This blog is my first blog, mainly because for the first time I have something interesting to blog about. Before I start writing anything I have a plan of what I'm going to blog about: 1/3 about NZ dairying, 1/3 about NZ as a country and 1/3 about my experiences travelling from Shropshire to Waitaki, North Otago. There will also be loads of photos hopefully. Enjoy and spread it around to anyone who might be interested.
I thought I would do one last small blog post before I set out on my road-trip.
My bags are packed, with clothes for all kinds of weather. If the summer so far is anything to go by I could need my swimming shorts and thickest coat both on the same day. I have given the car a bit of a clean, but it would take years to get it properly clean. I left the passenger window open in a rainstorm once, so there are some very dodgy stains on the seat.
I plan to stay in hostels each night of my trip, but just in case that doesn't happen, I have thrown in the sleeping bag and folded down the back seats. They don't quite fold down flat, which nullifies the need for a pillow. I had a little lie down in there to see how comfy it was, and nearly fell asleep. So I think it'll do. There is loads of room in there, even with my bags and fishing gear. I think it is actually bigger than my bedroom was when I lived in university halls.
The milometer (actually kilometremeter) is set at 0000 and I am ready to go. I need to top up with fuel and pick up some emergency rations and then I will be on the road.
You can follow me on Twitter @FLawder, although I can't promise regular tweets. I will definitely tweet every time there is a new blog post though.
In the height of summer, I was expecting hot dry days for at least a couple of months. To be honest we have had a fair few of them, and I am on my second bottle of suncream for the season. But we have also had a fair few storms, proper ones with thunder and lightening. The other day a storm stuck around directly over the bungalow, you couldn't hear yourself speak during the thunder. I wouldn't have wanted to be out on the bike in the middle of a paddock in it.
In one storm I was in the middle of cooking my supper and the power went out. I had to go out to the car port where we keep the quads and use the BBQ that was also sheltering in there. I had previously thought that a BBQ with a gas ring was ridiculous, but I eat my words because it proved very useful for cooking my spaghetti bolognese al fresco-ish. That being said it wasn't the cleanliest of kitchens.
At the moment it is warm and sunny, shorts and t-shirt weather at 7:20 pm. But wind the clock back an hour, and it was raining as hard as I have ever seen rain fall. In about fifteen minutes we had half an inch of it. The windows were no longer transparent. It was like being in a car wash, I half expected a big yellow brush to roll down the patio doors lathering them up and giving them a good scrubbing. A couple of minutes into the downpour I remembered all my washing was hanging on the line outside. It is inside now, dripping onto the carpet.
A random hail storm also came by a week or two ago. It got quite haily (yes that is a word) pretty quickly. Here is a poor quality clip of it:
In other news, I saw the funniest thing I have ever seen the other day. It could well have been a 'you-had-to-be-there' moment but I am going to continue anyway. You may remember 'Ginger' the cow who had stomach lesions (featured in post 18. 'Miscellaneous Snippets II). Here she is looking still far too skinny, but you can't see every bone in her body like a few months ago.
To properly explain what happened, I have used my considerable computer skills on paint, and created a cross between a diagram and a comic strip. You can click on the image to enlarge it.
I can confirm that both participating parties are in good health, except the bull who has a severely bruised ego.
For Christmas, my Dad got my the brilliant present of a days fly fishing with a guide, coach and general expert who goes by the name of 'Squid.' I had booked my days sport for today, but when I rang to confirm last night, he told me that he had had an accident and would not be able to give me the full guide today. It emerged that he had a had a boating accident that resulted in a sore leg, possibly fractured arm and his boat at the bottom of the Waitaki river. I still went along for a couple of hours in which, with his help, I perfected my casting technique and also improved the speed in which I can untangle my line!
It turns out that he is a massive legend and an excellent instructor. At the start he mostly said things like "Well you've ballsed that up." and "Stop dicking around and think about what you are doing." I did just that and by the end he just kept on saying "Beautiful, beautiful. Look at that. Beautiful." Which bodes well for me, but not for Kiwi trout. We will be heading out to the water again sometime in the next month to catch something.
I have two weeks off work starting this Sunday. During my time off I will be undertaking what I am billing as 'the mother of all road-trips.'
In my 1991 Nissan Avenir 'Gavin', I will be driving from my bungalow approximately 1000 miles up the wild West Coast, onto a ferry, and then up the North Island to Matamata. Why that particular small town I hear you ask? Well at Matamata, there be hobbits! (Excuse my geekiness - http://www.hobbitontours.com/.)
From there, depending on how fed up of driving I am, I will then either travel North West towards the top of the North Island or head North East to the Bay of Plenty, or go South East to Hawke's Bay. I am still very much in the planning stage.
I am undecided whether to take my laptop and using hostel internet, blog whilst I travel, or save it all for when I return.
Either way rest assured, the next few blogs will about:
It is going to be like a Top Gear special, except I am travelling solo. And if the car breaks down, I do not have the skills to fix it. Nor do I have a film crew following me in a Range Rover, just have my trusty compact Olympus camera, which I am surprised to find still fully functioning.
It will be a challenge. One does not simply drive to the North Island. The black gates are guarded by more than just orcs. There is evil there that does not sleep... But I can't wait to get going!
I thought I should kick of 2013 with a (later than planned) blog entry less about my shenanigans, and more about dairy farming.
This post is about where the milk goes once it is out of the udder, and why the answer to that is the reason why the dairy industry here is in great shape, as opposed to the shambles in the UK. In most peoples opinons, it is pretty much down to the great milk market that exists here, in the form of NZ based multinational company Fonterra. The information included here is partly from my own online research and partly from chatting to Kiwi dairy farmers in the pub.
Fonterra is a co-operative owned by about 10,500 dairy farmers, this is about 96% of the dairy farmers in NZ who supply to the one company.
Milk is bought in the simplest way, you are paid for what you produce, in milk solids (fat and protein), as opposed to litres. The price varies but is currently at about $5.65 - $5.75 per KgMS.
Milk is collected every night by the road-hogging, lane dominating Fonterra milk truck. We are currently sending about 10,000 litres every day of milk at about 8.5% MS. After collection, the tanker driver leaves a docket with a load of information. A sample is taken from each collection which is tested for milk quality.
This is a docket from early November (when the yield was high!)
With out re-typing what the picture shows pretty well, you can see that a couple of days after collection, the basic test results (fat, protein and SCC) are published on the docket. This makes it much easier to continuously adapt and adjust the input to see an immediate effect on the output.
The quality summary at the end of the data shows some of the results of the quality tests that are done on the milk.
We have a big chart in the dairy which outlines the various quality standards. There is a lot of info which I am not going to type out, but here is the chart.
Basically you are fined various amounts for particular drops in standards, this is worked out by a 'demerit' point system. One demerit point = 5% of the value of the milk supplied. The different results from each test are given a value for points deduction, any demerits are flagged up immediately on the docket. I should say that this information is also updated online every day.
The tests the milk is subjected to include:
Bactoscan (individual bacteria count - demerits start at 50,000/ml)
Thermoduric and Coliform Plate Count (more specific bacteria)
Senses (Human judgement of the quality of milk, i.e, colour, smell etc.)
Sediment
Colostrum levels (measured as Immunoglobulin 1)
Inhibitory Substances (Penicillin / antibiotics - major fines)
Freezing point (checking no-one is topping up the vat with water!)
Somatic Cell Count (mastitis indicator - demerits occur above 400,000/ml we aim to stay below 200,000/ml and strip out more often if the SCC on docket rises sharply)
Collection Temperature
DDE (historically problems with pesticide contamination)
Aflatoxin (apparently mushroom related)
Reject Milk (the chart also points out, helpfully, that if the milk is not fit for human consumption, there will be no payment.
The tanker picks up the milk between about 8pm and 1am. I am always flat out on the sofa, asleep in bed or cooking my tea, it has taken me weeks and weeks to get a photograph of the tanker which thunders right past the bungalow, rattling the glasses on the draining board, every night.
I am overjoyed to be able to publish these photos, it is like the trophy moment at the end of a long stalk. You can't see, but the driver is giving me a huge thumbs up for my efforts.
The milk is taken to one of the huge manufacturing sites to be tested and processed. This is a photo of the Edendale site which I took when I drove past it on my way to Stewart Island a few months ago.
It is massive, and processes 15 million litres of milk per day. Most of the milk through here goes to make milk powder. A major difference to the UK is the lack of a market for fresh liquid milk, and the massive market for manufactured dairy goods, particularly in Asia, but they conduct a huge amount of business on every continent. An interesting fact on the Fonterra website is that the company accounts for 25% of NZ's exported products and a shipping container of dairy products leaves the country every three minutes.
More mind-blowing Fonterra marketing facts from the website:
Fonterra NZ processes 16 billion litres of milk per year. That figure is rising quickly.
Fonterra operates in more than 100 countries across the world.
Fonterra in Australia produces 300,000 tonnes of dairy products per year.
More than half of the pizzas eaten in China are topped with Fonterra produced cheese.
Fonterra sells enough cheese to McDonald's each year to wrap around the world three and a half times.
Now I know I am a bit of a cheese snob, but it says something about McDonald's cheese if it is measured in its stretchy wrapping properties. I bet they don't measure Stilton like that. Incidentally, according to my calculations 80 million Carr's Water Biscuit sized pieces of Stilton are produced yearly (approx).
I digress, but the fact remains that the huge multinational business, owned by the farmers, gives great strength to the industry. At the moment, and certainly in the foreseeable future, the country can not produce too much milk, there will be someone to buy it, for more money than it takes to make. Which, of course is the important bit.
The Fonterra website makes for some very interesting reading and has so much information I could do a blog for a year just on the one subject.
I hope this gives you a bit of an insight into at least my take of the milk business here in NZ. I could do a lot more typing but I am getting up in 6 hours so I will call it a night.
It has been very strange this Christmas, my first away from the family. Apparently they halved the amount of food cooked for Christmas dinner due to my absence. The weather though was most unnatural, I find it bemusing that Santa still wears a fur-lined hat and 'Let It Snow' amongst other wintery songs is still played endlessly on the radio.
Instead of going to church for midnight mass, I was peer pressured into taking a different kind of communion (mainly differing in quantity of alcohol), as Christmas Eve turned into Christmas Day. I don't really want to go into detail of my night out because I am sure that is not why you are reading this blog. Also I know my mother reads it. However my story would show, as always, the kiwis as a very friendly and hospitable people. After the pie-selling, sticky-floored nightclub in town ('The Globe') had rung last orders we were invited to a house party, conveniently halfway between town and home.
The northern hemisphere drinking team was as follows:
F Lawder, (GB)
D Murphy (Ire)
J Toal (N. Ire)
B McCarton (N. Ire)
We gave a good account of ourselves except for one Northern Irish team member who seemed at one point to be taking a very close look at the gravel on the drive, and then confusing a lawn with a mattress. Daniel and myself in my opinion deserve MoM awards for milking Christmas morning, having forgone a nights sleep in favour of festive celebration.
Milking went by in a bit of a blur and I don't think either of us cupped on any bulls or forgot about any cows. I went back to bed for a few hours when I came in, a tactical nap is sometimes needed in this line of work.
When I woke up the sun had burnt away the mornings haze and it heated up to something like 27/28 °C. There was not a cloud in the sky and it definitely did not feel like Christmas. I had to wait until later to open my presents sent from the UK, so it could be done over Skype at a sensible hour in both time-zones.
I had bought a Christmas tree a few days earlier in an attempt to get Christmassy. Unfortunately it wasn't a particularly impressive specimen, measured in inches rather than feet. Here it is decorated with tin foil, the only shiny thing we could find in the house.
When dinner time eventually came round, we fired up the barbie and threw on a few steaks, sausages, chops, kebabs and burgers (or patties as they insist on calling them here).
For just four of us we had plenty of meat to go around, but it is my favourite of all the Christmas traditions, eating too much food. We also had a salad and a load of buns but they didn't really feature.
What did feature though, was a very impressive array of sauces, better than any collection I have seen before at a BBQ.
When they are all mixed together, the sauce created could power a medium sized tractor and also kill 99.9% of bacteria, probably.
The food was very good, and expertly cooked, though I say so myself. I much prefer to cook on a charcoal BBQ, it seems a bit like cheating using gas. It is basically a kitchen appliance that is outside. Also you lose a bit of the BBQ flavour, and the layer of charcoal around the outside of the sausage.
Yes, the food was good, but not as nice as this that had winged its way from home. Possibly the nicest thing I have ever eaten.
I think this is a good opportunity to remind you readers that in exchange for a (hopefully) entertaining few minutes of reading, I will gladly accept edible gifts! The more uniquely British the better.
My address:
Mr F Lawder,
783, Burnside Road,
RD 17D,
Oamaru,
9492
New Zealand
I am only joking. But seriously... I check the postbox regularly.
Well that is all for now, I hope you had a great Christmas, and have a happy New Year (which I will reach first!), and please, keep on telling your friends, family and colleagues about this blog.
When I choose the title for a new blog post I usually just put down what I am thinking about whilst I'm typing away.
Today I am thinking about my leg, which is dead. We were sorting out the bulls in the yard, and a particularly stupid heifer made an audacious dash for freedom. I made a run for the open gate to cut her off, my path took me behind one of the Charolais bulls, who was also running towards the gate. He didn't take kindly to my surprising turn of pace and lashed out with a brutal buckaroo kick, right to the upper thigh.
I have had a dead leg for three days now. I was disappointed not to get a hoof shaped bruise though, which is something I would definitely have taken a photo of and put on the blog.
Anyway, what have I been up to? The other day I put the Lord of the Rings soundtrack in the CD player and drove to Mount Cook, or as near to it as I could get without donning crampons and grabbing a rope. Mt Cook is the tallest mountain in NZ at 12,316 ft and is a pretty impressive bit of rock. Despite it being summer now, there was still a fair amount of snow on it.
There were some prety dramatic skies on the drive to the hill, and with the dramatic landscape make for some awesome views.
The lake is Lake Pukaki and is famous for being bright turquoise, especially when the sunlight is right, apparently the colour is due to deposits of minerals in the water.
(This photo has had no colour enhancement)
The road to Mt Cook runs along the lake for about 40km so I took a lot of photographs like this, with lake, mountains and sky.
Once I got nearer the view became less impressive when the clouds descended. They always seem to appear when ever I want to get some good pics of mountains. This is what Mt Cook close up looked like, to me anyway.
Near to Mt Cook is the famous Tasman Glacier. I have never seen a glacier before so I thought I would check it out. The Tasman Glacier is 24 km long and 92 km² in area, which is quite a lot of ice. Although there used to be much more of it, it is retreating by between 480 and 820 metres per year. And I assume that was the reason it was so far away from the lookout point the sign directed me to.
It was also a lot dirtier than I expected, not the pristine white I imagined, and the whole area looked like Mordor, with nothing alive apart from a thorny bush called 'Wild Irishman', (I actually live with one of these). I waited around for a bit to see if the glacier was moving, after ten minutes I thought I saw a party of orcs approaching so I scarpered, turns out they were just some Aussie tourists.
On my return journey I stopped off at a Salmon farm, which had a floating shop. I thought I would see what NZ smoked salmon was like compared to the Scottish kind which I could eat kilos of. But what really caused me to pull a dangerous but necessary U-turn was the big sign that said 'FEED THE FISH FOR FREE.'
Here is a clip of me making the fish go mental by chucking in the food.
The reaction was very piranha-ish and reminded me of that scene in one of the James Bonds. Here is the best pic I got of a salmon, they move pretty fast.
And here is what I bought (I have no high hopes of catching salmon, I think I am more of a trout bloke).
In other news, David and Jocelyn have gone to Ireland for Christmas, which means we are running the show for a few weeks. It is good to get some responsibility and do a bit of decision making without having to ring the boss!
Also check out last week's Farmers Weekly, you will find in this years photo competition that this photo of mine won its section and is now in the running for the big prize of £200!
We have been to quite a few BBQ's recently, as is traditional in this part of the world. Lots of Speight's, steaks, burgers and sausages and it is guaranteed that there will be a pavlova there. It is certainly different to mulled wine and mince pies, but I am not complaining. We are having a BBQ on Christmas day, obviously I am in charge of the cooking and I will definitely cook too much meat. I am trying to think of the best way to BBQ a turkey.
Thanks to everyone who has sent me Christmas presents and cards, the winner for the best card goes to my sister Charlotte with this excellent homemade piece. I might get it framed.
Have a great Christmas everyone and don't forget the farmers who graft hard to produce your Christmas dinner.
The weather is (mostly) warm and dry now we are into summer. Due to the high grazing pressure on the grass it is necessary for it to be irrigated to maintain a suitable growth rate.
This farm, mostly made up of a valley is far too steep to accommodate the imposing structures that are center pivot irrigation. These are very popular, particularly north from here on the Canterbury plains. Our neighbours across the road use a pivot.
They are powered by an electric motor and move very slowly over fences, cows and anything else that gets in the way. There are gaps in the fences with bungee cord that allows the wheels to cross over.
On steep pasture such as ours, the best method of irrigation is through the use of K-lines. These consist of pipes attached to hydrants in the paddock. On these pipes at equal intervals of about 12-15m (I havn't measured them), are pods that contain sprinklers. It is much easier to post photos than trying to explain them.
I hope you readers think these photos are worth me getting completely soaked when I took them, I got very irrigated and very irritated.
Here is a short clip of the irrigation in action:
The lines are moved around daily (not be me, I stick with the livestock) by towing them with a quad. There is a plastic ball (could be a buoy) at the end of each line that is picked up by a trailer, it can be done at pretty high speed if you have enough experience in mending broken plastic pipes.
Yes, the bike and trailer are usually this muddy.
There is another type of irrigation used here in NZ but not to the extent of pivot or K-line. It is surface irrigation where water is carried in canals at the edge of paddocks. These canals have dams which when blocked allow the selected paddock to flood, the ground is in a structure which allows the water to drain from paddock to paddock and then back to the canals. This is a lot less practical than the plumbed irrigation used here.
The irrigation seems to be doing its job, because the grass is growing. You may remember I posted this picture back in August.
After some selective reseeding, plenty more rain, a bit of sun, irrigation and three grazings, and now a bit of a hammering from the calves, it looks like this.
It's pretty hardy stuff grass.
Right that is all for now, I will leave you with a picture of me holding a leveret that I caught (future rugby coaches take note, that is how fast I am).
Well it is December now, and the weather is great. I was wearing short sleeves to get the cows in at 4 am this morning. That is how warm it is. Milking didn't go great, it was one of those mornings where everything seemed to be going wrong. I did however discover a Sunday morning kids radio show which certainly made milking go a bit faster. I particularly enjoyed listening to the story of the three billy goats gruff, complete with a deadpan troll voice and accompanying songs. Although the condescending tone of the presenter did get pretty annoying after a while.
The big news on the farm is the arrival of the bulls. AI finished last week and the bulls have taken over to do it 'the natural way.' We have eighteen bulls, fifteen of which are Charolais and the other three are Hereford. They are all two or three years old, as any older and they get a bit too fat and lazy.
The bulls are in three teams of six, and are with the milkers, with the pennies (penicillin / antibiotics treated cows) or resting on their own. We change them round every two days.
Here are a few photos of the chaps:
A young Charolais.
They seem to have taken a shine to this heifer.
One of the Herefords.
The big fella asserting his dominance.
Getting the job done 'the natural way.'
I spent ages in the paddock the other day trying to get a picture of a bull doing the deed. They get very shy when you whip the camera out!
I took this video whilst I was waiting, try and spot the cow who is on heat!
The presence of the bulls makes my job a little bit trickier, when bringing cows in we have to try and keep the bulls out of the yard and the shed. They need to be turned round at the yard if the cows are going to a new paddock or just left behind when the cows come in. The best method to separate them is a combination of gentle vocal persuasion and a stick. The traditional bull-standard nose-tapper is a two to three foot long length of alkathene pipe, usually 24-28 mm diameter. With just the right amount of flex in it, the stick is a valuable tool for keep the bull at a distance.
I am glad that they are beef bulls anyway, I would feel a bit more uneasy if i was dealing with dairy bulls every day.
On the subject of beef (and now a seamless link to the next bit), I have been perfecting my burger recipe and construction method. Having bought what they call a 'pattie pusher', and what I call a burger squasher, homemade burgers are becoming a pretty frequent meal.
This piece of kit is a brilliant invention, I am going to bring it back to the UK in my suitcase when I return. The burger mix is made from lean minced beef, finely chopped onion, a bit of grated cheese to hold it together (that is a Freddie Lawder cookery top tip there!) and a good splash of Lea & Perrins, which I am glad to be able to buy out here.
Four pretty reasonably sized burgers fit in my giant breakfast frying pan. They shrink a bit as some of the juices run out, but a lot of that depends on the quality of the mince.
One of the most important parts in the construction of this super burger is the melted cheese slice. Proper cheese is much preferable to processed cheese, I managed to find some colby cheddar that had very helpfully been pre-sliced.
The nest in which the burger rests is also crucial. Note the presence of fresh lettuce and tomato, a balanced diet is important (it also stops the bun going soggy). I also stick the buns under the grill for a minute to prevent the potentially catastrophic burger collapse, where there is just too much filling for the bread.
The finished product, in its simplest form. Extras not shown have included, bacon, pineapple, more cheese, caramelised onion, and a very wide selection of sauces, often mixed to create a new sauce. So next time instead of getting a pitifully small and pathetic 'Big Mac', make your own burger, it is very easy. If you havn't got a burger squasher throw a ball of the mixture hard onto a clean surface, which has a similar effect, but without the 'grill lines'.
Righto, that is all for now, uploading those photos has made me hungry. I'll be back soon.
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