That's Lilly, the friendliest cow ever, and me!

Hello everyone around the world!
It looks like there won’t be any German articles on my homepage any more because some friends don’t speak German. I am sorry about that.
Well, what happened the last nine weeks? (Whoops, long time ago that I wrote something.)
First of all, we had a nice family holiday in Coromandel. One week at the beach where we went surfing and swimming. The water was still warm enough to stay in the sea for more than an hour without getting cold. We also went kite buggying. I don’t know if that word exists but that’s what we called it. We had a self-made buggy and a kite, which pulled us. It took several trials and accidents until it actually worked as it should do. It is a lot of fun as long as you can control the buggy and the kite. When there was no wind and no waves we went wakeboarding and by now, I am able to do reasonable jumps. It is definitely a good training for snowboarding. (Unfortunately, it’s getting dark to early after Daylight Savings ended, so we can’t go wakeboarding any more.) As you can see (or read), it was a great week with lots of fun.
Back to work on the Monday afterwards wasn’t too bad but the thought of working 12 days and than having a weekend off wasn’t too nice, although the work got less and it’s still getting less. We finished feeding turnips (the plant looks like sugar beet), which means no more changing of the brakes (tape, to stop the cows from eating too much) on those paddocks (Feldern). On the following Monday, our Maize (Futtermais) got harvested by a contractor. It was very impressive to see a harvester and about seven tractors working on the farm. Big, new clean John Deeres! Wow, if you like big machines. Did you ever ask yourselves what is under those big covered piles with lots of tyres on top that you can see on some farms and especially how to put those tyres on top?
Well, it is a lot of Maize (150 t in our case) and we had to pull the cover over the Maize and carry hundreds of tyres on top of the Maize. It took hours and was very exhausting. I hated it but it had to be done. To feed out the Maize you have to take the tyres and the cover off again. That’s physical work and you know what you have done, afterwards.
I will tell a bit about the work, I have to do. I hope, it’s not too boring for you. There even might be someone out there, who might think about becoming a farmer. ;)
Every day, we feed out one feed-out wagon of Maize and one wagon of potatoes (about 4 t per wagon). It sounds like a lot of food, although there are about 500 cows on the farm. Can you imagine that a cow gains about 30 kg weight between the morning milking and afternoon milking? Sure, some of that weight is milk but not all of it. It means, that a cow loses a few kilograms at night, only for energy. Isn’t it incredible?!
All cows get milked in the morning and one herd (out of two) gets milked in the afternoon as well. The afternoon milking itself takes about 40 minutes for about 200 cows but we have to chase the cows to the shed first and clean everything afterwards which doubles the time.
That’s already the work that needs to be done every day. Additionally, there are always “little” things to do like cutting trees, fencing and other maintaining jobs. For the last couple of weeks, we built a new trailer for the tractor and the work still is in progress. It is a nice relaxed way of working if there isn’t anything urgent.
A little information about the cows on the farm: In Germany, most of the cows are black and white, so called Friesian or Holstein-Friesian (the bigger ones). In New Zealand and also on this farm, we have Jersey, Friesian and Kiwi-Cross (a crossbreed of Jersey and Friesian). Jerseys are much smaller than Friesians and have a light brown colour. The crossbreeds are almost as big as Friesians and are dark brown to black.
Why do they have different cows in New Zealand? It’s because of the different climate. The production optimum of Jerseys is at a higher temperature and moisture than Friesians, which also means that they don’t like cold temperatures. That’s why there aren’t that many Jerseys on the South Island. Another reason is the way, farmers get paid for their milk. The volume doesn’t really matter, it’s the milksolids, that they get paid for. Milksolids are the sum of fat and protein in the milk. Friesian cows give more milk than Jerseys but their milksolids aren’t that high. The rich milk of Jerseys is more economic for farms. I could go on with those economics for a long time because I went to a discussion group for pasture, optimum breeds, herd homes etc. yesterday. It was very interesting, but probably not that interesting for you.;p
Back from the hopefully not too boring stuff to what else happened:
About a month ago, I had a delicious McDonald’s burger in a rather dirty McDonald’s. 24 hours later, I didn’t feel well and it got worse the next few days. The doctor diagnosed food poisoning. It was horrible and I stayed in bed the whole week, except for the walks to the toilets, which was much more often than I would have liked it to be. It’s a good way to lose weight (if you need to), but I wouldn’t wish anyone to get food poisoning.
Two weeks ago, Kent and I went to Northland for five days. As the name indicates, it’s the region at the top of New Zealand. The far north is actually called Far North. Up there is the famous Ninety-Mile Beach, which isn’t ninety miles long but with around 90 km it still is quite long. It also is an official State highway. It is amazing to drive on the beach with a car. Every ten minutes, you might see another car. At the northern end are some big sand dunes and we went down the dunes on a bodyboard. It was so high and steep. At that speed, the sand is hard as and I don’t want to know, what would happen if you fell off. Another nice activity on the sand dunes and the beach is riding the motorbike. Although we had to share Kent’s motocross bike, it was powerful enough to drive us everywhere. Once you are on top of the dunes, it looks like in the desert in Africa: Sand as far as you can see and some little rocks and weird plants. It’s amazing, up there, I lost my sense of direction almost immediately, everything looks the same.
After those trips on the dunes and my turns on riding the bike, I am thinking about getting a licence for motorbikes. It is so much fun, especially if the bike has so much power (450cc; appro. 50bhp).
At the northern end of NZ is Cape Reinga, that's also where the Pacific meets the Tasman Sea.
Another interesting activity we did, was going fishing. Well, we just went along on the boat to watch. We left the house at 4.30am and it took us an hour to go to the fishing pots by boat. The fisherman catches mainly packhorses, they look like crayfish, but they are bigger and more expensive. The packhorse, you can see on the picture weighs around 7 kgs and is worth appro. 200 NZ$. There must be some really rich Aucklanders who eat such expensive food.
On our way back, we drove through the Kauri forest. There are the only remaining old Kauri trees in New Zealand that once covered the entire country. They are big as! Giants of the forest. With a height of 50 ms not the highest tree, but its massive diameter and the straight structure are impressive.

Last weekend, Kent and I went to the rugby game Chiefs vs. Sharks. The Chiefs play for Waikato, which is our region and the Sharks are from South Africa. The game was part of the the Super 14 Series. The top 14 teams from Australia, South Africa and New Zealand play there. The Chiefs won after an interesting match. A great thing was that we got the tickets for free from one of the farm suppliers. Nice pre-match dinner in the lounge and top view seats :)

That's about it. The winter is on its way to New Zealand and there is no morning without fog.

I hope the summer in Germany is coming!

Take care!