The Taranaki Gate

The girls on this farm, and no doubt everywhere, really love these gates - or not! 



ATaranaki Gate

 These gates are named after the region Taranaki in New Zealand, where they were used extensively by the dairy farmers in the early days of settlement here.  Unfortunately they are still in use today.  Although they are handy in rarely used situations.  Our problem is "The Boss" is stronger than us girls, therefore they are usually a little tight and very difficult to undo, and more difficult to close. 

The gate is made of wire (usually sheep netting) and battens, and usually has a stake at each end to put on the fence post.  There is a loop at the bottom of the post holding it, and a tensioning loop at the top or (more frequently in our case) just a piece of number 8 wire.  We NZ'ers are famous for what we can achieve with a piece of No 8 Wire.

The gate in this picture is used reasonably regularly, but as the cows are out on these blocks over the summer for mating, the gate gets trashed by the bulls when they decide the mob just over there has better cows than they have!  Hence the gate - cheap and easily erected!  But we have too many of them (mainly for this reason), and the number of times I'm struggling to get the gate open or closed to stop  a mob, or with limited time to get to the spot I'm supposed to be in makes for a fair bit of swearing.  Last time I did this one the wire broke on me which didn't improve my disposition.

When we first came to this farm this gateway was open all the time.  The sheep were Romneys then, and they decided they didn't like the gate "The Boss" put in their path, so some of the mob stood on their hindlegs and bashed it down - not a happy man that day!