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!
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