Working on a dairy is tough. We just finished our second day
of work and are completely exhausted. Yesterday, Blake and I spent the morning
ripping heavy duty nails out of fence posts so a new fence could be put up, all
through a rain/wind storm. The afternoon consisted of power washing the house
for me and doing more fencing for Blake. Today was more power washing and
mowing for me and herding calves for Blake. Although the work is hard and the
weather is cold, there’s something really rewarding about putting in a full day
of HARD work. We are learning lot’s about the dairy in the process and making a
bit of money to help fund our adventure, so the work is definitely worth it.
Blake has basically given up his vegetarian diet for now. Living on the dairy
means lots of animal product, so meals have consisted of a lot of red meat, but
Colleen’s cooking sure is tasty. Another perk is being able to walk 400 meters
to the tank every morning and get some fresh milk to have for breakfast.
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| Mt.Taranaki |
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| My work attire |
Backtrack to this past weekend: We spent a very rainy and
cold Saturday by visiting the town of Hawera, about 30 minutes south of where
we are staying. They have a really cool museum with tons of handmade model
figures depicting the regional history of the area, along with old farming
tools and tractors. (This area is big in dairy and wheat farms) We spent a good
two hours there, but New Zealand seems to be against insulating their buildings
and leaving the doors open to the cold. In other words, I was freezing, so we
left and got hot chocolates nearby. As much as we love having the car to go
explore the gas (petrol) prices are crazy. We thought gas at home was
expensive, but it’s about double the price here!
Sunday, the skies seemed to clear up, so we thought we would
head to nearby Mt. Taranaki to do some hiking in Egmont National Park. We were
greeted by a very friendly woman at the visitor center who suggested a good
four hour hike for us to do that would have great views. Unfortunately, right
when we started our hike, the mountain got completely socked in by fog, so we
could only see a few feet ahead of us at times. As we got higher up the
mountain it even started snowing on us. Even though we couldn’t see much of the
scenery, the hike was still a lot of fun. About halfway through, we came to a
very narrow suspension bridge. I’m not even that scared of heights, but I was
gripping the railings for my life and looking straight ahead. Blake is pretty
afraid of heights, so he powered across it before his mind knew what he was
doing. Just as we finished the hike and thought our luck of viewing the
mountain was gone, the clouds cleared away and we were blessed with the most
amazing view of the mountain from a view tower. Blake is mad it’s covered in
snow, because he wants to climb it so badly. Sunday night the neighboring dairy
farmers came to the house for an ethnically diverse steak dinner. We had the
Americans (us), Kiwis (Colleen and her kids), English (Mike), Scottish (George, who lives and works
on the farm), Welsh (owns the dairy farm next door), and French (temporarily
working next door), making for some very interesting conversation.
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| Crossing the suspension bridge |
The internet connection here is terrible (think how fast your internet connection was in the early 2000s) so communication has been tough. Hopefully the pictures work this time though. Time for bed! On the docket tomorrow is a farm tour,
painting, and probably more fencing.
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| After our hike at Egmont National Park |
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| Gigantic cow milking machine |
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