You might have notice our blog hasn't been very active the last few months. I'm not trying to make excuses, I know I am lazy in digital world, but we have been kind of busy. Reed and I managed to find a job on a dairy farm. The dollar signs in our eyes must have been so large they blocked our ears during our initial interview. Some time after the weekly salary was discussed I vaguely remember our boss mentioning we might work up to 15 hours in a day. What he really meant to say is every day. 15 hours everyday for eight days in a row. We had to be in the paddock at 3:45am most morning to collect calves, if we were lucky our day would end around 7:30pm. But sometimes it was 8pm... Sometimes we got to sleep in to 4:30am. Man did I love those days... To be fair its not always like that, we just happen to start working at the beginning of calving season. As the season progressed things did begin to slow down and eventually we stopped picking up calves in the morning which meant we could all take turns getting the cows for milking which started at 4:30am. So only one person had to get up before 4am a day. By the end of the season milking even got faster and we would finish around 6:30pm. Now who could complain about that? And to be honest I got it pretty lucky, I got to take over the calf rearing job for the last four or five weeks we worked. It was a pretty cushy shift, I started at 6:30! Wooo hooo! I did feel pretty guilty, only working 12 hours while the guys still put in big days. But not that guilty...
We milked a little over 1000 cows twice a day. That is too many cows. Just too many. Milking itself took at least nine hours, then there is the daily farm maintenance and cow tending. Speaking of cows, did you know they are always plotting against us? Our boss told me that on my first day. I giggled. Fool. Now I know just how serious he was. Its like they know what you want them to do so they do the opposite. They spend all of their time looking for your mistakes, no matter how small, so they can exploit any opportunity to get into trouble. And they out number us. Dairy farming is war.
But it wasn't all bad. It was a pretty huge experience and I learned a lot. I did things I never thought I would do, lifted stuff I never thought I could lift, found out exactly how much abuse my mind and body can take, became way to comfortable with the smell and texture of placenta, I can reverse a trailer, I can keep up with the boys, I can drive a quad through mud wholes big enough to fit two carollas, I even learned to pray, "Jesus F***ing Christ" sometimes being the only words I'd hear my boss say for days.
The best thing to happen, by far, was Marsha. Our boss found her on the side of the road. She was so small and so cute and so not a cow. Marsha was my pet lamb. I agreed to try and raise her within nano seconds of the suggestion. Most lambs learn to walk minutes after being born. We don't know when she was born but she was on the farm for three days before she took her stumbly first steps. It wasn't for lack of trying, poor little girl tried so hard to stand! She just couldn't get those front feet into the right position resulting in a lot of awkward summer saults. Needless to say once she got it I beamingly show videos of her walking to strangers. Crazy Lamb Lady. My last week on the farm she followed me everywhere, running ahead even. I do miss Marsha. We almost took her with us... But she is now big enough to hang out in the paddock with the calves, she will be very happy there, if not a little confused about her identity.
We have left the farm, closed that chapter of our adventure, ready for the next.
