The last 2 weeks on the farm

We said our early morning goodbyes on the farm today and hopped on the 4 hour ferry to the south island. We’re heading to an art/music/culture sustainable festival until Feb 6! It is just outside a small town called Takaka on the top of the south island. (luminatefestival.co.nz). We will be camping there, our fortuitous $10 tent has sure come in handy this trip!

This was our daily schedule on the farm. I’m sad to leave it: it was such a beautiful farm with lovely people and animals!

7am: wake up, have the best homemade muesli/granola in the world, read.

8 am: work. This was usually weeding or planting or harvesting. Our last big project was putting up a giaaaant net over the blueberry field.

11 am: Sometimes break for tea and books.

12pm: lunch and more reading. Somehow for the last week or so all the wwoofers ended p being extreme foodies, so we had a great time battling over who would get to cook what next. Our new friend, Lushka, from England had lots of yummy Polish recipes to share! Our new friend Gerald, had just been in the army for 13 years and was now embarking on vegetarianism and baking. We had a lot of cookies.

Depending if we were done work for the day or not, we would either go back to work for a few more hours now or in the evening when it wasn’t so hot. Otherwise we devoured all of Carolann’s books. She had an amazing library of permaculture, biodynamics, self-sufficiency, cookbooks, foraging, building, and Carolann’s own self-sufficiency book. We were such bookworms!

Sometimes we would watch Carolann make butter, yogurt, and quark (we didn’t help because apparently wwoofers always screw everything up ahahah). There was a lovely little strawbale café about 15 mins down the road that we walked to a couple times for a coffee and some treats.

4pm: Make bread. We made all our own bread, which we went through really quickly because it was so delicious. We adapted a delicious whole wheat bread recipe, and we had variations such as apple and nutmeg, herb and garlic, orange and chocolate, caraway, etc. It was so much fun!

5pm: watch the pigs eat dinner. There were 4 pigs that lived right beside our cottage, who were name Milly, Molly, Mandy (the runt), and Lardass. They were charming little guys and went crazy over food! We learned to hypnotize them by scratching them behind the ears. They would stand there in a daze after being pet. I guess they’re not used to being pet for some strange reason (who doesn’t like petting smelly pigs??)

6pm: Dinner. Carolann supplied us with a bunch of food, plus all the dairy products form the cow. We had a little salad and herb garden right outside our house so of course we made lots of delicious salads. We made curries and dumplings and croquettes so many yummy things!!!

8pm: More reading….

9pm: Washing the dishes. We had solar hot water and we only washed the dishes once a day to save water.

We were usually in bed by 10 after more reading.

There were also 4 sheep, 5 cows, 3 dogs (Fred, Wilma, and Kao) and a bunch of beautiful chickens. Carolann gardened according to biodynamic principles, so we planted certain plants on days that corresponded with the alignment of the planets and the moon. Apparently she did a test bed a few years ago with plants grown according to biodynamics and not, and the BD plants did way better! BD also cares a lot about the soil, and has such preparations as burying cow horns filled with manure in them to replace bacteria in the soil.

On our last day, we climbed up to the top of the property when the bull was in another paddock and looked out across the land. Then we went and looked in some of the beehives to collect honey! Despite being stung the week before, this was something I had always wanted to do, and since there were semi-impermeable suits available I was thrilled to help (Carolann din’t tell us the suits weren’t actually bee-proof until after. She’s smart). Then we got to uncap the comb and extract the honey manually with a spinny thing. We ate so much honey that day and went into a sugar coma.

An Irish couple arrived the night before we left, so we made a delicious curry feast with chapatti’s, mint and chive yogurt, and damson plum chutney. What a good way to end our stay!

The internet is working real bad here so I can't do photos...

We won’t have electricity, internet, refrigeration, etc while we are at the festival. So no new posts until Feb 6 at the earliest! 

New Farm!

Hello everyone,

We made it to our new farm! It's a lovely place with cows, chickens, pigs, sheep, bees, 3 dogs, and lots of veggie gardens! We're loving it so far!! Theres solar hot water and a wind turbine and solar panels and a composting toilet!

The bad news is I got stung by a bee... and as you may or may not know that really sucks for me. My arm has swollen up huuuuge! Fortunately we are taking the day off because it's really rainy and I got some antihistamines. Hopefully I'll get better soon and I'll be back to weeding, planting, and making bamboo fences in no time!!

This place doesn't have internet, so my posts will be rather intermittent until February. I have to get into town on a weekly basis to email my school advisor, so hopefully I will be able to upload some photos of what we've been up to.

Let's hope this rain goes away... at least it's warmer than Vancouver at least!

Nature Spa to Wellington

Jan 11

We saw a hedgehog in the dark biking back to the hostel!!! And we didn’t jump on the trampoline….. we were way to full...

We bussed out of Coromandel town to Whitianga in the morning. It was a beauuuutful twisty drive through lush jungly gorges and valleys. The ocean is soso blue! There were beautiful lookouts to the postcard beaches from the tops of hills. Whitianga was very hot. We walked to a little ferry that cost $3 to go for 5 mins. Then we took a 30 min shuttle to Hot Water Beach. We found our campsite and then headed straight for the beach since the high tide had passed and we needed to get there while there was still sand. Turns out there is a (very!) hot spring running under the beach to the ocean. If you dig about a foot down, you hit hot water! The pools fill up, and you can dig a bit away from the underground stream to get cooler water to mix with it so it isn’t too hot. Many cafes around the beach hire little spades for digging holes, but we just showed up and scavenged a pre-dug hole. We found the peeeerfect one temperature-wise, and renovated it to our liking. We lounged there for hours and got all pruny until the tide came in and filled our pool. The ocean here on the east side of the peninsula is the Pacific, and it is much colder and wavier than the Tasman Sea on the other side. There were also a lot of tourists everywhere, but we didn’t mind too much because one of them saved us the backbreaking work of digging us our personal outdoor spa!

Hot Water Beach. 

Really awesome rock formations at Hot Water Beach! 

            Back at the campsite, we had a delicious dinner of handmade bread from a stand in Coromandel, some deluxe garlic and herb cheese, avocado and tomato sandwiches. We have been monitoring the free bin in the communal kitchen. So far we have gleaned some cereal, cookies, and a big bag of potatoes.

Perfect tree lounge chair. 

Laura's henna monarch I did for her. 

            Our travel plans have evolved drastically. Originally we were going to stop at the thermal town of Rotorua, but turns out there aren’t any busses there tomorrow or the next day. So we decided to skip it and take a plane down from Auckland to Wellington tomorrow. Sounds expensive, but it’s comparable to bussing, and much quicker. We will have a few days in Wellington to celebrate Laura’s birthday before heading to our next farm on Jan 15. We are looking forward to free activities, good food, and staying in one place for a while in Wellington.

Jan 13

We arrived in Wellington around 8 30pm and had dinner at a good (but ridiculously expensive) sushi place. We are so spoiled in Vancouver for good sushi and cheap food! After dinner we went bar hopping to a trillion different places along the main street. People don’t even go out until midnight here! We made lots of friends and danced the night away to celebrate Laura’s birthday! We even got free drink vouchers from our hostel for the occasion!

Frida menus at the taco place. 

Laura opening her birthday cards. 

This morning we went to a couple farmers markets and got some fruits and veggies. And we went to an awesome little Mexican restaurant for lunch. I had a veggie taco. I was very happy there pretending I was Frida Kahlo in Mexico. We’re heading out to the botanical gardens in a bit

Out of the farm and into the Coromandel

We left the farm on Tuesday after a doing some mulching and cracking open and eating macadamia nuts for hours. We also met a little frog friend! We stayed in Auckland for a night, where a friend showed us around to the coolest bars where we danced and had such a lovely time. 

Froggy friend

Cracking macadamias. There are approximately a trillion lying ont eh ground under a tree. 

We honed our cracking skills. 

Early morning breakfast at the hostel in Auckland.

 We left early Wednesday morning and now we are doing a whirlwind tour of the Coromandel Peninsula, known for its beautiful scenery, alternative culture, and sweet as beaches. (Why people say “sweet as” here I will never understand. Lif is to shor to finis word.) We started out in Thames, where we stayed at a lovely, quiet hostel (the owner gave us strawberries form the garden!!). There was a street market that day, so Laura bought some jewellery, we got a bag of local peaches, plums, nectarines and apricots, some henna, and some handmade sunscreen that smells like creamsicles. I had a ginormous sandwich at this vegetarian café that Lonely Planet recommends. We checked out some other little hippie food markets and op shops, then took a long walk up the highway to the butterfly and orchid gardens. Despite Laura being very excited about her visit to butterfly land, to her dismay the butterflies harassed her incessantly the whole time she was there. Especially one we named Raggedy Anne. Our theory is that when they get old and ratty and scary, they are going to die and want to lay eggs. This makes them flutter around you like psychopaths. One actually laid an egg on my water bottle, and two on my camera case. It was weird. Nevertheless we had a great time sitting still and willing them to land on us for most of our visit.

Frittata and giant sandwich at Sola Cafe. 

Biggest moth in the world! They rest during the day and are active at night. They only live for 4 days. 

Morpho moth. They usually rest with their wings closed, which makes them very difficult to photograph. 

One landed on Laura's foot! 

On the walk back we found an abandoned mine tunnel. Thames was a gold mining town, and there are lots of plaques talking about them. This one had an unlocked gate, but had a warning sign not to go in it without a guide. I wanted to go in but it was too cold and scary. In town we got some real cheap and real yummy fish and chips.  

Spooky mining tunnel. 

The next morning we made our way north to Coromandel Town. It’s about an hour’s drive along a scenic, twisty and narrow road. We bought a tent off of a German girl who was leaving for America, so we decided to camp tonight. We are staying at the Tui Lodge, which has lots of grass and gardens. They lend out free bikes, so I got a bike (Laura is afraid of biking around cars), and I rode in circles around her on the way into town (our hostel is 800m away). We went to the chai tea house and had fresh juice and smoothies. Then we biked and walked out to Long Bay and had a lovely swim, made a new friend and did some henna tattoos.

Back in Town we had a GIANT mound of miscellaneous seafood and chips (mussels, oysters, clams, squid, fish,and scallops), and then went for hokey pokey ice cream, which is a NZ classic. Our plan is to digest for a while (we found free unlimited internet outside of a café), then go back to the hostel and jump on the trampoline.

Day 4 on the farm

Today we weeded the corn patch and planted a second crop of corn. We paddled around the swimming pond and fished scummy plants out with a net! It’s a good activity in the heat. It’s really hot here, but the breeze keeps it tolerable. On our morning walk I climbed a tree with Alec. He always points out the good climbing trees on the property, so I decided to give this one a try.

Oldest bridge in NZ. 

Weaving flax. 

An old cream shack. 

The art gallery building. 

Then Laura and I walked to Kohukohu, the nearest village, which is about a half hour walk away. It has a handful of cute little shops and cafes. We went back to the art gallery and I bought a really awesome art piece that I have to send home in the mail. It’s stitched muka (flax fibre), plain and dyed with a local tree bark, on a blank canvas. It’s my first piece of art ever bought in a gallery! I can’t wait to hang it when I get home. Everyone in the art gallery is so lovely! There is a little artist collective that we made friends with, and I got to meet an talk to the artist that made the piece I bought!

We also went to an adorable café and had coffee and carrot cake. Everything is on island time here… so you can’t be in a rush!

We walked along the main drag and stood on New Zealand’s oldest bridge. It was a lovely day. The walk back was fun, we met a local who walked with us for a ways and told us about some Maori culture. We came home and made some soup for dinner with a lot of garden veggies (veges as they call them in Kiwiland). 

We went up to the highest point on the property and looked at the stars with giant binoculars and a tripod. We saw Jupiter's moons!!!! It was soooooooo amazing. I nearly had a panic attack when I saw them. And we looked at Sirius and the Seven Sisters and galaxies and nebulaas and dust clouds. And we saw the Southern Cross, which is a new constellation for us.