Episode 5
NZ Screening date 10 March 2004

Midway through their farming experience the City Girls are going from strength to strength as they find themselves coping with all the different challenges that rural living throws their way.

That is not to say that there haven’t been some difficult moments when thoughts turn to what was left behind in the Big Smoke. At the halfway point they can be forgiven for thinking that the next pedicure is just around the corner, but the farmers are about to bring them back to reality with a vengeance.

It is day 24 and Jo is about to get her first taste of working with farmer Matt. Her first job is to separate some pregnant deer into mating groups, and it all starts to go pear-shaped when Jo finds herself in the wrong place when they panic. The first taste is enough to have Jo feeling extra relieved when the job is complete.

As Jo does battle with the deer, Kate, Lou and Lex are sampling the delights of sheep shearing at Presto’s farm, and learning the joys of crutching ewes, which means removing all the smelly dags that collects about a sheep’s hind-quarters! Physio Kate gets to be a rousie, while Lou and Lex put the ewes in the pens to await their intimate haircuts! The three girls think that they have it tough until Presto gives them an idea of just how hard the shearers go at it to crutch 1500 ewes.

Kristy’s job, by comparison, is an absolute ball as she assists Richard, the local vet, to examine each rams testicles for lumps, knocks or knicks. After testing over forty sets of testes, Kristy finds a ram with what Richard fears might be a nasty type of sheep VD called brucellosis. Kristy shaves a bit of the rams neck to enable a blood sample to be drawn, and this, sadly for the ram, proves positive. As this ailment is highly contagious, all the other rams have to be checked for infection, and this leads to a cull of twenty-five of them, a regrettable but completely necessary action to prevent further spread of the disease…well spotted Kristy!

At Matt’s place Jo believes that living through the stampede of the deer was the worst bit of the day over for her, but Matt guides her through the destroying of a sick sheep, a heart-wrenching thing for anyone, but especially so for a committed vegetarian like Jo…she nevertheless steels herself to the task in a way that leaves no doubt about this City Girls bravery.

Another hard choice confronts one of the other City Girls back at home-base, but this is not quite so life and death as some; Lou has finally had enough of what rural life is doing to her nails, and gets her pride and joys trimmed back to close cut, before the work does it for her…not a sacrifice that any City Girl would easily make!

At the crack of dawn Kristy has to help milk the cows, but she does it from on a slightly different tangent to everyone else…she insists on getting the look just right, no matter how long it might keep farmer Paul waiting around at the milk shed, but alls well that ends well… one can only hope that the dairy cows appreciated the effort!

For the first time today the City Girls have been let loose entirely on their ownsome…Presto needs some late lambs docked, and leaves them with a totally un-amused working dog called “Perks” to help. With Lex calling the shots the ewes and lambs are finally penned, and with a few frank exchanges of view-points the ewes are successfully separated from the lambs…this is beginning to run like a well-oiled machine…are these really the same city-slickers who got off the plane less than a month ago?!

At home Kate puts in some quality time with Wilbur the pig, as Jo, Kristy and Lex head off on a grocery-shopping expedition…they need to stock up well because a hunting and fishing weekend with a local young farmer Dave and some of his mates, is coming up. At the supermarket the tables are turned when the City Girls opt for spirulina, while farmer Dave can’t quite fathom why anyone would want to ingest “green goo”…you can take the Girl out of the City, but you will never fully take the City out of the Girl!

Lou is going to miss out on the fun, though, as she is heading back to the Big City to attend a wedding…it will be weird for her to revisit her life for just a little while…as the plane whisks her back to home ground the remaining four City Girls head for the Bush and the banks of the Mouhaka river.

The boys help them to get into the pioneering spirit of the weekend by allowing them to inflate the rafts! Three hours of rafting later and the group are well into the heart of the Kaweka ranges, where their accommodation awaits…it quite a relief (in more ways than one) to find that a dunny is included on site. The City Girls get dressed up to take on their next task, to catch some wild pork for dinner, with the help of Colin, an expert pig hunter.

After mostly sorting out their sleeping quarters, the Girls set off to do some damage to the local porkers, minus Jo, who is only to happy to give her vegetarian conscience a break from this effort…she can try and tame the tent from Hell until the hunters return. As things transpire the pigs elude the hunters, so plan B, home-grown meat, is put into effect, and by the firelight no-one is complaining in the least. By dawn’s early light the blokes are raring to get into the new day, but the first of the City Girls have yet to be persuaded out of their tents…once they do emerge the only way to kick-start their energy levels is via a healthy swig of spirulina; even Neil is game to give this Big City concoction a go, but then the locals produce the proper way to start the day in the Bush… a feed of bangers and bacon.

Next up the Girls try their luck at trout fishing, but it seems that the word has gotten out amongst the wildlife in the area, and the best technique in the world wont land the City Girls a fish this day. Not to worry, as everyone had a great time, and Town and Country have found a lot more common ground than either side had expected…a memorable and successful weekend for all.