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.