Woofing on Harmony Farm
Trip Start
Sep 01, 2010
1
4
12
Trip End
Feb 28, 2011
Otaki, North Island, New Zealand
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Otaki, North Island 23 - 30 September
I had a really interesting and enjoyable week on Harmony Farm.
Ron and Leanne are the farm owners aiming to live off their land and as environmentally sustainably as they can. Most of this is achieved by recycling, everything! Even urine- we have a pee bucket which is emptied onto compost piles as it is apparently a very good fertilizer. The bucket itself is a bit scary!
We get up early each morning and have breakfast, which is home made muesli and home made yogurt - it's so easy to make, i will definitely be doing it at home. Then we go over the jobs for the day and decide on who will be chef! Once we have our list of jobs we head out onto the farm. I've been doing lots of different things, enjoying the variety particularly as some of it can be very hard on my office worker muscles! In particular we have been making and turning compost, planting and weeding vegetables, sowing seeds and harvesting vegetables, clearing weeds around the grapes, lemons, feijoas and olive trees. I've learnt how to drive the little tractor which was lots of fun! I've been picking up some good gardening tips which i hope to use in my own garden one day.
Ron and Leanne are very Eco-conscious and I've learnt a lot from them. They have some scary facts about oil and all of our natural energy systems running very low - now is a good time to start planting! :-)
Leanne is very interested in herbal medicine and we have spent some time reading about different herbs which might help my throat and boost my immune system - it's quite cool as i can go and pick them from the garden and make lots of teas and tonics, some nice, some disgusting!
We work until 1 when we sit down to a really nice lunch of homemade organic soup and salad we've picked from the garden - it's yummy! Meal times are really nice as there is quite a variety of people here and it makes for entertaining conversation! The other woofers are a lovely American girl who i am sharing a room with, an American guy and two young German guys. We're a mixed bunch but everyone gets on well.
After lunch, the afternoon is ours to do whatever. We've been on some massive 4 hour walks all around the beaches and Otaki Gorge which is stunning. We drove for what seemed like miles into the mountains and went for a nice walk around the river. The color is such a lovely icey blue, it's beautiful. They filmed some of the Lord of the Rings scenes here so nice to play tourist again. The town itself is pretty dull, but we often sneak in for chocolate supplies. Ron and Leanne don't have, or buy, any processed foods. It's funny, we have been sneaking supermarket bags with biscuits in! there's loads of food, but sometime after the manual work you need sugar!
It's been a really good week. I've learnt so much, worked really hard, but played hard too. Physically i feel the best i have for ages, not much throat pain and with all the veg and exercise i feel very healthy (and only 2 glasses of wine in 2 weeks - record for me). It will be sad to move on, but I'm very excited about the next adventure - the Tongario Crossing.
How's everyone at home?
Lots of love, A x
