New Zealand – Page 6 – stories from a drifter

The Alternate Universe

July 23, 2015October 2, 2022 driftermanguyLeave a comment

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep, clang, clang, clang.

Uh oh.

As I down shifted into fourth gear to stop at the tollbooth outside Tauranga, the engine stalled out. This wasn’t one of the regular stalls I had become accustomed to on frosty mornings. The temperature gauge had been slowly rising and I had been looking for a place to stop since I entered the motorway seven minutes ago.

I roll up to the tollbooth with the engine silent and a trail of smoke following me. I hand over a two-dollar coin and try to turn the engine over. Crung, crung, crung. The poor old lady in the tool booth shuts her window to escape the smoke and jumps in the adjacent booth. I realize this isn’t going to end well.

I scoot out, get down real low, and push my van through the boom gates with one hand on the steering wheel. Once I have some momentum I hop into the driver’s seat try to start it again using the old trick from Little Miss Sunshine. It’s not happening. But suddenly my van lurches forward.

“Steer to the side,” I hear from behind me. A young tradesman wearing a high vis jersey magically appears to give me a push.

Strangely enough the only thing that brought me to Tauranga is my AA membership that is now my saving grace. If you buy any 28-year-old vehicle it’s probably smart to sign up for a service that provides free roadside assistance, tows to the nearest workshop and a free eye exam at an optometry chain with the nearest location conveniently located 45 minutes away from where I’m staying. I was on my last set of contact lenses and my prescription had expired so I decided to take advantage of the latter. An eye exam turned into an excuse to take a day off of work on the farm to drive over the Kaimai ranges to see the coast and the short-but-sweet Mount Maunganui.

The breathtaking beach below the mountain.

It was a great day until I started to drive back to Matamata. Now I find myself on the side of the road by a tollbooth on the phone with the Automobile Association. Raj is on the scene 20 minutes later. He takes a look at the engine.

It’s hot,” he says in a thick Indian accent.

He instructs me to start up the engine with some revs. He wants to check the radiator cap but we would have to wait until it cools down.

“I recommend you don’t drive this vehicle. It might be a couple hundred dollars to fix it now, but if you keep driving you can blow the head gasket.”

I don’t know much about cars but I know when to trust people who know more than me. He says if I chose to drive it home, then the AA won’t be liable to help me if it dies.

I take a seat in his van loaded with Hindu relics and car batteries while he calls the office.

“Hello Lisa, how are you, love?” he says smoothly with a big smile. Raj hooks me up with a tow back to Tauranga and I search for a hostel in town on his oversized Samsung smartphone.

I wait in the New Zealand winter. Eventually a tow truck backs up to my van and out jumps a burly Kiwi man.

“Howzit?” he says in a deep, cheerful voice.

“Not too good right now,” I explain what happened.

He bends down to connect the winch and his short shorts stretch to reveal the majority of his ass crack. When the van is loaded he looks around and doesn’t see anyone here to pick me.

“Where do you go from here?”

“I’m gonna stay the night at a hostel down the road from the AA workshop.”

“Then I guess you’re riding with me,” he says. “Do you have fleas, lice, mites, bedbugs or any communicable diseases I should know about?”

“No.”

“Neither do I, hop in.”

He drives like a maniac. He powers through a wide roundabout that I would normally negotiate in second gear in my van. His CB radio buzzes.

YO CUZZIEEEE,” he yells to his work mate.

I hear a gargled response.

“Roger Roger, Churrrrr Brotha. Catchya.”

I can’t help smiling. I forget about my car trouble and just enjoy the situation I’ve somehow found myself in.

We quickly arrive at the shop, which I am surprised to find is still open at 8:20 in the evening. The mechanic drives my precious off the tow truck and into the shop. It still runs, but there’s no way it would make it over the steep climb through the Kaimai’s. He tells me I’m second in line for tomorrow morning so it shouldn’t be too long.

I walk a couple of blocks down the main drag of Tauranga to the quaint Loft 109 hostel. There’s a friendly English couple making dinner in the kitchen and two guys playing cards and drinking a half empty bottle of whiskey in the living room. I remember seeing them on top of the mountain earlier, and hearing American accents. The older of the two gave me a very strange, familiar feeling, like I’ve met him before. But I’m on the other side of the world in a small coastal town in a tiny hostel and quickly forget about the crazy notion.

I check in, find my room — there’s only six — and walk across the street to grab a lamb kebab with garlic yoghurt sauce. I return and take a seat at the dinner table with my new friends.

“Where are you from?” the older American, Will, asks.

“[REDACTED].” He looks shocked.

“What part?”

“[REDACTED].” The shock grows.

“We’re from [REDACTED].” Opposite sides of [REDACTED].

We talk about where exactly we are from and how crazy it is that we all ended up here. Me with my eye exam and broken down van. Them on a short holiday around the North Island. Will and I are the same age and graduated university the same year. He asks me to tell my story.

“After I graduated I worked on Terry McAuliffe’s campaign for Governor.”

His jaw drops. I realize where that strange feeling came from when I first saw him on the mountain.

“Region two,” explaining what part of the state I worked, knowing he was there too.

I fucking worked on Terry McAuliffe’s campaign!” he yells across the table.

“Get the fuck out of here! I was a DFO for [REDACTED] in [REDACTED],” I say in this strange encounter.

“I was a fucking DFO in [REDACTED]!” That’s just down the road.

After we get over how insane it is that we, two Deputy Field Organizer’s for Terry McAuliffe’s campaign two years ago, met at the Loft 109 hostel in Tauranga, New Zealand, I mention that I’ve been out of the American media loop for 13 months. They fill me in on a few major issues and then me their story.

The younger brother, Chris, just finished a study and work abroad program in Sydney. Before taking the long flight back to the states, Will decided to meet his brother in New Zealand and tramp around for a brief twelve days. I think how only an American would travel across the world for that short of a holiday. That’s probably his entire year’s worth of leave.

After the McAuliffe campaign he scored a job for Martin O’Malley, Governor of Maryland. Last year, O’Malley was replaced by a Republican, but Will stayed on the staff and fell in love with this new, real fiscal conservative. Most Republicans in America are social issue zealots but this guy actually knows what is best for his people and focuses on the economy. Then he delivers the zinger, the Governor was diagnosed with stage four terminal cancer and has around eight months left.

I suddenly realize the extent of news, culture, movies, TV shows, commercials and advertisements I’ve missed out on. How many “Jake from State Farm” and “IDK my BFF Jill” jokes have been programmed into the minds of every American in the past year? It’s going to seem like a foreign country by the time I return.

I regale the American brothers and the English couple of my experiences on the cow farm. How the payout for milk solids is at a six year low and most farmers won’t make any money this year. How cows are fucking idiots. How annoying is it to change the rubber wear on the milking cups. How frustrating it is trying to get the calves to drink milk.

Will tells me I’m the first genuine traveler he’s met on his trip.

I’m glad my car broke down. If I safely made it back to the farmhouse in Matamata, I would probably smoke weed and play Minecraft before going to sleep. In this alternate universe where Clifford, my big red van, got a bit too hot and forced me back to Tauranga, I had a much more interesting night. I met Raj, the extremely helpful AA roadside assistant, Gazza, the exuberant tow truck driver with the ass crack, Shannon and Ben, the kind English couple eating roasted chicken, potatoes and frozen veggies, Chris, the young Michigan University frat boy who came from Sydney, and his older brother Will, my long lost field organizing comrade.

Rian

July 16, 2015August 5, 2015 driftermanguy1 Comment

I met him the second night I worked on Digger’s farm. He drives up in his tray back ute, well-used mud tires and a beer in his hand.

“How ya’ goin’?” He says through his nose.

He says his name and sticks out his hand and when I go to shake it I notice he is missing half of his index finger. I expect him to be a blind drunk bogan but when we start talking around the bonfire I take note that I should never trust a first impression.

Rian is 26, divorced, splitting custody of a seven-year-old son and two-year-old daughter, which explains the mini 4-wheeler in the garage, child car seat and pink rain coat hanging on the wall. He is the owner of a 450-cow dairy farm and a 5-bedroom home with stunning views of overlapping gumdrop shaped grassy knolls. This is about a 3-minute drive to the Hobbiton movie set. Peter Jackson flew over Rian’s farm and thought, yeah, let’s make a movie here.

He’s of Dutch descent made apparent by his wild blonde hair, piercing blue eyes and thick well-kempt beard. But his accent is true kiwi. He wears the same outfit everyday. Mud stained blue overalls tucked into gumboots with a red flannel shirt barely visible underneath a wool sweater perpetually covered in what appears to be sawdust.

Digger used to work for Rian so he stops by the farm to check in whenever he goes into town. They are talking in Farmese so I’m listening but I don’t have much to contribute. He tells Digger he needs to put urea on his front paddocks.

“Why’s that?” Perfect question to ask a farmer who knows and loves his trade.

“Well,” he takes a drag from his Pall Mall held in his just-long-enough stub of an index finger. “The grass is a bit yellow and you never want that especially with the paddocks by the road. They need extra nitrogen…” He goes on and I understand a few words here and there.

Rian is every journalist’s dream. Give him a simple question about farming and he returns with a concise scientific explanation and somehow manages to sneak in life lessons. He mentions nonchalantly that most dairy farms in New Zealand aren’t going to turn a profit this year. Just last night the outlook for New Zealand milk dropped another 10 percent. Banks are foreclosing on the “sloppy farmers” who are in debt and can’t turn a profit.

As he’s leaving he tells me I’m coming to his farm this afternoon to milk cows.

“You’ve never milked a cow, right?” He asks. “OK, then you’re coming. And I’m not paying you.”

I grab my raincoat and jump in his truck. Once we start driving, I ask him to elaborate on why dairy farms aren’t going to make any money.

The last few summers have brought terrible droughts and the EU has recently decided not to sell produce and dairy to Russia, there’s similar conflict with China, and New Zealand has morals so they are sticking with Europe, meaning high supply and low demand.

“Don’t you get stressed out knowing you aren’t going to make any money this year?” I ask.

“It’s like the weather,” he says as we drive through a patch of rain and fog.

Sometimes it rains, sometimes it’s sunny. There’s no use in stressing about it.”

He explains how farmers are used to this routine. You live most of your life poor and in debt but you die rich. You pass on your land, wealth and assets to your children.

“If you buy 100 hectares and just sit on it for 50 years, you will make money. Milking is just a way to pay the mortgage, pay my staff, pay for maintenance. It’s about a 5% profit margin.”

Farmers make money other ways. Buying and selling stock is where most of Rian’s cash flow comes from. He has a reliable worker, Chad, living on the house on the farm and a young jumped up worker, Jack (“He thinks he is God’s gift to farming”), living with him at his house next door. With good staff, he has a lot of freedom to plan his day how he wants.

“All I have to do everyday is feed my animals and milk my cows,” Rian says. “Beyond that, I can do whatever I want.”

He says you have to do find ways to keep busy. He constantly makes improvements on his land to increase the value. He points to his shed. It costs him about $25,000 to build it and install electricity, lighting. Down the line it will be worth $30,0000.

“Some guys make 50 grand a year and have a great time but at the end of the year, they have nothing to show for it.”

For someone as young as 26, this guy really has his shit figured out. Rian is a long-term thinker. A year can bring profit or loss. It doesn’t matter. He says if you work hard everyday, everything will be fine.

I tell him on my first day on Digger’s farm I asked him, looking around at the green fields and Kaimai ranges in the distance, “Do you ever stop and realize how awesome your life is?”

“I’m living the dream,” Rian says. “When you’re a kid you play with toy tractors and trucks. That’s what I do.”

Moving

July 13, 2015August 5, 2015 driftermanguy1 Comment

I’ve decided that furniture moving is the perfect job for someone in a new country. Sit in a van for two hours with a couple of laid back locals and shoot the shit while seeing the countryside. Then move heavy shit from a house or storage unit into the 50 cubic meter van.

The first day was the hardest. I wasn’t used to lifting heavy stuff. I didn’t know the lingo. I didn’t know what to do. After five days I feel like a pro. Couches, chairs first, base on the bottom, stackables in the middle, top stow thrown in the gaps. Heavy armoire? Forty-five it. We don’t need to communicate. Grip, lift, up, down. Easy.

The busiest day so far was 12.5 hours. Start off the morning with a cross-town move in Matamata. Then drive two hours to Taupo, a beautiful lakeside town on a gentle slope with two snow capped mountain ranges on the other side of the dark blue water, to unload two small jobs from yesterday. Then drive an hour and a half to Rotorua — a Maori town smelling of sulfur surrounded by volcanic walks and thermal pools — to load a huge storage unit with two kayaks, three fridges, beds, lounge suites, pool table and a concrete kiwi we have been told to take great care of.

I can’t stop thinking about stuff. Everyone has so much stuff. Boxes and boxes. I came here with two bags with enough clothing and stuff for a year. I’m years away from having this much stuff and owning a house. People I know from high school are getting married, having kids, buying houses and here I am in New Zealand moving a cheerful 80-year-old widow into an old folks community.

Even these houses don’t have central heating. I’m starting to believe it simply does not exist here. Kiwis rely on fireplaces, portable oil heaters and electric blankets. After three mornings with a thick frost on the grass they talk on the radio about raising children in homes without adequate insulation. Apparently 11 degrees Celsius in a house is too cold. I bought an electric blanket to cope with living in an old farmhouse with no insulation and sub zero temperatures at night. It’s hard to get out of a toasty bed, or rather the foam mattress from my van, when you wake up and can see your breath.

One of the movers, Nick, tall and athletic with blonde dreadlocks, asked me if I think they have accents.

“Of course.”

That’s trippy, man.”

This led to an hour or so of reciprocating questions about America, New Zealand, accents, traveling and life.

I talk about the Kiwi accent. They change letters. “I” sounds like “U.” Fush and chups. “E” sounds like “I.” Pen becomes pin. Shed becomes shid.

“Hey man you wanna give me a hand with that bed, sorry, bid, over there?” I ask.

“It sounds weird when you say it right,” Nick replies.

He asks me to tell him some American curse words.

“God damn fuckin’ shit,” I say with a twang.

We love cunt,” he says.

It’s true. Everyone, everything is a cunt. If something is annoying it is cunty. It’s such a beautiful, multipurpose word.

Then there’s Kelton, or Kel, fifty years old next month and spent the past seven years in the furniture moving game. He deals with his male pattern balding by shaving his head to a “Skullet.” He’s a daily weed smoker and his missus walked out on him three years ago. His son works at KFC because he didn’t like McDonalds and he is reluctantly taking the management course but he doesn’t want more responsibility.

Kel hasn’t had a holiday in three years so some of his friends living on one of the tiny coral islands near Samoa booked him a flight to force him to visit. He had to apply for a passport. Forty-nine years and he’s never left home. He’s been on a place once for his mother’s funeral.

It’s interesting seeing how people live their lives in different parts of the world. There are always people like Kel. Work everyday, there’s never enough money, pay check to pay check, no money for a holiday, gotta pay the mortgage, gotta pay alimony, gotta save for my son to give him a better life.

It’s a simple job but it is fulfilling. The clients are always different. Some are overbearing and annoying, eager to look into the boxes in the storage unit they haven’t seen in 17 years while all you want to do it pick it up and put it in the van. Some are welcoming. My accent gives me away. The gumboot and fleece clad bloke can tell I’m not from here. I tell him I’m traveling, living on a dairy farm and doing this job for extra cash. How many cows on the farm? Two hundred and thirty. Ahh, pretty cruisey, eh? He says he works on an organic dairy farm and gives each of us a block of handmade cheddar cheese.

I’ve had a chance to see what ordinary people are like. I see their old homes, their new homes, all of their belongings. If you are a tourist taking a two-week tour around New Zealand, you will never see this part of the country.

Jump On

July 13, 2015August 5, 2015 driftermanguyLeave a comment

It was getting darker by the minute and the Milky Way was almost visible. I just finished leveling out the just-add-water cement I poured over the eroded drainage area under the milk vat in the pump room. I thought it was about time to call it a night.

“Jump on, we have some fencing to do,” Digger says with desperation as he pulls up the two-wheeler, leaving it in neutral.

He runs to his truck and speeds toward the lane. I whip the Chinese knock off around and ride down the bumpy track to the paddock where the cows are supposed to be.

One-hundred-and-forty-two cows had broken down a fence and stampeded into the next paddock full of delicious, untouched grass. They ruined the farmer’s night and gorged on fresh grass. Mission accomplished.

Earlier in the day the bored inmates dug up the hose leading to the water trough in their paddock. A cow can drink up to 60 liters a day so they freak out as soon as their water stops refilling. Digger screwed the hose back together and got the water flowing again.

“That will be disconnected by the morning.”

Just as he walked away to check the trough a cow steps up from the gang, puts her hoof right on the hose and looks me dead in the eye. She takes a step forward and releases the contents of her bowels, a nice dark liquid, all over the hose he just fixed. She makes it clear who is boss.

This all could have been prevented. The hoses are usually underground but Digger had decided to save time by covering this one with sand. The kind of mistake you would expect from a 21-year-old contract milker who has had a total of 43 days of experience running his own farm.

I’m still learning everyday, man.”

A few hours later they had broken it again and their water trough was not refilling. Panic among the ranks. What to we do? I’m thirsty. I don’t like this one bit. My mouth is dry. Should we go somewhere else? That paddock over there looks good. Lets break out of here! What? Riot? Riot!!! RIOT!!!! WOOOOO FUCK YEAH!!! I assume that’s how they talk to each other.

There was a mudslide forming from the hose streaming water into the paddock. The cows take advantage of this by running down the small hill, easily barreling through the wire fence and making thick muck that sucks my gumboots down like quick sand.

We arrive on the scene and point the headlights on the post where they broke through. The top row is still intact but the bottom two wires have been ripped off clean. It’s amazing how much damage a meddling mob of cows can do to a fence.

Digger grabs the chain tensioner and crimps the top wire back together. I walk down the fence line to untangle and prepare the other two wires for repair.

We make quick work of the busted fence, but the cows are on the wrong side. Digger takes the two-wheeler and makes sweeping passes across the back of the mob to try to herd them through the gate. My job is to park the truck in a way to convince them to make a hairpin turn up the hill into their paddock and not straight through the gate down the lane.

I’m leaning against the Jurassic Park-esque 1990 Suzuki Sierra listening to Cat Stevens and enjoying the stars while Digger is honking the squeaky, high-pitched horn and yelling at the beasts.

“Here we go, girls,” he starts out politely.

“Come on, ladies,” Honk Honk.

“I appreciate how much effort you are putting into not going into your paddock.”

“… What are you bitches after? …. Sluts…. Cunts… I’ve seen the devil… HAARRR,” I make out bits and pieces of the frustrated incomprehensible Kiwi babble.

I don’t care how much you weigh, I will fuck you up. You want 70 kilos of me up your arsehole?”

I hear the cows slowly walking toward me in the pitch black. They are like zombies but they don’t care about brains they just want that sweet green grass. I see big black blobs move closer and hear them ripping and tearing bunches from the earth. They are reluctant to leave this bounty behind for their old feces-covered field.

A couple of cows meander through the gate and I feel like a guard from Orange is the New Black.

“Keep moving, ladies. Up the hill.”

“What are you looking at? Are you eye fucking me? Eyeballs on the ground, inmate. That’s right.”

Digger rides up to me. I thought he might be giving up.

“Move the truck back a few meters. They won’t go up if you are right there,” he says with little patience.

I had the jeep positioned to stop them from running down the lane but I was too enthusiastic and parked way too close to their exit.

“They look for any excuse not to go where you want them to go,” he tells me.

A minute later the group mentality kicks in and they rush through the gate. They make a wide sweeping turn up the hill. I stand back to give them plenty of room and make some guttural noises to keep them in line and to let them know they can’t escape the tyranny of the farmer. There is no escape.

A lone Jersey girl remains and Digger tells her what’s on his mind.

“One hundred and forty one cows made it into that paddock what the fuck is wrong with you?”

She makes her way toward the gate but gets trapped in the corner instead. He chases after her into the darkness and I hear a sharp ripple through the wire fence.

“If you break that fence I will fucking kill you,” he yells as she jumps over, giving up on the gate.

When everything is sorted out, we get back to the house and I ask if there is ever a day when everything goes according to plan?

Fuck no,” Digger shoots back.

This is life on the farm. An easy night can become a crisis at any time. It’s common sense and problem solving, improvisation and anticipation. It doesn’t feel like work. Work is getting up in the morning and driving to “work” and doing some sort of activity that may or may not make you feel like a useless blood sack and then knocking off and leaving “work.” Farming is a lifestyle. You live here and you can never really knock off. You are an inmate too, just like the cows.

I’ve Found Something

July 1, 2015August 5, 2015 driftermanguy1 Comment

I can’t get the smell of cow piss and shit off my hands.

I worked on a 230-cow dairy farm for the first time today. It is about 5 minutes from the Hobbiton movie set and fuck me if it isn’t one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. Rolling green hills sit next to the Kaimai ranges with long white clouds above which part only for a minute to reveal golden sunshine that blankets the fields. Light rain falls intermittently but I am too covered in cow excrement to care. I keep looking for sneaky barefooted Hobbitses but I haven’t found any yet.

I met the farmer last night. Digger, 21, works the entire farm by himself for most of the year besides calving and milking season which starts in about two weeks. What a badass life. He said his budget is really tight, so he won’t be able to pay me much but I don’t mind. I have been applying for WWOOFing. It stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, or Willing Workers on Organic Farms, where volunteers work on a farm for 4-6 hours a day in exchange for food and accommodation. I just want to get on a farm so I’ll pretty much do anything at this point.

I’m not sure where I found this urge to learn farming. I was about halfway through my working holiday in Australia when I realized I didn’t want to go back to the states. Americans only have working holiday agreements with 5 countries — Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, South Korea and Singapore — so the next logical step was to go to New Zealand. Only a three hour flight from Australia and they have many cultural similarities. I was growing tired of pulling beers, waiting tables and pretending to be nice to people so I knew I wanted to try something new. Where Australia has grown rich from its mineral exports, New Zealand is an agrarian country so I figured that would be the best place to find a job.

A quick vocabulary lesson:

Paddock: A sectioned off field. Cows are moved from paddock to paddock on the farm depending on how much grass has grown and which spot is most convenient for the farmer.
Heifers: Young female cows that haven’t had their first calf yet. They are crazy cunts and they aren’t comfortable being in the milking shed.
Yard: The concrete area where the cows are pushed into where they congregate and shit and piss on each other before they are ready to be pushed into the milking shed.
Milking Shed: This farm has a herringbone layout which means there is a pit about a meter deep with two rows of cows on either side. The milker stands in the pit to put the milking suction cups on the utters on the cows that have their asses right in your face on either side so you are in a constant danger of being covered in projectile liquid shit and high powered piss.

Lane: The bumpy road that connects the paddocks to the yard. Once you open a gate of a paddock, the cows will slowly but surely follow each other down the road. At first a walk, then a slow trot then sometimes a full on stampede.
Draft: Separating and sorting the cows that are calving soon from those that aren’t.
Gumboots: The almost-knee-high waterproof rubber boots worn by most farmers.

After one day on a farm, I’m in love. It’s even better than I expected. I helped Digger draft his cows today. He picked me up in his mud and shit covered 1990 4WD Sierra jeep and took me to his farm. We went straight to the paddock with his heifers. The two-wheeler farm bike was parked next to it. First task of the day was teaching the greenhorn how to ride. Digger basically just told me how to change gears and where the clutch, gas and breaks are.

“Awright, give it a go.”

I didn’t really look where I was going as I was too focused on trying to go forward. I nearly took out an electrified wire fence which was about 10 meters in front of me but I was able to stop the bike and not fall off. A miracle. There’s something special about riding an offroad bike around a muddy farm in New Zealand. Probably one of the most badass things I’ve ever done. After I got a hang of the bike, we had to make sure the gates in the yard and milking shed were opened and closed accordingly before the cows are let into the lane.

My job was to drive the bike up the end of the lane and make sure the cows go into the yard while Digger took up the rear with his truck. The only experience I’ve had with cows by this point in my 24 years is doing solo day hikes around Ireland and coming face to face with gangs of cows that gave me pretty fearsome stare downs. Honestly, I was kind of terrified of them. And now I have over 100 cows running straight for me and I’m supposed to tell them where to go and the only other person on the farm is on the other side of these cows. I see them start to run toward me and I’m trying desperately to pull the motorbike out of the way but it fell over and now I have to pick it up and damn it is heavy and here they come now.

They see me and they stop dead in their tracks. I have no idea what I’m doing. I clap. I yell. I bend at the knees and pat my hands on my thighs like I’m beckoning a dog. I do the third-base-coach-turn-into-home motion but they don’t play baseball. I start walking and skipping up to the yard. Eventually the cows get the idea and they run up into the yard. Except for about 10 stragglers.

I thought I was the king of the cows but they all of the sudden they all turn around and stampede back down the lane and now I bet Digger thinks I’m the worst farmhand ever because I can’t keep the cows in one place but then he drives up and honks his horn and they come back. Phew. These are heifers, Digger explains, so they have never been in the milking shed before so be careful, they are unpredictable. It’s a constant struggle but he manages to get the first lot into their neat little rows with all their asses hanging off the railing and all their piss and shit flops down into the pit right where I’m supposed to stand and pull the shit covered lever which opens the gate to let through a few cows at a time so Digger has time to sort out the ones he has spray painted which means they have big utters which means they will drop their little baby cows soon and they want to all run out at the same time so it’s difficult to close the gate but Digger says you just have to shut it real quick right in front of their big dumb heads and that will scare them and they will jump back and he was right.

We get one mob through and then Digger has to get in the yard and push them all forward. I’m standing in front of the milking shed and Digger tells me to stand off to the side so that I don’t scare them because they don’t like Americans. One of the cows gets spooked and shoves her head through the gate and manages to fit her whole body through and she bends the lever that brings it up and down. That cow is a fucking gay slut cunt because Digger just fixed that gate two days ago and now he has to fix it again. Now the gate is broken so all the cows run through and I’m told to let them go because they might break something else. Fucking heifers.

Next we bring in the old veterans. I take the truck and he takes the bike and we drive down and open up the gate and let them walk up to the yard. I take up the rear and by the time the last cow is in the yard the rest are all ready neatly lined up in the cow shed. These old ladies know this game. They listen to the guy who has been feeding them and milking them and taking care of them.

After all the cows have been drafted and are happy and in their appropriate paddocks it’s time to hose down the yard. I can’t believe how much water is used to clear out the extreme amount of delicious pies and soups the cows left for us. And during milking season this is done twice a day. What a terrible waste of water. Oh well this is how it’s done. I’m a greenhorn so I shouldn’t question anything.

We’ve been working for about 5 hours now and since I’m not really getting paid it’s time to go for a feed. We get a big bucket of KFC and then Digger says he will buy me a new pair of Gumboots to cover my wages for the day and I think that sounds great because I actually had a lot of fun today and I learned a lot. I don’t want to leave. I want to live on the farm. I want to walk outside and be among the cows and shit and piss and hills and clean air. But he can’t pay me until milking starts because the farm owner is a tight ass even though he is a millionaire who own this dairy farm, a goat farm, a farm supply store in town and a bunch of other shit.

Today was more fulfilling and satisfying than any day I have ever worked in a god damn office job. Answering emails and attending office meetings is the most depressing thing I’ve ever done compared to moving two groups of cows through a milking shed and sorting them and chasing cows on a farm bike and nearly falling face first into a bit slippery pile of muddy shit. This is what I want to do and if you told me that two years ago when I was a little kid graduating from James Madison University I would tell you to go get fucked.