Day 5 - Shamrockvale

It's Friday yay! The first time we have had the Friday feeling in a while. Farm life has completely taken it out of me and I am now sick - boo! After a solid 10 hours sleep last night though I am feeling slightly better.

Looking after calves is like having children, when they don't eat you worry about them all day. Nugget didn't eat much last night and wouldn't really eat anything this morning. He also sounds a bit like he has a cold. Poor little sausage! After attempting to feed Nugget and Tyson finishing off his and Nuggets breakfast, Simon and I headed over to the silos were Chris was filling us up a trailer full of grain for the cows. After helping Nick yesterday morning, I was now fully qualified to be let loose on my own with Simon as my official gate opener. We did miss one lot of troughs and have to go back for them but other than that I managed to remember the route through the various fields so no one went hungry.

After smoko, Simon got to drive a tractor around with Nick delivering hay bales to all the fields, whilst I was up at the yard with Chris helping with the sick cows again. In the afternoon, I was back in with Marius helping make the frames for the beehives and Simon was let loose with the petrol strimmer strapped too him to tidy up the previous days mowing.

Today is Sonja's last day on the farm so we invited Marius round for dinner and cooked up a curry. Marius also introduced us to bee pollen and has given us a bag to put on our porridge in the mornings that he collected from the hives. Apparently it is incredibly good for you and has more protein than steak. It's collected by a special device that knocks the pollen off the bees legs when they enter the hive and then freeze dried.Read more