The Longest Day of the Year

Greetings from Eitental, Austria! We are on our second day of working on a camel and horse farm in a tiny town outside the larger town of Melk. Our concluding days in Slovenia turned out to be excellent as we finished helping out host Tjasia, and were able to take a day to tour the capital Ljbujana. Our journey to Vienna from Ljubjana was gorgeous as the train trip journeyed through Austrian countryside for an extremely easy five-hour journey.

Trisha and I then spent four days in Vienna in a hostel-apartment away from the farm and village life; dictating our own schedule, food, and general existence. It was a much-needed respite. We do need a bit of time between our farm-stays, both to be on our own and to take a pause from our labors (which are actually a lot of work). Vienna was glorious as we toured much by walking and using their highly efficient public transportation. We even saw the ballet Anna Karena in the Vienna Opera House. It standing room only, but had excellent view and only cost us 4 Euros apiece.

At the end of our four days we felt energized and independent, though held mixed emotions about beginning another farm-stay. We are beginning to tire of this type of travel. It does allow us to tour cities and be economical, but we also must shelve our independence to do so. Similar to other times this spring, we knew that we would have to adjust again to a new family, new food, new schedule, whatever other little quirks or obstacles that might come our way. Many of these transitions have been easy this year, while others like our last in Slovenia, took a few days before we began to enjoy it. Our current farm, with the horses and the camels, has been no exception to this transition process.

To illuminate the difficulties this process entails, I must share our first full day at this Austrian camel farm. This day was not only was the longest day of the year on calendar, but may have been our longest day of the year in terms of how we felt afterward.

We arrived at the farm in the late afternoon on Friday . Our host Gerda picked us up from the train station and gave us an overview of our stay. It was difficult to make any true impressions as we really only had time to settle into our room and take a tour of the place. We were attempting to be as optimistic as we could, but were missing our independent weekend in Vienna.

The next day, our longest day, began at 7:00 a.m. Normally our days are to begin at 6:00 a.m., since all 11 camels and 10 horses need to be fed and have their stables cleaned. Why this is to happen at 6:00 a.m. I’m not sure, but maybe I will discover the reason through groggy eyes on Monday morning. Feeling relatively ready and awake on Saturday at 7:00, we were given a lesson by Gerda’s sister Heidi on how to properly clean-up horse-stables and camel stables.

Before I go on, let me give you a little insight into this farm. Heidi, who gave us the stable clean-up lesson is in her mid 60’s, lived in Texas for 25 years, and recently moved into her mother’s house on the farm property in a spare bedroom with her Spanish boyfriend Jose, whom she met few weeks ago. Gerda, our boss for the week, is the more responsible sister who runs the camel and horse farm (horses for lessons, camels for special engagements). The property also contains a factory that makes elastics and is run by Gerda’s husband, who really is more of a business partner to Gerda than a husband, so she says. The elderly mother of the two sisters lives in one of the houses on the farm too.

We have found Gerda a difficult woman to read. She can be warm, inquisitive, and caring enough to make sure we are well-fed and given chances to explore the area. We have also found her to be impatient, curt, and a bit rude when it comes to doing tasks that we have never done before in our lives. Although extremely put-off when we first encountered this behavior, we have since deducted that it is her way of ensuring safety around the animals. Her directness may also be a result of English being her second language and when translated from German, it just sounds rough.

After the lesson on stable clean-up, Trisha and I then learned how to feed the camels and horses, and then began both tasks. The feeding was the fun part. The stable cleaning wasn’t actually that bad, it just took awhile with so many animals. We finished our tasks around 9:00 and then headed inside to make our breakfasts (we actually love that we get to cook all our meals here and that we just tell Gerda what we need). Our spirits were fairly high at this point, as the work was complete and breakfast was on the table. The big question that hadn’t been answered was what was the remainder of our day going to entail. We had read that normally four to five hours of work was expected. Two hours down, but no definite answers what next. Something that Trisha and I value highly during out farmstays are specific instructions and a clear schedule. Since it was our first day, we were waiting to figure out what this would be.

After breakfast, Gerda told us we would be heading to town to pick out food for the week. So we piled in the van with Heidi and Jose and headed to the store. When we arrived, Gerda claimed she didn’t like grocery stores, so the four of us headed in. Fortunately Trisha and I had no problems picking out and planning food for the week. We weren’t told what our budget was to be, just that we needed to plan for three or four days. It worked out and Gerda never said anything about the price, which we thought to be pretty good for the amount we purchased.

Following this, Gerda drove us to Melk and the giant monastery located there, which is a big tourist attraction. She said Trisha and I should check if there was a tour in English, and that she would pick us up in and hour-and-a-half. We were still in our work clothes from the morning, hadn’t brought our camera, and were definitely not feeling like tourists. But we agreed, as the idea of walking around the city by ourselves was nice. It turned out the tour didn’t have times that worked, so we ended up getting a coffee and taking a long walk. Not so bad.

After this, at about 12:30, we returned to the farm and Gerda instructed us on feeding the horses and camels at midday. It was easy task that consisted of throwing them all some hay, and took only about 10 minutes. We then began preparing lunch. To our surprise, Gerda came in while we were preparing and said a friend of hers needed help with some pony rides. She said if we left in an half-hour, we could go help. She also mentioned earlier in the day that the stables are cleaned and horses and camels fed around 6:00. So was this trip to the friends part of our work, or was this just an outing? How long would we be away? Questions running though our brains remained unspoken, as we wanted to go with the flow on the first day. We were beginning to feel a little trapped though.

We rushed though our lunch and headed out the door around 2:00. The friends house wasn’t down the block, but in the town of Linz, 1 ½ hours away. When we got the friends house, we discovered that it wasn’t just a house, but a zoo on a huge property that was run by the friend. We learned that the pony rides weren’t going to happen because of the rain, so instead, Gerda thought we might like to tour the zoo. We did, and it was very nice for a zoo located in a remote area in the Austrian countryside.

After about an hour of walking around checking out the two elephants, lion, zebras, monkeys, and other creatures one wouldn’t expect in the country, we began to wonder where Gerda was. We were also starting to long to be back and finish our work, shower, and finally change our clothes. We found her at about 6:00 p.m., sleeping in the car. After she awoke, she said she wanted to talk with her friend who owned the zoo. We found the friend and Trisha and I followed them around the property as they talked in German.

What seemed like hours of listening to endless German chatter, and with our hopes of leaving on the brink, the two women headed not to Gerda's car, but to the kitchen for big cups of tea and more talking. This was the point where the independence we had felt in Vienna, was completely sucked out of us. We knew it was and 1 1/2 hour ride home, work needed to be completed, dinner prepared, and we were longing for those showers (which we hadn’t taken since Vienna on the previous morning). This was the low point of our day, when we were questioning our new farmstay, the work we were doing, and the lack of control we felt at times during these stays. We were also suffering in the knowledge that we still had a few more farmstays lined up in the coming weeks before we return to the U.S.

Finally we did head home and arrived back at the farm at 9:00 p.m. Fortunately the work had been completed by Heidi and all we had to do was make dinner for ourselves and wash-up. We both were emotionally drained from the lack of control we felt during the day and the constant questioning of “Is this worth it.” Even when our longest day ended and we headed to bed, our spirits were still struggling with all the emotions we were feeling.

Our frustrations with our longest day and lack of specific work schedule did lead us to tell Gerda our feelings. She was understanding with in her strong German accent and somewhat emotionless mannerisms, and told us she likes to plan things for her helpers to do during the day, like visit her friends zoo. We instructed her that we appreciated outings, but preferred to have advanced notice so we could prepare ourselves. It was also conveyed that we didn’t need every minute planned and that having off-time by ourselves between the work was fine with us.

The good news is the next day was not like our first and we were able to do our work and take time for ourselves. She did offer an outing, but we told her we would wait a day or two. Perhaps if this had been our first, or second, or even third farm, we would have been more gung-ho about it all. But we are over the gung-ho at this point. Trisha and I still love to tour all these great places, feel blessed beyond belief that we have the opportunity to do so, and even don’t mind the hard work during the day. But we are very much looking forward to the day when life is back on our terms, living under our own roof, and doing life like normal.

This is a fake smile- Trisha is not too happy on this mule