The Koibee

You’ve seen the movies, you know the scenes where the cow girl jumps over the iron gate, no big deal, super smooth.  What you probably don’t know is that every time the cow girl does that, the crotch of her pants rip.  That is one of the many things I have learned during my first week at the Schacherbauerhof in Mehring, Germany.  I have also learned, many times over, to walk in the new fallen snow instead of the snow that has been packed down and is now slippery.  Sometimes I just get cocky and think that I’m above the ice, that I can walk on it—but no one is above the ice.  There have been many awkward foot slides and arms jutting out to grab things that aren’t there for stability, even a few windmill motions.  I am sometimes quite positive that Georg thinks I am the strangest, clumsiest person he’s ever met.

Okay, introductions.  I am staying with the Stadler Family, which consists of Oma and Opa, parents of Georg, Georg’s wife Bettina, and their three children, Anna (13), Marlene (10), and Sofie (7). When I first arrived last Thursday, I could barely understand a word anyone was saying. That’s because they live in Bavaria, the most southeastern German state, where they have their own special dialect that is much, much different from the German you learn in school.  At first it was overwhelming, but after almost a week, I am fairly settled in and really loving my time here.

Every day I am in the stalls by 6:30 am to begin the morning milking.  There are currently 33 cows that we milk, twice a day. Each one produces about 15 liters each time they are milked, some cows can produce up to 40 liters, but those are the black and white ones.  The ones here are brown and white.  Who knew?  Color really does matter.  The cows come through the “Milking Parlor” and fill six stalls at a time.  They are milked using a machine, but first you have to get those teets revved up first and ready for business.  Meaning you have to start by hand.  At first, this was difficult for me.  I could get milk to come out of 1 or 2 of the 4, but then Georg would have to help me with the others.  After about three days, I could consistently milk any cow with no help, thank god.  It was getting embarrassing. Now it’s like a challenge every time, can she do it, can she milk them….YES SHE CAN…(it just might take a little longer than we expected….) (that one was for you, Dad).  So then you stick the little suctions things on them and they have to stand there for a few minutes and then they can go eat. Fiiiiinallllly, they say.  After they’re all finished, Georg goes and takes care of other duties on the farm, and I clean up the milking parlor.  This is the less fun part, but I’m just glad I can finally do something on my own and not need direction anymore, so I’m happy to do it.  Plus, I get to use a pressure washer, and I feel like I’m right back at Stone Creek Golf Course, so experienced.

The Milking Parlor is just six of these stalls.

 This is the view standing right at the side of the cow, they are about three feet higher than us so that it's easier to milk them.  

At 8:30, we fruhstück. That means we have breakfast. I like the fact that two hours of work are behind me by the time I sit down for my first meal.  And Georg always brings tea for when we are milking, so that tides me over until breakfast. The second milking is at 4:30.  Depending on the day, I either continue working with Georg the full day, or I take a few hours for myself to go explore or relax.  Lunch is always at 12:30.  Half of the week Georg’s mom cooks, the other half, Bettina does.

My first day of work was a Friday, which is a busy day here because it’s the only day of the week that the Hofladen (it’s a little farm store) is open. They sell all kinds of organic products, along with their own milk, eggs, bread, and meat.  Every Friday, Georg’s mom bakes bread in their huge brick oven.  40 big loaves and about 200 or so rolls. This Friday I got to help.  It was fun and delicious, and his mom speaks really slowly for me so that I can understand what she’s saying.  Comically slow. I love it.  She is so sweet, and once she gets going with that dough, whew! Watch out. She’s on point. After we were done with bread, I helped ground and package some meat that was fresh from the slaughter house.  Adjusting to that is a little weird, but I’m just trying to go with it.  Georg was like, yep, we just got one of our bulls back from the slaughter house…moment of silence for the guy…annnnnnnd switch on the grinder. After I packaged it, I brought it to the store to be sold.  I do have to say, it is cool seeing the process of how everything happens and watching it go straight from the farm into people’s grocery baskets. 

Another exciting thing that happened on Friday was a calf being born! It’s little hooves were sticking out as we walked into the barn that morning.  Georg got the big long gloves and some other tools and told me to hop in the pen and help out. Roger that. It’s difficult to describe the exact process of getting baby out, but a lot of pulling and then a rush of blood pretty much explains it I suppose.  Since then two more calves have also been born.  They are so cute and soft and they suck on your finger.  There are also baby piggies and some of them are so small that they can scoot between the bars of the pen and run be free! But then when they see any kind of movement they go squealing back to their moms. Whoever says that pigs are smarter than dogs are just as dumb as the pigs, if you ask me.  Then there are three little Shetland ponies and one is meaner than hell. Along with at least 50 or so cows, that concludes the inhabitants of barn number one.  Scattered throughout the other three buildings are horses, goats, chickens, cats and a dog. Oh, and peacocks. 

Looking out my bedroom window, peacock.

Front door of the cow barn--not sure what it all means, but  I like it.

Here is the first calf that was born! And the second one is on the other side of the mom, tryna get a drank.

Here is where the cows eat once their done milking.  In the summer time they can go out on the fields, but they mostly stay inside during the winter.

The view straight out from my bedroom window.  That's where the coweys are!

On Saturday I got to go for my first outing to Burghausen.  It’s about a 15 or 20 minute bike ride away, depending on if you’re going to the Neustadt or the Altstadt. This time I went by foot.  Georg’s parents drove me into the Altstadt and left me smack in the middle of this beautiful scene:

I walked around for a while and took a few photos, sat and had a coffee at a café, and slowly made my way back to the house.  On Monday I went back into town to explore the castle.  It’s been named Europe’s longest castle, spanning 1.3 km (or thereabouts).  Here’s what it looks like from above.  I took a helicopter ride up so I could get a better angle. Just kidding. Got this on the internet:

To the right of it is the Salzach river, which is the same river that flows through Salzburg (which is only 57 km away from me right now)! And, if you cross the bridge to the very right, you are officially in Austria.  But more on that later. So I parked my super cool ride and strolled through the very empty castle walls.  Here’s some pictures:

It's not Knight Rider, but it does the job.

Took a picture of myself, not lame

I then walked down these steps into the Altstadt:

Once I was there, I crossed the Salzach and sat down for a nice cup of coffee and cookie in Austria.  Delightful.  Except I was alone.  But it was better than being with a cow I guess.  As I was hiking back up to the castle, a woman stopped me and asked if I was from Burghausen and if I knew any good places to eat and we had a whole conversation in German without any confusion and I was so proud of myself. 

"Ach" is the name of a town, so great

Speaking with the kids actually helps a lot, because they don’t know much English (Anna knows some) and so we have to figure everything out in German.  Even better, it's Bayerisch German. The sound of it is actually starting to grow on me, especially the word for "calf".  In German, it's "das Kalb" pronounced like, "dahs Kahlb".  But in Bayerisch?  No.  It's a Koi-bee, the girls say to me like I'm dumb for saying, das Kalb. Koi-bee. Yep, I have a new favorite German word. And, here's some of my other favorite things the girls say:

Sofie: “Komm mit!” (Come with me! She says this as she tugs on my hand and drags me off to her room or the table or anywhere where she wants to show me something).

Marlene:  „Es muss so sein und nicht so sein“.  (It has to be like this, not like that.  She uses this sentence often when she’s explaining to me how to do something, like drive a tractor for instance.  Yeah, a ten year old taught me how to drive the tractor.  Well, the small one.  She can’t drive the big one yet, but I can, neener, neener!)

Sofie: „Zuerst ist er nett und dann wird er böse!“  (At first he’s nice, but then he's bad!  She said this, and the opposite of this, during the first five minutes of a movie we watched the other night, as all of the characters came on the screen. Thank you Sofie, I no longer need to watch the rest of the film.)

Anna: “SAH-fiiiieee!!” (That’s how she says Sofie, especially when Sofie does something wrong.)

Sofie: “‘Tschuldigung…” (In this context, I’m going to translate it as “Oops, sorry!”.  Sofie responds in this way all the time, so quickly, and it’s so funny.  She just says it and then goes on with her business.)

On the third or fourth night, Sofie drew me a bunch of pictures.  The next day, she ran out to me in the barn and showed me  a little piece of wood, in which she’d carved my name: H E L I.  Out of allllllll the different ways I have seen people misspell my name, this was by far my favorite.  I wanted to die of laughter, it was so adorable, and actually, I am quite fond of the new spelling.  Sorry Mom and Dad. 

I am growing very fond of the whole family actually.  I love the way all three girls are so capable of doing everything themselves.  It was the first time I’d seen a seven year old brandish a huge knife at face height to try to cut an apple by herself on the kitchen counter, and succeed.  And when she was struggling, nobody ran to help her, they just let her do it.  The girls drive the tractors, they milk the cows, they can all do pretty much all of the farm work.  I feel like Georg teaches me the same way he teaches his girls, and I think it’s really cool.  He shows me how to do something and then just lets me give it a shot.  If I can’t do it, he gives me a few tips and I try again, but he never does it for me, even though it would be much faster most of the time. 

One example of this would be on Tuesday, when we went into the forest to cut down trees.  First he sat me in the big tractor and showed me all the important things: clutch, gear shifter thingy, ignition, pulleys and lever thingys for the attachements, and then he goes, okay meet you down by the forest.  Sweet.  I have driven a stick shift all of one time, but I guess Kevin did a good job teaching me, because it wasn’t so difficult this time.  The only problem was at first, when I started to pull away, and then Georg wanted to put something in the tractor, he asked me to stop, but I then realized I didn’t know how.  I just kept stepping on the brake and the thing kept rolling along.  Yeah, I know, step on the clutch Hayley, I know that now.

So we got to the forest and then Georg goes, have you ever used a chain saw? Um, does watching someone use one count? Good enough! So he explained how to use it, and how to cut down a tree, and then said, here, you do this one.  Okay, it was a pretty puny tree, the trunk was no more than 10 inches in diameter, but still! Then we went on to cut down much bigger ones (Georg did, I watched and then pulled it down using the tractor if needed).  It was so exciting to watch them fall down with a huge whoosh and crack.  Especially the anticipation of seeing if it was going to fall the right way.  It was like being at a baseball game and thinking every foul ball is going to hit you.  At one point Georg was like, hm, I’m not sure exactly where this one is going to fall.  Do you have special health insurance for Germany? Ha, great, now my mom is going to freak out, because I DON’T. But don’t worry, he was just kidding.  I was probably safer there then I was when we were trying to move a couple of cows the other day.

Here's my chainsaw proof outfit

The boots probably would have fit my dad...even with two pairs of socks and newspaper stuffed inside, they made me twenty times clumsier than I already am.  But they were chainsaw approved!

Anyway, we had to rope and gate off everything and then try to get these four cows to go through a small passageway, with two or three steps.  Not easy. Georg and his dad and I were all trying to herd them in, all had pitchforks in our hands, and the cows just would not go.  They kept trying to double back and I didn’t have the exact know-how to anticipate when I should try to keep blocking them or when I should just let them get by me.  So at one point I ended up stepping backwards and tripping over a small bale of hay, and falling into more hay, and thankfully not getting trampled or stabbing anyone with my pitchfork.  I am getting a lifetime’s worth of experiences here. 

It’s way too much to even try to write about all of it, but those are the highlights so far.  I enjoy having coffee with the grandparents and getting into a long discussion with Opa about factory farming.  The conversation turns to Bush and weapons and I’m out not as enthused, but it’s give and take.  Also I just found out a few days ago that Oma thought I was from Switzerland this whole time, not America.  I’m still confused about that one.  Today the three girls plus one of their friends and I went to go see the sequel to the movie we watched the other night.  We all biked together to the movie theater, which was stressful at times because they have no concept of other people/cars yet, but we all got there and back in one piece and I think the girls had a lot of fun.  It was about four friends and their dog and all of their adventures together.  It was a kid’s movie, so I could understand it, and I was getting super into it.  I love my life. Week two begins tomorrow, and I can only imagine what kind of things I will encounter.