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.
