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Published: July 13th 2009
You might remember a while back I mentioned that I'd joined a scheme called WWOOFing - Willing Workers On Organic Farms. The scheme allows travellers to go and work on farms in exchange for food, accomodation and farming experience. I joined up and managed to find a nice sounding dairy farm on the West Coast of the South Island in a little village called Whataroa. The job description was ''Milking cows, shearing sheep, some horse riding and general farm chores'' I decided it sounded okay so I set off to give it a go.
When I arrived at the farm I met the family and the two other WWOOFers that were working there. There was Pete the farmer, his wife Sonia, their daughter Laura and a couple from the Czech Republic called Ivana & Joseph. First impressions of everyone were good. I was quite nervous on the way there and had visions of some terrible ''League Of Gentlemen'' setup but everyone seemed normal enough so we were off to a good start. Sonia showed me to my new home for the week which was a lovley granny flat above the garage shared with Ivana and Joseph. The first thing I
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Me, Sherry & Lauradid was go and meet Sunny the beautiful, chesnut horse that I would be looking after for the week. I spent the afternoon grooming and riding her and I really enjoyed myself. I thought I would be a bit rusty as It's been a few years since I last rode but it all just came back to me straight away.
The next day I started work on the farm. Pete's farm consists of 350 heffers, 7 calves, 7 bulls, a huge flock of sheep, 2 horses, 2 billy goats, tonnes of chickens, several sheepdogs and 2 farm cats. Most days followed the same routine. We would bring in the three heffers for milking, hand feed the calves, feed the horses & the billy goats and everyday we went out into the fields of heffers to move the electric fences to give them a little bit more grass each day. This is called grazing rotation and if the farmer didn't do it then within two days the cows would eat all the grass in the field and what they didn't eat they would just churn up and ruin with their hooves. To be honest this job was a bit of
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The chooks a pain at times. The cows were all charging at you as they were in the routine of seeing you and getting more food so they got a bit over excited and balshy. The other problem with the job was the amount of electric shocks you got off the fences. You just can't avoid them and for some reason every one I got made me a bit angry and one of the days I got so many that I could have actually had a full on tantrum. These jobs had to be done everyday and then other jobs on top of that as required. Some days fences or water troughs needed fixing and some days Pete would drive the tractor through the fields with a bale of silage and me and Ivana on the back and we would throw the silage all over the fields for the cows to eat. I liked that job and I liked driving around in the tractor and the 4x4. I really loved driving the 4x4 with KP the sheepdog in the back - I felt like a proper farmer! Ha Ha. I learnt lots of new skills on the farm but the main one
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Milking shed was milking cows. The main skill of the job is avoiding getting shit on, which is more difficult than you think as when the cows are in the milking shed you are directly behind and underneath them, basically in directly in the line of fire although I've heard it's good for your complexion. The cows are milked by a machine that is just like a vaccum with four suction pipes which go on each of the teats but Pete told me to hand milk each of the teats first to check the milk is a nice, blue colour and to bring the milk down into the udder so I started this while he went to turn all the machines on. I got a bit of a shock when I let go and the milk carried on coming out of one of them. I was really sure that you didn't have to ''turn them off'' but I did start to doubt myself and I gave it a bit of a waggle to get it to stop and it did thankfully!
I found that being an animal lover and working on a farm is hard work as the animals are not
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Milking machine seen or treated as pets. They are for making money by milking or shearing and failing that they are sold for meat. I couldn't help but be nice to them. I kept talking to them and stroking them and noticing all their individual characteristics and behaviour. This is a big mistake to make and when Sonia told Pete over dinner that we all had to go and kill two of the sheep for meat that week I ended up getting so upset that I nearly left the farm. The whole situation threw me into a massive moral dilemma. I felt that as a meat eater I had a duty to see it but I knew in my heart that I couldn't do it & that made me question if I should really be eating meat at all based on that. How could I refuse to watch Pete kill the sheep but then happily sit down at his kitchen table and eat them? It seemed morally wrong to me. I thought about it and thought about it and in the end I decided that if I did go ahead and watch it I'd be on a nut roast this Christmas &
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The farm cats so I had to find a good time to explain to Pete that I couldn't see it. In the end I was so distraught by the whole thing that I ran up to him and shouted ''Pete I am really sorry but I can't take part in the silencing of the lambs!'' & then I tried really hard not to cry for the twenty minuites while we talked about it. Pete was really lovley about it which made it even harder not to cry and he said it was just initial shock and that if he had thought about it as much as I had then he wouldn't be able to do it either. It all ended well with him promising not to kill anything whilst I was on the premises and me succeeding in not crying in front of him. The lesson that I learnt that day is that where the animals are concerned farmers have to be seriously hardened or they couldn't do their jobs. I don't know if I could switch myself off like that. Pete assured me that if I worked on the farm long enough it woúldn't bother me at all & I'm still trying
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Me in Sherrys library to decide if that's a good or bad thing.
One of the most enjoyable parts of my stay was spending time as part of the family and the community. The best thing about New Zealand for me is the way that people are so community spirited. I've experienced this at Katies in Auckland & Cath & Adams in Christchurch to. Everyone knows their neighbours and they help them when they can, they organise community events to raise money for local projects and another great aspect is the ''Pot Luck Dinners'' they have. At a ''Pot Luck Dinner'' everyone turns up at someones house with a dish they have made and they all share it and eat together. Pete & Sonia took me to a Pot Luck Dinner with some other farmers and their wives in Whataroa. The food was amazing, the wine was flowing & we watched rugby & then a Simon & Garfunkal DVD. I got talking to a farmer from down the road who also kept cattle & I was telling him how much I had loved feeding the calves & he told me all his calves fed off the heffers & wern't hand reared. When I
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Sherrys library asked him why that was he told me he was a beef farmer. Good thing I dídn't land on his farm then! I met some really nice people that night & I thought it was nice of Pete & Sonia to take us along with them.
During my stay I also went to the community quiz night to raise money for the kids local triathlon. To my great surprise I managed to get loads of the questions right! It must be all the travelling, reading and museum visiting or something but my general knowledge has definately improved. I don't want to blow my own trumpet but I rekon I could be bit of an asset to a pub quiz team now, which is always handy and a definate plus point of my travels. I just need to work on not getting too excited and shouting the answer out so that all the other teams then know it as well. I think that might just have been my shock at actually knowing the answers though.
I loved spending time with the family, especially Laura who was eleven & very mature and clever (most of the time) I took her
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Me & Laura baking - I look my Mum on this picture to school & to her after school sports, I baked cakes with her, played chess with her, did her homework and read books with her and we rode Sunny together almost everyday. Sunny was a bit naughty and Laura was scared of her so Peter wanted me to ride each day to tire her out and then watch over Laura riding and we had lots of fun together doing that. I also made another friend down the road called Sherry. Sherry is an Americal school principal who has built her own library on the side of her house. She is a very interesting character and she is very American. She keeps her own goats and makes her own cheese so I went round for a cup of tea and some cheese and crackers and we talked for hours. Meals with the family were nice. Everyone sat at the table and most of the food was grown on the farm. The evening meals were superb but lunch was kind of whatever was left over from the previous evening made into a soup?! I'm not sure if anyone was a fan of the soups but I certainly wasn't and Ivana & Joseph
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Billy goats gruff always referred to them as "Sonias Special Cuisine" and I suspect they wern't keen either.
On the last day of my stay I packed up my rucksack in the morning & helped Sonia round the house. It was Lauras last day of term and she had asked if I would go and watch her in the school play. As I'd been packing that morning I realised with some suprise that I had actually managed to avoid any embarrasing incidents which was quite unusual. I had been sure beforehand that I was bound to either skid in cow poo or trip up and headbutt a cows arse or something equally ridiculous but I'd managed to avoid it so far. Then the inevitable happened and this time it was a corker.
The school hall where the play was being held had a big, elevated stage at the front but the children wern't using it - they were just at the front of the hall. About half way through I decided to nip to the loo and went through the door next to the big stage marked ''ladies'' Behind the door was a set of stairs to the left and another
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Me milking door to the right. I opted for the steps and mid show I wandered out onto the elevated stage in search of the toilets! I looked at the audience, said ''whoops'' and then shot off the stage and sat at the back of the hall cringing with embarassment. Very funny now but definately not at the time! After the show Sonia gave me a lift down to Franz Joseph where I am currently staying & we said our goodbyes. All in all it was an excellent experience that I won't forget. It was certainly an eye opener into the variety of life on a farm and I'd recommend that WWOOFing scheme to anyone that wants to get farming experience. I would like to do more of it in the future myself too.
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Mum
non-member comment
Best blog yet!
Oh Rach I think this is your best yet. I loved Sherry's library and the pics of you on the horse with the fabulous background are really great. You made it sound so interesting and funny. You look a bit cold in these pics. Love and miss you! Mum