When they want to move to the country and get away from the smell and noise.
Stressed urbanites are fleeing New Zealand cities for the countryside, only to find they can't cope with the noise, schedule and smells of rural life, reports the New Zealand Herald.
New Zealanders have in recent years gone crazy for what they call "lifestyle blocking" (search), in which well-to-do people go back to the land and set themselves up as genteel part-time farmers.
But the long-established commercial farmers in the Franklin District (search) just south of Auckland, New Zealand's biggest city, find their new neighbors amusing at best, and sometimes downright annoying.
"There was a woman who [called] a farmer about being woken early," Franklin farmers' leader Wendy Clark recounted. "She had a responsible position in the city, she said. 'Couldn't you milk your cows a bit later?'"
Another commercial farmer couldn't find his cows one morning. It turned out the "lifestyler" next door had led them to a different enclosure so their smell wouldn't ruin the ambience at his barbecue.
"People on lifestyle blocks don't understand noise in the country," explained Franklin District Mayor Heather Maloney. "They cannot understand why someone should need to start a tractor at 5:30 in the morning."
Maloney said some "lifestylers" had asked for shallower roadside embankments, which wouldn't be as good as the current high ones at preventing flooding ? but which would make it so much easier to walk the dogs.
Other complaints have come in about stinky dairy sheds, drying onions and noisy bird-scaring devices.
The local government is trying to zone the area so that new "lifestyle blocks" are kept away from established commercial farms.
Topic: And I thought only we had this problem with City Slickers (Read 1130 times)