Willing Weeders on Organic Farms

First of all, apologies for the lack of posts this past week. We've been WWOOFing at a place with yet again weak Internet. They had some sort of cellular/usb connection that only worked with their desktop computer so we couldn't connect to upload any pictures. What is it with WWOOFers and poor Internet? If only they'd list that on their profile...

Anyway, after the wonderful few days at Blueberry Bliss we took the bus to Invercargill where our next hosts Colin and Ellen picked us up. Colin and Ellen run a stud sheep farm on about 10 acres with large gardens. Both being around 70 years old they use WWOOFers to do general tasks around the house and garden. Which for us meant weeding!

From WWOOFing in Winton

We also trimmed their hedges and roses and moved some dirt around to fill in some holes to make the mowing easier.

From WWOOFing in Winton

On Saturday we knocked off work early and they took us to the A & P Show (Agricultural and Produce) which was like a County or State Fair back home. It was fun going through the fair with Colin since he'd lived in the town for ages and knew everyone (he introduced us as his "good friends from America"). He even took us to an old-fashioned private club above the grandstands where we had shots of whiskey while looking down over the proceedings in the fair.

The highlight of the fair was the sheep shearing competition. Up to five shearers would be on stage and shear a pre-determined number of sheep per round. Colin loved the competition, and when it came time for the finals he was quite amazed at the line-up. He said, "I reckon you'll never see a line-up of sheep shearers like that again." I reckon he's probably right.

From WWOOFing in Winton

Especially entertaining about the sheep shearing was the commentary by the announcer. He would give a blow by blow account of what was happening. (Example: "Donny Fagan is working around the chin. Look at his form as he goes down the leg.") Also funny was that each shearer had a separate judge who watched over the shearing, because as Colin made clear to us, "it's a test of both speed and quality."

In between rounds of shearing there was also a competition of the wool handlers, the person responsible for clearing the wool away as the sheep are sheared. Who knew competitive sheep shearing was a team effort?

We had a wonderful stay at their house. They treated us like family and we felt very comfortable with them. Most nights we would sit outside on the patio and have a wonderful dinner with great conversation. We feel like we've become good friends with Colin and Ellen and will miss them when we leave.

From WWOOFing in Winton

Now we're off to Stewart Island for a couple nights. We're not sure what we're going to do down there but we come back to the mainland on Friday and head to Christchurch. We've already arranged to stay with Sue again, our previous couchsurfer. Then it's off to Singapore on Monday where through couchsurfing we've arranged to stay with a Japanese man who lives there. Should be interesting...

Here's the full set of pictures from our stay in Winton:

WWOOFing in Winton

WWOOFing with Blueberries

From our couchsurfing host in Christchurch we got picked up by our WWOOFing hosts. Don picked us up on his way home from his job as an accountant in the city. He took us back to their farm, a five acre blueberry orchard. We had asked them to host because after the bad experience at our last WWOOFing stint we liked what Don and Wendy said at the end of their description in our WWOOFing guide: "Family home where visitors are treated as family members." That sounded exactly like what we had in mind when we first signed up for WWOOFing.

The first thing we did after getting settled in their house was flush birds out of their blueberry orchard. They have a net covering the bushes to keep the birds off, but sometimes birds sneak in through various holes and we marched down the aisles making noises with pots and pans pushing the birds toward one end that Don had temporarily opened. Here's a shot of the orchard with the net on top:

From WWOOFing at Blueberry Bliss

We felt right at home at Blueberry Bliss. Their 21 year old son was also at home on his break from University and we were treated just like family. I enjoyed talking with Don about economics and he even let me borrow a book called Around the World in 80 Trades about a Irish guy who travels around the world trading items from one place to the next. Having the two subjects of travel and economics it was a sure hit with me.

Jaimee was also quite popular with Wendy and her sister, mother and aunt. Whenever she took out her crochet projects, the women would swoon around her admiring her creations (Jaimee's crafts are amazing):

From WWOOFing at Blueberry Bliss

So far the work has been about 95% weeding, but we don't mind at all. We work our four hours and then have the rest of the day off to do whatever. They have bikes for us to borrow and they're also on the bus line into Christchurch. We're really enjoying ourselves and actually wouldn't have minded staying longer. But, we've already arranged for another WWOOFing stay in Invercargill, down in the South of the South Island. We go down there on Wednesday morning.

We've taken some pictures of our stay so far. We'll try to take some more before we leave.

Where do we start?

First of all, apologies to our families for not contacting anyone over Christmas. We are safe and had a fine, albeit interesting Christmas weekend. The reason for the silence was that we were WWOOFing out in the country where our cell phone didn't work, the Internet was dial-up that was ridiculously slow even for dial-up, and although we could have used the phone (and should have!) we were kind of scared to ask our hosts...let's back up a bit to explain.

We arranged to WWOOF at a pizza cafe and bar in Westport, on the West Coast of the South Island. Little did we know when we signed up that it would be so isolated and that it would be run like an East German compound. Petra and Jack, the German owners were quite stern and even though their English was pretty good they were somewhat uncommunicative and we were often unsure where we stood with what we were doing.

We're pretty sure we would have left much earlier if we'd had our own car. We felt trapped without a car, but even if we'd gotten away we were unsure where'd we go during the Holidays on such short notice. The West Coast is very rural and we knew from looking at the bus schedule before that it ran very infrequently, especially during the holidays.

We were going to title this post "WWOOFing in Hell", but that would only be true if Hell had good food (and beer). Our first in indication of how the place was run was when Jack picked us up at the bus stop (a gas station) and we went immediately to the grocery store to stock up the bar.

From WWOOFing at Jacks

I was pushing the above cart around, trying to be polite to the stares. "Yep, just getting ready for Christmas", I told other shoppers. And this was just the grocery store (and the beer cart - Jaimee was pushing the wine cart), we next went to Liquor Land to get even more beer and hard liquor.

Then when we chatted with him about our other WWOOFing experiences and we mentioned "four hours of work a day" he said, "Oh, that is just a recommendation." As it turned out they pretty much expected us to work all day doing outdoor stuff, then help in the kitchen in the evening. But they never really said that so we weren't sure. One day we did only work four hours but got a really chilly reception that evening.

It was a weird place. Not just the East German vibe (they actually had a friend who was doing some carpentry work for them who had spent some time in an East German prison for trying to escape to West Berlin 25 years ago) but also their favortism for this French WWOOFer who was some sort of permanent unpaid employee. She was weird too - she drank tea in the morning out of a soup bowl and could hardly speak English but was the only one allowed to wait on customers (I got lectured once for serving two guys drinks at the bar, even though I charged them and put the money in the till). And don't get us started about the espresso machine (which I was yelled at for trying to use), or calling Jaimee "bloody stupid" for catching a mouse in the dining room during the dinner rush but releasing it instead of stomping on it to kill it (she actually got a round of applause from the dinner patrons for catching it).

Also, the accomodations were quite rustic. Here's Jaimee posing in the outdoor shower:

From WWOOFing at Jacks

And, to top it all off, the police came looking for us! We were working in the kitchen and I noticed that a police car drove up. Petra went out to see what he wanted, and then came in to get me. I thought maybe she needed someone who spoke better English, but it turned out he was looking for me and Jaimee! When we hadn't contacted Jaimee's Mom and Aunt over Christmas they got worried, and using our last GPS coordinates from our Spot page they called the Westport police to have them check on us. Luckily we were right where our Spot said we'd be. We then snuck away to call Jaimee's family and told them we'd be more diligent about checking in either with Spot or via e-mail. Our habit had been to check in with Spot only when we changed locations but we'll try and do it more frequently so no one worries...

However, our stay at Jack's wasn't all bad - as mentioned, the food was very, very good. Petra made excellent fresh bread nearly every day, the pizza was yummy, and usually they would offer us beer (except for the day we only worked four hours - No beer for you!) Also, we did meet a lot of interesting local characters, and walked to the beach and chatted with some gold miners we met there:

From WWOOFing at Jacks

But, we've moved on now. We got a lift into Westport today (Jack needed to buy more beer), and even though it's "Boxing Day Observed" we were able to rent a car (we had to call them and they opened up especially for us and rented us the last car they had). We're going to explore the West Coast on our own for the next week or so. Prior to going to Jack's we had tentatively lined up another WWOOFing gig for New Year's weekend but we'll have to decide if we want to do it now or not...WWOOFing does save us money (we spent zero dollars during the past week), and when it's good, it can be very good. We got a super nice e-mail from Craig, our last WWOOFing host and it cheered us up to know that we'd made a good friend. But, as we've experienced, when it's bad, it can also be quite bad...

Here are the pictures from our stay:

WWOOFing at Jacks

Almost like leaving home again

We've had such a nice time WWOOFing here in Mangawhai that it's hard for us to leave. Although our hosts Craig and Jeanette welcomed us to stay through the Holidays with them, we've decided that as tempting as the offer is, we've got more things to see so we're heading south tomorrow morning.

We had a lot of fun here. The work wasn't too bad, and we got to see some beautiful areas of the coast. We went on a cliff walk in Mangawhai, part of Te Araroa - a 3,000 km long trail that covers the length of New Zealand. The entire thing isn't open yet, but the section we hiked was beautiful.

From WWOOFing in Mangawhai

Only the cliff part is part of the trail but we made a loop of it by hiking along the cliffs and back along the beach, stopping for this picture along the way:

From WWOOFing in Mangawhai

Craig's neighbor is giving us a ride to Auckland in the morning (he has to go there for business anyway) and then Friday morning we're taking a bus to Wellington, the southern point of the North Island. There we're meeting up with Brian, an acquaintance of Jaimee's mom and aunt in Idaho. (He travels to the states each year to attend the Sturgis Motorcyle Rally, riding through Idaho which is where they met him.)

Brian invited us to spend the weekend at his "bach" somewhere on the coast near Wellington. Then early next week we've lined up another WWOOFing gig on the South Island coast near Westport. It's been hard to coordinate WWOOFing around the Holidays as New Zealanders travel extensively during the Holiday period; the entire country is essentially on vacation. In fact, commercial trucks are not allowed on coastal roads from this Monday through New Year's weekend.

But our next WWOOF place is a farm/hotel/pizza restaurant so they are open and busy during the holidays. Not sure what we'll be doing but they want us to show up next Tuesday.

So, we're on the move again; it will be good to travel again after being here for over a week...

The pictures of our WWOOF stay are here:

WWOOFing in Mangawhai

Making ourselves at home

As we said at the end of our last post, we are doing our second WWOOF gig and so far it's going great! Our host, Craig told us "to make ourselves at home" and we've had no problem doing that. Especially since our schedule is to work one full day (which we spent weeding the decorative garden along the driveway) and then one day off, the morning which we spent out fishing with Craig and his friend Gibby. We had to get up at 5AM but it was super beautiful out on the water at that time of morning.

From WWOOFing in Mangawhai

Craig is a great guy - he looks like John Goodman and acts like he's from Texas. He's a libertarian organic farmer. In other words, he loves to recycle and compost but doesn't want anyone to force him to do it. He also hates Al Gore, Michael Moore and doesn't know what to think of Obama yet. He's the first New Zealander we've met so far that likes Americans (compared to Australians who generally like Americans). This is especially in contrast to our last WWOOF hosts who didn't really hide their animosity to America. In fact from 2001 to 2003 they refused to host American WWOOFers because of what George Bush was doing.

But, enough politics...let's talk fishing. Today Craig took us out in his boat to the bay nearby to literally fish for our dinner. We've been having fish every night so far, and since his stock was running low we went fishing (you don't need a fishing license, he pointed out). I hadn't fished since I was a kid and Jaimee hadn't fished since she was 18. It was surprisingly easy - we used poles with three hooks each and we just dropped the lines to the bottom and waited for the fish to bite. I reeled in this Snapper (which goes for $30/kg in the store):

From WWOOFing in Mangawhai

We definitely have enough fish for the rest of our stay here (which will probably be through the weekend or Monday).

The weather has been outstanding too - mid 70s with a slight breeze. Jaimee got a slight sunburn while working outside and my allergies have been pretty bad, but otherwise we're safe and sound and really enjoying ourselves.

A lightning tour of Northern New Zealand

As mentioned previously, we rented a car for a few days to go on a tour of the northern part of the North Island of New Zealand. We didn't really know where we were going except that we were expected back at our next WWOOF hosts by Monday evening.

We rented a car in Warkworth from the chattiest rental person ever - he told us that the USA used to drive on the "correct" side of the road until Henry Ford for some reason put steering wheels on the left-hand side of the car. He also insisted on going over all of New Zealand traffic laws before letting us part with his Toyota Starlet (we learned that you can only get a Starlet if you import it specially to New Zealand) rental, as seen here by a bush along the ocean:

From Northland Whirlwind

As it turned out we ended up driving 850 km (530 miles) all the way to the tip of New Zealand and back. We used our Spot device to check-in at various points of interest and I created a map with some of the photos geo-tagged to where we took them here.

We actually had great weather for this trip - lots of sun with clouds scattered around but no rain. Northern New Zealand is beautiful. It's super rural with lots of little towns and beaches around every corner. It reminded us of Whidbey Island in Washington.

From Northland Whirlwind

Here's the link to the full album of our trip:

Northland Whirlwind

We are now in Mangawhai Heads for another WWOOF stint. It's a beautiful setting - olive groves and a small farm amongst rolling hills. There's also a swimming pool and hot tub. I'm not sure what the work will be like though as our host asked us if we'd "done much concrete work before." I guess "organic farming" can take many shapes around here. And he drank a low-carb beer before jumping in the pool to get his exercise. We should be in for an interesting time...

On the road, briefly

We've finished our first WWOOF "job" and have lined up another one that starts Monday night. Until then we've rented a car to explore the Northland region of New Zealand's North Island.

The weather the last few days has been quite rainy - one storm dropped almost 4 1/2 inches in about 12 hours. Luckily our hosts found us indoor work: Jaimee cleaned and sterilized new vinegar bottles and Asa cleaned old olive oil bottles in preparation for a new batch.

From WWOOFing in Warkworth

We also were there for the last sheep birth: it was a set of boy and girl twins.

From WWOOFing in Warkworth

Here's the link to all the photos from our stay at Puriri Flat.

WWOOFing in Warkworth

Life on the farm

Just a quick update, but we're still at Puriri Flat Vineyards and still having a great time. We're falling into a nice routine of working half days, and we realized that we've now been here for seven nights straight which is the longest time we've been stationary since we started our trip.

Our hosts Doug and Jean-Ann are kind enough to rotate the tasks so we don't get bored. We've done a variety of different activities so far: mulching, weeding, making fertilizer (it smells!) and filling a retaining wall. We even got to dig out and move (or shift in NZ-speak) a lemon tree. We also had a moment of sadness this morning: one of the lambs born last Saturday was unable to nurse, and despite some bottle-feeding by Jean-Ann it didn't make it and died this morning. The cries of the mother sheep were quite sad and loud.

There are several lambs on the farm and one more pregnant ewe. Here's a quick shot of some of the sheep in the first pasture (before we herded them to the upper pasture):

From WWOOFing in Warkworth

We're here through Saturday, and we don't know where we're going after that. We've sent some e-mails to other WWOOF farms but haven't heard back yet. Maybe we'll have to call some of them to line up another farm stay.

A WWOOFing Thanksgiving

As we write this, it's Thanksgiving Day, which of course means nothing in New Zealand. Also because of the timezone/international date line, it won't be Thanksgiving in the US until tomorrow. However, we're having a blast on our farm.

As some background for those that don't know, WWOOF stands for Willing Workers World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. The idea is to link up farmers with workers. You buy a year-long membership to each country you want to WWOOF in and you get access to a database of farms that take on workers. We decided in the beginning to try it for New Zealand (we're open to trying other countries later in our trip, but we only bought one membership thus far. We didn't do it in Australia because we figured we'd have other stuff to do there). As mentioned previously, we sent out some requests and Doug and Jean-Ann of Puriri Flat farm said we could stay/work with them.

Jean-Ann picked us up at the bus station in Warkworth (about an hour north of Auckland) and we went to their farm. It's on a beautiful hill (nothing flat about their farm at all) overlooking a tidal river.

From WWOOFing in Warkworth

There were two choices for accommodations: a small house with bunk beds or a semi-permanent caravan (trailer) at the top of the property. We chose the caravan as it contained a double bed and was unbelievably cute as well as being private.

From WWOOFing in Warkworth

So far we've worked two days. Breakfast is at 8AM, we start work at 8:30, have tea (Doug is originally from England) around 10:30 and then go back to work until 1PM. After lunch we are free to do whatever we want in the afternoon. Lunches have been sandwiches or leftovers, but for dinner Doug or Jean-Ann cooks up something yummy.

Thus far the work has been manual labor type stuff. The first day we cleared and mulched brush along the side of their driveway (it rivals my Uncle Neil's driveway for steepness - although this one is made of cement sections). Today we took wheel barrow loads (33 loads to be exact!) sideways across a hill to fill in a retaining wall. It would have made a perfect Amazing Race task as it required teamwork to keep the wheel barrow from falling over and was also very tiring. Phil would be proud - we didn't drop one load!

Today Doug gave us a ride into Warkworth, although we have to hitchhike back. Their farm is about 10km from town, although they said people hitchhike all the time so we shouldn't be worried.

One other quick note: Doug showed us pictures of all the other WWOOFers who'd worked on their farm (they've been doing this since 2001 and have had probably close to 100 groups come to work, taking pictures of each person for their book) and we felt very unremarkable. They've had Japanese who've brought sushi-making materials, a philharmonic clarinet player who gave a concert in their yard, a fifth-generation mason from England who built them a stone wall and artists who've done beautiful artwork for them. Jaimee has some funny stories about autistic kids to share and I was able to chat with him about which band of service to use for his cell phone (GSM vs UTMS). Not sure how memorable we'll be. Although it has only been two days so we'll see what we can come up with.

We're scheduled to work here through December 5, and I sheepishly asked if they work on the weekends, and the answer was, "If you're staying here, yes" although the days might be shorter. We'll see...