Thursday, October 7, 2010

Tuesday 9/28

Tuesday the rain took a break and Tony had us out on the deck – water blasting (power-washing) the glass of the railings, and bleaching the actual deck and the sides of the house. JP completely destroyed his jeans, t-shirt, and zip-up hoodie with that crazy powerful bleach – but we had a blast.
That same day Tony moved the alpacas from one field (on top of the hill) to another (the one right by the house!). This was exciting news for me. JP and I had gone for a walk through the farm lands a couple days before and had encountered the alpacas who came racing up to inspect us, and we’d found ourselves positively enthralled with them. J
Now upon the arrival of 4pm, Ian Finer pulled into the driveway to steal us away once more. We’d made arrangements to spend time with the Finers one last time to see their dairy farm and eat dinner at their house.
So Ian took us straight out to one of the milking houses where the cows were all lined up from the fields to enter in on a bit of a merry-go-round upon which they’re mechanically milked on for a couple of minutes before being released once more onto their grazing fields.
And I got to milk cows. J It was awesome. Yes it was mechanical – but I still got poop on my arms, got peed on, and got kicked in the shoulder and swatted in the face with a tail – and it was all very invigorating. :) Now, sure it’s mechanical, but it still takes so skill to quickly apply the sucky-tubes to each nipple on the udders. At least, I felt like it took some skill….
Next we went in to the calf house – where the calves of all the local school children were being raised. Good lordy were they cute. The grandchildren of the two farm workers filled up the milk sacks for the calves, and we got to feed the calves muesli out of our hands and feel them suck on our fingers. J
Next we got to meet the big, old pigs ( who STUNK like none other!) and tried to the stop the little boy from throwing rocks at them… poor, stinky pigs. Ian Finer, who now has made quite a name for himself, told us about 30 years before when he’d first built the milking house with just about no money. :) Pretty incredible.
He took us back to his house where Janet was cooking away and refused any form of assistance. They encouraged us to enjoy the sunshine in their yard while waiting for dinner to start. So JP and I took some time examining their beautiful garden before planting ourselves on their porch swing.

Ian and Janet have 4 daughters and 1 son… so 5 kids, who have each married and bore 3 kids. That evening their daughter from Wellington, her police officer husband, and their 3 teenage daughters joined all of us for dinner. And we had the best time getting to know them. We all sat around the dinner table for hours, enjoying a wonderful meal of sheep, yams unlike we’ve ever seen, cooked pumpkin, and apple-blueberry crumble with hokey pokey ice cream for dessert (hokey pokey ice cream is vanilla with chunks of honeycomb mixed in). We enjoyed conversation about American stereotypes, political associations, media, the police force, alcohol, and yada-yada-yada. We thought they were delightful and that their daughters were charming.
We thanked them all profusely and then Ian brought us home. J We got back at 10pm.

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