I am a Farm Girl Aviator

Right before we left for Fiji, Meredith and I received an email invitation to go speak at clubs in the Palmerston North area.  I ended up going to the Woodville Rotary club, and my speech was last Thursday evening.  I took the bus up there (no commuter trains head that direction) and was met by a Rotarian, Bob, at the bus stop.  He works at the dairy plant that I had passed the previous weekend on my Wanganui trip as the Health and Safety manager.  Because my bus got me to Palmerston North by 2:30 or so, we had plenty of time before Rotary, so I got a personalized tour of the dairy plant.  I saw the plastic milk jugs being made, the milk being tested and processed, and yogurt and cottage cheese being made.  It was like getting to know the enemy, getting to know my nemesis.  (In case you didn’t know, I am lactose intolerant.)  I was all dressed in coveralls, white gumboots, hairnet, ear plugs (loud machinery in a dairy plant), and safety goggles.  Too bad I didn’t have my camera in there!  Afterwards, we went back to his house so that I could change, and then we headed off to Rotary.  Woodville is a real farming community, so this club reflected that in its laid back attitude.  It is a smaller club, about 11 members or so, and another one joined the night I gave my speech.  It went very well, was very well accepted, and the whole evening was very pleasant.

Bob and his wife Margaret were leaving early the next morning to visit their son (I think), so I stayed with a different couple, Joy and Jim.  (Joy was the new Rotarian from the evening.)  They were so nice!  I know I say that every time, but I haven’t had a bad experience with Rotary yet.  They had a whole room set up for me, my own shower, bathroom, everything.  The bed was so comfortable that I felt like I was staying in a hotel!  I even had little mini soaps and shampoos.  Joy had also left the fire going because she knew Americans typically found New Zealand to be cold due to the lack of central heat.  We had a nice evening, sitting by the fire and talking, but I was exhausted and went to bed early.

I had a bit of a sleep in the next morning, thank goodness.  Finally, some good sleep!  Joy and Jim had a great breakfast laid out for me, and after breakfast and talking and showering, we drove in to Fielding for some real Kiwi experiences.  This area is big in livestock farming, so to introduce me to it all, we went to a Stock Sale.  The farmers bring in their livestock to be auctioned off on specified days.  It is a great social outing as well for the older farmers.  You can tell that they are not there to bid on any livestock; they are there to catch up with their old farming buddies, much like younger women go shopping with friends without any intention of making purchases.  We watched paddocks of sheep being auctioned off outside before making our way out of the rain into the cattle auction.  This consists of a large warehouse with stadium seats along one side and a sort of boardwalk on the other side.  The cattle are driven in through one door, weighed on the scale, driven into the next pen, auctioned off, and then driven out the other side by dogs.  It was quite entertaining to see about how much different cows are sold for, what is a good price per kilogram, and why some cows are worth more than others.

After this, we drove into Palmerston North for lunch and a bit of shopping.  I really want a small map of New Zealand and a larger map of the world, but one with Australia at the top.  I haven’t been able to find one that I like yet, but I am still looking!  We had to be home by 3:30 so Joy could get dinner started, but we drove home past the wind farm, which was cool.  Windmills are huge, by the way.  I got out to take some pictures and was really cold and almost blown over, as well.  Engineers really placed that wind farm in a strategic position.  Anyways, we got home and curled up by the fire with cups of tea, reading the paper and relaxing indoors.  Two friends of Joy and Jim’s came over for dinner, which was amazing.  Roast lamb and vegetables and all sorts of other yummy stuff.  Their friends were really nice.  We had good political conversations that turned to a discussion about good advertisements we had enjoyed.  I was talking about how I love the Tui billboards.

[In case you don’t know: Tui is a beer brewed in New Zealand.  They have billboards where the left half is black with white type, and the right is red with ‘Yeah Right’ and the Tui symbol on it.  They change the left side to go with whatever is the current mood in NZ.  For example, ‘It’s getting too cold for a beer’ or ‘The perfect body in 3 minutes a day’ would be on the left, followed by the ‘Yeah Right’ on the right.  I think they are hysterical!  They have been going since 1997 or so, which is quite long for an advertising campaign, but the brilliant thing is that they can change so quickly based on NZ society.  They had some great ones during the election.  The one nearest to my flat now says, ‘We didn’t think Winston Peters was a sore loser’ or something like that.]

Jim and Joy’s friends had just purchased a magnet where you could change whatever was written on the left side with magnetic letters that came with it.  I was super excited about it, so they gave it to me!  I also got to go to the brewery the next day and have a look around.

After this, I was transferred to my next host family, Jim and Jenny.  They are an older couple who live on a farm, so I got to experience farm life.  I got to bottle feed baby lambs that didn’t have healthy mothers.  I got to drive a quad bike (4-wheeler in America) around the farmland.  I helped set up a new fence and moved cattle from one paddock to another.  Jim drove me over to a friend’s dairy farm so I could see cows being milked.  I hadn’t seen it industrialized before.  This guy can milk 160 cows in about 1.5 hours with his machinery.  Jim and Jenny also have two cats, so I got to play with them.  I have missed having cats around.  That night was the big rugby final (Auckland trounced Otago, just so you know), so they had some friends over for dinner and to watch the game.

The next morning the weather finally cleared up.  There had been a cold snap, a last ditch effort by Mother Nature to hold on to winter, and it had been raining for three days.  I was so happy that it did decide to clear up because it meant that the best part of my trip would actually get off the ground.  Michael, another Rotarian who I have never met (he is in another club, I think), has some sort of job with planes.  I am not entirely sure what he does.  Anyway, he set it up for me to go flying over the Palmerston North area!  Jim drove me to the Fielding Airfield, where we met up with Andre, our pilot who looked like he was about 26 or so.  He took us up in a Cessna, me in the front co-pilot seat and Jim in the back taking pictures.  We are up in the air, and Andre hands the controls over to me!  It was fantastic, being up there and flying the plane.  I loved being above everything.  There was a fog settled down in Woodville, so it was very cool to be above the clouds and seeing them from above.  The skies were clear enough to see Mt. Taranaki and Ruapehu.  I have seriously been bitten by the aviation bug.  Anyone want to sponsor me getting my pilot’s license?  It was also very cool because Michael set it up to be a free flight, no cost to us.  Rotary is amazing like that, opening up so many opportunities that you wouldn’t normally get.  You aren’t experiencing New Zealand as outsiders and backpackers; you get in to see what the Kiwi way of life is like, to eat what they eat, and to tour as locals would.  Very cool!

So, after that excursion, it was time for me to head home.  Jenny was amazing and sent me home on the bus with cakes and pies and chocolate.  No getting hungry on the way home!  I got back into Wellington around 3 on Sunday and having been running around ever since then.  I am leaving at 5:10AM tomorrow morning for my south island trip with my mother, and I have a lot of things to take care of before that (not the least of which is pack, something I have not even begun).  I won’t be back until November 4th, so I will pick up on my story then!