wwoofing!

Hi everyone,

Last weekend we did something interesting. We went WWOOFING. For those who don't know, WWOOFing stands for Willing Workers on Organic Farms. The idea is, you contact an organic farmer, go to their farm and provide 4 to 5 hours of labor doing anything from weeding crops to planting to tending animals to mending fences or construction. In return the farmer provides you with food and lodging on the farm. It's a big deal for a lot of people who travel through New Zealand and want to do it on the cheap while learning about organic farming. Typically you're supposed to volunteer your services for a 5 day minimum (to give them time to teach you the workings of the farm) but since we actually have jobs we had to find someone who was willing to let us just come in on the weekend. As it turns out, one of the sellers at the farmers market in town runs an organic farm about an hour and a half outside of dunedin in the little town of Clinton and was willing to let us help out for the weekend.

Here was our accomodation!!

Here are some pics from the insides! Sweet!

Saturday morning we set to work weeding carrots. Now I don't know if any of you have experience carrot weeding on an industrial scale. But I assure you, aside from the smelly farm jobs, there is no greater hell than trying to weed organic carrots. The darn things are teeny tiny compared to the weeds all around them, are incredibly fragile and are surrounded by horrible spiny splinter inducing thistles. The progress is agonizingly slow (sometimes so slow that the farmer chastises you) as you work your way up a seemingly endless row on your hands and knees. We now have a much greater appreciation of the cost of organic carrots. Totally a bargain.

But after four hours of this, the rest of the day was ours. We had intended on going fishing but since the weather wasn't cooperating we hung about the farm and enjoyed the animals and got to know our fellow woofers.

Here's the family pig and drea feeding it..

Dave milking the cow

Drea milking the cow

"what the hecks going on back there!?!"

Sunday morning's labor was a refreshing change. Hoeing and planting. So much nicer. The weather was nice and it was really quite relaxing to do a little manual labor. The farmer came out and gave us lots of good advice on things to take care of in our gardens. (Did you know that you're not supposed to plant brassicas (brocoli and cauliflour, etc) in the same place in successive years).

Dave, Julia and James

Drea and Julia planting brocoli

At the end of day two! (also, last day of mustache dave!)

We lingered for a few more hours and then said our goodbyes to almost everyone. Drea and Julia had bonded over both having attending all woman universities and she had invited her back to stay with us for a couple days between wwoof hosts. More stories to come. Stay tuned.

Love to all, Dave and Andrea