House Sitting In Glen Murray

My current housesit sees me on a lifestyle block amongst the hills of rural Glen Murray, in the Waikato. I’m here until the weekend then it’s back down to Raetihi.

It’s nice out here in Glen Murray. It can be quite remote with the nearest supermarket (Te Kauwhata New World) being a good 40-minute drive from this house, but I like remote properties. You just have to plan your grocery shopping and stock enough for a good 2-3 weeks to cut down on the driving. It’s mostly sheep and beef country around where I’m staying, but there is the occasional dairy farm here and there.

Animal-wise I have here one doggie of the Bitza breed (a bit of this and a bit of that) who goes by the name of Chilli. She’s eight years old and super cruisy. She was friendly on day one, and most of the time she just chills out around the house, but she does enjoy her twice-daily walks around the paddocks, early in the morning and again later in the day when it’s not so hot.

Then there’re two horses (Dolly & Cougar) who live outside in their paddocks 24/7. There’s plenty of grass so that pretty much constitutes their present diet. There’re no covers to change nor hooves to see to, so the horses should be pretty easy to tend to while I’m here, I just need to keep an eye on their water and grass and maybe shift them into another paddock if need be.

There’re also ten sheep of a breed called Damara, which originate in northern Namibia but they can also be found in South Africa. This breed is quite rare in New Zealand. They tend to struggle with our wetter climate as opposed the drier conditions of Namibia & South Africa, and so the ten sheep here have had issues with footrot and they’re still a bit limpy. Damara are also self-shedding. Most of these ones have completely lost their winter coats but the odd one is still looking a bit scruffy.

Finally there’re 4 chooks who free range most of the day. All in all, it’s a really nice spot here.

Chilli

Dolly (left) & Cougar

The Damara Sheep

Chookies