movember winning entry

In response to Molly's comment about how the movember team did. I have no idea who this is but here's the winning mustache... Genius!

Best,
Dave

Bed Jumping 101

Hey everyone,

So we welcomed Julia the WWOOFer into our house after the end of our WWOOFing experience. She was a delightful guest and we enjoyed having her around. Julia went to Smith College on the East coast and she and Andrea bonded over discussions of their experiences at all-female college life. Julia stayed with us for a couple days before heading up to Palmerston to the next farm on her tour. All the best to you, Julia, and hope you enjoy the rest of your trip. Below are some pics of Drea and Julia trying to dispel the myth of womens colleges being all about pillow fights and pajama parties...


See, no pillows.

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

I'm no Magnum PI

Hey All,


Some of you may have noticed something strange about me in the pictures from my Christmas function. You saw right, that's a mustache. True, not a very good mustache, but a mustachioed Dave nonetheless.

Well, it's the month of Movember down here again (well, it was when these pictures were taken) and that's the time in New Zealand when men of all ages (and a few brave women) grow out our best impression of Tom Selleck without fear of repercussion from their significant other (Right, Drea!?!) This year I joined a movember team (that's right, a mustache team) to try and raise funds to fight prostate cancer and depression. Here's a pic from the team...

Christmas, then Thanksgiving?

Hey All,

So last weekend my company had their annual Christmas party (or as they call it here, the Christmas Do) . We booked a restaurant and had drinks, dinner and then more drinks. We had a good time talking with coworkers and enjoyed getting to know Melvin and his dentist girlfriend Susanne. (We hope we didn't give her a complex with our slightly skewed views on dentists and dentistry)
From Monday mornings reports, the rest of the folks at the table behind us didn't end up so good. Not surprising as they started the night sneaking wine bottles from the other tables.

The only strange thing about having our Christmas do the other weekend was that it came before Thanksgiving. And even though they don't celebrate Thanksgiving down here. It just seemed strange. Neither Drea nor I are quite ready for it to be Christmas. But now that I'm reminded, any Christmas requests from anyone?

Love to all,
Dave and Andrea

Happy Birthday Molly!!!

Happy Birthday Molly!!!

We want to wish a very Happy Birthday to Molly!!!!! (Andrea's sister-in-law).

This is Molly's baby daughter, Anna, with Molly's glasses on. So smart looking!

GObama!!!

Hey all,

We've been AWOL [andrea edit] about taking pictures the last couple weeks so sorry, no pics this time. But we wanted to make sure you were up to date. Drea and I were both very excited about the US election and have been taking lots of questions about our new president elect from friends and coworkers. We went out to dinner and to the symphony that Wednesday night and were congratulated by several kiwis (and Americans) after they found out we were American. Kiwis were for Obama roughly 9 times out of 10. We topped the night off with red, white and blue shots after the symphony (because we're classy like that). And it also happened to be Guy Fawkes day here so there were fireworks to accompany the victory. Anyway, yay for Obama, yay for the US, yay for the world.

Other than that, I went on a mountain bike trip up to Naseby (a old gold mining town), Drea's been learning lots of fascinating things about Permaculture, and we've been doing lots of work getting the garden into shape to take advantage of Drea's newfound knowledge. We even started our own little worm farm. Yay for knowledge, yay for worms!

Hope everyone is weathering the economy ok. miss you all.

Uh... Yay!
Dave and Andrea