WWOOFing Part II - Kerikeri Organics
Trip Start
Oct 02, 2007
1
9
Trip End
Ongoing
Kerikeri, New Zealand
Saturday, February 9, 2008
However, since buying Daffers, I have realised, or rather I have had it confirmed, that I can stand my own dirt, but I don't much care for anybody else's. Yet, old vans, old caravans, old shacks are invariably laminated with the dust and grime of those who have gone before you. So, I have determined that there are three courses of action open to a good bourgeois such as myself when confronted with rundown digs:
(a) Clean it - Not only did we take on Daffers, but seventeen years of grunge and the most extraordinarily intense, sickeningly sweet smell, generated by two boxes of industrial strength incense which I discovered (eventually) composting under some carpet in the back of the van. My determination to triumph over the whiff did lead to the accusation from some quarters that I have the beginnings of a cleaning-based Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. However, I like to think that any question marks over my current mental health were silenced when that same grit and determination was recently put to excellent effect destroying two sizeable colonies of ants that had put up camp under Daffer's front passenger mat and in the tent bag!
(b) Live with it - Though I wiped down the interior of the Harris caravan with a cloth steeped in neat Ecover, and Antonia moved the dust around with a battery powered hand held vacuum cleaner, the little caravan had been well and truly reclaimed by the Smurfs and their mushroomy ilk. It wasn't pleasant, but I felt better knowing I'd got rid of the biggest of the daddy long legs.. we could live with it for a couple of weeks.
(c) Avoid it completely - part of the experience of travelling is finding your strengths, weaknesses, and limits. And it was at Kerikeri Organics that Jez and I discovered our limits when it comes to dossing down!
The two bedrooms in the WWOOFers cabin at Kerikeri Organics were already taken by Carola and Farina, two young German travellers who'd arrived a little earlier, so we could have The Caravan. We'd been given an inkling of what to expect from the caravan when Marty, our WWOOF host, promised he'd be down later to 'sort out the rats' adding with a twinkle, "You don't wanna be roughing it too much". I expect in her day, the little pale blue caravan had, with her curvaceous silhouette, set pulses racing on Top 10 campgrounds all over the North Island. Unfortunately that day had surely been sometime in the 1950s, and the intervening years hadn't been kind.
At some point in the last thirty years an effort to tart up the van's tired, plump little body had been made by daubing her sides with a mural of a manically grinning whale, which, having faded with time and sunlight, now looked very creepy indeed. The interior of the van took 'creepy' and ran with it. In the dank, confined space, two damp, saggy single beds, adorned with moth-eaten tweed-covered headboards, held up either end of the van, hard up against flimsy, grimy looking walls. The mattresses bore all the signs of being the latest place for rodents to gather and talk about the weather, though I did find the $1.20 they left behind amongst the pile of pillows, which I managed to pick out, Mission Impossible style, without touching any fabric! The windows, which had been open for some time presumably to let in as much wildlife as possible, were covered with miserable old bits of fabric and grubby-looking throws. It was cold, clammy and depressing, and made the Ngunguru digs look like the posher bits of Longleat Centre Parcs. There was no way on God's green earth that Jez or I were going to sleep in this caravan.
So, not for the first time on this trip we had reason to cheer, "Thank the Lord for Daffers!" We knew where we stood with Daffers - she was comfy, cosy and clean (now!), and she bravely stood in as our sleeping quarters for the next three weeks. All other WWOOF facilities - kitchen, bathroom and living room - were in or, in the case of the compost loo, near the cabin. The cabin was in the same school as the caravan, but in a slightly different class. Indeed, it was more of a portal to the animal kingdom than it was a space for human habitation. Ants were very well represented, as were white tail spiders, a poisonous Australian import, were visible from time to time. An incredibly industrious mason bee put on regular demonstrations on how to fill those annoying little holes around the home without resorting to chemical sealants. But, the kings and queens of the castle were undoubtedly the sizeable gang of mice and rats which positively thrived on the poison Marty laid out for them, in enormous doses, sellotaped to long sticks and shoved up into the holes in the ceiling. Come sundown the little buggers would throw off their pretence of shyness and romp about the roof space, tear around behind the kitchen cupboards, and leap like salmon across the corrugated plastic roof which bravely, but inadequately, defended the bathroom from the elements. They were so noisy, they earned the moniker, 'the people upstairs', an anthropomorphic trick which undoubtedly helped us deal with the psychological trauma of being seriously outnumbered by increasingly confident rodents.
The compost loo deserves a special mention. At Ngunguru we'd been exposed to the bucket method of ethical toileting - literally a bucket into which one would 'perform', sprinkling sawdust on top of one's doings to aid decomposition and disguise smells. I had my reservations about this very basic approach from day one, as I eyed up the bucket and wondered if I'd walked into the wrong room, and couldn't help but commit the ecological blasphemy of yearning for a good old-fashioned flush mechanism! But the view from the toilet's picture window of native bush and forest as far as the eye could see took my mind off my inherent lavatorial conservatism and it was a case of sit back and think of the wonder of nature. However, you get the measure of a 10 gallon bucket pretty quickly, I can tell you, when four full-sized human beings are helping to fill it, and for the curious amongst you, it doesn't take long! Four to five days and Jez and I would be seriously considering driving the 40-odd miles to Whangarei for a leisure stop! Indeed, going to the toilet became quite a preoccupation, conversationally if not actually, for Jez and I, and eventually we broke - we had to ask Paul his thinking behind his approach to this eco-lav, and, perhaps more importantly, where was he putting it all?! On the first point, Paul admitted that whilst the room housing the toilet was a success, their particular composting system wasn't. In fact, Paul and Antonia had strong suspicions that a few of their friends didn't visit as often as they might because they didn't want such a personal meeting with the waste remains of their breakfast, lunch or tea.
With respect to the second issue - the filling of each bucket would have Paul reaching for his shovel and digging a hole. Contents go in, and six months later he'd plant a banana tree! I don't know whether it's mathematically possible to divide 100 acres by 10 gallons in order to quantify just how long the Harrises have got before they will be forced to buy the section next door, but don't be surprised if the next time you buy organic bananas from the supermarket they bear the label, 'Ngunguru'!
The Kerikeri compost loo was along the lines of the DOC favourite, the long drop. The toilet building was roomy, measuring about 8ft by 6ft, cobbled together from sheets of old ply wood, and set a little way behind the main cabin. The front of the building was open, affording views of a line of trees and the farm's nursery. There was an elaborate swathe of plaited flax on a pully system serving as a blind to preserve one's modesty, but the thought of being trapped in that room behind some damp, festering, vegetable screen never really appealed to any of us, so we'd pee and poo en plain air, singing to ward off any potential intrusion. About ten days after our arrival at Kerikeri Organics, it was becoming apparent that the long drop was becoming shorter by the day, and that the issue would have to be raised with Marty. Coupled with the usual reserve that accompanies asking somebody to dispose of your poo, an added degree of reticence to mention the subject with the boss set in as a rumour circulated that he'd need an Assistant in order to perform the necessary deed or deeds. Fortunately, far from throwing us each of us a mask and rubber gloves and urging us to 'muck in', Marty singled-handedly scooped, shoved or whatever-ed the contents of the pit and normal service was resumed!
For the next three weeks Carola, Farina, Jez and I were put to work on the farm - feeding the animals, including organic farming's least productive flock of free range chickens, setting up the organic shop, weeding lemon trees, planting out salad crops, mounding up potatoes, putting up fences (badly) and sorting kiwi fruit. We were briefly joined part-way through by a Russian-born Kansan who shall be known here only by his 'porn' name Daisy, and whose ruby red hot pants bought a touch of glamour, albeit fleetingly, to the field! Food was an enormous part of our lives at Kerikeri Organics, and when we weren't working we devoted a great deal of time and energy to cooking and eating organic feasts fit for hungry WWOOFers. We helped ourselves to staples - milk, butter, pasta, rice, fruit and veggies - from the organic shop on site, which was open to the public and run on an honesty system. Delicious, freshly home-baked bread was supplied regularly by Marty's partner, Becky, and we could buy luxury items, such as organic chocolate (surely it's not ethical to make it taste that good!), at a discount from the shop. We took turns to cook and wash up, and generally we ate very well. We ate a lot better once Carola ceased in hiding her considerable muffin baking skills behind an organic bushal, and I rediscovered the lost art of crumble making! It's amazing what you can do with a bread tin and a Breville mini-oven! Carola's culinary accomplishments live on here in this blog:
Chocolate and Banana Muffin Cake by Carola, trans. Farina
You will need:
2 cups of flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ cup of sugar
½ cup of coco
½ teaspoon of salt
100g butter (melted)
1 cup of milk
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 cup mashed bananas (that's about 2 bananas)
Method:
Mix the dry stuff together
Mix the wet stuff together
Mix the wet and the dry stuff together
Pour into a tin or scoop into individual muffin tin-lets and bake in the oven (220C) for 12-15 mins.
Enjoy with a cup of organic tea or coffee!
And, before you ask... I don't know what a 'cup' is! It's about that much! Oh, Google it!
Beyond the common bond of WWOOFing, the four of us struck a real friendship, and we ate, laughed and sang our way through the work, the rats and, particularly during the final week, the incessant and torrential rain. Jez's poem to celebrate Farina's birthday says it all:
Cabin Fever
Way down in Kerikeri in the verdant bush,
Four young WWOOFers laughed and lived,
A fresh baked loaf came every day
To fuel their weeding, digging ways.
The compost toilet overflowed,
Rats ate their food, they were so bold.
But through it all those WWOOFers vied
To joke and jape and have a great time.
Farina, Carola, Lucy and Tom
Made peace between the Krauts and the Pommes,
White tailed spiders couldn't get them down,
Chocolate pangs were their only vice.
And now we must all say 'Auf Weidersehn'
With sadness, good friends now moving on,
We won't forget those heady days of cabin
Fever, sun and rain.
We just have one last thing to say
Farina, bless you! And happy birthday!
Jez Partridge
