‘My John Deere is better than your John Deere!” I yelled, then laughed like an idiot. Bob the fencer smiled. But behind his dark glasses, I’m pretty sure he was wondering what the hell I was on about: I was sitting on my little John Deere ride-on mower. He was in the cab of his enormous John Deere tractor. If there was going to be any sort of, ahem, measuring contest, it was game, set, match and enormous trophy to him.
Bob, who lives up the road, was at Lush Places to fix up the two fences that were given a terrible beating when we had a couple of our sky-high shelter belts trimmed a couple of months back.
One fence, the one that runs next to a Leyland cypress hedge, lost a few posts, broken off at ground level, and required a partial facelift. But the one that runs 90m below a belt of alders was completely munted and would need Bob to perform the equivalent of fencing open-heart surgery. It took him two days to complete, with two new strainer posts, and the result looked as neat as stitches. His wire work, posts and stays are as fancy as any art gallery installation. Bob is an artist as well as a surgeon.
He’s also got the right tools for the job, like a big, flash tractor with a deluxe post rammer on the back, along with a ute and trailer with all the gear, including an air compressor, a fancy nail gun and a top-end electric chainsaw. It made me jealous. It also left me with a feeling that’s become quite familiar since moving to the country: emasculation.
It has become clear to me since moving from town that if you want to be taken seriously out in the paddocks you need to have a collection of seriously big machines like a big ute, a trailer, a tractor and, if you want to be properly set up, a digger. By comparison, my small SUV and my ride-on with its little trailer are Tonka toys, and about as useful if things go wrong – and stuff always seems to go wrong in the country.
Fortunately for Lush Places, Bob isn’t the only neighbour who is a proper bloke who can swing by to help.
The shelter belt trimming also cut up part of a paddock, creating deep ruts. No problem. Another neighbour, Geoff, popped over with a small earthmover that he and his son have been fixing up.
Then there was the time the Countdown delivery truck got stuck in mud on our driveway. No problem. I called another neighbour, Tony. He was elsewhere, but he sent over his son, Jakob, who sorted it with a grunty old ute and a tow rope. You might like to know that Jakob is just 15, but clearly already more of a bloke than I am.
Neighbours in the country are different from neighbours in the city. For a start, in the country there are fewer of them. But the major difference between city and country neighbours is that in the sticks you will likely know them, while in the city, there’s a good chance you won’t.
A Stats NZ survey in 2015 found a massive 44% of us believed they didn’t have anyone “supportive” living next door – though I’d hazard a bet that number is even bigger in the big cities.
In Auckland, we had a few good neighbours over the years (hello, Rod and Amanda!) and many terrible ones: the loud, boring party people, the “greenies” with a teenager who left broken glass on our berm, the criminal ones with dogs that barked constantly and, once, a boy racer who rushed out on to the street firing his air pistol wildly because he thought his souped-up Subaru was being nicked.
Of course, there’s no guarantee country neighbours will be saints. I learnt recently that one couple hereabouts are so disliked they are known as “the Wits”, as in “the Halfwits”. And no, it isn’t us.
Of course, it did make me wonder if we, too, had been nicknamed by our neighbours. If we have, let’s hope it’s not “the Lushes”.
