Wairiri Buffalo farm - Days 2 & 3

Friday 13th Oct

First morning waking up on ththe farm, wow this place is quite stunning! I woke up quite early despite having quite a broken sleep; there were so many weird and unusual noises in and outside the dairy Shed (in which I was sleeping in an upstairs converted office/bedroom). Anyway I woke up early and went into the house to have breakfast and grab a coffee before getting to work. 

My host Lucy has a friend staying over, who was also up early, so the pair of us decided to go for a brisk walk before everyone else got up. We were away for about an hour and by the time we got back the rest of the house had risen (apart from Christo, Lucy’s husband, who had left for work about 6am!)

  

I then quickly got to work with my main task this week: cleaning the Dairy Shed! This was going to b a mammoth job, not only because its quite big, but their farm hand Jackie had been on holiday for two weeks so it had gotten slightly out of hand and mucky! Although the buffalo are only in for a couple of hours every evening at the moment - just for milking then back out again - they can make a surprising amount of mess! Haha pooper scooping, scraping, hosing, and repeat! I did this for about three hours and barely made a mark, I stopped for lunch and continued with sommy water-blasting in the afternoon.

  

About 3:30 I stopped for the day, and Chloe, the youngest daughter who is 13, took me for a walk around their land and through a native Forrest. A great wee walk, scrambling through trees, over logs, through creeks, over fences and back down through a field where we hoped there were no buffalo! Haha 

  

The buffalo were down near the Dairy Shed, possibly knowing that it was near milking time.

 

We had a lovely dinner as a family and I decided to go to bed earlyish about 8:30 as I was pretty knackered after my first day back to work!

This is the view from the house over to my accommodation and the dairy Shed (my room is in the top left of this building. That cat -Chicken - is quickly becoming s good wee companion, but it may be cause I feed her now hsha  Altogether a very nice first day at my new WWOOFing place. 

  

Saturday 14th

Mostly the same today. I was given more morning tasks: now each day I feed th chickens and collect the eggs, feed the horses their morning hay, feed the buffalo calves their hay (and occasionally also pellets in the morning however this will be mostly done at night.). I will also be taking Chloe to the school bus on some mornings and collecting her most afternoons as the bus doesn’t come as far out as we are.  WWOOFing hours are usually just 4 hours a day and although I think this will probably be more than that I am careful to take my time in between tasks. Getting things done as quickly as possible yet also making sure to have wee breaks in between. After morning feeding I had a buffalo milk latte (YUM!) and I think this should become a regular occursnce! 

Christo was away at the market and the girls were off skiing so I made myself some fried eggs on toast! 💜 Look how deliciously organic these eggs look!

It was back to the water blasting then until lunch time. It’s hard on the back/shoulders but also so satisfying! I got another quarter done today as well as cleaning up all the muck from last night 😅

I stopped and rested for about an hour then helped make dinner. Lucy gave me the recipe and ingredients for this new dish, a tube and cheese loaf! Oh MY was it GOOD!!! 

We watched a film - Collateral Beauty with Will Smith - then all headed to bed! Long days work!