Life in NZ

It's hard to believe we've been in NZ for 5 months! We made it through our first calving season. Pictured here is a group of 40 calves being fed milk from a "Calf-a-teria" no kidding that's really what it's called. Jennifer worked in the calf barn from mid-July to mid-September feeding the calves twice per day. We had about 800 calves born during that two month period! The farm selected about 200 calves to keep and they are all out of the barn and on grass pastures. Kevin is now taking care of the new calves as well as a herd of 120 heifers that were born last year and a group of about 60 dairy cows.


Now that Jennifer is finished working with the calves, she helps with milking on the weekends while the guys take time off. We are milking about 1000 cows twice a day on a 50-stall rotary parlor. The standard milking times in NZ are 5 am and 3 pm. It takes about 4 hours to milk the entire herd.

We were given a farm dog named Duke. He is about a year old. He goes to work with Kevin every morning on the back of the quad. Duke helps to get the cows out of the pastures when it's time to milk. He is a very friendly, lovable dog and he's really pretty smart!

We are both used to driving on the left side of the road now, and getting in the right side of the car in order to drive! It's hard to keep the months straight in our heads sometimes since it is Spring in October. It feels like May in Michigan. We even have some dark purple lilacs blooming in our front yard! A Summertime Christmas and New Year will be strange. Good, but strange!

We are able to purchase most of the foods we like to eat from the local grocery store. There are just a few things that don't quite taste the same as they do at home, and a few things that are just not available. There is a store in Auckland called Martha's Backyard that imports food from the US and sells it to people like us. Sure, it was more than a 2-hour drive just to get there, but well worth it! Food is generally more expensive here than it is at home, due in part to a 15% goods & services tax on everything. The fact that many things are imported also adds to the expense. Some things however, like meat and dairy products are expensive even though they produce plenty of these products right here. Gas is also expensive, about $5 US per gallon.

Hope all of you are doing well!