Well, Arlene, I do travel. I live in Wisconsin and I go to New York every August. It's for a gal on my Farmwife list group. After I told the group we were selling our cows, she said "I wish I could hire you to milk mine when we go on vacation". I told her "pay my way and I'll come". She does.........flies me out there, I stay in her house and "house sit", leave me a vehicle to drive. Don't need that tho, as my SU is driving out. The farm is only a couple hours from Watkins Glen, so he is going out to the NASCAR race there that first weekend I am there. We do have to mow her yard (takes us 2 hours with 2 rider mowers, so you know it is a big yard). And she pays in cash.
She does get perks, tho. I bake for her while she is gone. She doesn't cook much and bakes not at all. Last year I made her about 11 batches of cookie dough and put it in her freezer. A double batch of brownies, a double batch of butterscotch brownies. 3 loaves of bread. A dozen HUGE cinnamon rolls. I told her awhile back that this year I was going to have my SU bring out my KitchenAid mixer.........she would be amazed at what I could do with my good mixer. She told me she was amazed at what I could turn out with her little Sunbeam mixer. Then I told her she'd be astounded at the KitchenAid results. LOL
I asked her the first year I went out " aren't there any people in New York that do relief milking????" She said "I want someone that has some common sense and can make decisions". Ah, decisions, I am good at that.
SU and I usually go as a team and we operate just like we did when we were still milking............I do all the milking and he does the feed mixing and feeding and outside stuff. If needed, I also feed the calves. We've had people tell us that it is so nice to have someone dependable and they don't have to worry when they are gone if we are there. We just do the stuff like it was our own.
We only do guys that have stanchion/tie stall barns. I don't want to get into any parlor milking. If they have enough cows to utilize a parlor, they should have ample help to do the job. I prefer herd size of about 60 or so, but I have one guy that usually has close to 90 and another with 105 or so. That one I have help milking. The guy with 90 I have to do myself. He has 8 milkers tho, so it isn't too bad.
In Sept. I have to help where they have about 115, but there are 3 of us. Hubby mixes feed and has to feed at 2 different farms.
There is really good money in it if you can handle some of the stupid things you have to deal with. We usually make at least $100.00/day. You cannot believe how many of the guys we have chored for don't even have a decent pitchfork or scoop shovel. One place the SU had to pail about 20 pails of concentrate into the feed mixer..........not a one of the 5 gallon pails had a HANDLE, for crying out loud. I keep an arsenal of stuff in the back seat floor of the truck and the 3 pitchforks are in the truck box all the time. LOL
