My second week here

April 2nd
Yesterday morning we went back to fence building. And on the way there, Henry had set a lot of fires before and when we later drove there, we saw that the fence was slightly burned. The fire was actually far enough away, but the fence wood must have been so dry that it started to burn anyway. Luckily, a friend had already stopped and extinguished it (because I don't think cars drive here often). And when we arrived, I also got some water from the giant puddle on the other side of the street and poured it over until it stopped smoking or crackling. But we still have to replace 8 tree trunks there.
Yesterday I attached wire to the new fence again. That's actually silly...you collect wire that is 4 days old and on the fifth day you put it back on ;). And the fence is just infinitely long. We are only renewing one side out of 4 and that's still over 2 km (I'm not good at estimating....it could be something completely different...but quite long).
Yesterday, we really couldn't drive across the river. So, we laid 3 tree trunks across the river twice and tied them together. And now we have a great bridge :) You just have to drive very accurately, because they were only thin tree trunks.
And yesterday evening, a friend hosted a barbecue party where we went. The first difference to Germany is already that no one would have a barbecue party at 2ºC in Germany (and then it got even colder), but here it is warm spring weather. But there are other differences too, for example, that cool country music was playing all evening and everyone was wearing cowboy boots, rubber boots, a cowboy hat or camo stuff. Just like it looks in pictures. I think I should buy some other things now so that you can't see from a distance that I'm not from here. But the people were all very nice and you couldn't even tell that it was already half past midnight.

April 3rd
Today we built a dam ;) There is a creek (well, it's more like a river) flowing across the property and we dammed it up so that the meadow next to it would flood. So, there was a bridge and on both sides of the creek were some sort of rails where we had to insert some thick wooden beams. Since I couldn't really do outdoor work, I was supposed to drive the tractor. The tractor was parked diagonally on the bridge, which was maybe 1.5 m longer than the tractor. And I was supposed to lift the wooden beams and let them down onto the rails. To do that, I had to drive the front wheel so close to the edge that it was half overhanging. That wouldn't have been so difficult, but I had never driven the tractor before. Haha it's good what they trust me with when I have never driven a tractor here before and it's a 3m drop on both sides. But I managed it and it was really fun. Normally, I always had to work outside and someone else would sit in the tractor the whole time - now it was the other way around and it was actually practical since there was a snowstorm. This way, you can easily conjure up your own lake on the property. As Aileen told me, it will even be quite a big lake and they already had an idea for me of how I can use it: I should practice canoeing there every day and then participate in a canoe race. Well, we'll see if that works out. (I've never been canoeing before)

April 7th
It snowed again today, so we thought we could do something inside. So, Henry and I spent the whole morning cutting up the beef that was hanging in the barn, because it was getting dry. After lunch, I went to check on the cows again. I hadn't done that with Jay for the past few days, but on foot. Because Aileen gave me a list of the cows that are likely to calve next, and I should always check if they are there, because if they are not there, it means they went into the forest to calve. There is no real fence here, which means that the cows could actually be anywhere (even 10 km away), but normally they don't go that far away from the feed. When I checked today, I didn't see number 10 and I found a calf that didn't have a mother. It was like it fell from the sky. The poor calf was wandering around completely disoriented and looking for its mom, and I checked all the cows within a radius of 50m and none of them had calved. So, I told Henry and our first assumption was that the calf belonged to number 10, so we searched everywhere. When we had searched everything within a radius of 1 km, we thought that the calf could never have walked so far alone...so number 10 is not the mother. Then we looked in the other paddock and there was a cow that had calved, but didn't have a calf - found the mom ☺ and the calf had somehow crawled under the fence. But the mom didn't want the calf and didn't care about it. So, we took the calf to the barn...I drove the quad and Henry sat in the back with the calf on his lap. Then we quickly jumped on the horses and rode back to the paddock. There was another cow that was just calving, but only one leg was sticking out. So, we herded the mom and the other cow into the barn with the horses. When we arrived there, we let the one calf drink first because it had been without milk for quite a long time, and then we had to help the other cow give birth. After that, we rode out again and looked for number 10. We did that until it got dark (around 8 pm) and we just couldn't find her :(. And that was another adventurous ride 😂 - without a saddle, through the woods, over 1000 tree trunks, through bushes at a too fast pace for the road conditions - just like in the wild west. But my method of closing my eyes and holding onto the mane works quite well.
Actually, you would think that I'm pretty good at looking for animals in the wilderness by now. Because in Sweden, I looked for rabbits, on the island, I looked for cows every day, on the other farm, I looked for sheep, and now I'm looking for cows again. But honestly, I never really found animals there either, I was just glad in the end that I found my way back home ;)
We already have 11 calves now. We didn't continue building our fence this week, but there was still plenty to do without fence building. I got to drive the tractor all by myself twice to feed the horses and cows. So, for that, you have to choose 2 good hay bales and drive them to the paddock. But that's not so easy either, because on the cow paddock, for example, you also have to drive through the forest and there are tree stumps everywhere, and if you drive over them, the tires get stuck. And you have to drive through the gates without letting a cow escape (and sometimes there are 50 cows waiting in the driveway for someone to open the gate). We also repaired and built many things. I started making new beautiful horseshoe hangers. Then we gave ear tags to the calves and many many other things....

April 9th

Yesterday was a really cool day. After doing normal things in the morning like feeding and stuff, we spent the whole afternoon rearranging cows and letting them onto other pastures. We did that from 4pm to 8pm and it was sooo much fun.😊 This time, we just rode without saddles and only with halters, because no one had time to groom and saddle. Up until now, we had always only driven cows from one place to another and they always go quite leisurely. But yesterday, we also moved the one-year-old cattle to another paddock. But that was wild. We galloped with them across a large meadow and there was even a snowstorm where the snow was coming sideways from the front. It was really cool. Too bad I didn't have a free hand to take a photo or video. And Jay was also so excited that she could run fast and immediately made a few jumps ;) And with the weather of yesterday, where it snowed or rained in between, it was even good to ride without a saddle, otherwise it would have gotten pretty cold after 4 hours.

So, if I can't write a blog post in the next few weeks, it's because all the cows are starting to calve. It was already extremely difficult to write this here this week, because we now had a 13-hour day (from 7am to 8pm outside). And during that time, I didn't even have time to take photos. And there is no longer any difference between Sunday and Monday. But I think that's good. Because I'm only here for 2 months and I want to see and learn as much as possible during that time. And this is the best way. We probably have about 20 calves now and we had a few cows calve for the first time and one cow is 15 years old. And every day there is something else we have to help with or feed a bottle or something similar. It would take too long to explain all that in detail now. Otherwise, I'm allowed to drive a lot of tractors here now :D even complicated things. Right now, Henry is still driving with me and explaining everything, hoping that I'll be able to do it alone soon and he won't have to do it anymore ;) (for example, if I have to move 20 hay bales from one trailer to another. And yesterday we also rearranged some heavy stuff in the workshop, where you had to drive very accurately)