The Jones's experience their first calving on the farm.

This was a great day for all of us to catch up with calving time at the weekend, especially for Sophie & Chloe to see first hand what it was going to be like for them to get up close in the paddock with the mother giving birth.

It was a cold, wet, windy Saturday morning and we witnessed the mother giving birth and even got close up to the calf and tagged this one as a boby calf destined for the wagon in 4 days time.

Sophie & Chloe got up close and really enjoyed their big day they were fascinated by it all and were intrigued with the after birth also and inspected it with caution.

Sherren has stated in earnest calving and learning all the aspects of calf rearing, so she will be very busy over the next few months until at least November, all in all we have around 35 calves a day or night being born. Its good seeing her happy again I haven't seen that for a while especially since we returned to Auckland, so I am happy we have made the right move to Dannevirke and into a new career of farming this is us now we have finally found the lower end of the North Island fascinating to say the least. City life is too restricted and too fast pace of life boredom sets in and you have nothing to look forward too most of the time, at least here we are kept busy.

Farming in Dannevirke

These pictures are taken last week when we had a good dousing of snow on the Ruahine Ranges, the view is so stunning compared to what we have been used to waking up to in Auckland at Hobsonville. There is total peace and tranquillity compared to 5:00am morning wake up calls from Ritches Coaches going past the main road, here you only here the local Rooster as part of our wake up call. The total transformation from city dwelling to real country has changed us all for the better I'm sure.

Now into week 2 of farming and have spend more time dealing with calving we are now into the busy part of the year where we will have on average 35 calves being born daily, found my first still born this morning when I went to get the cows onto the pad for feeding. It was good to see first hand and try to find the mother that had slipped her calf as this was important to find as she would now go back to milking soon, as we are now dry we wouldn't be able to start the rotary to milk her.

So the emphasis would be to find her and foster her out to a full time milking farm who would look after her until we go back to milking properly in mid August time, then it was back to normal duties and feeding out on the pad for a few hours. Midday saw us all in seminar with a farming consultant giving us his knowledge of today's up to date farming practices which was good to find out. Then he gave us his experiences and a few tips of how to spot a cows well being and when a cow can come down with many illnesses like Mastitis, Bloat, Acidosis. All of these we would encounter some time soon either this milking season or next, so we had so much more to learn and we will develop are skill levels very rapidly over a short time period.

Family have adapted well considering there has been a considerable change to their lifestyle but have handled it so well, there is no time to get bored now, not like the big smoke in Auckland which was the same boring lifestyle day in day out. So many people going places with very little time for anybody to be totally honest.

Life here is very cheap to maintain, when you compare what we were spending in Auckland on a day to day basis, here there is no paying for firewood, milk, household rubbish is put in huge containers and dumped for free, rent is free, we don't have to travel to work so no petrol costs involved, so there is a saving overall we just have to work those figures out to confirm we are on top compared to Auckland.

A Week in the Life of Dannevirke

Well we finally arrived in Dannevirke on the Friday night with lots of unpacking to arrange and so little time to get organised before I started as a 2IC on the farm. It was a busy time for all trying to get the right boxes in the right places and making the house as comfortable as possible. By late Sunday it was finally looking like a home for us all to live in and we could start getting back to some sort of normality. The children enjoyed a trip to their new School to acquaint themselves with their surroundings and new friends.
My first week on the farm was a real eye opener to how hard farmers actually work and what varied work you have to do for a full week. Many aspects to farming that I actually didn't really know about, this week has taught to give them a respect in many ways. My working day involved ear tagging, feeding out, measuring pasture, fencing, marking out pasture breaks, mixing feed by the tonne, and moving cattle to various positions throughout the week.

So by the end of the first week my whole body ached and could not tell which part hurt the most from using most parts physically for 5 days non stop from 7am through to 5pm, most days there was severe gale force winds, snow blizzards, to horizontal rain. It couldn't of been a more varied week for weather patterns but taught a lot in a very short space of time.

This is going to be a long year for me in a new part of New Zealand where its not for the faint hearted to get into a career change at my age of life, but its what we as a family have decided to do together, it just means I have to put in the hard yards if we are going to be a success on the Farm.

Keep you all posted with my next chapter soon.