and now from Northland

I was in Northland or two days last week, hence the airport posts.

What was I doing?

Why, I was hanging out with Scotty,

the Northern Regional Vice Chair

(and a little bit with Hunt, who is Regional Secretary)

This is Scotty

and his big chalk,

that's not a euphemism.

He lives in Northland and is a Livestock Procurement Agent

aka Stock Agent.

Basically what he does is goes to farms,

sheep or beef farms,

and 'puts a hand over' the stock,

that is a euphemism.

What that is is putting your hand over the sheepies loin

also known by us lay people is their hips.

By doing this you are feeling for if there is enough fat on the loin

for them to go to the works.
And thus a euphemism for drafting out lambs for the works.

Which in Scotty's case is in central Auckland.

I know, I was surprised too.

 These sheep are from the first farm we visited

and they are in the pen waiting to have

Scotty's hand put over them.

It sounds like some omnipotent power given to all stock agents.

Which it is in a way because Scotty's informal title is meat buyer.

He chooses the meat you get sold in the supermarket.

I can't remember which supermarket so don't get too excited
knowing where your food comes from.

The large chalk is used to mark the sheep going on the truck.
They get a stripe on their back.
Each farm gets a different colour and placement.
This allows the guys at the other end to know the groupings of the lambs.

These lambs have a blue stripe on their left shouder.
You can kind of see it.

Above is Scotty talking to the farmer,

who has the most beautifully scenic farm
situated on the banks of the Kaipara Harbour.

"We" took 72 lambs from the first farm and

120ish from the second Kaipara farm.

 This pretty girl got a reprieve for about a month

before Scotty will come back and put his hand on her again.

Geez putting a hand over just cracks me up.

So the reason I was wandering around after Scotty was because

I was the 'client' and Scotty is the 'talent'

and these guys, Mike and Amanda are the film crew and interviewer.

Scotty's career video is going to be posted
on the Get Ahead Career's website

 I am helping to organise.

Get Ahead is our rural careers programme.

We almost have a super cool website,

(when we finish filming)

and have careers days

where we take 120 high schools kids

out to a large field and play "which rural job is this?" type games.

It's a pretty good day.

To give you an idea of possibilities in the rural sector.

I know a 26 year old herd manager* on a corporate dairy farm who is earning

$110,000 pa.

Not bad for a Lincoln Degree and some livestock skills.

I know a 28 year old who is a stock manager* on $72,000 plus house and ute.

That's with a polytech dipolma and some stock skills. 

Plus no matter what your job is there are heaps of opportunities

to invest in livestock or equity farming and

make a bundle with not masses of effort.

It's all about networking.

Also we got kittens today!

* Herd is dairy and stock is sheep and beef - basically the same job though.