Everyone mucks in: how one Southland family gets through the busy calving season

Growing up, my parents were sharemilkers and we moved around a lot with their job. Then they bought a dairy farm just out of Balclutha.

My partner Mike, 35, and I are in our third season on this farm, but the two of us have done eight seasons together now. Before that I was working for DairyNZ as a consulting officer, and that's how we met. Then I went dairy farming with him.

We're not that big in comparison to a lot of other herds around us, but Mike and I have got two full-time staff on the farm as well. As sharemilkers, we don't tend to take days off - it's full-time for us, especially during calving. Because we know it's not unending - there's always a light at the end of the tunnel - we can get through and get it done.

It all starts for us around 12 August. Our herd of 670 cows all calve within a six-week period, so in that time we have to collect all the calves off their mothers, train and rear them. We rear about 200 calves; the rest are bobbied, but we still train those ones to drink on feeders to four days old.

For my boys - Darcy, 7, Monty, 5, and Albie, 2 - dairy farming is all they know. We have them fully immersed. They come out with us and do the day-to-day work, especially during the calving period. They don't complain, they just get on with the job, and they love it. Albie doesn't go to childcare, so he's basically my little sidekick.

It's a lifestyle. I've had to remind myself of that all the time - it's not just a job, it's a lifestyle - because when I've got Albie with me everything seems to take twice as long. I've always got to keep his health and safety in mind, and there's a lot of having to pick him up out of puddles and give him a cuddle when I'm in the middle of a job. There's a lot of stopping and starting. It takes a long time to get out the door in the mornings. And I've got down to the sheds and found that I'm not wearing a hat because I was so busy getting him ready. I always have heaps of snacks on hand - it definitely helps.

During calving season, a lot of things go out the window. You have to prioritise things. I don't care if my house is a mess at the moment, as long as everyone's fed and happy and all the jobs are done on the farm. I know it's not forever. It's about prioritising what's important and what needs to get done. You've just got to be able to let some things go and not place high expectations on yourself.

The last two seasons I had a local lady come in for the mornings to help. She'd come in for about four hours and help look after the kids and do general housework. Albie was under two and Monty wasn't at school then. She was a lifesaver. This season she wasn't available, so I thought, "Okay, we'll just get on and do it," but I've actually had to put the call out to my mum. I'm very lucky that she was able to come. She's a dairy farmer herself, so she's able to help on the farm and with the kids. We've got school trips coming up that we weren't going to be able to go on, and so she's going to take care of that. It's so good having someone if you need doctor's appointments or haircuts. She's going to be my general person here, which is awesome.

In the mornings I'm busy getting the kids off to school. Albie and I are normally out the door at quarter past eight, when the other boys get on the bus. We're feeding calves till about ten o'clock. Then we go and help get the new babies and mums in. By the time that's finished it's twelve/twelve-thirty so we're in for lunch. I feed Albie, get him down for his lunchtime nap, then we're back out the door at one/one-thirtyish.

Albie will often go on the tractor with his dad, feeding out baleage, and I do general jobs around the farm - setting up cow sheds, doing the calves' grain, helping milk the new colostrum mums. By that time the older boys are getting home. They get into their overalls, grab a snack, come out and help feed the afternoon calves. Quite often the boys will go round with their dad and check if there's any new calves, or put the cows onto a new break. We're normally in by five-thirty, and, if I'm here on my own, I've generally got tea in the slow cooker - it's my best friend at calving time. Then it's tea, showers, bed. Quite often during calving - I feel a bit bad saying this - homework tends to go out the window. But it's just one of those things.

I think it's important for our boys to see what we're doing. They help as much as they can. There's a little bit of bribery involved: we've told them that this calving, if they do a really good job and stay positive the whole time and help out as much as they can, then we might look at getting them a motorbike to share at the end of it. Maybe.