Tia Woods - Teatuarui woods 2007. 2 Newzealand Auckland
                 
From Tia -

It was home .Life at home was basic, my parents being young had a lot to learn, and had huge responsibilities with us kids and the farm. It was a brand new start for my parents and at least they were happy and had eachother .My dad milked many cows with granddad, I remember how tiring dad was after milking cows twice a day and having to do other activites and work for the farm. Mum often helped on the farm, milking cows, feeding calves during the calving season which was the toughest time of the year. Farming kept the food on the table and kept money flowing for our family so no one could really complain. Waikato is the town of farming, New Zealand producing the best milk in the world. I remember as a child growing up, I was a true country girl, I loved the farm, the animals and summertime with dad on the motorbikes. As us kids got older we started working on the farm, but dad never wanted me and my sister to milk cows, he never encouraged it. However we fed calves with mum, hundreds of calves. Frosty, cold winter mornings on the farm was the worst, being so skinny I would always complain about being too cold, but mum always said eatuarui you have to be tough.? I sure dad tried to bulk me up with porridge and meats, but no luck there. When I was old enough I started Primary school when I turned five. I attended a little country school called Koromatua School. It was a very small school of about 100 kids, most of them either farm kids or Mormon kids. The school was close to where I lived so me and my older brother walked about 1km to catch the bus to school. School of what I remember was so much fun and there was a lot of freedom. We often got asked to join the Mormon church, but my parents were never interested in any religion of that sort. We often got a lot of missionaries and people from the Mormon church knocking at our door giving us bibles, magazines and always informing us about how good it would be to join the church. Mum got so fed up one day she just decided not to opened the door for them. When I was about seven, we moved up the road in my granddads house. It was defiantly bigger than the cottage, but I loved and missed the cottage terribly. I missed my granddad when he moved into town, he left his old grandpa scent behind, so I always had something to remember him by.(2)