stock truck driver were trying to round up a particularly ferocious bull. I probably would be ferocious, too, if I was going to be made into hamburgers.

I don't remember the water trough incident but Mum sure does. I was 4 and the only country kid at my city kindergarten. We'd gone on a farm visit and I was apparently showing off walking around the edge of a water trough when - you guessed it - in I went. Mum was mortified. I was wet.

A water trough came in handy the day I decided to vomit all over my lovely cream mat. Somehow the peas and carrots got in my hair. The power was off, as it frequently was, and this meant the water pump wasn't working. So, off Mum went to the nearest water trough to get some water to try and sort out my Worzel Gummidge hair.

The water distribution was set up with livelihoods and animal welfare in mind, not the needs of a shower-obsessed teenager girl. After a power outage, the water would go first to the cow shed and water troughs and finally to the house.

When I was about 11 I tried to earn my Miss Bull credentials by helping separate cows and calves. A cow went for me and while she didn't make contact I was sufficiently freaked out I stayed away after that.

There was always plenty to do in the house. Have you ever tried to fold a monkey suit, let alone put one in the washing machine without getting cow manure on yourself. (I think now they'd be called overalls.) We had pudding every night and I would much rather whip up a lemon surprise pudding or apple dumplings than peel potatoes. Yes, the beginnings of my sweet tooth were nurtured on the farm.

Our meat came in box files. A beast would be sent for slaughtering and butchering and then came back in plastic bags in cardboard box files. I guess they were handy for holding cuts of steak. Mum would put the cow tongue in the fridge and press it down with a brick - there was no wastage. That was one way to stop me opening the fridge to get the tin of condensed milk out for after-school pigouts.

Unlike many of our neighbours, Dad (or for that matter Mum) didn't inherit a farm. Dad was also something of a novelty as he could see the economic benefits of hiring a bulldozer to create paddocks out of what the previous owners had been using as a rubbish dump in a gully.

Dad was also an early adapter to computers for record keeping. In 1994, he appeared in a Livestock Improvement advertisement for its herd management program, DairyMAN. Dad was quoted as saying "I won't say it was always easy, but I will say it was worth it."

Despite my aversion to farming, I do know it's never easy. This weekend you can watch a raft of rural games in The Square - all for free. Who knows - Miss Bull might be lurking behind a hale bay.