As always in traveller’s life plans change within hours – or minutes…. so, after I couldn’t find tickets for the formula 1 race and the cancellation of my car ride to Montreal, I decided to head to another farm.
Robert, the guy from Alpenblick farm, phoned Anita to buy a goat from her. Since Tara, the Australian wwoofer was on the phone they started talking and Robert mentioned that he was looking for another wwoofer. And there was me.
So, instead of catching the bus back to Montreal, Anita gave me a car ride over to highway 7 and the place of Robert and Petra.
On the first day, my ‘work’ was more or less only watching which was compensated by the work of the following ten days.
Usually we got up at around 6:45AM and headed for the little sheep to give them their milk. Afterwards the same procedure for the six little goats.
Petra was then usually feeding Freddy, the pot bellied pig, Elvis and Presley, the two mini horses and Rosie and her little one who were also kept in the same barn.
And there were also Ven, the old German shepherd, David, the Lama and the four cats who are also always hungry.
In the meanwhile I helped Robert to melk the goats – actually I just helped him to get them out of the barn after melking – or I started to clean out the cow pens.
When I was visiting there were two cows, Ursula and Julia, and one bull, Blacky, kept inside. Ursula because she was having her baby which I helped to pull out on Sunday (13th June), Julia because she was melked and if she wasn’t kept in, all other calves kept drinking her milk. And Blacky was kept in because he had no rubber ring, so their would have been endless fights with the two older bulls, Lucky and XY (forgot his name).
I also had to bring Ursula and Blacky to the water tub at the barn entrance which was – at least at the beginning – a big challenge for me since I couldn’t estimated how well Blacky would really behave when he was at the leash. But everything went fine, so we became best friends in the following days.
After finishing work in the barn, it was time for breakfast, usually it was around 9:30 to 10:00 by then.After breakfast there was always some more work to do, weeding the garden, cleaning out the horse pens, watching the sheep (since cojotes keep coming around taking whatever is easy to catch) or cleaning up the yard.
By noon everybody wanted to have fresh water and you could also do another round of pen cleaning. After that there was some time to have lunch and a little time off.
At six PM the evening chores were on and after finishing of (most of the times between 8 and 9) it was time for dinner and the continuing fight against the mosquitos.
Sometimes there were customers coming to buy fresh goats or cow milk, eggs or meat, sometimes there were friends of Petra coming around. Once, Robert brought two of the lambs to the butcher (which wasn’t that bad because they were just two of the crowd). On beginning of the new week, I noticed that one of the bulls was not with the other cattle but was staying close to the barn and he didn’t use his left back leg. So from then on he was kept in the yard and will go to the butcher the next week.
Blacky is also going to get a free ride to the slaughterhouse some time next week and this really brings me close to tears every time I think of it. But that’s farm life.
One of the best moments so was the birth of Little One, Ursula’s calf, which I called Ben on the first afternoon but since Robert told me that the starting letter would be ‘W’ for this year and nobody seemed to care to give him a regular name, I changed his name to ‘Little One’.
The birth of Little One was not as romantic or special as I would have imagined:
Megan, one of Petra’s friends, had come over to visit us on Sunday, a bright sunny day with blue skies, and she came in and said that Ursula was going to calve.
So we all went out and took a look at the little hoove which was sticking out of Ursula’s back. Then we waited until the second hoove could be seen.
By then Robert had fetched the two chains. When we could see the little head and some more of the legs, Petra attached the chains to the hooves and on the next wave of travails we pulled the calve out, Robert cleaned it’s nose and that was about it. Altogether it took something about 45-60 minutes.
Robert tried to guess the calve’s weight at once and then I had to get the measuring tape which could also be use to calculate the weight of the little one to confirm his guess.
Our newborn weighed about 75 pounds, so Robert missed by about 10 pounds (no idea if that’s good or not).
After one hour Ben was already standing and tottered on his own little legs into the shade and after one week the little boy was jumping around in the barn – that’s been pretty amazing to me 🙂
Another hot afternoon when I was just digging the garden, Petra asked me if I would like to go for a swim. Of course I did and so we went to Carleton Place, the village next door, (but still about 15 ks afar) and had a nice little swim in the river – fantastic 🙂
On Saturday Petra took me to the Farmer’s market in Carleton place where she’s selling their products. My task there was to look after the goats and sheep we took there for the walking-by children to pet. Altogether that was an easy morning except for some of the entertaining parts delivered by the girls of the nearby music school.
Some of them were really talented but with others you were strongly reminded of the first round of the American Idol show – and the pen of the animals was right beside the stage.
Sunday, on my last evening, we were invited for dinner by friends of Robert and Petra, Rika and Lloyd and their daughter Karina. They have a beautiful house and the food was delicous – some combination of German Heringstip, some Mexican/Brazilian (Lloyd is from Brazil) thing with beans and olives (I think), loads of fresh salads and a fantastic desert afterwards.
At the beginning we were sitting on the deck outside right beside the pool until the mosquitos were taking over and it also got a bit chilly outside.
A fantastic final evening of a stay full of interesting experiences.
On Monday after feeding the animals Robert drove me the 25 ks over to Ottawa and took me straight to the prison – but that’s another story 😉
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