#21 - Goodbye New Zealand, we’ll miss your cows!
Jules and his ladies
This week, we have continued to assist Simon in his daily work with his herd of 250 cows and we have helped to prepare the arrival of the 250 calves coming soon: the first one was born last night! Unfortunately, we won’t be here to help Simon and Liz during the calving period - the hardest month of the year for a breeder.
Liz and Simon, with whom we have worked over the past two weeks, do not correspond at all to the image we have of a farmer couple. Liz is an architect during the week and Simon graduated in marketing and IT, they are both thirty. But in 2008, when Simon entered the job market during the economic crisis, he soon realized that taking back the business operated by his family for generations would be a safer decision until the context embellishes. Of course, after six years on the farm, he does not consider a return to the office work: having his own schedule, being his own boss and organizing his work as he wants, that's what he likes here.
Far from the –erroneous– cliché of what can be a farmer, Simon looks a lot like us: he informs himself reading Vice on the internet and watches every episode of Games of Thrones.
Last weekend, Simon and Liz left for a four-day weekend, leaving us alone to manage the farm and the herd (almost) independently. What we did not know was that this stay on the South Island was long planned by Simon who proposed to Liz on the top a snowy mountain, Te Wai Pounamu on the northern island of New Zealand.
And she said ... yes!
This absence was an opportunity for us to understand the heavy responsibilities involved in managing a herd. A field of several hectares may sound great to someone living in a city, but 250 animals of three hundred kilograms each eat very quickly anything they find. Every twelve hours maximum we must change their location. The operation takes an hour each time, not including the time to devote to sometimes injured animals: blocked hip, damaged hooves ... In addition to commuting, you have to take the herd to the feed paddock every morning and once again the operation takes a full hour, first to prepare the food with the tractor and then to guide the cows. But you already know all this thanks to our video from last week!
We also continued a long term work, started by Simon six years ago and never stopped since then: cleaning the farm of all that previous operators may have left in the fields (rusty fence ends and / or barbed wire, sheet metal part, electric cables...) Indeed, if the farm has long belonged to the family of Simon, it was for years exploited by agricultural contractors. Thanks to a local contract called ‘Share Milker’, the benefits are distributed 50-50 between the owner of the farm that brings the material and the operator who owns the cows. Concretely, this large cleaning task took us a lot of time, going through each field in order to remove anything that might hurt the herd.
Beautiful fields once they are clean!
However, as calving begins soon, we spent much of the week preparing for the arrival of this army of calves. Liz and Simon were very clear with us: when there is one calf it is cute, but when twenty of them were born in a night, the perception of them is very, very different. During each meal this week, Simon helped himself twice, explaining that he must make stocks to face the marathon of work lying ahead. Gluttony or real necessity, we unfortunately do not stay long enough to be sure…
If this month is complicated to handle for the couple, it is that it requires organization: Liz even helps three hours every evening, when returning from her work in the city! Indeed, every morning and every night calves must be separated from their mothers and gathered in a stable to teach them quickly how to eat. Then you have to constantly change the distribution of cows between those that have not yet calved, those that have given birth within four days, and the ones that gave birth over four days.
Such mother, such daughter
"Why this concept of four days? " we hear you say in front of your computer screen, thousands of kilometers away from us.
We also did not know about it, but in the four days following the birth of her calf, a heifer produces milk called colostrum, which composition is specific and which cannot be marketed with the 'normal' milk because it does not meet the same quality criteria. Yellowish, it is very rich in protein and antibodies but extremely low in sugar. During this short period, the cows are milked, but their milk is not going in the general tank, it will be given to dogs or discarded.
Imagine, then, that twice a day all three herds of cows have to be moved from one place to another, and it is then necessary to identify and move some cows and not others. And with the extremely gregarious behavior of these animals, any selection of a single individual is a mission that requires real expertise. During this " longest month of the year", all the feeding manipulations must be repeated three times instead of one. It would be too easy otherwise!
In short, if the schedule had allowed us to, we would have liked to give a hand for the next two weeks, to see that traders are not the only ones working all night long, and to make a few extra hours under the light of New Zealand’s moon.
Simon also took us practicing a basic Kiwi farmer’s hobby: possum hunting. These small marsupials, big as large rabbits, brought into the country for their fur have no predators and do considerable damage to the flora and fauna of the islands. Their hunting is encouraged (even by Greenpeace) and practiced at night, armed with a rifle and a powerful lamp to spot their yellow eyes that reflect light from the treetops. Their fur is then sold to make clothes while their meat will delight Mojo, Buddy and Roxy, the three dogs from the farm.
Final score at the end of hunting night: Humans: 13 - Possums: 0.
Just a regular night in New-Zealand
Finally, and as always this year, we continued to eat well. As we explained in a previous article, the Kiwis are fans of meat "home-killed". It is with pleasure that we often had in the evening to open a carton of several kilos of meat labeled "T-Bone Steaks 2014", coming from a cow who lived here and was shot on the farm.
When leaving the farm this morning, we realized that it was the first time we were going out of it. For eighteen days, we have been happy with this life isolated from everything, without feeling any urgent need for a return to the urban world. Some physical work outdoors, a book and three companions: what more do we need?
After 153 days of adventures and farming, halfway through our year of discovery of the agricultural world, we decided to take two weeks on our own in Southeast Asia to enjoy summer vacation, and see separately our friend that we miss. But do not worry, we’ll come back with an article in three weeks from Burma.
And we can already tell you that the program looks strong!
We’ll be back in three weeks for more adventures!