This Economist book review on the threatened mustang makes me want to be up in the Wairarapa on my weekend land.

My parents used the chance of seeing wild horses (and tanks) to keep me and my brothers and sisters focussed outside the car and off the back seat fighting and feeling sick as we crossed the unsealed Desert Road to Lake Taupo.

The few times we saw the horses were enough to keep us kids straining for another sight, for what must have been precious minutes of peace, every time we did that trip.

So when the Kaimanawa Horse Trust asked me to keep a few on our land in the Wairarapa last year I was delighted to have space for them. A dozen arrived at the beginning of the drought. They’ve become accustomed to our movements tending the beehives. We can get to within 20m before a family group thunders a couple of hundred metres away to settle down again.

I’m not sure how long we’ll have them.  I don’t want to have to deal with the ecological dilemmas of a wild herd expansion in the regenerating large paddock they’re in.

Still I’m looking forward to having the time to enjoy the couple of young horses we’ll be keeping long term.