One pint or two?

Tuesday 9th. Don't know what was wrong with me yesterday but I didn't feel so great and didn't want any supper! That got Brigid worried, me being off my food! 

Still, Tuesday and a new day. We are now staying on another farm but this is primarily a dairy farm. We had breakfast in the farmhouse kitchen and I avoided the cooked breakfast (just in case!). 

We then took a leisurely stroll (scramble) up to Dog Rock which is just behind the farmhouse. Boy, was it worth it. 

On the side of the rock there are some Maori drawings which have been fenced off to preserve them. We could see why, because on other faces of the rock were some 20th century additions. 

Back home to catch up on the blog and try and book our next stops on our journey. 

We thought that for lunch we would drive to Pleasant Point, the nearest town to us. We are closer to Cave but that is only a small township. Pleasant Point is, as the name says, a pleasant place. On the Main Street there is the old station complete with museum and the only Model T train in the world. 

We had lunch at Legends where the outside tables were somewhat novel. 

Lunch was a baked potato frittata and flat white. What I hadn't realised was that you could have a bowl of flat white - it looked enormous. 

After that a walk around town and then back to the farm for a swim. 

Judith, our host, then popped in to see if we would like to view the farm. We drove onto a hillside above the house and looked out over their 1600 acres - not that we could see it all. 

They grow maize and lucerne for animal feed and have cows, calves, sheep and goats. We then went down to view the dairy. 

There are 250 cows in the dairy barn and the milking and feeding is fully automated. 

Cows can present themselves for milking at any time and the computer will know if they are not ready or not. If ready, their teats are cleaned and the suction tubes attached automatically. 

In the barn there is an automated back scratcher which the cows seem to enjoy. They are fed twice a day, the feed being distributed on the floor in front of their pens. 

Throughout the day a robot moves up and down the barn pushing the feed back toward the pens. Fascinating. 

The effluent is automatically scraped to the end of the barn and then separated out so that the liquids go back onto the fields and a dried cake goes onto the garden. It seems that nothing is wasted.