Ten minutes worth of rapid, truncated ablutions saw me clad in skivvy, brushed-cotton shirt, ancient moleskin trousers, a thick wool jerkin, and with a pair of heavy woollen socks on my feet. I probably should have dug out my short gumboots the previous evening, but I had decided against them at the last minute and opted for the wool socks and battered sneakers instead. The socks would keep my feet warm if they got wet.
Steaming coffee and a banana did wonders to kick-start the system, and by one minute to 5 o’clock I was in my car with the engine ticking over. I like to listen to the National Radio news as soon as possible after I’m awake, just to make sure the world is still out there and that the part I’m heading into is reasonably safe. Catriona MacLeod’s steady, measured tones assured me that the Waikato at least was not part of the world headlines that morning, the likelihood of being kidnapped, washed away by tsunami, mudslide or tornado were minimal, and that Syrian forces of either persuasion had not yet over-run State Highway 3 anywhere between Ohaupo and Te Awamutu.
So there was a fair chance I could make it safely to the broad asparagus fields at Kaipaki. I and a fellow photo-journalist had arranged to be there a half-hour before sunrise to get some special photographs of the wide-open paddocks, the diligent pickers, the forest of green spears, and all of them washed over by the soft, flat yellow light of an early sunrise away out beyond the distant shoulder of Maungatautari and splintered by the upraised agonised arms of closer-in old dead trees.
It was really beautiful. The air was chill and crisp, a fine, freckled layer of cloud along the eastern horizon blushed pink at having been caught still clad in its diaphanous nightie by an ardent dawn, and suddenly the trickle of light turned into an incoming tide of rich molten butter that flooded thinly across the land. It reminded me hugely of the trickle of cream that rapidly turned into a flat wave spreading across the separator room floor when my Dad forgot to change the filled cream-can in the early days of milking. I was just a little kid, but even then I knew that every ounce of that cream was hard-earned money back in those tough 1950s, and to see it irretrievably dribbling across the concrete floor was worthy of some seriously potent invective and electrified action.
Not so at the asparagus farm. As daylight swamped the area, the pickers, some of whom had been there since before I got out of bed, simply turned off their little led-light head torches and continued diligently picking away. They worked at it fast and hard.
It’s a smart-art, this asparagus-picking, and it seems you need to be as supple as a deflated bicycle tube. Pickers spend much of the time with their head and shoulders at about waist-level or lower, one arm wielding a keenly-sharpened, long-handled, serrated-edged knife and the other grasping the individual asparagus spears as they’re cut off neatly at ground-level. The pickers move rapidly and efficiently up and down the vague rows of plants, selectively cutting out spears and here and there slashing off over-large stalks that have already grown beyond their use-by date. The spears can grow 6 – 8cm in a day of good sunshine. They are stacked into an oblong plastic drum secured to the waist of each picker, and then emptied into larger bins placed here and there about the paddocks.
We took a few liberties, the other photographer and I, and snapped off several dew-laden spears. They were as crisp as carrots and tasted absolutely beautiful – like fresh-picked, newly-shelled baby peas, sweet and succulent and way ahead of the weary, sagging stuff one sometimes sees in the supermarket. We took a few further liberties, I must confess. Then we felt really bad when our warm and knowledgeable host presented us both with a fat plastic bag filled with fresh spears that were less than an hour away from their mother earth. He advised steaming them briefly, laying them out on thick slices of wholegrain bread and spreading a couple of poached eggs over the top. Generous sprinklings of salt and pepper, of course.
It was food even the gods would have happily queued for. And if they’d wanted to cap it with something really special, they would, like me, have chiselled a generous crumble of blue-vein cheese over it all. That’s very, very close to being as delicious as a serious slab of blue-cooked angus backsteak doing a lazy breaststroke through a mushroom-and-capers black pepper sauce…
We took maybe 200 photos each, working the angles as the light got stronger. We got smiles and pleasant co-operation as the pickers relaxed under the hard gaze on the lenses, and we drove away at about 6.30am, having done much of a day’s work and seen others whose workday was still busy but drawing to a close. Most of the world wasn’t even awake yet.
Our work is for a substantial book which will be part of the Waipa District’s celebration of the last 150 years of the region. But among the gang of pickers, the work was urgent and fast and up to the minute – the asparagus spears were too young yesterday and they’d be too old tomorrow. It needed a fast and expert eye to detect what was pickable, what was too old, and what could safely be left for tomorrow.
They were cheerful, happy, smiling men, in spite of the tough, hard, continuous work that most people, including me, wouldn’t last 30 minutes at. Yet 80 to 100 pickers every day of the week for three months of the asparagus season harvest the fine green spears of the Waipa District – one of the biggest growing regions in the country. They collect hundreds of tonnes of the delicious edible lily stalk in that time – that’s what it is, a member of the lily family.
And I was home by 7am. I made another mug of coffee, took it out to the terrace, and sat there listening to the morning chorus of birds that habitually acknowledge the arrival of the new day. The young tui who has not yet learned to sing properly was chortling away as best he could in the big totara across the road; several old-man blackbirds were doing their own Pavarotti thing from various surrounding high points; a number of thrushes were emulating Placido Domingo in full voice; starlings were squabbling loudly, as is their wont; sparrows were discussing politics in a mirror-image of the Beehive turkeys; and little pairs of goldfinches were chittering away to each other as they fossicked for early fodder across the neighbour’s lawn.
Being up at dawn, provided there is good coffee to hand, really does have its advantages.
Kingsley Field is a columnist with the Waikato Times in Hamilton. His Outdoor columns appear fortnightly. He has recently published his second illustrated volume of the columns, and is now working on Volume III. He can be contracted at kingsley(at)accuwrite.co.nz