Posts

Showing posts from February, 2016

NZ: Woofing on a dairy farm part two

Image
Sorry for the silence again!!! I have been living out of my car for the past week and a bit and have had no wifi or power....but a nice Egyptian man has lent me his dongle (that sounds rude) I'm very glad I wrote the blog post when I did as it may have turned out very different if I'd waited a few more days.   We cut woofing a week short as it became unbearable.  Whilst the owners were away, we had a really lovely time with Wayne and Nick the farm hand.  We got on with stuff without interference and worry of repercussions of doing it wrong, and had a generally good chilled out time.  Wayne even gave us the morning off and we went to the A and P (we still don't know what that stands for) show in Reefton,  which was basically a small country fair with a variety of competitions like wood chopping, sheep shearing and my favourite - miniature horses!!!! They were amazing and like someone had shrunk a big horse, they were nothing like the miniature ponies I've seen in th

NZ: Woofing on a dairy farm

Image
Sorry for the extended period of silence!!! I haven't really had the opportunity to blog on the farm but today it's raining and I am not milking until the afternoon and Mum is nagging me so thought I'd do a wee update. So I will pick up from where I left off.... John drove me back to Greymouth, we said our goodbyes and parted ways.  I drove along state highway 7 to my farm in Mawherati, where I arrived just in time to jump straight in with the afternoon milking session. At first I was pretty flumoxxed by it - there's lots to remember, from the way you attach the cups to the udders, to the codes sprayed on each cow's udder to let you know whether to milk it or not, or which udder to avoid milking.  Me and Toria (the other girl who's woofing with me) eventually got the hang of it.  Essentially the process is: 1) you go out on quad bikes to the paddock the cows are in, round them up and herd them into the milking shed 2) you then have to get about 20