All the Way to Someplace Else (and back again).: A Farm Visit: The Acheron

Scott talking to us in the wool shed.

Last week we visited my Mommy and Daddy’s friend Scott McFadden at his farm the Acheron (Ak-er-ron). It is our favorite farm to visit and Mommy has been visiting them since 1999. Scott talked to us in the wool shed about the farm and how large it is. It is a medium to steep hill country farm. They don’t get that much rain there during the year. At the bottom of the farm where the wool shed is, it is 400 ft above sea level. At the top of the farm it is 1,400 ft above sea level. Our elevation in Harrington is only about 50 ft above sea level.

Sheep in the yards

Scott's working dog named "Happy". He is a huntaway.

Scott has 24 beef cows and 20 calves. He also has 3,300 ewes (ewes is pronounced you. Ewes are adult female sheep) and 1,340 ewe lambs. It only takes Scott and 5 dogs to take care of all these animals and the 804 hectare farm. Do you know how many acres that is?

The kind of tractor you need in hill country

Showing the students how to body condition score
and evaluate a wool sheep

Scott talked about different types of sheep and why certain breeds were good for certain types of farms. He grows wool for Smartwool. Did you know that you can buy Smartwool socks and sweaters in the US? Then we went hill trekking and climbed up a big hill on the farm (you would call it a mountain) that overlooks the Hurinui (Hur-i-new-ee) river and out to the sea.

The climb to the top

Some of the students ahead of us.
No sky is as blue as a NZ sky!

When we left the farm we went down to the edge of the Hurinui river to explore. It was very cold. It also had lots of rounded rocks at the bottom and I skipped one. The river is fed from the glaciers up in the mountains so that is why there are all the rounded rocks and the water looks blue. After that we got back on the bus and left to go back to Lincoln University.