Supervacations!

Supervacations are when you go on vacation when you're already on vacation. I'm already on vacation in NZ, thus any vacation I take from wwoofing counts as a supervacation. Most of these involve climbing.

Two weeks ago, I headed up to Mt. Somers for a weekend of spectacular trad climbing with Simon, Rik, and Dave. I got out of Timaru early and toured up the Inland Scenic Route, detouring off into the Peel Forest for a while. Unfortunately the sky had been misty raining all day and showed no signs of letting up as I went north. Bored and unexcited about pre-hiking in the wet, I drove to our meet up spot at the base of the mountain two hours early. Rik introduced himself in the carpark and said that he was going to get an early start on the 3.5hr hike in and asked if I'd like to join him. Seeing no point in hanging around in my car for two hours we set off. I was wearing cotton pants, lots of wooly top layers, a "Gore-tex" jacket (how stiff do they have to become before they're actually waterproof?), my Smartwool socks and trail runners posing as hiking shoes. It wasn't going to make life any more fun if I got disgruntled about the heavy pack (climbing gear spoils packing light) and silly bottom layers, so I just tried to concentrate on the warm dry hut that would await us in the mountains. I was so relieved to see the hut, I could feel tears swelling. Warm in the hut I got my soaked socks off, rung them out and set them on the wood stove to steam dry. Don't ask, but I only brought one pair. Yes it was raining when I packed my gear. I never go backpacking, I usually just go to relatively street-side crags where wet trekking doesn't exist except in the middle of a steaming hot summer.

Pinnacles Hut was amazing. Complete with 18 bunks, a wood/coal stove, picnic tables, and a kitchen bench, I couldn't believe I'd paid $5 for 2 nights worth of student-rate DOC (Dept. of Conservation) tickets. Fun that night consisted of drinking and making weird faces in response to Rik's bladder of cooking wine. Wee! Fun in the woods. The next morning it was still misty and damp, and the four of us hung out for as long as we could stand it playing card games. I swear we picked one that made us exceptionally antsy, but maybe that happens with all card games (sober). Just after lunchtime we packed up our gear and set off up the trail (about 30min) for the rocks. Everything was still in fog so we couldn't see the rock until Simon led us right up to it. Here comes the exciting part...

I'd come on this climbing trip mainly to improve my trad climbing abilities. This was going to be my acid test to see if I really was going to get into the world of trad climbing and become a super gear junkie, or just stick to amateur sport climbing. (Trad climbing means going up and placing removable protection in the rock as you go, then removing it all before you set the next pitch. It means knowing which little piece of aluminum to wiggle into the rock so that when you fall 20-30ft you don't die. It's entirely more complicated than sport, where you're clipping into pre-drilled bolts, and much more mental.) We warmed up easy on two 15s (5.7). Rik led ours and I agreed to reclimb it placing all the gear. The rock there was like a ramp, slowly climbing more and more steeply into the sky, but never quite reaching vertical. I racked up and lead the pitch on double ropes easily and smoothly, just thrilled to be able to confidently set gear and know that it would hold me. I led a 15 as my second route and felt just as solid on it as my first. I was super pumped to be getting into the rhythm of placing gear and to be climbing on a double rope system.

Dave and Simon put up a harder pitch (19) on the next wall over and I hopped on it on top rope and climbed the 45+m to the top. The rope got stuck at the top as we were trying to pull it and we couldn't get it to budge. We'd been climbing on double ropes because the pitches were so long (over the 30m you can do on a single rope system), and because of this we had to knot the two ropes together in order to rappel down. When the knot got itself into a wedge at the top of the cliff there was no way to flick it out, even after Simon prusik ascended the rope 15m. I volunteered to go back to camp and start cooking up the burrito makings that were in my pack while the guys freed the rope. And then I got lost Bear Grills-style and decided to follow my way down a scree slope to a river bed and then turn abruptly left towards camp and bushwack the rest of the way. By the time I got to the stream just before our hut I could hear Simon and Dave just behind me. At least I had fun feeling "lost" and running Man v. Wild dialogue in my head while I made my way back to camp.

On our second day we got out reasonably early and quickly got our gear racked up. I chickened out of leading the "hard" 16 straight off since our two experienced crew members were warming up on a 15. Rik belayed me on the second 15 from the day before and it strangely felt no easier. Dave went off with Simon to put up a 21 and I scrounged up the courage to get on the 16. It was a pretty hairy start and I clipped a bolt that was technically off route about 15-20ft off the deck just for peace of mind. I finally found a wire placement, got my nerves settled, and headed up into the crack system. The rock yawned into a wide V that let me stem easily and go hands free to place gear. I couldn't tell from the ground because of the mist, but there were bolts all the way up the route on the arete. It was a much more mixed route than I had anticipated; I could clip my left rope into the bolts and my right into gear. The route felt really good and I got a nice sideways cam placement in along with a whole string of good nut placements. After cleaning the gear off that route and being wayyy too amped up to call it a day, I joined up with Simon and Dave again and wore myself out cleaning out the gear from the 21. I've never had my calves burn so much from climbing. The 21 was in a right angle corner with loads of good jams and great stemming all the way up. Two thirds of the way up, just as the route was finally kicking it up, I really started to lose it. I was trying to shake out the lactic acid in the my legs from so much slow climbing earlier in the weekend, but that required putting more weight on my left arm, and I ended up doing some sort of strange, awkward chicken winging before I fell on the rope and rested. Needless to say, definitely wore me out. Three hours hike out in the beautiful woods I'd missed on the way in and we were soon relaxing at the pub in Methven for a cold beer.

____________________

The second supervacation was this past weekend with Kara down to Hampden and Moeraki. I will write about that shortly, but am heading to bed now as it's 2am. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

Photo gallery of Moeraki trip instead:

Oamaru beach

And below: giant hogweed. bull kelp at Oamaru beach. New Zealand flax. me at Moeraki boulders. old iron dock at at Moeraki. the boulder field.

A Dunk of Diesel and Dettol

On Tuesday afternoon Nath, Kara, and I rounded up the chooks into the hen house and closed them in with the corrugated metal panel. Nath had prepared a mix of Dettol and diesel to cure the mites growing scaly on the chickens' feet. As I guarded the door, Nath went after the chooks with the net and Kara clipped each one's wing and dipped their feet. The chooks were going absolutely nuts of course, but once we had them in our hands they were much easier to handle than I thought. If you place your thumb on their knees then the chicken can't move its legs. We snipped their primary feathers down on one side (no need to do both) so that they can't fly off. If you clip their wings young enough they won't ever learn that they can fly. It sounds like a traumatizing process, but the chooks were just as friendly and food-seeking as usual the next morning and laid a good dozen and a half eggs.

In other chicken news, we have 4 chooks sitting up in battery cages to get them off the cluck. Once chickens get broody their hormones keep them on the cluck, but they don't produce any eggs. Putting them up on cages gets air under their bums and cools their body temperature down to egg laying conditions. We give them food and water and take them out once they start laying or seem off the cluck. We're still trying to sort out Araucanas from the brown layers (there are 2 green egg layers in the main run). We've checked at least 8 chickens now and none of them are the culprits! We're starting to get down to the chooks we were so sure couldn't lay green eggs. Ever elusive. Distinguishing Araucanas is tricky if they're half-breeds.

We also have brand new "bock-bocks" as Kara calls them. I found a squacking mother and 4 chicks outside the run last week and they've been captured and placed in a box with straw, feed, water, and a warming lamp. After much ado and tramping through the woods behind the hen house Kara and I weren't able to capture the mother who'd escaped above our heads into the trees. We think she's returned the to hen house, but with so many hens looking alike we can't be sure. The chicks were struggling quite a bit when we brought them in, traumatized from the capture and being separated from their mother. We taught them to drink by dunking their heads in the water feeder and now at least three of the four are happily pecking away in their new quarters. The fourth is getting extra TLC from Kara. Its left eye was shut this afternoon and it hasn't grown as much as the others. This wee bock-bock escaped the initial capture and got separated from its mother when we went after her. The chick managed to find its way into the hen house and was laying outside the box of its siblings when we found it. A rough start so we're trying to help it catch up.

Daily Grind

Wake up around 8-9am, get a quick breakfast together of yogurt or milk and muesli with some extra raisins, coconut, and nuts thrown in. Drink a mug of tea. Lather everything visible in sunscreen, get my gumboots on and head out for morning work. Water the seedlings, feed the chickens, pick up the few morning eggs. Then off to the main morning work - weeding, planting, pruning, irrigation, organizing a shed on rainy days, whatever the day's fancy. Lunch time rolls in about 1pm, usually dinner leftovers; time for a wee break for reading or internets, and then back outside just after 2pm. Afternoon fun of more of the same and then check the chooks for eggs and pile them in the chiller. The Araucanas are in a separate run - they lay fantastic green eggs - and are currently occupied as lawn mowing chickens. Not quite as thorough as sheep, but they do a decent job. Knock off work around 5pm, hang about the house, have a beer, maybe read or do some yoga; dinner around 7-8pm; maybe a movie after. Bed around 11pm.

Nothing to get your blood pressure up. Wittle away the days, clean out a shed. "What's that bag of ...?" "Blood and bone." "What?" "Ground up blood and bone from rendering; put it on the strawberries for fertilizer." Yummy. Sorry vegans. SOL.

Vegetables!

= Happiness! And I have arrived at a vegetable farm. Finally. I spent another 4 days in Amberley along the beach, tearing down a fence (all by myself), and enjoying coffee and yoga and picnics along the water. Then I began my trek south to Timaru. Along the way I stopped at an auto shop to get new windshield wipers since the ones that were on the car actually made it harder to see when it rained. I brought my entire wiper into the shop to get the right size. The girl asked if i need to replace everything or just the blade. I opted for the blade of course, being cheaper, and she just said to cut them to the right length. Seemed simple enough. Did that. Then I had to get the wiper back on. The last (and first) time I replaced my blades in the states the auto guy sold me the entire set and put them on for me (said it was standard service; guessing he figured I had no idea anyway, which I didn't). So I tried to summon the memory of watching him do it for me... and about 40 min later I finally had my new wiper blades on the car. Luckily I didn't have to ask for help. Next stop was a gas station to get air. I've done that tons of times in the states, should be no problem. The air hose has a pressure gauge on it, which should make things easier because then you don't need your own. But it took me another 10min of staring at it and pretending to add air to my tire to figure out the partial release mechanism that gives you the pressure reading for a split second. No tires exploded on my trip south, so I think things are in working order. Now all I have to do is duct tape my right headlight in place so it doesn't disconnect when I go over bumps.

Life in Timaru at Aroha Organics is grand with Nath and Steph. We're right off the Main South Rd and one farm property over from the ocean. I've been trying to think of something that goes on here for every letter of the alphabet, but I get lost around i or j. (much easier to write it out)

Almonds, apples
Bee stings
Carrots
Dok (sp? nasty weed)
Eggs
Fish and chips & Flight of the Concords
Garlic
House (as in the show) and hazelnut trees, honey
Irrigation
Juggling, courtesy Rush, usually with...
Kiwifruit (we just eat it)
Lemons
Mustard (used as living mulch between the strawberries)
Noel (daddy Jack Russell terrier)
Onions
Pumpkins, pears, peaches, plums, peas
Queen bee... missing from one of the hives
Raspberries
Strawberries
Treehugger Organics (Nath & Steph's brand)
UV rays (getting quite bronzed)
Van (decked out in bright purple and green, hippie style)
Wwoofers (lots coming through here)
Xrays - Steph got hit by a bastard driver
Yoga outside in the grass
Zoe (the girl dog of the bunch)

I got stung by one of the queenless bees 4 days ago on the right side of my forehead. My right eye is still swollen, though some antihistamine is helping (works a lot better than the pills). These honey bees are ferocious - they go all anarchy and aggressive when they don't have a queen. Luckily only one of the hives is in this situation. They attacked me twice when I was planting onions (two days in a row), after which Rush and I gave up and worked elsewhere. Bees don't usually attack. They make stellar honey, some of which gets made into HoneyHaze (a spread of 30% hazelnuts, 70% honey) - pretty close to heaven.

There are a number of chickens and one duck here. They like to be free range, as in out of their cages. There are several breeds and the eggs range from brown to white to green. The green ones are really cool. There's also a rooster around, so we float the eggs before cracking them, lest we find a chick fetus on the pan! (Fertilized eggs float)

I'll be sticking around here for a few weeks, then probably south again to see Fiordlands.

I'm not dead yet!!

...cried the chicken. Got up to the first big old lady hen house today and found a chicken laying strangely on the side of the house. Her head was buried in the mud and she still had a heartbeat. I picked her up and she moved, barely. Showing her to Claudia, I asked her what to do with a half-dead chicken. "Smash its head." "Um... you do it." Claudia laid her head on a beam and crunched her head twice. That was it - then the chicken went on our trailer and headed off to the woods to decompose. I like it better when they're all the way dead when we find them.

We had a massive storm last night that carried on until about noon today. Hail, sleet, torrential rains, winds. Apparently this is not unusual for NZ. My much anticipated trip out to Castle Hill for climbing was canceled - they got snow! Heading out to the Port Hills, just south of Christchurch, tomorrow for a little day trip. By the way, my usual outfit of clothes here is (when warm) pants, a t-shirt and a long-sleeve shirt and (when cold) wool long underwear, pants, two pairs of wool socks, top underlayers, two wool shirts, maybe a fleece, hat, and/or jacket... sometimes in the house. Hope summer's coming soon!

And my last bit of exciting news is that I think I'm in love with milk and honey. So far my favorite foods on this trip are butter and honey on toast, tasty cheddar cheese and honey on bread, and yogurt with honey and muesli. hmmm... pattern. We've been making yogurt here from the fresh raw cow's milk. So delicious. I've decided I have to start doing this when I get home. Claudia has an EasyYo yogurt maker (basically and insulated container with a piece of tupperware for the yogurt). I heat up the milk on the stove to simmer and then let it cool off to about 40ºC (warm-hot) and then put it in the container with a bit of left over yogurt. Then pour 40ºC water around the container in the thermos and let it sit for 12hrs. I have to chance the water once to keep it going. The 40-45ºC temp allows the yogurt bacteria to grow and multiply... thus making yogurt. So if it gets too hot or cold, the culture dies and you have plain ol' milk. You get the same volume of yogurt as the milk you put in... so doing the math, yep, way cheaper to make yogurt myself and just buy milk if I've got the time! On the honey side of things, there's a special NZ "honey" called Manuka. It's actually from a flower and more of a dew/syrup (think honeysuckle) so the bees aren't so central. It's delicious, definitely tastes a bit flowery, and regular honey seems bland next to it. Mmmm. Maybe I can bring some back!

Things I'd never really considered before

A chicken can lose its voice. There's an old lady hen in the upper paddock that lets out this hoarse cluck every time I go to gather her eggs. At first I thought it might be like humans losing their voices, but now I'm pretty sure she's got it for life.

Chickens can lay really strange eggs. Again with the old ladies again. Obviously fertility doesn't last forever and neither do hens' ability to lay beautiful smooth brown eggs. We get eggs that have rough sand-like shells, ones with holes in them, odd shaped ones with blunt corners, and occasionally one without a fully hardened shell. I think we scared a chicken when we drove in to the paddock the other day and it dropped a fresh egg on the ground with a thin paper like shell. Weird.

The circle of life for a baby goat. Last week a baby goat was born and its little wet and curly haired self was the cutest thing ever. We brought him and his mama to a separate shelter in the front yard so they could bond and she would learn how to nurse him as a first time mother. The mom had little clue what to do at first and we helped the baby goat who couldn't stand to suck, giving him both formula and mama's teet for milk. We kept up the assisted feed regimen for 2 or 3 days. The baby goat should have been standing by then. He could get his back legs going but his front legs were like rubber when we would set him upright. He'd put the tiniest amount of weight on them and collapse like a pile of sticks. The next day I went out to feed him and he wouldn't suck. We tried the bottle as well and he wouldn't take to that either. Occasionally he'd let out a bleat and turn his face, so we figured he wasn't hungry. He'd had a huge meal the night before. But later in the day it was more of the same. The next morning Daniel came in with a freezing cold goat and put him in a a warm bath. By then I'm sure he was unconscious or possibly worse. I asked Daniel how we'd know if he'd gone and he said the goat would go stiff. Sure enough, later that afternoon he was done. You can't really force a baby goat to drink milk if he doesn't want it and it wouldn't do much good in the long run. Daniel says that whenever they've given their goats antibiotics or fixed their ailments in the past, then those goats are the first to go in a storm. They simply aren't as strong as healthy goats. So we let the baby goat go and now he's being saved in the freezer for possum bait.

Chicken Farm!

I know it's been a while since I've posted, but I've been super busy working on a chicken farm for the past week! I ended up here a bit randomly (the place I was supposed to stay was full, so I got referred over here) and I've really been enjoying myself. Claudia and Daniel own Yellow Hill farm where they have over 1200 hens for their eggs, about 40 goats, and 10 cows (with a newborn yesterday). Then eggs are certified organic and free range and get sold all over town in the organic groceries, farmer's markets, and to restaurants.

All the chickens, save one, are brown hens and are upwards of 2 yrs old. some were inherited from another farmer, so we don't know how old those are and they just die of old age. I walked in one hen house yesterday to find a dead one and all the hens gathered looking strangely at it, cooing a funeral song. (or so I imagined). The old ladies (as we call them) don't lay as frequently, but they're not good for much else, so they'd just get killed off in a more conventional operation. I suppose it makes things a bit less cost effective, because they can be a "drain" on feed, but it depends on what you're looking for. They make delicious jumbo sized eggs which younger hens don't produce. And jumbo eggs are a hot item at the market - often they have double yokes or kids like the "dinosaur" eggs.

Egg work starts in the afternoon, around noon or 1pm, after the chickens have stopped laying for the day and have left their nests. We ride out on an ATV with a trailer to the two big chicken paddocks in the back of the property where it's a bit more sheltered from the weather that can whip through here. Gathering the eggs, feeding and getting water to the hens takes about 2hrs. We gather the eggs on trays from all the hen houses and also check around the bushes for the truly free ranging types. They have their favorite houses, so some will have over 100 eggs and others will have about a dozen. They get a wheat-based grain mix with plenty of good vitamins and minerals and occasionally some left over veggies from other farmers. [Everything has to be certified organic and everyone has to wear their gumboots out to prevent cross-contamination of stuff not on their farm.] There's plenty of grass around too for the hens to nibble on and this is what helps make their egg yolks so orangey-yellow. I learned that some farmers here put dye in their feed to make the yolks look super yellow. It looked a bit strange to me when I got here, and I commented to people that I'd never seen an egg that orange - turns out, for good reason!

All of the eggs need to washed and dried before they're packed. Some of the eggs we gather are just about ready to go - nice clean and brown. But others are coated in any combination of chicken poo, mud, and scrambled egg. The chickens are a bit cannibalistic, and will peck at their eggs if left too long or go downright bonkers if they see one cracked open on the ground. (Only one of the reasons egg gathering has to happen every day, in the early afternoon). The chickens produce an unbelievable amount of poop. Luckily this can be sold as well as fertilizer. Really strong stuff though; just putrid when it's fresh. Once the eggs are all clean and in their trays they get packed into boxes (6 trays of 30 eggs each). The cleaning and packing process takes about 3hrs I think for each days eggs. So we're already at about 5-6hrs of work, just for basic maintenance of the egg business.... without adding in the business side work, maintenance of their facilities, delivering and selling at markets, or what about tending to the goats, the garden patch, the cows, 2 dogs, 3 cats, or feeding ourselves. Needless to say, if you get behind it's hard to catch back up. We've been doing double duty on egg washing over the past week to try to catch back up from time off with markets and other obligations. Thank goodness I'm needed around here :) And with that... I have to go back to washing eggs.

my new wheels

I won the battle on trademe.co.nz for a red Honda Civic LX 1985 2-door hatchback. Suweet! It doesn't have power steering, is an automatic, and has a tape deck and radio. It also has a manual choke to add gas to the engine to help get it going. Not something i'm familiar with but I think i've got it worked out. And of course, it goes on the left side of the road. Luckily NZ roads are near empty, so i shouldn't have any problems staying out of trouble. Paid less than $600 USD for it and will probably have to spend another $100 on it to do an oil change, get a new WOF (Warrant of Fitness) when it expires, and new registration when that comes up. ... plus petrol of course. and then I can sell it in March and make most of the money back. Not a bad deal at all I'd say. Pics coming soon.

Back in ChCh for a car + a Yurt and a Fire Bath

[September 3, 2008]
I'm in my second wwoof stay now - in Christchurch for a week so I can buy a car. Spent a bit of time today looking into one with the dad (RW) and 15yr old son, Robbie. trademe.co.nz has a lot of action but it can be hard to find one for under $1000. Should be able to turn out something before week's end.

[I got a car today - Sept 6!!!! Woo hoo, mission accomplished]

Yurt! Yesterday, the last day at Okuti, we put up a yurt! It was a really nice break from the monotony of digging weeds. There's a lattice structure for the walls, a heavy wheel at the top into which the roof posts attach, and then the entire structure is wrapped in canvass. Craftsmanship is key here because the strength of the structure is in the web of parts - no one piece is very strong. (I'll put up pics very soon, but the pc i'm using isn't reading the pic files on my external hd correctly, so i can't upload them) You're not that sheltered from the elements when it's done though, so it's more like a giant, very sturdy tent.

Speaking of insulation - houses here seem very thinly insulated despite the cold winters here. The windows are all single payne. At Okuti we had a fire going every night and in the mornings sometimes too. This place has central air but I'm out in the shed sans insulation, so I have about 6 blankets. Super warm!

I almost forgot... the fire bath! Janie and Jim (at Okuti) put a bathtub out in the yard and carved out a space for a fire w/ chimney beneath it. You fill up the bathtub and light a fire and about 2-3hrs later you have a hot bath. The bottom gets very hot and I put a towel down to sit on b/c it keeps heating up (I had to add cold water too). I added a bunch of herbs - eucalyptus, mint, lemon balm, rosemary, lavendar - from their garden and it smelled wonderful. I sat out there for over an hour under the big starry NZ sky enjoying my steaming hot bath all to myself. Very romantic.

Logging and Freezing Showers

Two important things of the day: dragging logs out of the woods is really hard and taking an outdoor shower when it's 50F out is a really bad idea.

So today was a bit of a test of wills. The logging work actually wasn't so bad if I thought about it as my workout for the day, which it was. James wanted to rebuild a low garden wall with poplar posts. He took a chainsaw to a few poplars on the hill and cut them into chunks, and then Maren and I lugged and dragged the logs down the hill. We used trunks 2.5-6" in diameter. Poplar was planted on the hillsides to stop erosion, which it does well, but it's also become a bit of a nuisance as it's now pushing out native trees. Slow and heavy work to get the 5 plus trees down off the hill.

Our hosts think we're wusses, but the outdoor solar-heated shower at dusk is just miserable in this season. The air temp is too cold to get naked and the (really) hot water from the solar shower just dribbles out making it impossible to get warm in it. It's a bloody ordeal getting a shower out there without warm air. I'm shivering violently by the time I'm done and my little pack towel can't cover me while I'm wet. Maren decided it was way too cold to get a shower outside tonight after Steph and I came back freezing and is opting for a shower in the house instead. Not a wimp I think.

---

Slowly but surely I'm learning lots of cool things out here. Willow and poplar are great for building living structures. You can stick stumps of either in the ground and they'll root and flower and grow. Rather amazing. You can make living willow walls or a shade cover of poplar or willow. If you're really enthusiastic, maybe a chair or yurt, a tunnel or gazebo classroom, all kinds of crazy structures. Also learned that poplar makes poor firewood, but a dense native bushy conifer (I forgot the name) works really well. And I learned the best way to haul heavy log sections - hoist one on my shoulder which saves my biceps and forearms from wearing out too fast (climbing strength didn't get me very far). My Carhartts are very dirty and worn in now from all the work we've been up to.

My first wwoof

[Sept 27, 2008]
We do about 5hrs of work a day. Work starts at 9am after make your own breakfast and goes until lunch around 1:30pm, an hour lunch, and then we work again until 3-4pm. We have two tea breaks also with English black tea usually, biscuits (cookies), and maybe a bit of dried fruit. Lunch is usually a bit late because of our tea break and dinner is around 7-8pm. We are always welcome to get snacks if we need them, but usually the meals are very filling.

Wwoofing isn't really about eating, so... in the past week I have weeded and turned up the soil for garden beds, removed 8-gauge wire from a fence and cleaned the bark off the wood posts, stuck poplar poles in the ground for a living gazebo, gathered sticks and brush which we burned in a huge bonfire, cracked walnuts while it rained yesterday, and 3 times a day we do the dishes. (This is in addition to our 5hrs of work each day). We end up working half of the daylight hours, but our hosts pretty much work dawn to dusk. In addition to doing outdoor work on their farm and keeping the B&B, there's the regular household work, taking care of their son Sol, and making lunch and dinner for us.

Gathering sticks to burn today was harder than the digging in the beds we'd been doing for the past few days. We'd load up an enormous blue tarp of sticks from the fields and drag it to the burn pile, taking 2-3 of us to haul it across the swampy meadows. The burn pile was next to the convergence of two streams and sopping wet from the rains yesterday. We got really muddy and needed wellies to keep our feet dry instead of our porous sneakers! (really really muddy shoes and pants)

Yesterday, the sheep were out in the yard mowing the grass. They're very good at it, but they are also very good at escaping. We kept having to chase them away from the vegetable beds and flowers and back to their designated area, which was not well enough fenced in. Today some escaped across the cattle grate into the road and we had to chase them back in. They're pretty nimble things and good at jumping through the bushes and on in particular seems to have a "grass is greener" mentality. So they can be a bit of a pain! And yes, we've done the quintessential counting of sheep.

Sheep have poopy butts!

[Thursday, Sept 25, 2008]
I've done two days of work at Okuti Garden and am feeling a lot more comfortable now. Yesterday afternoon I walked with Fabrice and Stephanie (the French couple) down the road to the tennis courts. Along the way we passed some very thickly coated sheep. Their wool grows everywhere, including their butts! And sheep poop. So the sheep have very poopy butts, with dried poop haning off their wool on their behinds. If it gets really bad, and these particular sheep were pretty bad, then the poop strands drag along and look like a cross between soppy poopy dreads and hippie bead strands. Oh the hilarity of the poopy butt!

Wed, Sept 24, 2008

[Tuesday]
After getting settled in Christchurch, I fell hard asleep at about 3pm. I set the alarm for about n hour later, but then turned it off in favor of more sleeping. mmmm! I awoke to my two other dorm mates about 9pm. Managed to get my weary self out of bed for a bit, cleaned up my already pretty organized stuff, brushed my teeth, and walked downt ot a convenience store, really really hungry, with Gillie for bread and PB.

I met Gillie much earlier that day on the City Bus from the airport into the city center. We were both headed to the visitor's center, and friendly as lonely backpackers are, we decided to make the trip together. We picked up phone cards and the lady at the desk let me know what I already suspected, that the buses to Akaroa via Little River were already gone for the day. Gillie had been recommended the Coachman backpackers and we hopelessly circumnavigated the block adjacent to it 1 1/2 times before a guard at the Cathedral pointed us in the right direction. We booked a dorm room (4-beds) for $25 and then headed off to an internet cafe and a phone booth to take care of a few things.

Soon after that we met up with Gillie's friend Carolyn who was in town looking at jobs. I soon decided that moving to NZ was a great idea - albeit, not in Carolyn's style. Her husband was looking at university jobs in the department of strategy (?) and I think she was looking at HR manager type positions. She had awful buckle platform heels and a blouse that let her leathery tan boobs spill out. Great for job interviews. We all walked the town a bit and I bought a pack towel (having forgotten any sort of towel), a plug converter (the plastic pieces broke that night), and talked to a guy at an outdoorsy shop about climbing. This was excellent. He gave me info for the local indoor gym, his number, and the local listserv, from which people organize climbing trips every weekend. So I should be all set. Except that I'm in Little River now, sans car. But once I get back into town I should be able to figure out things quickly. One thing follows another --

[Wednesday]
In Little River at Okuti Garden I met 3 other wwoofers. All recommended that a car was essential for travel here as buses are limited and trains worse. In order to pay for a car I'd need a job and in order to have a job I'd need a place to stay. And then from working in the city I could easily go climbing with my listserv buddies. I have to buy a car very soon because it's almost tourist season and prices go up. I could probably manage to keep wwoofing for a while afterwards because wwoofing only costs gas money. Getting a car means about $800-$1000 for the purchase, plus around $250 for basic insurance, plus petrol. The hope is that I'd sell the car for around the same at the end and make most of that cost back. Decisions! Oh, and working in a cafe or something decent might be difficult given the climbing to farming grungy trend of my cothes.

Being out at Okuti Garden is like insta-lonely. I don't know whether it's the quiet, which makes it harder to be distracted from my own thoughts or the mix of people here. By the way, I have yet to meet another American traveler. Well, I met two huge ladies from Texas on the bus, but they're not the same kind of travelers. The wwoofers here are a German girl (22) and a French couple, all of whom speak English.

Tues, Sept 23, 2008

[from the Auckland airport, early morning]
It's Tuesday now. Monday got lost in transit. Everything's worked itslef out. They didn't have my meal preference b/c of the flight change (lacto-ovo veg, ANZ get's super specific), but an attendant got me an extra business class fish meal, which was fantastic. Breakfast was great too - a vege noodle stirfry. Pretty high class I thought. The sunset was gorgeous this morning, but now we've settled into a heavy overcast - gray skies and bright green grasses.

Super friendliness abounds here - even the customs people checking for food stuffs and forest-touched gear were nice and laid back. Customs was much more scary going to India and returning to the US. I also met a really nice girl on the flight who's from Toronto and working in Aukland on fire system engineering. We exchanged emails and she wanted to hear how wwoofing went since she was looking into it for her Christmas holiday.

Next stop - Christchurch, where I'll need transit to the visitor's center to get a bus (cross my fingers!) to Little River. Got to get cash out and find a phone to let my host know when I'll arrive.

Sun, Sept 21, 2008

I'm a bit behind getting this all posted... but here's where the journey starts. [Excerpts from my travel journal.]

No air flight goes without some hiccup it seems. I board the United flight to LAX on time only to find that there's a malfunction with... we later find it's only the A/C unit. Everyone de-boards and we're waylaid over an hour. I arrange a backup flight out of LAX to Aukland in case we arrive too late - indeed, at 8min past departure I just miss my 9:30pm Air New Zealand flight. The 10:30pm one is boarding as I get my boarding pass at the gate and I hop on the flight - after of course, flying across the parking lots of LAX running and getting directions to Terminal 2 and kindly being hurried through security. I would have made it if I hadn't had to re-enter the 'secure area.'

Itinerary changes mean a domino effect on down the line - a now 3hr layover in Aukland before going to Christchurch where I may arrive too late to make the transit to Little River, where I can get picked up by the welcoming wwoof host for a quick jaunt over to their home, Okuti Garden. It could be worse - if our plane hadn't gotten fixed at Dulles before 7pm I would have had to start all over tomorrow.

[from LAX, waiting to take off]
It's true, New Zealand hospitality is superb - I can already feel it at the gate and with our flight attendants. We get our first meal an hour into the flight. I'm so excited. I didn't really eat lunch on account of late breakfast, nerves and an ever quesy digestive system. I've had some dark chocolate (my favorite on flights!) and pumpkin muffins (also w/ chocolate in them) and a little PBJ. I also had one of my little red plums which bled all over my fingers, much like my black pen did when I tried to start this journal on paper. Ooh, and the person who was in 57A apparently baled on flying, so I've got seats 57B and 57A for my 12hr flight. So luxurious for economy! Back to the hot meal coming soon - I don't know why I'm so excited about airline food, but the idea of a hot meal of interesting goodies just makes me so happy. I know it's cheaper for them not to serve on domestic flights and it's probably not great nutritionally and I'm normally an organic gourmet food girl. Whatever, it brings back memories of childhood and the last meal I had on a flight was a paneer curry on the way to India. Ii thought it was the best tofu I'd ever had. Whoops.

And did I mention, ever the airline reeks of outdoorsiness. I'm already at home. My biggest goals are to get to know farm life and pick up lots of farming knowledge and go climbing a lot! I brought 30lbs of climbing gear! I better use it. I got my roll in a kayak a week ago so I'm set to get on some easy Class I and II rapids.