Journal 1

Well, this blog was really supposed to be more like a diary than a log book, so I’m starting a few journal-esqe entries to give my real feelings about things instead of just giving you guys my itinerary and then occasionally freaking out. This format also works better right now when I only have internet sporadically because I can write these up on my computer and then zip-drive them over to the station’s computer to upload them without using my computer time!

2-19

Alright, so I guess I should set the scene before running off on a whole bunch of stories. I’m currently living at the station complex of Paewai Mullins Shearing, known affectionately as PMS. I really don’t know where the “Paewai” part of the name comes from, but Mullins is the Boss’ last name, and the company has been in the family (which is pretty heavily Maori) for three or four generations. The current Boss’ name is Punga. He’s about 28, with a wife and new baby daughter (by the way, wives are called “the missus” by everyone around these parts. I’m not sure if I think it’s cute or patronizing) and he’s what Kiwis call a “boy racer,” meaning he’s pretty into Western car culture and appears to think he’s a gangsta of sorts. He’s really funny, though, and I like him. I live here in the complex with Tina, the manager, a small, quiet woman; her daughter Abby, a spitfire chick who’s around my age and will drink you under the table and then ask if your unresponsive corpse would like to fight; Lewis, a nice guy in his late 30’s who’s pretty quiet except when he’s drunk; and Rodrigo, who’s about 25, I’d guess, and came over from Chile to learn more about sheep, like me! When it’s just the five of us here things are pretty chill, but when anyone else stops in things can get rowdy, and I tend to hole up in my room. The worst offender in these carousings is a character named Uncle Ben, who’s pretty loud to begin with, and then becomes a really frustrating and annoyingly drunk every day around 8pm. Uncle Ben is, of course, SOMEBODY’S uncle, but I have no idea who’s, as everyone’s related by blood or by marriage except me and Rodrigo, and it’s hard to keep all the family trees straight. But the devotion to drinking seems to be a universal trait with this group, no matter which way they’re related.

Drinking starts the minute shearing gets done. As soon as the clippers turn off and all of the wool is bagged up and we start heading out, the lead manager for the day will pull out a case of Tui, the favored local beer, and hand everyone a bottle. This would be a really nice ritual if it didn’t mean that there was a case of beer being consumed on the way home, so that by the time we get back people are in a pretty fine mood and decide to stick around the complex to talk and drink some more. Again, this would be somewhat ok if we got done around dinner time every day, but sometimes we get done at 2 or 3pm, and then it just seems like people are drinking nonstop until they fall asleep six or seven hours later. And when they’re not sleeping, everyone’s smoking. I’m the only non-smoker in the company, apparently. And the younger generation also partakes pretty heavily in smoking marijuana, so if it’s not one thing, it’s another.

I don’t mean to sound so hard on them. Really, they’re very nice people, but for someone who’s used to being able to take partying, drugs and drinking or leave it, it’s hard to be around it 24-7.

Two real blessings about this place, though, are the fact that I have my own room (which is wood paneled and reminds me of Grandma Hartke’s basement) and that the countryside is beautiful. Both my room and the outdoors have become my refuge, as is usual for me when I go somewhere new. I’ve been taking long walks after work, since it’s summer here and the sun doesn’t go down until around 9, and I’m awed by the picturesque-ness of the rolling green hills, grazing cows, sheep, butterflies, mountains in the distance, waving grasses, brilliant sunshine, sky as blue as I’ve ever seen it… It makes me feel good when I’m down.

So now you’ve got a bit of the feeling of things, here’s how my first three days of sheep-wrangling have gone down.

My official position in the company is as a junior wool handler. What this means is that I’m the person who gets the wool out of the way of the shearer, separates the good wool from the not-so-good wool, and then bags it up to be pressed. It helps to think of the shearing floor as stations in an assembly line, with everyone working together like cogs. On the top of the totem pole you have the shearer, and there may be any number of them depending on how man shearing engines the farmer has in his shear shed. The shearer grabs a sheep out of the waiting pen and flips it so it’s sitting on its rump and shears all the wool off it in a very precise pattern of strokes. When the sheep is done they shove it through a sort of doggie door to an outside pen. While the shearer is doing what they do best, the wool handler (there is one assigned to every shearer, usually) is pulling the good wool (A wool) away in one direction and the dirty or marked wool (B wool) off in another direction with their “broom,” which is actually a broom handle with a special piece of plastic at the end that catches wool better than bristles would do. Then the pressers (usually between 1 and 3 people) grab the A wool and put it in a large bin with a bag in it and stuff it down like you do when you’re raking leaves. They do this until they can’t get any more in, and then they use a giant pressing machine to compress the wool into a sort of bale, which them pops out of the presser and they label the bag with the kind of wool, the name of the farm, and the number of the bag. Viola! The wool is then taken by the farmer to wherever they have it processed, and our part in the equation is over.

On Thursday, my first day, the Boss put me on the shearing gang with the latest start; 8:45am. It was just a sort of introduction for me that day as we had 3 shearers and only about 200 sheep, so it only took about two hours not including the driving time to and from the farm. Friday was a longer day. We started out at 5:15am and drove to a farm about an hour and a half away, which is on the outside limit of PMS’s radius, and did something like 800 sheep with four shearers in about six hours. Today was Saturday, and I was on the gang that started out at 5:45, and we didn’t have to go as far, which was nice. Today I think we did about 400 sheep with two shearers in about six hours.

And tomorrow is Sunday, and that means a day off. If I could, I’d use the day to go to the library in town where internet is only 3 dollars per hour and do some internet stuff, but as the library’s closed I may go fishing with Rodrigo. Probably better for me anyway. :-)

I do miss my family and friends, though. Nights are lonely when you’re sitting in your room reading, listening to people getting drunk and rowdy outside. I could go get rowdy with them, I guess, but I honestly have no desire to. I’ll have a beer socially with them when we’re done working, but the fact is that I just don’t like the taste of the stuff, and the idea of being out of it all the time just doesn’t appeal. I miss Northfield, where I could spend my night listening to music with Gabe, or watching movies with the Nesses, or goofing off with Maddie and Julia. I know I was dying of boredom while I was there, in some ways, but sitting here now I appreciate my family and friend’s ability to have fun with each other without having to resort to artificial ingredients.

Ah well, that’s enough for tonight. I’ll probably end up writing more tomorrow, and we’ll see when I get a chance to post it. Until later, everyone!

P.S. I finally got a NZ phone that works everywhere (my US phone with a NZ sim card only worked in major cities) so now I'll be able to Tweet and text from the station here, which makes me feel a lot better. Hooray!