New Year · First Gate

The first morning of the year smells like warm grass and a gate that has been waiting.

Spike sat at the timber latch with his ears pricked — black-and-tan, soft eye already on the paddock. Suzy arrived half a breath later, chocolate smoke-brown, already knowing which way the cattle would try to lean.

New year, said Spike, in the careful voice he uses after Puppy School thinking. Same farm. Same job. First gate first.

Suzy nodded. A year is big. A gate is one clean step. We start with the step we can do.

Canberra had already started a quiet line, because Canberra starts lines even when the calendar has turned. London queued behind her, pretending she had not heard that it was a special morning. Harare lifted her head at the same grass and, for once, did not chase a greener idea of it.

Little Thunder the bull — mahogany, bright orange curly poll — stood at the rails and did not announce. Apples could wait. Even a new year can begin without a speech, Spike murmured. Little Thunder blinked, calm.

Beijing waited one clean step from the trough. Tokyo’s dart-energy softened into a morning stretch. Moscow would not budge from her favourite shade until Suzy soft-eyed the space behind her. Paris would not be hurried — she finished the mouthful she meant to finish, then walked.

Denver took the high bit of the paddock under a summer sky. Nairobi chose the gate side. Manila stood the other side of the fence — still part of the farm, still counted. No new paddock plots. Just cattle settling for a first morning.

Spike walked the latch. Suzy sat in the gap that was actually a gap. The line had a place to finish. That is how you open a year on Mount Mee: not with noise. With a gate that opens clean, and kelpies who soft-eye the herd through it.

Chooks murmured at the coop edge. Sheep wool-warm in a huddle. Goats paused mid-curiosity. Quails did their leave-and-come-back and then stayed counted. Every animal was in the morning, Suzy said. First gate for all of us.

Spike shook dust off, pleased with how still he had been when stillness was the job. Suzy stayed in the gateway a moment longer — because that is where the next clean step would begin.

Happy new year the farm way, they told you. Put this story in your Farm Keeper folder. When you visit Mount Mee, you will know the first gate when you see it.

Same farm. First gate. One clean step.