Julie Paton: If it weren't for your moonboot...

Broken bones make farm work interesting and hockey impossible.

It's tempting just to copy and paste last month's column, because here it is May and it's still warm and muggy, the confused trees are still fully clad in leaves and plagues of flies are still tormenting us and the cows.

Although it hasn't rained, it has been vaguely tropical and the grass has carried on growing.

But even if the weather hasn't changed, farm life ticks along. The autumn cows have finished calving, the spring cows are on holiday.

The most trying issue we've dealt with is the saga of Bruce's foot. He's enjoyed playing in the same team as our eldest son Jack - now that Jack is Year 9 he's eligible to play men's hockey. Bruce has waited for this day for years, and was loving every moment of it until, three weeks into the season, disaster struck.

One of Bruce's teammates whacked the ball towards him and Bruce made the mistake of trying to jump over it. If he hadn't moved, it would have just hit him in the shin and maybe given him a bruise.

But his jump put his foot directly in line with the ball and it took the full force.

He hobbled off and rested, iced, compressed and elevated his little heart out but to no avail - the next day saw him limping off to A&E (he had to drive himself, as I was away and our learner driver was with me).

They X-rayed it, told him he had broken a couple of little bones and there wasn't much to be done.

A week later during a rare night off, as he hobbled around in immense pain for an hour in central Auckland, he was convinced the damage was greater than estimated.

He lurched off to radiology, where further pictures showed a bigger broken bone, and he arrived home proudly wearing his very own moonboot.

Now that the moonboot has put in a couple of weeks service around the farm, it's probably just as well they gave it to him to keep, because nobody else would want to put it on. He wraps it in plastic bags, but I still have to scrub it clean for his rare town visits.

So his hockey career is on ice at the moment and he has to grit his teeth and look on from the sideline.

I thought he might be out for the rest of the season, but now think sheer determination will seem him back on the field within a month.

Just as well because if he's not running around a hockey pitch he might put on a little too much condition before calving starts.

Farm pup Pippa is one who could afford to pile on a few kilos. She's a very smart dog and is quickly picking up all the tricks of the trade - though she's still reluctant to tackle bulls.

The other day at the runoff she was a good 10 metres away from a group of bulls when one of them snorted. She turned tail and ran, all Bruce saw was the tip of her tail disappearing over the hill behind him.

She's still a bit daft around motorbikes too - she likes to sit on the front and enjoy the view and the wind in her hair but she's fallen into the trap of trying to anticipate Bruce's next move (I could have told her that was a bad idea).

The other day he slowed for a corner and she decided he was stopping and began to jump off, just as he accelerated.

She tried desperately to pull herself back but it was too late, she was committed. She looked back at him despairingly as she fell and then cartwheeled along the verge.

Then yesterday, distracted by a delicious smell in the race, she forgot the motorbike was approaching, suddenly realised it was coming down the race before her but, instead of stepping out of the way, in her panicked confusion, stepped backwards right into its path.

Luckily she is OK. Despite all her accidents and injuries, she's always up for a trip around the farm - I envy her that boundless energy.