School, school and more school

Today was a school day. Yes, in the usual sense, it’s Friday and Emily went to school on the bus, but our whole day revolved around the school today.

First, it was Merit Assembly day…this is run every fortnight by a different class and they put together a whole lot of little things to present to the other kids and the half dozen parents who show up. Today was Emily’s class and we don’t often go but Emily promised it was going to be funny. It was, too, with the class having put together a power point story about being “firewise”… I think the motto in the end was “get down and get out fast or you’ll just be a memory of the past”…catchy for 10 year olds!

This was the other reason for going in to school this morning….

The big school girl

Oh, yes, be afraid, Tara is about to start school! Her birthday isn’t for another month, but she had her first school visit with schooliform today. They have a lovely system here where the local day care centre takes all the 4 year olds to school for one afternoon a month, so Tara has been going to school for the last 11 months..but not in her schooliform! She was soooooooo excited to put on her uniform. She was a bit quieter when it came to being handed over to her teacher, but she sat through the assembly riveted to proceedings and then toodled off with her class to their room. We left two children at school today, which was quite odd to be truthful.

On arrival home, it was a whirlwind of the usual jobs before having to go back to school to pick up Tara at lunchtime. I had to do the rounds of the kids who know me as the “baker” from hockey, and those who wanted to tell me about the progress of the chickens they’ve got off of us this year. How come everyone else’s chickens are laying eggs and ours aren’t?!?!

Eventually home for lunch and by this time Adrian has left for hockey practice at school, so he’s back there doing the practice and then a coaching workshop that the school has deemed all their coaches must participate in. At 3pm he excuses himself and heads into Dannevirke for the hockey games.

As for me, after lunch we get into the preparation for hockey afternoon. Put dinner in the crockpot, bake bikkies for after the games, dress the children in 14 layers of clothing as both of tonight’s games are outside. At 3pm, leave to get into Dannevirke to do library, supermarket, vet and the warehouse, then hockey.

4.40pm Norsewood Blue vs Weber Blue. The Weber team is super good with lovely skills and they’ve been playing since they were 4 or 5, and they beat our other team 9-0 in the first game of the season. Our Blue team is ever so slightly better than the other team though, so we had high hopes. Until the last 5 minutes, all was pretty even, and then all of a sudden our guys ran out of puff and Weber ran in 3 more goals. Still, it wasn’t 9! Final score, 6-3 to Weber. Biggest pasting that the Blue team have had this season so probably quite useful for them, but they still get warm chocolate chip bikkies afterwards….no wonder so many kids play hockey at our school!

5.10pm Norsewood Red vs St Josephs Green. Our blue team beat them by 2 goals last week so we had confidence that the red team could do pretty well. Briar and Tara had abandoned 10 of their 14 layers, were stuffing themselves on chocolate chip bikkies and ready salted chips, and had disappeared into another part of the complex to play tag with all the big kids. Emily played defense and this was her usual pose…

Patrizia in goal with her loyal defender, Emily

These guys saw a fair bit of action, but we did get down the other end….

The melee at the goal, but we got one in!!!!

Again, the second half kind of fell apart and they got too many goals and we didn’t get enough….6-2 we think….ooops! Still, everyone got chocolate chip bikkies afterwards, though they weren’t warm by that stage!

And finally, at 6pm I bundle 3 children into the car and wend the half hour home before lighting the fire, plonking them in front of “Jake and the Neverland Pirates” and cooking some veg to go with the chicken I’ve had in the crockpot. Late bed again.

Adrian however, still had more to do…a hockey meeting….more school stuff…and he got home at 8.45pm. That’s pretty much 12 hours he spent at school or related things today…

Phew, thank goodness it’s the weekend tomorrow!

Hockey and Milkshakes

Friday is hockey day. Adrian is the coach for the Norsewood and Districts School Kiwisticks team, having coached the younger Ministicks last year. In 2012, Norsewood couldn’t get together a hockey team and had to combine with other schools to take part in the Dannevirke competition. Last year, we managed to have 1 full team, and in 2014 we have 3 full teams – 1 Ministicks and 2 Kiwisticks – as well as a few kids who are involved with the Funsticks programme. Basically, these littlies get together in a group to do drills and skills and then play a wee game together.

Emily plays for Norsewood Red, one of the Kiwisticks teams. Last year was her first year playing hockey and she absolutely loves it. Adrian is thrilled with this, because he was a most accomplished hockey player once upon a time. I, of course, am devastated because I’d imagined she’d be my little Silver Fern…ahhh well! So tonight was the 4th game of the season, and things have certainly improved. First week, they lost 9-0…yikes, demoralising +++. Second week, somewhat better with a 7-1 loss. Last week was major celebration with a 3-1 win and we just got pipped tonight 3-2 by probably one of the best teams in the competition. Each week there’s a player of the day for each team, and there’s always biscuits or cake (provided by yours truly) for afters. No wonder everyone want to play hockey!!

Now yesterday I mentioned my new cow. Yes, her name is Milkshake, and yes, she is actually Emily’s. And here she is…

Milkshake, or “Big Nose” as Adrian affectionately calls her!

Milkshake was previously known as #153 and has lived her whole life on a dairy farm. This year she was unlucky enough not to get pregnant, so she was off for the chop. Harsh, but true. I work on said dairy farm as a relief milker (don’t you love 6am starts?!), so when we drafted out the “empties” I asked if I could look at one of them to milk over winter. Mona is still milking, but only producing 2-3 litres a day and really needs to be dried off before she calves again in October. So I wandered in amongst about 15 cows, ranging in age from 3-10 years. The most gorgeous cow was actually a 9 year old with an udder just about touching the floor, but she was just soooo quiet. She would have been a dream, but at 9 years old you just can’t be sure she’ll get in calf again and I would have hated to have saved her for six months then have to get rid of her myself. So then I saw #153 and I was hooked. Had an instant liking and it’s really paid off.

It’s been a huge culture shock for the poor girl, who is coming up 4 years old, and will have had 2 calves already. She would have had her first calf at 2 years old and gone straight into the milking shed with 500 other girls, then dried off, had another calf and spent another season in the shed. Now, because she wasn’t in calf, her life was going to end. That is the harsh reality of the dairy industry, and the farm I work for is a really nice dairy farm, but I guess in business hard decisions need to be made. In the end, Milkshake has come here and will be around for quite some time. We walked her up the road from the neighbour’s with no drama and the first day we milked her it was actually pretty straight forward. She didn’t much like going out the gate past the pigs but with a bit of persuasion off she went.

The second day was a little different. She was not going to be milked, despite milk coming in a constant stream from her teats! She went over fences and gates and after 2 hours chasing her I ended up hand milking her while she was standing untethered in the yard. This from a cow who had never been hand milked before! Amazingly quiet really, even though she did kick over the milk a couple of times, and I got a good whack on the knee cap…owwweeeee! But at least she was milked. I tried again in the afternoon, obviously being a complete tiger for punishment, and in 10 minutes we had her in the shed and milked her out properly using our wee machine. Since then, no problems….just as well because I think another 2 1/2 hours chasing her might just have broken me! And now both my girls wander up to the shed and wait their turn.

While Milkshake gets to the shed first, Mona won’t let her in first!

And now I get 9-10 litres of milk every day…which is quite a lot really!

Glorious milk…10 litres today

Oh, and by the way, the reason she’s Emily’s cow, is that at the time I got her, Adrian and I didn’t quite have the cash to buy her. Emily however, did! So here’s the deal. She buys the cow and I get milking rights. Emily thought she could charge me $1 a day for milking but gave that up fairly early on. She did get naming rights…no kidding. We will get Milkshake in calf sometime soon and when the calf is born it will be Emily’s and when it’s sold as it probably will be, then she will get that money. It’ll be interesting to see how this business venture goes.

And I leave you with a cute photo…I promise the other children are still here somewhere but Briar always seems to pop up when the camera is around. I promise this photo was not staged. This morning, Briar cleaned Mona’s udder, dried it, and (yes, with a bit of help) put the cups on her. She then sticks around till the process is finished and puts cream on her udder afterwards. This is known as future proofing…I reckon she’ll be able to do it all by herself by the time she’s at school!