Saturday, October 10, 2009
Eee-Eye-Eee-I-Oh
We spent the last two weeks having a True Kiwi Experience: living and working on a dairy farm in Southland. We stayed with Helen and Michael and their two children, Ania (11) and Paul (6). Their dairy farm consists of 280 cows that are milked twice daily, as well as 80 calves that are fed twice daily, spread over their 130 ha property.
In exchange for a room of our own (complete with a fireplace and ensuite bathroom with heated flooring and a spa bath) as well as all our meals, we helped out with the cooking, kept the kitchen tidy, and watched the kids once in a while, as well as various farm jobs. Within an hour of arriving we were suited up in our coveralls and gumboots and headed out for the afternoon milking. Michael’s cowshed was built last year, so it’s all state-of-the-art (herringbone design, for people who speak Dairy). The process of milking the cows involves 36 of them lining up on each side of a three-feet-deep milking pit where we stand. Hanging above the pit are the cups that we manually attach to the teats, starting the automatic suction of milk, and that automatically detach when the milking is complete, allowing us to attach them to the cows waiting on the other side of the pit. The cows that just finished milking will file out and 36 new cows will file in, and the process repeats until all 280 cows have been milked. If all runs smoothly it takes approximately 3 hours to finish the milking and clean-up of the shed.
Keep in mind, being three feet below a large dairy cow puts you about eye-level with a not-so-pleasant/dangerous area of the cow. Dodging shit and piss (excuse our French, but this is real farming terminology) keeps you on your toes, especially since cows use these bodily functions as weapons. Another weapon in their arsenal is their powerful anti-suction-cup ninja back kick, which is known to bruise many-a forearm or hand. Sometimes, to prevent a repeat offender, their back leg would be tied to the railing to allow a smoother, injury-free milking session. Unfortunately there is no way to prevent them crapping on you as retaliation.
A job we preferred was to feed the 80 calves who lived in a separate barn, ranging in age from a day old to a couple of weeks old. These calves were split up between 5 pens depending on their age. They are fed from small milking troughs that have 5 artificial teats. This means each pen needs to be split into smaller groups of 5 – 10 during feeding. The reason for the smaller groups is that calves are naughty, and the quick drinkers will head butt their neighbours to try and steal their milk. Since they are still babies, they are fun and rambunctious. Their way of getting our attention is to head butt us in the leg, groin, bum, knees – wherever their head is aimed. The easiest way of satisfying their attention-craving-nature is to let them suck on as many of our (gloved) fingers as they can fit in their mouth. Since they only have bottom teeth, they cannot bite us or hurt us by doing this – unless they head butt our fingers into a milking trough. Watch the video below to see what we mean.
Our favourite pen was the newborns, which need to be taught how to feed. This involves straddling their neck and feeding them with a bottle until they can handle feeding independently from a trough. These little ones were the least naughty but liked to play the most. We each named our favourite calf out of the entire group: Craig’s was Ernst Ochre (tag #75) and Andrea’s was QT (tag #67). QT was Andrea’s favourite because it was very little and calm. Turns out it was so calm because it was dying. Upon arriving to a morning feed, Andrea found QT had moved on the Calf Heaven. The good news is, dead calves are worth $3, so Michael and Helen can buy two litres of petrol in QT’s memory.
Other random jobs we did were to tag (or ear-pierce) the older calves before helping load them onto a tractor to move them to a new paddock to begin their outdoor life. Andrea was in charge of loading the brass tag into the piercing tool, while Craig was in charge of catching the number Andrea loaded, holding it still by straddling its neck, and then piercing each ear. Trust us, this sounds much easier than it actually is. Riding in a pen on the back of a tractor with 15 calves on an unsealed back road surrounded by neighbouring sheep farms was truly a moment to savour and remember what an authentic experience we were having.
Overall, our farm stay has been the most interesting experience yet in New Zealand. Experiencing first-hand how hard farmers work has made us appreciate where our milk comes from, although we will not be looking into any career changes into farming! We will be keeping in touch with the family, and who knows – we may be able to reciprocate their hospitality by providing them with a Real Canadian City Experience one day!
In exchange for a room of our own (complete with a fireplace and ensuite bathroom with heated flooring and a spa bath) as well as all our meals, we helped out with the cooking, kept the kitchen tidy, and watched the kids once in a while, as well as various farm jobs. Within an hour of arriving we were suited up in our coveralls and gumboots and headed out for the afternoon milking. Michael’s cowshed was built last year, so it’s all state-of-the-art (herringbone design, for people who speak Dairy). The process of milking the cows involves 36 of them lining up on each side of a three-feet-deep milking pit where we stand. Hanging above the pit are the cups that we manually attach to the teats, starting the automatic suction of milk, and that automatically detach when the milking is complete, allowing us to attach them to the cows waiting on the other side of the pit. The cows that just finished milking will file out and 36 new cows will file in, and the process repeats until all 280 cows have been milked. If all runs smoothly it takes approximately 3 hours to finish the milking and clean-up of the shed.
Keep in mind, being three feet below a large dairy cow puts you about eye-level with a not-so-pleasant/dangerous area of the cow. Dodging shit and piss (excuse our French, but this is real farming terminology) keeps you on your toes, especially since cows use these bodily functions as weapons. Another weapon in their arsenal is their powerful anti-suction-cup ninja back kick, which is known to bruise many-a forearm or hand. Sometimes, to prevent a repeat offender, their back leg would be tied to the railing to allow a smoother, injury-free milking session. Unfortunately there is no way to prevent them crapping on you as retaliation.
A job we preferred was to feed the 80 calves who lived in a separate barn, ranging in age from a day old to a couple of weeks old. These calves were split up between 5 pens depending on their age. They are fed from small milking troughs that have 5 artificial teats. This means each pen needs to be split into smaller groups of 5 – 10 during feeding. The reason for the smaller groups is that calves are naughty, and the quick drinkers will head butt their neighbours to try and steal their milk. Since they are still babies, they are fun and rambunctious. Their way of getting our attention is to head butt us in the leg, groin, bum, knees – wherever their head is aimed. The easiest way of satisfying their attention-craving-nature is to let them suck on as many of our (gloved) fingers as they can fit in their mouth. Since they only have bottom teeth, they cannot bite us or hurt us by doing this – unless they head butt our fingers into a milking trough. Watch the video below to see what we mean.
Our favourite pen was the newborns, which need to be taught how to feed. This involves straddling their neck and feeding them with a bottle until they can handle feeding independently from a trough. These little ones were the least naughty but liked to play the most. We each named our favourite calf out of the entire group: Craig’s was Ernst Ochre (tag #75) and Andrea’s was QT (tag #67). QT was Andrea’s favourite because it was very little and calm. Turns out it was so calm because it was dying. Upon arriving to a morning feed, Andrea found QT had moved on the Calf Heaven. The good news is, dead calves are worth $3, so Michael and Helen can buy two litres of petrol in QT’s memory.
Other random jobs we did were to tag (or ear-pierce) the older calves before helping load them onto a tractor to move them to a new paddock to begin their outdoor life. Andrea was in charge of loading the brass tag into the piercing tool, while Craig was in charge of catching the number Andrea loaded, holding it still by straddling its neck, and then piercing each ear. Trust us, this sounds much easier than it actually is. Riding in a pen on the back of a tractor with 15 calves on an unsealed back road surrounded by neighbouring sheep farms was truly a moment to savour and remember what an authentic experience we were having.
Overall, our farm stay has been the most interesting experience yet in New Zealand. Experiencing first-hand how hard farmers work has made us appreciate where our milk comes from, although we will not be looking into any career changes into farming! We will be keeping in touch with the family, and who knows – we may be able to reciprocate their hospitality by providing them with a Real Canadian City Experience one day!
Friday, September 25, 2009
Milka Teat
In the past few weeks we have entered into the world of “freedom camping” here in New Zealand. This is essentially just finding a park or rest stop without a “NO CAMPING” sign and setting up for the night. It’s great, because it’s free. We hadn’t done much since it was bloody cold at night in the past, and we (Andrea) wanted to pay for a camp site with power to run the heater.
We’ve been able to find some pretty amazing sites with better views than at most camp grounds. We’ve spent a few nights on those beautiful blue lakes we’ve been writing about. Craig even dared a swim in one on a warm day, but lasted under water only long enough for a picture since his limbs began to go numb with cold almost immediately.
For the last week or so we’ve been staying at the beautiful Invercargill Top 10 Holiday Park, run by Diane and Phillip. We’ve been doing a few hours of gardening or cleaning each day in exchange for a free place to stay and a few yummy home-cooked meals. They even put us up in one of their hotel-room-like units for the past two nights, so it’s almost seemed like a vacation away from our vacation... just with more weeding.
Today we begin our next adventure: we are going to live with a family on a dairy farm in the Catlins Forest area for a few weeks. We joined a group called Farm Help in New Zealand, which hooks you up with farmers and the like for whom you can work a few hours a day, in exchange for accommodation and meals. We have no idea what we will be doing, but we are confident it will be a great experience!
We’ve been able to find some pretty amazing sites with better views than at most camp grounds. We’ve spent a few nights on those beautiful blue lakes we’ve been writing about. Craig even dared a swim in one on a warm day, but lasted under water only long enough for a picture since his limbs began to go numb with cold almost immediately.
For the last week or so we’ve been staying at the beautiful Invercargill Top 10 Holiday Park, run by Diane and Phillip. We’ve been doing a few hours of gardening or cleaning each day in exchange for a free place to stay and a few yummy home-cooked meals. They even put us up in one of their hotel-room-like units for the past two nights, so it’s almost seemed like a vacation away from our vacation... just with more weeding.
Today we begin our next adventure: we are going to live with a family on a dairy farm in the Catlins Forest area for a few weeks. We joined a group called Farm Help in New Zealand, which hooks you up with farmers and the like for whom you can work a few hours a day, in exchange for accommodation and meals. We have no idea what we will be doing, but we are confident it will be a great experience!
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Mountains of Fun
From Invercargill, where the lamb bottle-feeding took place, we began to head north up the west coast. We are now in the Southern Alps, which means more breaktaking snow-capped mountains and glacier-fed blue lakes than you can shake a stick at.
Just outside of a tiny town called Clifden we ventured into a network of underground limestone caves, with our hikers, a torch (aka flashlight), and fairly low expectations of how good free caves could be. Well, were we surprised! The caves took over half an hour to navigate, and involved tight squeezes, spider walking across underground streams, and even glowworms. At the end we discovered a tiny lamb that had wandered into the caves, so we carried it out and it became attached to us. Andrea wanted to keep it, but Craig convinced her that the van would probably not be the ideal location to raise a lamb.
Next we spent three days relaxing in Te Anau where our campsite had wonderful views of Lake Te Anau, which is New Zealand’s second-largest lake and is part of Fiordland National Park. Unfortunately the weather was rainy and we were both sick, but it was the perfect place to recharge our batteries. Apparently you still get sick while on a year-long vacation.
From there we headed to Queenstown, New Zealand’s adventure capital. The town itself reminded us a bit of Whistler, and we only stayed one night, since everything was very touristy and overpriced. If we end up wanting to do a bungee jump or anything else EXTREME we will do it when Craig’s parents are here in a few months. That night we went out with a fun Scottish couple who were camped next to us and we watched the All Blacks (NZ’s rugby team) lose to South Africa. The night ended in a tiny Whisky Bar where we traded travel stories in front of a fire and played hacky sack with the British bartender who was so impressed with Craig’s “stellar ‘chops” that he bought Craig a beer.
Now we are in Wanaka, once again at a lakeside campsite and surrounded by snow-capped mountains. Yesterday we did a five and a half hour hike to the top of Roy’s Peak, which at 1578m is the highest tramp we’ve done here. Although it completely kicked our butts, we were rewarded with panoramic mountain range views at the top. You just don’t have these views in Southern Ontario!
Today we went to Puzzling World, where we went into the Illusion Rooms and were amazed by holograms and puzzled by rooms that were at an angle or played with our sense of perception. We also navigated our way through a giant 3-D, two-story, kilometre and a half maze that took close to an hour. It was a-MAZE-ing!
Just outside of a tiny town called Clifden we ventured into a network of underground limestone caves, with our hikers, a torch (aka flashlight), and fairly low expectations of how good free caves could be. Well, were we surprised! The caves took over half an hour to navigate, and involved tight squeezes, spider walking across underground streams, and even glowworms. At the end we discovered a tiny lamb that had wandered into the caves, so we carried it out and it became attached to us. Andrea wanted to keep it, but Craig convinced her that the van would probably not be the ideal location to raise a lamb.
Next we spent three days relaxing in Te Anau where our campsite had wonderful views of Lake Te Anau, which is New Zealand’s second-largest lake and is part of Fiordland National Park. Unfortunately the weather was rainy and we were both sick, but it was the perfect place to recharge our batteries. Apparently you still get sick while on a year-long vacation.
From there we headed to Queenstown, New Zealand’s adventure capital. The town itself reminded us a bit of Whistler, and we only stayed one night, since everything was very touristy and overpriced. If we end up wanting to do a bungee jump or anything else EXTREME we will do it when Craig’s parents are here in a few months. That night we went out with a fun Scottish couple who were camped next to us and we watched the All Blacks (NZ’s rugby team) lose to South Africa. The night ended in a tiny Whisky Bar where we traded travel stories in front of a fire and played hacky sack with the British bartender who was so impressed with Craig’s “stellar ‘chops” that he bought Craig a beer.
Now we are in Wanaka, once again at a lakeside campsite and surrounded by snow-capped mountains. Yesterday we did a five and a half hour hike to the top of Roy’s Peak, which at 1578m is the highest tramp we’ve done here. Although it completely kicked our butts, we were rewarded with panoramic mountain range views at the top. You just don’t have these views in Southern Ontario!
Today we went to Puzzling World, where we went into the Illusion Rooms and were amazed by holograms and puzzled by rooms that were at an angle or played with our sense of perception. We also navigated our way through a giant 3-D, two-story, kilometre and a half maze that took close to an hour. It was a-MAZE-ing!
Monday, September 7, 2009
I Love Lamb
We arrived on the south island on August 27, and proceeded down the east coast towards Dunedin. We did the 900 km journey over two days, arriving the next afternoon, which luckily was a Friday. Andrea was able to catch up with Branden over a few beers on their deck overlooking the Dunedin harbour with the ocean in the background. That night we went out with Branden, his wife Ana, and a group of their friends to catch some live Kiwi music. We saw Sola Rosa put on a fantastic show, and recommend any Canadians looking to sample some Kiwi music to check them out – their newest video is on YouTube, “Turn Around”.
Branden and Ana were gracious enough to let us stay in their spare bedroom for a week, to take a break from campervan life. We explored Dunedin, including the University of Otago campus, the many gorgeous old buildings in the downtown area, and Baldwin Street, the world’s steepest residential street.
After a week in Dunedin, we once again heard the call of the road. On Saturday we returned to campervan life and headed further south to the Catlins area. The Catlins are an area rich with forests, waterfalls, scenic reserves, and tons of wildlife, along the southeastern tip of the south island. We were incredibly lucky yesterday to catch a rare glimpse of a couple of yellow-eyed penguins in the wild. After two hours of waiting in the cold on a rocky beach, we were rewarded with two penguins returning from the sea to their breeding grounds. They hung out by us for almost half an hour, coming within 5 metres of where we were, allowing Craig some great photo opportunities. What also made this encounter so unique was that this was not a tourist attraction where you have to pay – it was just a beach, with us and four other people and our cameras. Seeing wild penguins so close was Andrea’s dream come true.
We are now continuing west along the southern tip, again without any destination. The caravan park we are staying at has sheep, lambs, and a goat. The owners have adopted an orphaned one-week-old lamb, who Andrea was lucky enough to be able to bottle feed tonight. This was Andrea’s second dream come true, and within 24 hours of seeing penguins!
Branden and Ana were gracious enough to let us stay in their spare bedroom for a week, to take a break from campervan life. We explored Dunedin, including the University of Otago campus, the many gorgeous old buildings in the downtown area, and Baldwin Street, the world’s steepest residential street.
After a week in Dunedin, we once again heard the call of the road. On Saturday we returned to campervan life and headed further south to the Catlins area. The Catlins are an area rich with forests, waterfalls, scenic reserves, and tons of wildlife, along the southeastern tip of the south island. We were incredibly lucky yesterday to catch a rare glimpse of a couple of yellow-eyed penguins in the wild. After two hours of waiting in the cold on a rocky beach, we were rewarded with two penguins returning from the sea to their breeding grounds. They hung out by us for almost half an hour, coming within 5 metres of where we were, allowing Craig some great photo opportunities. What also made this encounter so unique was that this was not a tourist attraction where you have to pay – it was just a beach, with us and four other people and our cameras. Seeing wild penguins so close was Andrea’s dream come true.
We are now continuing west along the southern tip, again without any destination. The caravan park we are staying at has sheep, lambs, and a goat. The owners have adopted an orphaned one-week-old lamb, who Andrea was lucky enough to be able to bottle feed tonight. This was Andrea’s second dream come true, and within 24 hours of seeing penguins!
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