When I was in High School (college to you Americans) I did School Certificate and 6th Form Certificate Horticulture. I wanted to work in the horticultural sector growing plants. Spoiler: I never did. Anyway, come 7th Form I wanted to carry on with Horticulture but the only thing available was Agriculture. I decided that because I wasn’t going to be a farmer when I left school to take instead take 6th Form Chemistry. I only chose that because I knew they would make Hydrogen “bombs”… guess which day I was away on.
The funny thing is that after leaving school I was looking for work but nothing really came up. I hate not working so when a friend of the family contacted my parents to see if I was interested in a farmhand job with the farmer she was house cleaning for I said “Yes” and applied. Well, I got the job.
One thing you need to know about me at that time. I was just over 5 foot tall and weighed at most 50kg. I was not in any way shape or form built to be a farmhand. But I still gave it my all.
So I rocked up on my first day and he gave me the run around of the farm to get my bearings. One of the first things he did was teach me how to ride the farm bike. I’d always been a motorcycle fan but as I got older in my High School years I sort of got disillusioned with the idea that I’d be able to ride bikes because of my small stature. Farming removed those doubts and I picked up riding almost instantly. Super happy about that one as it kicked off my riding lifestyle which has led to my current job as a postie whereby I get paid to ride a motorcycle.
I’ve got fond memories of the farm bike which was a Yamaha AG-175. It was built like a Russian tank but the boss still managed to dent the petrol tank by riding it into a post.
One of the memories on the bike was Moving Day for his brother-in-law. Moving Day is where sharemilkers whose contracts are completed with one farm and not renewed have to move their livestock to another farm they have a contract for. The cows are the sharemilker’s who run the farm and the land of someone else. It’s a great way to get into farming but it is basically the rural form of renting. Anyway, this was such a great day because I got to ride the farm bike out the back of Ararata, between Hawera and Patea. It’s beautiful country out there. The move was about 5 kilometres and took a good 4 or 5 hours to do. Technically speaking it’s illegal for me to ride without a licence but farmers seem to get away with it which is cool. All I had to do was ride from side to side to keep the cows moving. Today people would use quads but I prefer a two wheeler because it can turn far tighter. This is good if a cow decides to go out on her own. Weirdly enough it was usually one of the few Fresians that did that. Jerseys seem to know where they are going. Side to side, side to side for about 4 or 5 hours. It was slow but a lot of fun. There was a heap of people as well. This is the great thing about farming, there’s always someone happy to lend a hand.
Another story I have with riding involved gates. I was riding down the race to setup one of the paddocks for after the evening milking. As I rode down the race the bike just stopped and I couldn’t work out why… until I touched the bike frame. Holy cow, getting hit with 4000 volts is not fun. I’d forgotten to close the spring gate across the race which was still connected to the live fence. Yaaaay me. Actually that happened A LOT.
I once was taking down a temporary fence and had all the gear loaded on the back of the bike. It had been raining but wasn’t at the time. With everything loaded up I jumped on the bike and rode off, only my hand slipped off the clutch while in first. The front rose and I had a decision to make. I either buttoned off the throttle or just went with it. I chose the latter because the risk of the front coming down hard and coming out from under me on the wet grass was high. So went with it I did, and I ended up doing a wheelie for the entire paddock - getting into third in the process. Say what you will about its weight, but that thing could kiss the sky with ease.
Of course, milking was the main thing I did. This involved an early morning milking starting at 4:00am and an evening milking which often ran to 8:00pm. In between I carried out other work on the farm so my days were long and tiresome. It caught up to me though at the end of my time there. Like I said, I was not built for this lifestyle.
Milking was fun, if not a little tedious. We had a herring-bone shed.

The cows have their own little bay and the farmer stands in the pit. Remember how I said I was only a little over 5ft? Well, the pit was about a metre deep which worked nice for the farmer but for me not so good. I got peed on so much because I never saw the tail rise. Worse still, I got crapped on about 6 times. It’s a weird feeling to wonder why your head is suddenly getting warm only to realise the horrible, truth.
Man I was slow in the first few months of milking but I got quick towards the end. I love milking but I don’t like the cows that kick.
Not long after I started I was taught how to drive a tractor. I’d only been driving the tractor for two days when I had my first incident. I was driving the tractor down a hill when it started to speed up. In a car you’d naturally apply the brakes and that’s what I did. The problem is that tractors have independent brakes and I’d forgotten about the latch that allowed both brakes to be applied at the same time. My foot slipped off one brake and locked up the other and I ended up facing back up the hill… after having carved a lovely trench with the wheels. It took a few days for the boss to notice, even though it was on the front field along the road and I had told him as soon as I did it.
The tractor was a little Ford and I don’t like Ford cars because they suck. 😈 It was actually fun driving the tractor and I got real good at it. I did have one harrowing experience, not long after I started. I got to drive the harrows around a paddock. Sorry, that was more anti-climactic than it needed to be but I did get that joke in and I did only do it once. 🤣
Other tasks on the farm I did with the tractor were:
- moving calves to rearing shed (there was a cage we could load on the back)
- moving slinkies for picking up (slinkies are dead calves and their skins are used to make leather)
- feeding out hay
- general cartage
- harrowing fields
- tedding for hay
- feeding out hay
Feeding out hay was fun but I struck a problem. You wanted to have a relatively even distribution but we were using rectangle bales which is fed out in end sheets. How did I feed out with the tractor moving? I had a brilliant idea.
Each bale was tied with two strings and we had to cut these to release the hay. Luckily there was a build up of these strings so I tied one string to each point on the steering wheel. This allowed me to turn the tractor while standing on the tray feeding out. It worked like a dream.
Of course, the Fordson tractor we had was better because it allowed us to use the round bales. Much easier to rollout round bales… if you get them around the right way. The amount of times I’d insert a round bale the wrong way and have to stop, release the bale, turn the tractor around, then redo the bale. This might account for why I hate paper over on the dunny roll.
One of the best/dumbest things I did was planting agapanthus on the cliff face. My boss told me to plant them on the edges because they are a good plant for this due to their root structure. They hold the cliff together and help stop erosion. He then went off to town but I wasn’t feeling too good about being so close to the edge. I’m not afraid of heights, in fact I relish them, but I’m crazy not stupid and hanging over a cliff unprotected is stupid. So I went to the implement shed and found a rope, which I then tied to myself, and then climbed down the cliff. My boss and his family came home from town and I was nowhere to be seen… until I climbed up from the cliff at the time they arrived at the house. He laughed when he saw what I had done and then proceeded to tell me I only needed to do at the top. Still, I had my first abseiling experience and I did it on my own.
The hardest part about working on the farm is dealing with dead animals. I’m not scared of death and seeing dead animals wasn’t an issue for me. In fact after working on the farm I went straight into working at the local meat works. No, what was hard was the fact that there’s a degree of relationship you build with these animals. The hardest one was when I was told to kill a calf.
The calf was born brain dead and was struggling to survive. It wasn’t eating and its breathing was laboured. It lasted for a couple of days before the boss told me I had to knock it on the head. Once again he went to town. At one stage I went to get the shotgun to make it easier but I couldn’t work out how to put it together - I’m not really a gun person. The firing pin would have been hidden by law anyway. So I had to resort to the only thing I had… sledgehammer. I won’t go into detail but the sound of a skull crushing will haunt me for life. It was a necessary evil though because it would have only suffered all the time until it karked it. Sadly another slinky for the tanner.
I’ve come across bloated animals which look like weird balloons with stiff legs. Bloat is a serious issue for cows as gas can’t get released for some reason and so the cow just fills up with farts. Worse case scenario would see you stabbing it in the side to release the gas. Luckily I never had to do that.
I did have to administer a liquid CalciMag. It’s a product that contains calcium and magnesium which helps prevent bloat. There’s also a powder called CausMag which is the same stuff but you spread it on the field. It stops the bloat but it also helps prevent difficult pregnancy. Man does it dry you out though. It ruined an oilskin jacket I had.
I have helped deliver a couple of calves though. That’s always a good feeling.
The absolute worst job I ever had to do though - aside from killing a calf - was weed spraying. The worst weed we have is gorse which gets out of control in New Zealand. Weirdly, in Wellington it’s illegal to spray gorse because the native Giant Weta has made it its home. Of course brush fires are common around there as a result so many Giant Weta most likely have died as a result. 6 of one, half a dozen of the other. But I had to spray it and it’s always done when it’s hot and I had to dress in overalls, mask, and gloves. To be honest I did end up not wearing much of that gear so I’ve most likely been poisoned as a result. No effects of it so far though and it’s been almost 30 years. The good thing that comes out of spraying though is the fact I got to light it all on fire. Controlled burn offs are so much fun.
Speaking of fun, the farm had the Waiongoro river flowing around its perimeter. So when spraying got too hot I’d strip off and go for a swim. Not going to lie to you, that did in fact mean skinny dip. I always forgot my togs. But I was mostly on my own and the farm it butted up to was run by a solo farmer who was a little worse for wear in the head and who never came down to the river anyway. Had friends down there a few times for barbecues and swims - not skinny dips - and had lots of fun.
The funniest/worst thing I ever did was when I was washing down the ute. It was an old Holden Rodeo and it was old when I started. Anyway, I was washing it down with the wash down hose from the milking shed when I saw something fly off the ute. I had a look and realised it was the fuel cap. Yep, a heap of water was now in the fuel tank. It took the boss about a week to fix my mistake. He did realise it was a mistake though. What had happened was the flap covering the fuel tank had opened with the pressure of the water. Then the water hit the wings of the fuel cap rotating it off and opening the fuel tank to the water. I felt like a twat and never washed the ute that way again.
I once was asked to hang a gate. I remembered a few weeks beforehand when the boss said he loved a well hung gate, one that was dead level. I was super proud of how level my gate was only to get annoyed when the boss told me off for the way I hung it. It wasn’t until he told me to go and have a look at it properly that I realised why he told me off. It was level but the ground wasn’t and there was a 20cm gap at one end. More than enough for a calf to get out.
I did run an entire fence by myself. It helped having an auger on the tractor. The boss never complained about that fence. In fact he was quite chuffed with my work.
I also had to fixed a number of water leaks and even install new troughs. I liked the plumbing side of things but it’s quite different plumbing than in a house. We had another tool that the boss’ dad built which had a grubber head, a blade, and a tube. The tube was where you put the water pipe. You dug a small hole that the grubber blade went into to dig through the ground. As the tractor moved foward it would cut the grass with the vertical blade and the pipe would flow through the tube getting laid underground. The ground then would close by itself behind the tractor keeping the pipe underground. It was genius and built by someone without an engineering degree… like so many old farmers. It was a great tool and I loved using it.
I also had to clean tanks from the inside. The water tank was nice but the vat sucked because it needed to be washed down and it was freaking hot inside.
All in all I enjoyed working on the farm but I wish I had done it a few years later when I was a little more work hardened. It took a toll on me physically as I had to do more work to compensate for the fact I was a weed. Now it would be nothing for me to do.
I learned a lot on the farm and it did shape my perspective on a number of things. I’d go back to it in a heart beat but 7 days a week is a joke really. I like family time and weekends are mostly where that comes in. I love my postie job because it offers me heaps of family time due to starting early and finishing early whereas farming is starting early and finishing late. I don’t want to live to work.