I left the Bay of Islands yesterday afternoon to head south again to the town of Paparoa, in the central part of the Northland region.  There is a farm here that I signed up to WWOOF on, and for the past 36 hours I’ve been getting in touch with my farmer side.

Bert and Rebecca own a 400 acre farm and they specialize in organic, free-range chickens and pigs.  They collect eggs from about 9000 chickens, which are sold throughout New Zealand, Australia, and primarily the US as FRENZ brand organic eggs (ever had any?).  I was told that because of the freshness of the eggs (and the international date line), it is possible to eat the eggs in the US before they’ve even been laid.  Chicken farmer humor.  Anyhow, they also have about 400 pigs.  They kind of stumbled into pigs unintentionally, and they continue to get more and more…the sows have more piglets constantly.  In addition, there are some sheep, cattle, goats, three dogs, 2 cats, and a large veggie garden.

Bert and Rebecca aren’t traditional farmers, they’re university-educated city folk who saw the market for organic farming and wanted to run their own business.  They’ve had the farm here for about six years.  They are great to learn from because they’ve just recently learned a lot of it themselves and they are constantly learning more.

Here’s a quick list of duties I had on my first full day on the job:

1. Take 20lb blocks of cheese scraps from the cheese factory and cut them into manageable pieces for the chickens and pigs to eat
2. Go through the six chicken sheds and collect eggs (the farm produces 50,000 eggs per week), feed the birds, change their water supply, and pick up any dead chickens
3. Wrangle pigs from a pasture to a small pen and separate the large from the small, male from female
4. Go down the street to the neighbor’s farm and help him “dock” sheep - this is the process by which the lambs get their tails cut off, their balls castrated, and an ID mark cut out of their ear (he had 227 to dock today)
5. Wrangle six largest pigs into a pen and onto a trailer to be taken to the butcher
6. Wash out pig feed buckets

Here’s a quick list of things I learned on the farm today:

1. Farming is very hard work
2. Farming is very dirty work
3. Chickens don’t want you to take their eggs and will peck at your hands when you grab them - it doesn’t always hurt, but it is very difficult to not react to a peck
4. Chickens are not intelligent
5. Free-range chickens must be so much happier than penned, factory-farm chickens - and they have a nice diet (cheese, plants, bugs, feed pellets)
6. Pigs are not intelligent
7. Pigs are really, really strong - especially the big ones (350+ lbs)
8. Pigs are well behaved in general and do as you say, but they panic when in small pens
9. Farming is very hard work
10. Farming is very muddy
11. Driving on the left side of the road is unintuitive for me, but very fun
12. New Zealand farmers are extremely friendly and help each other out often
13. Sheep are not intelligent
14. Sheep behave similar to pigs
15. Sorting out lambs from bigger sheep and tossing them into a separate pen is kind of fun
16. Sheep are muddy and often have shit all over their wool
17. Sheep are lighter than pigs (30 - 60 lbs), but lifting and containing them while their tail is cut off, their balls pinched with a tight rubber band, and their ears cut with M-shaped scissors takes a lot of muscle - and after 227 lambs your arms stop working
18. Farming is hard work
19. Moving six large male pigs (with testes like Hass Avocados!) up a ramp into a small trailer can be very, very difficult
20. Pigs are not intelligent
21. Pigs are very, very strong
22. Scrubbing buckets is not a fun way to end the day

Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures of any of this yet…I was afraid to get my camera muddy or damaged, but I would have loved to get a photo of the pile of severed lamb tails after a few hours of docking.  It looked like a massacre (which it kind of was).  Also, the scenery here is absolutely beautiful, especially on a day as sunny as today was.

Okay, I think that’s enough for today…I need to get some rest for another big day tomorrow.  I’ll try to take some pics and post them soon.