Gatherings

A few weekends ago our team met – for the first time – in person. For months, we’ve gotten a glimpse into the window of home offices and loungerooms, pyjamas and uglies over Zoom – and then you’re face to face and it’s like catching up with an old friend.

We converged on the Rangitīkei for a team weekend to have some honest, heartfelt conversations about what Shepherdess is, what we want it to be and what we can make happen in 2023. We have some big ideas! How exciting it is when you pool everyone’s strengths: provincial Aotearoa is your oyster. It was also about the laughs and comraderies. Exactly like the comradery we hope these pages, and The Shepherdess Muster in February, bring you.

We will be gathering for a weekend at Motu village – 80 kilometres northwest of Gisborne – in the Motu school grounds (with its roll of seven kids) and the neighbouring farmer’s paddock. For a weekend of stand-up comedy and burlesque – both watching and joining – for anyone brave enough to perform their own routine. Gathering to learn new art forms, support local women-led businesses at their market stalls, connect with entrepreneurs, and dine on good food the entire weekend. Gathering to put all those things you don’t often talk about on the table: sex and intimacy, career development, health. A festival with the spirit of a retreat.

Back when I started Shepherdess two and a half years ago, I didn’t quite know how to pull it off – after all, a weekend of art, burlesque, and frank discussions about grief or intimacy isn’t a regular entry in the rural Aotearoa social calendar. When Shepherdess started to grow legs, I thought, “F--- it, we will!” Women in rural Aotearoa need a weekend for themselves. Where they don’t have to be known as the farmer or the calf rearer or the business owner or the mother.

So that’s The Shepherdess Muster. The first, we hope, of many annual events, with the North Island getting the first dibs. We hope you will join us, tell a friend or even gift a ticket to someone in your whānau you know deserves a retreat.

Shepherdess also recently took out Highly Commended for Best Magazine and Best Editor at the Webstar Magazine Media Awards 2022 in the consumer special interest, current affairs and business category. So thank you! Because without you, Shepherdess wouldn’t exist.