Shopping frenzy!

Another fortnight, another shopping frenzy, this time for about 320AUD! J Yeah, it’s a lot but it’ll keep me going probably for 3 weeks now. As this amount seems pretty rediculous, I might just point out some of prices here for an idea. About bananas you know already. J

• Plasticbag – 0,9
• 2L orange juice – 4,99
• 1kg pears – 2,88
• 1kg apples – 2,70
• 1kg long grain rice – 1,89
• Cucumber – 2,98
• Pistachio nuts – 29,96 per kg
• Chicken breast fillet (2pcs) – 9,5
• Capsicum red (paprika) – 7,98 per kg
• Capsicum green (paprika) – 4,98 per kg
• Beef minced meat – 9,90 per kg
• Raw sugar 1kg – 1,69
• Eggs 12 pack (600g) – 4,55
• Seed bread (800g) – 3,25
• Yoghurt 170g – 1,69

Prices are in AUD, just to be on the safe side. J I do not remember what things did cost back at home, but yes, it is a lot more expencive here and yes, people do earn a lot more money aswell. On the other hand, I do not understand them complaining about the fuel prices. For crying out loud, it costs about 1,5-1,55 AUD per litre. Just about the same as in Estonia I guess, or even less.

Life itself has been busy, full of work and nothing else. As we had enough rain to start seeding, we’ve been up and running from 6AM till the very evening, usually finishing between 6PM and 9PM. It isn’t too bad, it isn’t too hard and that is where the money is hidden. J So wake up for me is at 5.20, quick morning push ups and sit ups to get the blood moving and warmth as the mornings are quite chilly. Once we had just +2 before the sunrise, usually 6-9 degrees which climbs up to about 15-20 degrees during the day. I open the door of my tractor at about 6AM and start filling up the tank with water and chemicals. That usually takes about 20 minutes, then it’s another 15-30 minutes drive up to the certain field. And so the day goes, spraying and filling up, unless there are some problems, which do occur from time to time. J One of the two reasons we are not working this weekend is because the pump on the sprayer decided to end its’ work contract. Well, it was an old machine already, having served for over 10 years. Another reason was one guy forgot to order the fertilizer, so even without the pump failure we would have had a weekend off. And as I said, what better way to spend it than shopping! J And I got myself connected again, so that’s good aswell. Aaah, upon getting back from work it’s just a quick meal, getting a shower, maybe watching some TV and off to bed, sweet dreams and another day starts sneaking up.

After doing some maths I found out I’ve done more than 1100ha of spraying since 09.05.11 up to today. I haven’t yet calculated the approximate consumption of diesel, but I’ll get to that aswell. J

Last week I was spraying a field (no 35) in the south east corner of the farm (while the shed is located on the north western side) and as I headed off to the field I heard Pete on the 2-way (the walkie-talkie type of thing for internal communication within the farm while on the vehicles) asking me if I could also move a truck with barley seeds from field 35 (south east) to 44 (south west). „Well, not a problem Pete, see you at 44 in an hour.“ One hour is exactly how much it took me to get from the shed (north western side of the farm) to field 35 and from there to 44. J Our manager Richie, a nice lad from UK, and also Pete are doing about 150-200km of driving around the farm in a day in their utes (the off-road vehicle with a case in the back). So that’s the size of this farm!

One more thing that comes with a weekend off is that I go jogging. Here in the farm I’ve managed to do it once every week, that is 5 times already, except the second weekend, cannot recall why though. Earlier while still in Brisbane I tried to go out twice a week. As I already started doing some maths then here are some another figures – so far 13 times and 91,91km, totaling 8241 calories. Not too bad I’d say. J

That’s all I have to say now.

Daily routine (22.05.11)

Some photos to start with :)

Without any access to the simple pleasures of life, i.e. internet, skype, blogging, I’ve had enough time to do other things, mainly work. The past week has brought along a bit more hours, days with average 10 hours of work, but have managed to make a 12h day aswell. To be quite fair with you, it was not a whole 12 hours of work, but as the law insists you have to have a half-an-hour break every 5 hours (read: lunch) and as mine just passed while driving around and spraying the fields, I added those two half-an-hour breaks on top of the actual hours. That’s the way it works here. And if you were irish, you’d add another 30-60 minutes to get more money (read: lying). So as said, I’ve had my working days filled with driving the tractor and doing spraying. Itself it’s not a hard work, but on the other hand you cannot really relax either as the fields might be quite rough – you are being thrown around on your seat like nothing, also have to keep an eye on whatever obstacles, from time to time kangaroos, rabbits, birds, mice (well, mice are always there and everywhere), foxes, but also these little fellows –

hedgehogs. As the tractor has a modern radio installed I am more than happy to use the other simple pleasures of life – BYO (read: bring your own). Usually, as I have mentioned it’s for bringing your own drinks to restaurants, in my case BYO music. Luckily the amount of music I can copy onto the USB memory sticks is about 3900 songs, that might keep me entertained for a little while.

Meanwhile 2 weekends have passed, quite ordinary, not too much going on but still have had some entertainment. Last weekend (13-15.May) started off with a shorter working day, as the irish guys needed to go to Murray Bridge to sort out their issues with their car, caused by their arrogance, ignorance and I’m-the-centre-of-the-world mentality. By today (22.May) it is still unsorted as they need their passports, which got stolen while in Sydney and now new ones are again waiting in Sydney which they do not feel like getting asap. So if nothing changes, they’ll be fined. Fine by me, this might reduce their level of arrogance.

So were was I – Murray Bridge – so far it relates to shopping and I did a heavy shopping this time, resulting in 250AUD! But that more or less keeps me covered for 2 weeks so no worries. J As we had both Saturday and Sunday also off, there was not too much to do, yet fortunately one english guy, Andy likes to do some racing, it was worth while having a peek on local highlight – speedway racing at Waikerie Speedway. It’s a dirt covered round track and the aim is, as in all forms of motorsports, suprise-suprise, not to crash and to finish first. J The event was of some

national importance, so there were a number of cars involved in various classes, starting from small engines with very young drivers and finishing with really powerful V8 dirtcars going sideways pretty much the whole

race. Andy wasn’t racing any of those however. As they say, save the best for last, so to dot the i of the evening there was a figure 8 racing, which included some destruction derby driving but not entirely. The idea was to finish, but you were allowed to do some crashing aswell, in order to overtake or to mess around with competitors a bit. But not TOO much because then you’d get penalties! And to make it more interesting, they’ve added 2 small jumps on the course, taking those might give some extra points or smth. Don’t know the rules though. It was quite interesting to watch, especially those guys with V8 cars going sideways and overtaking each other at the same time, but I’d prefer some more corners on the course and as the night was long (the whole event lasted about 5 hours) and cold (you could actually see your breath) then I probably wouldn’t invest going there again. Except when I could race myself J

This weekend began somehow differently. One evening I was told that tomorrow we’ll only have a half a day’s work again. I became a bit frustrated with it because I already had had 2 weeks in a row with both Sat & Sun off, but later that day, already half asleep I recalled – it’s Friday and tomorrow is Saturday. So no worries Margus, half day is already filled and that’s good. J Which

left the other half still open. As Pete had a football game that afternoon, Dermot and I set our way to Swan Reach to see BSR Redbacks (Blanchetown & Swan Reach joint team) play Aussie rules footy. It was a nice warm sunny day when you could actually wear only shorts and thongs (read: flipflops), a rare thing here. And there cannot be footy without a beer, or two, maybe three, sometimes four. J I don’t quite get the game yet but it’s a bit like American football, only it’s a men’s game without any protective plasticy shields or helmets. It’s a rough

game. J BSR team won a second weekend in a row with 144 points against opponents’ 53, if I’m not mistaken.

On both weekends I noticed a similarity during the events – it is a social event where everybody goes, whole families, they bring their own barbie (read: BBQ) or if possible (and early enough) use the public barbies. And when I say everybody, I refer to a lot of people from the nearby (read: 100km) communities. To make it nice and comfy for the spectators – they can park their cars pretty much the whole way around the stadium, so there’s no need to even step out of it. J Next step to so called american society.

P.S. Remember the Queensland (QLD) floods earlier this year and cyclone Yasi’s devastation in northern QLD?! Well it has had it’s affect. The Queenslanders are known as Banana Benders and that’s for a reason. Namely QLD provides the majority of bananas for the whole nation and also exports a lot of them. Due to the environmental disasters guess what has happened – YES correct, the increase of prices. And I kid you not – the price used to be around 2 AUD per kg, now it’s somewhere 13-14 AUD per kg!! 1kg of bananas is about 5-7 pieces. You do the maths.

P.P.S It is these days publicly on all media channels advertized that due to strong local currency situation it is reasonable, whoever can afford it, to go travelling. On the other hand it is a tricky position for local products to be sold abroad because the cost has increased, not only due to currency situation but also the general increase in production costs.

And that's what happens when you light up a dump and bring some beers :)

Another "days of firsts"

So finally I found out that the talks about the roos (read: kangaroos) jumping around freely here on farmlands are true. On Monday morning I saw 3 roos looking around in the bush and gicing the big green thing funny looks, today noticed another fellow enjoying himself (or herself) under the early morning sun totally ignoring my passing just about 20m away. I thought they would look a bit different from those we have back in Tallinn Zoo, maybe it's just the fact it's wintertime coming up so their fur adjusts to the colours of the surroundings. I imagined them to be less grey and more light brown :)

Monday also started up with my trying out the spraying the first time with all the procedures of making the chemical coctail in the tanktrailer, getting the sprayer inspected for any kind of problems etc. To be honest, it's not as hard of a work as I thought. I am just driving the whole unit to the certain field, get the machinery ready (yes, you can go wrong with it and then it's not good) and off I go. The driving itself is being done by GPS controlled autosteering, the use of

pedals is anyway a rare thing, just have to keep my eyes open for rough terrain (result of bad ploughing), any breathers or centrepoints on the field or other miscellaneous objects. The GPS keeps the tractors on the straight line and my other duty is to turn the tractor around at each end of the line and align it close to a centre of a new line, there GPS takes over the process again. Of course you have to calculate the wind direction, because as certain fields that are still not harvested are neighbouring the ones I spray, I might just ruin a lot of crops when miscalculating something, also it would not be a good idea to spill a big amount of the coctail out from the tank because otherwise that certain spot on the field will not grown anything within the next 5 years. :) AND it is also not a good idea to leave the sprayer running while making an unexpected stop on the field, mainly due to the previous reason. AND there are quite a few other things to bare in mind, such as the bearings and bearinghousing and if those are intact. Well at one point I was too busy finding my way around a field centrepoint while Pete (who was instructing me) noticed a bearing being broke. Moreover, having had it changed after 30 minutes hard work and just having started to head back to the shed another failure - the 2 long beams of the sprayer had got stuck into one another. As the wheels of the sprayer unit were aligned precisely and correctly AND as the whole thing had just had it's renovation it was pretty unclear why it happened. Not even the guys who have been working in that farm for 10 years have not experienced anything like it. So it must have something to do with me :) Looking at the bright side, without having had those incidents we would probably have gone to the other farms (I'll tell about it later) without enough or specific spares. No worries, all turned out just fine.

Well, I am not sure how interesting it is to read all this. Moreover, I wonder how many people are actually reading this apart from my family. So if it does not take tooooo much of your valuable time dear readers, send me a small notice so I'd actually know who am I dealing with here :)

Cheers guys!

New room

It’s always the tricky part when I start writing something here. Throught the recent days I have had ideas what to write down but as soon as I begin, I have a blank sheet with non of the ideas. J It’s not only the thoughts what to write down and share with you guys that pop up to my head, but also general, like what to do when back at home, which places to visit around here, what kind of work would be interesting to do here, what would I still study, which adventure sports I’d like to try etc etc. I am indeed glad I made the decision to give up work at home and take this challenge to try something totally different, it just open the mind to new ideas and experiences.

Anyway – 2 weeks, tick; first paycheck - tick; own room – tick. On Friday the british guys Pete and Andy moved out to another house, some 15km further away from work. Therefore Saturday was the perfect moment to do some cleaning up in the house and around. Basically every ceiling, wall and floor in the house was vacuumcleaned, tilefloors washed, even some windows received attention. Most of my attention was ofcourse on my new room – finally a cupboard to put my clothes in, four walls with a window and a decent door – some privacy. Also bought myself a small heater because the room is, especially in the evenings and mornings quite cold. And the average temperature has not yet made its’ low as the coldest time here is generally July-August. Considering the fact I will be staying in this farm till the end of July it was just the right thing to buy. Also got myself a decent pillow as the old one, well it could not be called a pillow anymore. So in general it’s finally looking good enough, still some cleaning to be done today and probably I will go for a jog aswell, haven’t done any exercise except physical work for 2 weeks now.

However there is one thing I’d like to be different here. Last 2 weeks I was on daily basis together with 4 other guys. Now as from yesterday only with 2 other guys. To make matters worse – the british guys Pete and Andy were older and a lot more grown up. I mean I am left here with 2 kids and have to be a freaking kindergarden teacher. The irish, Dermot and Alan are just... I could easily manage on my own but as long as I am not able to move around myself – that is having a car, I am more or less stuck with them and also cannot just fully ignore them. And what I meant about difference is that there are not any other people round about my age to socialize with. Yes, there is a bunch of

backpackers working in the upper shed (we have an upper and lower shed, the upper one is where the washing and packing of potatoes is done and lower is where the cooling rooms for storage are and where the machinery is located), but I do not have any contact with those people just because I have no business up there at this moment. As I said before, I’ll manage but it would be more interesting to have some more people around. Fortunately, as soon as there will be some rain, we’ll have our weeks full of work and then I really will not have any spare time, just work which means money which means I can relax and travel later. J

Emotions

The first week working in the Oakville Farm has gone by, I have to say quite quickly. It has been definately interesting, but as I’ve said before, a bit hard and of course tiring. Nevertheless, it’s the past now and looking forward to the future. J

I guess it is necessaryto take a break of so-called serious work after some time and do something different, do something that allows you to slow down and not be in a rush every day. I am not sure though how the officework here is, I assume more relaxed than compared to what I am used to, but the farmwork has it’s benefits. There is no rush, well at least now. Everything takes time, everybody has time and if you do not finish with something today, you always have tomorrow. Yes, some things cannot wait, especially when there is either harvesting or seeding involved. But now I am waiting for it. A 12-14 hour working day does not seem easy at all, but it definately involves a lot bigger income. And quite frankly, how hard can it be to drive around in a tractor, do spraying with the help of GPS that even keeps yu going in a straight line. All I really have to do is turn the machine around and not fall asleep. J

Also, here I’ve already learned to drive machines I think I never would have. I do not know what I am going to do with that knowledge in the future, but eventually it might come handy. Various types of tractors, also old trucks, small forklifts and bigger, industrial forklifts. It’s fairly easy, it’s just the fact that usually you do not even get a chance to have a try in one of those, without actually being involved in any business dealing with them. Well yeah, here I am in a business dealing with them, but I mean that back at home I guess it won’t be so simple compared to what it’s here.

Today, Monday 02.05. we went for a quick drive around the farmlands to have a look at the fields we are going to be dealing with in the coming weeks. That is a LOT of land, a LOT of dricing, a LOT of kilometers. In addition to that, tomorrow we are going to drive to the 2 other places that we will eventually be working in. That means taking all the equipment from here to those other 2 farms, doing the necessary jobs there and heading back. As they are located a fair bit away from here, it’ll be a long roadtrip with the tractors, average speed of 20-30km/h on the public roads. J But it’ll definately be an experience and a change in the life here. What more could you ask for.

The days of firsts

The first days have gone by with a steady, but quick pace. Tuesday starter with a 6AM wake up and 7AM arrival to the farm. And it was late start. As I heard during the day, some folks start harvesting potatoes already at 2AM! Why? Because you need to have some trucks already loaded and ready for washing and packing at the shed when the shed crew comes along between 5-6AM. So I had a fairly late start J

The first day was really about getting to know a bit about the equipment they are using here and having a drive with them. All tractors are John Deere production and only a year or two old. I had a go with 3 different ones, did some deliveries of fertilizers to a couple of fields, seeding a bit

of wheat on a small plot just to keep the wind from blowing away the soil (read: sand) and making a sandstormevery now and then and also managed to do some ploughing. First time for everything or what! All machines are big, with fully automatic gearboxes but still very different in their build. While with some you just play with a number of buttons to set the speed and revs, then with others you still need to use pedals. Oh my, manual work J. It was interesting, especially considering that my only experience with a tractor is an old red (and/or blue) Belarus. Yet as the guys around here said – when you could drive a Belarus, you can drive anything. Apparently it’s true, because those machines are indeed easy to drive. And so it went, first day of firsts with 8,5 hours of worktime.

Wednesday was a whole different day, initially I was supposed dissassemble a seeder unit and replace most of it’s pipes and hoses but as someone had lost a much needed bolt to attach the seeder to the tractor, there were other things lined up. Oh yeah, firstly, talking about me I am usuallytalking about me and Pete as he is stuck with me basically the whole time to teach and show everything. And secondly it seems a great deal of things either get lost or broker around here (which is ok) but noone really tells about it as it happens. It’s always some time later some other guy finding it out. So in the morning all workers were given a strong warning and apparently if you mess up, you will step out of the door.

So the day went by pretty much doing two things – installing a video camera in one part of the seeder (where the grain will be held) with making a stand for the screen in the tractor and watching a truck full of seeds getting stuck in soft ground while unloading the seeds into a temporary storage. A grand total of 9h 15 minutes of work J. Well I actually did work in the full sense of it, I just don’t know how to describe everything I do here. And quite frankly, it is tiring. By the way, filling the tank of a tractor with diesel can be quite expensive if yu did it in a regular gas station – 320L of diesel with a price of around 1,5AUD / L is not what you’d call cheap. Our station in the farm premices offers you a wonderful deal however – just 0,20AUD / L J.

Getting sorted, sort of

Sunday was the good time just to get a bit organized here. As I just cannot stand utter dirt and uncomfort, I did some cleaning up. Firstly vacuumcleaned the room, both floor and ceiling which was full of spider nets, small harmless spiders went in aswell and just plain dust. Lateron during the evening cleaned some dishes and kitchen faces just to be able to cook. Suprise-suprise – the things I did clean up remained clean even after everyone had their breakky.

As Pete and Andy, the guy been here the longest decided to head to Murray Bridge to do some shopping, I thought of going along. For 2 reasons actually. First, I wanted to change my mobile operator from Vodafone to Telstra because Vodafone hardly has any network signal here at all and secondly to get some other essentials for living. As it is still a bank holiday today (and tomorrow), I couldn’t sort out the first plan, but did manage to get foodstuff that I cannot get from our small local „Friendly Grocer“ shop. And as it still is a day of holiday, the guys thought of going to KFC, where I don’t think I’ve eaten before. J A Ultimate Burger Meal was quite handy for 10AUD, packed with some fries, 3 chicken wings and a burger accompanied by a drink. That should keep me feeling fine till the morning.breakky! J So they do like it nice and tidy, they just do not know where to start or how to start. I’d say just start by doing, but that’s just me.

Today, Monday I went along with Pete, the oldest guy in this place we are living, for a quick drive around the premices to get an idea of what I will be dealing with here and what is this place about. To say the least – it’s huge! The farm consists of about 46 fields, most of which are round! They are round because every field has a watering system on them and that is located in very centre of it. The system itself is still above ground but the pipework below ground leads to the centre. Every year there are about 12-14 fields in use, others are idle. Each field is about 800m of diameter,

about 15ha of coverage. On each field in use there is an on ground watering system which is pivoting and covers the whole field in about 12-13 hours. That whole system is fully automatic, can be started and stopped both on the field and in the office nearby. Not bad for farming J

Murray Bridge is a bigger place to go shopping or going to movies, what Pete and Andy did yesterday, but apparently they do take a ride from time to time also to Adelaide. Murray Bridge is also the place I’ll probably be looking for a car, because as it seems, you cannot really make it here without one. Everything is just too far away to go by foot, public transport – well what is that in outback! So in a months time I guess I’ll be starting to look for a cheap car, as far as I’ve heard you can get some more or less decent car for round about 1000-2000AUD. Let’s see how it goes,

but as Pete and Andy are going to be moving to a different place with this week probably and Dermot & Alan, the Irish guys, both 19, are heading back to Sydney after 7 weeks, I need to find myself something to move around with. And what better way to go for a roadtrip later, than with your own car J

Tomorrow I’ll be starting my carreer as a farmer, well apparently a tractor driver and supposedly I will be firstly doing spraying. I guess some chemicals and fertilizers on the fields. And as soon as that is done and no rain comes, we might actually be moving to a different farm, owned by the same guys who own this farm, to do the same. But if it rains, which everybody kind of hopes it does, we’ll be up for serious seeding. What exactly shall be put down, I don’t know yet.

Pictures of the living here and the fields and the tractor driver, that is me, will follow hopefully soon. J

Have a good one! Cheers!