Forked Creek – Chapter 3
Meeting Adam
I’m not really looking forward to meeting this Adam, even though he’s a rellie of Glenda’s and she seems proud of him. I imagine some grimly enthusiastic gun nut: camouflage gear and a whiff of blood. I don’t enjoy killing things, and I don’t generally like people who do.
Still, a farmer can’t be squeamish or sentimental. Pest control is an unpleasant task, but I don’t shirk it when it has to be done: witness my gun licence and .22.
When I was a kid growing up on the South Coast, Dad and I would shoot the occasional rabbit for the pot, and I’m still an okay shot, as the local foxes and rabbits have learned to their cost.
Feral pigs, though, are way out of my league. Amazing how those fat, barrel-shaped porkers turn into lean, mean packets of muscle in just one or two generations of freedom. And they’re famously smart too.
Pulses of vibration interrupt my thoughts. I delve in my pocket for the phone.
‘Hi, this is Adam Hawker … Aunty Glenda says you’ve got a pig problem.’
The voice on the phone is soft, boyish, friendly. Not such a bad start.
‘Look … I’m not trying to talk myself out of a job, but you know that there are people who’ll do this for free, don’t you?’
I explain to Adam my concerns about inviting the local yahoos to come shoot up my place. He laughs.
‘I get where you’re coming from … but Farm Assist can put you in touch with responsible shooters, properly insured, SSAA registered. You’d stay in control.’
‘So you’re saying you don’t want to take on the job?’
‘No, not what I’m saying at all. Just trying to save you a few bucks, Marg. Well, a couple of thousand bucks, to be honest, if I have to spend a few days up at your place. Aunty says you’re a mate, so …’
We arrange for Adam to come up to the farm tomorrow for an assessment. ‘I’ll come take a look for free and you can ask me anything you want. Try before you buy.’ That soft laugh again. ‘It’s time I visited Aunty, anyway.’
Adam turns out to be a tallish, slender man around the thirty mark. Unruly, dark, curly hair, olive skin, fine features. Quick, brown, intelligent eyes. More Bondi surfer boy than bush pig shooter. He appraises the farm thoughtfully.
‘A lot different to how it was before Uncle Pawel died. Back then, this place was just dirt and sheep shit. Now, you’ve still got grazing at the end of a hot summer. The native grasses are coming back … and the old orchard is bearing again. Trees, bees, veggies, chooks, sheep, goats … I’m impressed.’
‘Thanks. Early days yet, but we’ve put a lot of work into rehydrating the soil: the contour swales, the keyline dams, the revegetation.’
Adam nods thoughtfully, like he knows what I’m talking about. It makes a pleasant change: I lose most people at ‘rehydrate’.
‘It’s all about putting water back into the landscape, stabilising the soil, capturing the rain instead of letting it run off, building humus,’ I sum up.
‘This will be the “crazy hippie shit” they mentioned down at the pub.’
‘That’ll be it. But as you can see – it works.’
‘Yeah, but does it pay, though?’
I laugh. A little bitterly.
‘That’ll be a no, then.’
‘It’s never going to make me rich, put it that way. It’s been a long haul to get to where we are now – and I could have done with deeper pockets. But the farm now has about a hundred seasonal products coming off it, not just two or three.’
‘And about a hundred farm hands beavering away?’
‘Fifteen. And all but two are volunteers.’
‘No shit?’ Adam scratches his head in disbelief.
‘Plenty of shit, actually.’ I point at the dunny, the compost toilet shack. ‘And none of it leaves the property: it all goes back on the land.’
‘That legal?’
‘Yes, because the humanure is never used on crops for human consumption. It feeds the tagasaste windbreaks and the lucerne. In turn, they provide nitrogen-rich mulch, fodder for the dairy goats, and lots of flowers – great bee forage.’
‘Clever … And now the pigs have found this little slice of hog paradise.’
‘So it would seem. Never saw one up to now.’
‘There was nothing for them, before, see. Now that they know that there’s tucker here, they’ll keep coming … Plenty of them out there.’ He indicates the expanse of wetlands, downhill from my property, with their head-high reed beds: the ‘black swamp’ from which the town gets its name.
‘They’ll come in overnight, clean up your veggies, your chooks, your new-born lambs. Knock over your beehives. Muddy your dams and smash up your fences.’
‘Fuck.’
‘And they’re not scared of dogs, as you’ve found out already.’
I must have winced.
‘Sorry, I can see that’s a bit raw.’ He gives me a sympathetic little smile. ‘But there are things we can do to put them off.’
‘Put them off? I’d sooner wipe the bastards off the face of the Earth, frankly.’
‘I get you. But that’s not going to happen. Out in those reed beds, there will probably be two hundred pigs, maybe more. Ten, twenty sounders. Even with helicopters, dogs, bikes, 1080, traps, it’d take months to wipe them out.’
‘So, what can you do for me?’
‘Trap as many of this little mob as I can, for starters. Can’t use poison baits here because of your livestock … I don’t like using 1080 anyway.’
‘Not stalk them?’
‘No. Stalking’s for sport shooters. Follow them into the reeds and you’ll kill maybe five animals, then the rest will scatter. But they’ll regroup and keep coming back to where the food is.
‘Pigs are a stubborn, clever animal. So what I’ll do is, remove the whole mob that have this, ah … inconvenient habit. Trap ’em, shoot ’em, then come back in a week and spotlight survivors. There might be twenty animals in the sounder.
‘Then it will be down to you to improve your fencing, before another mob moves in. Maybe change a few things around the place to make you less of a target. We can talk about that.
‘Meantime, I’ll keep coming back every few weeks over winter, check up on things. When there are no more pigs coming on to your land, we could get Farm Assist involved, organise a shoot in the wetlands, disrupt their peak breeding season. But no other shooters on your property: just me. That sound like a plan?’
It sounded like a plan.
With thanks to Susan Fendt for the audio reading.
Next week in ‘Forked Creek’
Chapter 4: Setting the Trap
Adam sets to work. Fault lines appear in Forked Creek Farm’s little community.
Thanks Susan xx