Visiting farms and feeding baby sheep in New Zealand.

One of the best parts of staying here at The J Taitokerau is how much we’ve been welcomed by Mark and Nessy Jackson into their home and their lives.

Our new friends here at The J Taitokerau, Mark and Nessy, have many, many friends here in Northland. We’ve been meeting some of Mark and Nessy’s Northland friends in the past week, which we’ve absolutely loved.

New Zealand has 4 million people, and 40 million sheep, so when I told Mark I had never before seen a lamb (before arriving in New Zealand), it came as quite a surprise to him (and to Carrie as well I think).

Mark introduced us to Larry and Fiona.

Larry and Fiona own a farm where they raise all kinds of livestock, but primarily they raise sheep.

Larry and Fiona had an unfortunate experience with someone stealing 5 of their sheep (in the middle of the night – the police are sorting it out), which left several lambs orphaned and needing to be fed.

So Mark took Carrie and me, as well as his daughters Sahba and Alicia, so that we could feed the lambs at the farm of Larry and Fiona.

What an awesome experience, to both see up-close, and feed, little lambs here in Northland, New Zealand.

We also got to go to Marcus’ family’s farm, where Marcus’ brother, dad, and kids all co-manage and run the farm.  On Marcus’ farm, they primarily graze cows, but also have pigs.

Marcus and Dougal also showed us our first up-close whitebaiting experience.