The Schlachthaus

Bettina and Georg went on an overnight trip to Regensburg and guess who took care of the cows the whole time? Ha! I did! I am an expert!  I had to milk them three times on my own.  The first time was a fiasco, but mostly because I think the cows just sensed that Georg wasn’t coming and they felt like messing with me.  

Somehow, four of the cows that we don’t milk ended up in the group that gets milked.  I have no idea how they did it.  There are gates that stop them from going into the other section.  They must have done magic. It’s the only explanation.  Luckily, Opa helped me drive the four out of the mangled group of 35 or so and into the right section again.  Then, the whole time I was milking, the stupid cows kept dropping mud pies all over.  All of them.  Usually one or two will do it during a milking, and that's messy enough as it is. Then, there is one cow that always tries to kick me 18 times when I’m milking her.  I was getting mad at her and as she tried to stomp her foot down on my arm I grabbed her leg thinking for some reason that I could stop her.  Couldn’t.  I felt like a substitute teacher with a class full of high schoolers.  They settled down for day two though. No one pooped and no one ran amuck and all were milked in perfect harmony.  Except the kicker.

Sofie was also sick for the two days her parents were gone, so I hung out with her during the day.  We read together and did some of her math work book, but she said it hurt her head.  So we switched to cartoons.  Then she would run around hyper for about five minutes and want to play all sorts of games.  Then she would get droopy eyes and wrap herself up in a blanket and lie down and claim that she was dead. Ich bin tot! If death is just a cold and a headache…might not be so bad.

Anna took on the role of mother when she got home from school, cooking dinner and then breakfast the next morning, and laying out a note for me about the contents of my plate.  

Dear HLLEY (sorry!) HALEY, (still owes me an apology for that one)

--Do you want a cup of "Ceylon Lemon Honey tea"?  Over there is sugar!

--On your plate is your bred; it's not warm, but you can toast it! (perfect usage of the semi-colon, by the way)

--We have not butter, only fresh cheese and cherry jam.

--You can eat a strawberry muesli.  Watch out! You must shake the yoghurt, before you open it! But I don't know, if it good yet!

--I wish you a nice day with Sofie!

Anna and Marlene

Anna likes to practice her English with me.  It makes me wonder what my German sounds like. She is great.  That night, we all watched The Pirates of the Caribbean 2 together and Johnny Depp still looks good with a German-Pirate accent.  I tried to leave to go shower, but Marlene hooked her arms around me like a little koala and wouldn't let me go.  So we cuddled for the last forty minutes of the movie.  Kids are fun sometimes.

Today I tried to spray water at a cow with a hose to get it to move and ended up spraying myself in the face because the nozzle was faced the wrong way.

I also had to help Opa get two pigs into a trailer today, because guess where they were going? To the slaughter house.  When I found out, I just stood there, cool, calm, and collected on the outside, but horrified on the inside, because there they were, just enjoying life, being annoying, stupid pigs, and in a few hours, they would be dead.  They didn’t even have a clue.  I had spent three weeks hating them, and if I were staying longer, I would also probably spend a week eating them.  It was the last true farm experience I needed to have:  going to the slaughter house.

Two pink pigs, probably 150 pounds each, loaded up in the trailer and Opa drove us all of 8 km through the snow and backed up the trailer to the double doors of a barn.  The butcher came out in all white. Like a bride on her wedding day.  We opened the door for the pigs to run out into the large, white room with green flooring and stainless steel gadgets all over.  As the pigs ran in, I saw the butcher holding a big clamp in his hand with pokey teeth on the end.  He chased after the pigs, at which point I thought, this does not look like something I want to see, and turned away.  Opa told me I could come inside the room if I wanted to watch.  No.  No, I do not.  He went in and I heard some squealing.  Then he came back out and explained to me that the clamp thing was just to give the pigs an electric shock so that they couldn’t feel anything anymore.  So they’re dead? I asked.  No, still alive.  I peeked inside and saw them both lying on the ground, one was shaking a little bit, and a big pool of blood lay in between them.  So, as it turns out, I could never be a farmer.

 There they were, still alive, lying in their own blood.  I shut the door again. The door had windows, which were foggy except for right around the edges.  I looked through the centimeter gap and saw that the pigs were being raised up by their back legs and hung from those devices you always see on television, and then the butcher pushed them over to the other side of the room to wash them and it got too foggy to see.  I just kept thinking, how the heck does this guy spend every single day killing animals?  I understand it’s necessary for food, but to actually be the person that has to do it?  You would have to be so detached from them.  Maybe a chicken or two is one thing, but cows, pigs…things that look more similar to dogs and cats than a bird.  That’s where my farming career would end. I would accidentally set all the animals free.

Brighter things are ahead.  I’m taking the day off tomorrow and heading down to Salzburg! Over two years later and I will finally be back.  I shouldn’t say finally.  Some people don’t go back for 20 years, if ever.  Some people can’t even go back because they’ve never been there a first time.  And I get to say I’m going back tomorrow.  Brighter things. 

PS: The first link for the Sofie video never fully loaded.  I think this one should work:  http://youtu.be/OOMQjrVB8MM