01/02/2016 Meningie, Yes, the farm has us back

Yes, the farm has us back!

Today we arrived around noon, 15 km west of Meningie (150 km south of Adelaide), and met Brad and Karen.

Brad and Karen are the owners of the farm and they were very nice! Karen is from Sweden and she introduced herself to us saying 'My name is Karen', which was very funny. Otherwise, it seemed that we already got the job. The only 'problem', which is actually not a big problem, is that Brad and Karen were originally looking for only one person (which we already knew), but they don't mind hiring a second person.

The job was advertised for the person to milk the cows once a day and then work on the farm in general when there is no milking. Brad said we just have to see how everything goes. During the first week, we will have to participate in each milking for orientation, which means we have to start at 3 am every day...

During the first few days, we started at 4 am and milked and cleaned until around 7:30 am, then had breakfast for an hour, and then started working on the farm at 8:30 am (feeding calves, feeding cows, and whatever else needs to be done). We had a break at around 12:30 pm to also get some sleep, and then had to start again at 3 pm and milk and clean until around 7:30 pm.

Sometimes we had to start earlier (2:30 am) and then until Thursday we only had a total of 13 hours of sleep :-(. Starting from Friday, everything got a little better, we got used to the lack of sleep, and we are already looking forward to the time when we only have to do one milking per day. During milking, sick cows are milked into a large bucket, and Viktor (Brad's right hand) is currently not quite sure if Jenny will be able to do the milking, as these buckets have to be poured into a large container and she often cannot carry the buckets..

On Friday, Mike milked alone with Derryl (equivalent to Viktor) for the first time, and later Jenny fed and vaccinated the calves together with Tatjana (Viktor's wife). Everything is slowly falling into place, and we'll see how things will go next week. Oh, I haven't mentioned it yet - we have our own house here again, which we share with Maschur, another employee who is currently on vacation for a month. So far, we are quite satisfied and feel comfortable here. Since most of the work on the farm is tailored to a man (driving tractors, operating large machinery, etc.), unfortunately, there is not much for women to do, and Brad has organized a second job for Jenny. Only 10 km away from us is a cheese factory and restaurant, and Jenny will be working there every Thursday and Friday starting next week =).