The Adventures of Michalina: The most magical ecovillage experience

Laura hanging out (literally) on the patio.

Feb 15

This morning we arrived at Otamatea ecovillage with Sabine and Wolfgang for our last wwoofing stay. We’ll be here for 9 days until I fly off to Fiji on the 24^th. Ahh!! It’s a beautiful place so far, full of loaded peach, pear, and apple trees! We will be eating a lot of peaches and pears in the next week… They have 3 ducks (that patrol the gardens for slugs and snails), chickens, 2 cows (for meat), and 2 lovely dogs (named Jesse and Lily, aka bucket head since she’s been biting herself lately, poor thing. Jesse dug in the garden with us and munched on 2 baby mice. Yum!). We broke up the potato bed today after a delicious lunch of fresh fluffy bread, AMAZING cheese, AMAZING home kill sausage, garden tomatoes and cucumbers and--OMG WOLFGANG JUST WALKED IN WITH TWO TALL GLASSES OF FRESHLY SQUEEZED PEAR JUICE WE ARE GOING TO DIE OF DELICIOUS HAPPINESS OVERLOAD—sorry, this place is just too magical. Ahem where was I… oh yes really good food and new fruit discoveries yet again! We tried a pepita today, which is like a melony thing: small apple-sized and round with white skin with purple stripes and light yellow flesh that tastes like a melon. In a few minutes we are going to help Wolfgang make pasta for dinner.

We have our own wwoofer cottage, which is a tall open loft room with our own kitchen and loft bedroom. It’s so bright and sunny! And made of earth. We have our own composting toilet outside (we pee under the trees) and a shower in the workshop/garlic hanging area. Sabine and Wolfgang’s house is also beautiful! It’s made of earth as well, and has big open rooms overlooking the valley and gardens. They have a huge pantry stocked with eggs and preserves and cheese… drool… There are also lots of ponds around here. The perfect place to wrap up my New Zealand trip in paradise…

Wolfgang taught us how to make pasta, and we had it with a delicious creamy pumpkin curry sauce. We also had white radishes and the most enchanting watermelon radishes. AND we had some beer that they made. Wolfgang suggested we make a food schedule to make German pasta and tortillas to ensure that we make all the food we want to in our short stay here.

Sunday

Today was our day off, so we had a pancake breakfast with whipped cream, honeycomb, and peaches and pears! Then we had coffee, then went on a walk around the peninsula to put out some possum bait. We found some rat skulls that I’m gonna see if I can smuggle back to Canada. My chances of all my stuff making it back to Canada are becoming slimmer and slimmer as I collect more and more feathers, skulls and teeth… I’ll see what I can do.

Then we went to a beautiful sandy beach with huge sand dunes and cool shells. We stopped to get some local ice cream on the way. It was a lovely drive through farmland. Sabine and Wolfgang are TOO NICE!! We are already plotting how we are going to come back and live here.

We are haymaking tomorrow, which should be interesting since I’m a weakling and it involves 200-300 lb hay bales. Hopefully I will come back with lots of muscles. In any case, we will celebrate with home brew after it’s done!

Feb 21. Thursday

Haymaking wasn’t as hard as we thought. We lifted bales of hay onto trucks all day in the sweltering sun. We had a view of the river and the hillside across it, and there was the added excitement of picking up bits of the tractor that had fallen off, and removing old cow bones from the field so they didn’t jam the bailer (a person that used to live at the ecovillage didn’t take care of their animals and two died in that paddock…).

We’ve been picking green shield bugs/stink bugs off of the plants around here, a task that I enjoy immensely but Laura hates. There is a certain trick to it: you have to understand the bugs. I have it down to a science. They usually swing over to the underside of the leaf when they sense you coming, and then sometimes they jump off the leaf and fall. Other times they fly away. If you position the water bottle catcher contraption under them you can almost always get them (and then feed them to the chickens!). Sometimes you have to employ other various kill techniques, such as squishing with your finger, a twig, or stepping on them. Anyway, I think it’s my true calling. Laura says I can come to her garden sometimes and kill bugs in exchange for food in the future.

I also tried feeding a stink bug to a praying mantis but the mantis ran away from it. What a wuss. When Laura starts raising praying mantids I will request a special strain that is tough.

There was a community dinner here last night, and about 20 people came. It was fun getting to know everyone and trying all the food they brought! We were very stuffed at the end. There is actually a lot of tension and drama at the ecovillage because of differing interests etc. They are having trouble agreeing on what projects to do, what to spend money on, whether to become a partnership or corporation etc. Despite this, it was a nice evening without anyone strangling anyone else. And the dessert was real good.

One day Sabine sent us out to collect pears on the ground to make juice. We came back with two giant baskets we could hardly lift. (I promise I will have muscles when I get home, guys). She put some pears in the bottom of a quark cheesecake she made (omg…) and then we fed the ugly ones to the cows. (When they fire up the oven—literally, with wood—they often bake lots of things. Sabine made the cheesecake, a giant zucchini chocolate cake, and two loaves of whole wheat sourdough. Why do I have plans to leave this place again?) The peach trees are also dripping with peaches still, so we have to eat lots. We also harvested purple beans, other pole beans, sorted onions, prepared a bed and planted carrots, turnips and radishes, and will pick some beautiful pumpkins later. It’s nice to be here during harvest time!

We are having lots of fun hanging out with the dogs (minus a bucket) and playing in the garden here. There are lots of cool creatures and bugs! They also have a lot of great books to read! Especially cook books. My journal is actually full of recipes, so I guess I will have to buy the books when I get home.

Feb 23

We left the farm today. I’ll definitely be back to visit one day! Wolf and Sabine are such special people willing to share a few laughs and their practical points of view of sustainable living. I went to a singing workshop with them for the day while Laura headed for Auckland. It was so much fun! We sang songs in lots of different languages and some stuff by the “O Brother Where Art Thou” composer and some of my favourite choir songs. We went out for sushi for lunch (you got to pick single pieces for yourself). It was a great day! I got a ride to Auckland with the conductor and his wife, and they drove me straight to my hostel. Laura and I are meeting up in a little bit, we had to get different hostels because the one I booked first got full.

Yesterday we got to see one of the neighbour’s straw bale homes and went swimming in their natural pool! It was a beautiful place with a beautiful dog and huge frogs and tadpoles in the pool!