The word wwoofing comes from the abbreviation WWOOF, which stands for "willing workers on organic farms". So now I have transformed from a tourist into a "wwoofer" and am at my first host for one week, which is a dairy farm near the town of Gympie in Queensland.I live and eat with the farmer's family: Glenn and Therese, and their four children Finn (9), Liam (7), Ariel (4) and Rhian (2).
On their farm they produce organic milk (Biomilch). They don't make cheese or other milk products here, but someone else does and that cheese is quite good too. They have had wwoofers on this farm for years, so everyone including the kids is used to having such a guest like me around. Next week, when I'm gone, they will have a couple from Belgium.
The family is very friendly and gives me enough work to have a fulfilling day everyday, and it's never boring because there is lots of different work. I can help not only in the daily milking, but also with e.g. the bottling, or doing various jobs around the house and garden. I've been cutting firewood with a chainsaw for example, scraping the sticky remains of an old carpet from the floor, and mowing the very high grass all around. In between there's always something to clean up in the kitchen.
If you want to know how the milking is done here: the 65 cows are not in a stable but always out on the pasture (Weide), so we have to drove (treiben) them in to the dairy (Melkerei) and out again twice a day. Dasher, the farm dog, helps us with this. He has fun chasing the cows and dashes around like his name suggests! The milking itself is done in a milking pit (Melkgrube), so the cow's odders are at a more convenient height. 
The cows are milked in groups of eight at a time, while they get some milled barley. We don't milk by hand but with a milking machine that works on vacuum. The whole dairy is set up so that one person can operate it and do the complete milking by himself, but of course it's easier and faster if there are two.And the usual call to get the cows moving is: "Walk up ladiiiiies!"
4 comments:
Servus! KLingt ja interessant. Aber was machen die eigentlich, wenn mal grad kein Wwoofer da ist? Die Arbeit ist ja dann auch nicht weniger, und wenn die Entlohnung "nur" in Essen und Wohnen besteht, verlassen womöglich manche wwoofer die Farm von heut auf morgen? Haben deine Gastleute schon solche "Anekdoten" erzählt? Gruß Ziggy
Hallo Ziggy,
Naja, die Farm ist ja nicht auf wwoofer angewiesen. Den normalen Betrieb bewaeltigen sie auch gut ohne wwoofer. Insofern ist das keine Katastrophe, wenn mal eine Zeitlang kein wwoofer da ist. Die letzte Woche und die davor war z.B. keiner hier.
Wo ist dein Blog von "Rainbow aud love"
Gruß Papa
Du meinst das Posting hier (http://martinsaussie.blogspot.com/2009/07/rainbow-love-farm.html)? Das sollte da sein, wo es seit 16. Juli ist.
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