A few weeks ago, a friend and I went to help out at Dayanne and Paul’s farm, just near where I live. I met Dayanne about nine years ago at the gym — she’s Brazilian and came to New Zealand on her own to continue her studies, and like me, she could barely speak English when she arrived.
Today, she is a reference in her field — trained as a zootechnician in Brazil and now working in New Zealand with animal DNA collection and management for the production of elite cattle and sheep. She is known not only for the excellence of her work, but also for her passion and enthusiasm for the animals and the farm — not by chance, she’s called “Sheep Nutter”!
And because of that, every time we meet, I love learning from her about her way of life. I’m fascinated by the complexity of managing her farm and by the differences she knows firsthand between agriculture in Brazil and in New Zealand.
Being with Dayanne is like being in a classroom — you always end up learning a lot. I not only admire her energy and passion for her work, but also her patience in answering all my questions, haha. That’s why spending a day working on the farm with her was such an amazing experience.
The day’s work involved docking tails and collecting genetic material from the lambs. We started around 8 a.m. There were about ten of us in the group, each responsible for a specific stage of the process. Two people positioned the lambs on the rack; one collected the genetic material; another attached the tag; another did the scanning; one prepared the next set of tags; another performed the tail docking; and someone else was already handling the next group of lambs. Over the course of six hours, we worked with around 450 lambs, spread across seven different lots — an intense pace, designed to be as fast and efficient as possible within this type of handling. The day was sunny, and it got hot inside the chute, which definitely helped with the collective production of sweat! Haha.
This was the first time we — my friend Marina and I — had ever worked (for real, haha!) on a farm. It was funny to see the contrast between urban and rural people, and being there naturally made me reflect on these two different ways of life.
Urban people live “by the calendar”: they organize their days according to the logic of the clock, schedules, and booked commitments. Time is divided into hours, weeks, and holidays. Life is structured into predictable blocks.
On the other hand, people in the countryside live by the cycle of the seasons. They respond to what nature asks of them, to weather that changes without warning, to the rhythm of animals and the phases of the year. There is no clear beginning or end to the workday — only continuity.
For those who work by the clock, tasks can be rearranged, postponed, or negotiated. Rest is protected by weekends, holidays, and by the simple act of shutting down the computer and walking away.
Unlike for those engaged in continuous care, demands don’t wait. The land and the animals have their own timing, one that doesn’t align with human deadlines. Interruption isn’t an exception there — it’s the way life works.
While urban life separates work from personal life, life in the countryside blends home, routine, weather, physical effort, and daily decisions. It’s a way of living that constantly demands physical and mental presence, responsibility, resilience, dedication, and a genuine love for what you do. At its core, it’s the contrast between scheduling time and responding to time, balancing goals with unpredictability, planting and caring in order to harvest later.
Urban life demands connection with people, whereas rural life requires connection not only with people but also — and especially — with the animals and the land. This difference in what each environment asks of you shapes mental health in distinct ways. One overwhelms through excessive social stimulation; the other overwhelms through the weight of continuous responsibility for living beings and, above all, through social isolation.
That day, working with Dayanne and the whole group, made me realize just how truly holistic and noble this way of life is. Holistic because it integrates body, time, work, and responsibility into the steady rhythm of nature; and noble because it reveals the humility of work without pauses, without guarantees, and almost always without recognition — the oldest human labor that sustains society, ensures our food, and keeps alive the cycles that make life possible.
Finally, thank you to Dayanne and Paul for welcoming us and allowing us, even if just for a day, to step out of the urban rhythm and experience the time of the countryside — with all that it demands and all that it offers.
Till the next sip,
