Working on a dairy farm in New Zealand

Heading out on this long trip, I had booked nothing more than a couple of bus tickets to take me through Poland and a plane ticket from Warsaw to Almaty, Kazakhstan. I had no clue how far my savings would be able to take me. So, I planned for a break from travel halfway around the world and applied for a Working Holiday Visa in New Zealand. My hope was to earn enough money to carry me on to South America and a week ago, I bought my plane ticket to Argentina. Back in the beginning of February just after Danni and I went our separate ways, I began working on a dairy farm on the east coast of the South Island and this is where I have been for the past month and a half.

In the milking palor

Life here is simple but hard. I usually meet at 5 AM when the first milking of the day starts. If I am lucky, I meet in late at 6.30 AM. If I am unlucky, I have to go get the cows which means leaving my house at 4 AM and riding off on a motorcycle into pitch black darkness where I better know exactly which paddock the cows are in. We do not see the sun until we are about two hours into the milking. It does make quite an entrance though as the milking palor is faced straight east. It is also around this time someone brings our morning coffee in closed thermal cups that we hang on a wire far above our heads out of the splashing zone. When the milking is done, we have breakfast with even more coffee and conversation that often revolves around how European it is of me to have my coffee black and how South American it is of my colleagues to take more sugar than actual coffee in theirs and top it off with milk. I think I should mention that my colleagues are all either Argentinian, Chilean or Brazilian which means I get to break out my Spanish all day every day. During the rest of the morning, we do all the other things that need to get done on a dairy farm besides milking. Fencing, chopping down thistles, feeding the calves (which is pretty darn cute) or getting the newborn calves (which still breaks my heart every time). The lunch break of two hours is used for some much needed mid-day rest until the second and last milking of the day starts at 2 PM. We are usually done a little before 6 PM giving me the rest of the evening to shower, eat and head to bed early to get at least six hours of sleep before the whole thing repeats itself the next day.  

Feeding the calves

Now, this job is not all bad. The open horizon gives way for a lot of pretty, pink skies, my house is just a comfortable walk from the ocean and the company is great. My roommate is a man from Argentina. He prepares the mate while I make the pancakes. But, as I mentioned, this life is hard. My forearms, wrists and hands hurt when I lie in bed trying to sleep, my fingers are constantly swollen and having to get up that early in the mornings (or rather during the night) really is a demotivating life force. The hardest part for me though is not the physical toll on the body but the mental debilitation. The work is exceptionally humdrum and mind-numbing and despite my wonderful colleagues, life here gets uniform and lonely but most of all, I honestly feel bad about the work that I am doing. Milking is obviously a stressful and anxious experience for the cows and every time I help getting the newborn calves, I feel dirty and am on the verge of tears. The moms cry and scream as they stay clued to the trailer their calves where their calves have just been put. We can try to make the life and conditions of dairy cows as comfortable and considerate as possible but the foundation of this practice is cruel no matter what. 

Going to work after sleeping in late

Spotted a seal on one of my many ocean walks

My living room window puts on a great color show every evening

Working here has been a tough, thought-provoking, fun and unusual experience and I am grateful for the kindness and friendship of my colleagues who are wonderful, smart, hardworking, good people. Still, I look forward to leaving this place in a couple of weeks and go back home to la tierra colorada in Argentina before I finally go home to Denmark. 

My first and only lesson of riding a motorcycle. One of my bosses asked me how difficult I thought it was to ride it. "A little," I answered "but a lot of fun!"