Black Sand Beach

                About 3 weeks ago (two days after I got to the farm) Perry, my host, got in a car accident when he fell asleep at the wheel. Don’t worry, he was fine, but his car was not. The insurance agency decided to write it off because he got water damage when he rammed it into a ditch.

                What that meant was that they needed a new car! The new car the found was in New Plymouth. That meant that we had to go on a road trip to get it! It felt a little like we were their children…

                Anyway, along the way I convinced them to stop at a black sand beach.

It surprisingly dense. I learned it is really iron rich which makes it heavy.

Not stage I promise.

Pondering something profound...

Perry, Jenny, Matt, Ben

Rabbit Pie

                I can announce that I have been able to check something off my bucket list: Eat and animal I killed. I convinced Perry to take me out hunting on his farm for rabbit and other small game.  He happily agreed. So, one night close to dusk we headed out onto the farm. We would drive along the road till we saw a rabbit or hare then stop and I would aim for the kill. I would aim using a .22 caliber rifle with a legit scope. I felt like one of those guys in the army movies ya know? Like the guy in the church tower is Saving Private Ryan. Except my prey was rabbits not Nazis…

                After about ten minutes of driving we saw a rabbit, I got out, and shot it! FIRST SHOT. We looked for more but I didn’t hit any cause I was going for a head shot…

Step one: Kill the Rabbit

Step Two: Skin it, cut off the head and feet.

Step 3-200: EAT THE DELICIOUS PIE (Meat pies are a popular New Zealand thing)

Ben’s  Easy Gap Year Guide for Translation Between American and New Zealand English

All the following words have been translated after a confused ten seconds between me and another New Zealander trying to find out what the heck the other meant. Some are sayings some are just words or common vernacular. Copy Right 2011, not really.

Flog – Steal.

Flat- dead (as in a battery)

Brilliant – Great!

Good on You! – Good for you/good job

Billy – Kettle

Cheers – Thanks

Cues – Lines (like single file lines)

Tea – Dinner

Smoko – Midafternoon break

Jersey – Sweater

Window Eggs – Eggs in a basket

Porrage – Oatmeal

Hire a car – rent a car

Chips – French Fries

Boot – Trunk

You wouldn’t read about it! – You wouldn’t believe it

Nacked – Tired

Shacked up – Moved in together

DIC (Driving in Charge) – DWI

Eftpos- Debit/Credit card thing

          * They pronounce the letter Z, Zed, not zee. Go figure.

I hope you liked this post. It’s being posted in the basement of a Hostel in Nelson. On a side note I was talking to two girls at this hostel (you know working my gameee) and one left to go smoke and as SOON as she left the other started to vent all over the place. Kinda threw me for a loop not gonna lie… ANYWAY, feel free to comment everyone! I only get comments from my family, and I know more than them read this. Gimme some feedback!

Work

I realized I may not have properly described what I’ve actually been doing one this New Zealand farm for the past two weeks. It’s partly because there has been a lot of rain lately making it too difficult to do the much needed jobs.

I’ve been doing little jobs a lot, like collecting firewood, power washing, and feeding the hand reared calves and lambs in the paddock behind the house. The real work I’ve been here to do and have done occasionally is to collect, feed and stock the chicken pens and dock the llambs.

Every day the 600 chickens they have lay about 450 eggs, which all need to be collected and sorted. Here are the steps:

1. Take the car and put ten full buckets of feed, wood shavings, six collecting bucks, oyster shells, and dirty egg cartons in it.
2. Go to chicken coup #1 and fill the back feeder up with two buckets of feed, and two handfuls of oyster shells.
3. Go in the coup and undernearth the roosting perches collecting dirty eggs.
4. Fill the nesting boxes up with wood shavings and knock out poop when there is some.
5. Go around to the side and collect eggs that have rolled out of the  nesting boxes.
6. Try not to run over chickens when driving to the next coup.
7. Repeat steps 2-6 for coups 2-5.
8. Bring all the collected eggs to the eggs shed.
9. Sort all the eggs into clean and dirty eggs.
10. Clean the dirty eggs using concentrated sodium hydroxide.
11. Put all the eggs into cartons of 30. There are usually about 14 cartons.

The other main job which I’m doing is called docking. It is pretty gruesome and took a little getting used to. It involves collecting the 2000 sheep and driving them to the wool shed, then ear marking and cutting the tails of lambs.

1.   The first step is to grab Chief the sheep dog and the two ATVs and head out into the farm.
2.    Head to the far end of the select paddocks that need mustering (herding) opening gates along the way.
3. Once at the furthest paddock start heading toward the wool shed keeping the ewes and lambs in front of you with the help of Chief.
4. Muster the sheep and lambs into the pens outside the wool shed eventually forcing them into the race way.
5.   Force about 50 animals down the raceway and help to keep them moving while Perry seperates the lambs from the ewes.
6.    Once we have about 30 lambs in a small pen Matt and I grab the lambs by their hind legs and put them into the cradle.      Perry either decides it a LT (long tail, older male), GST (genetically short tail), or normal lamb that needs to hail their tail cut off.
7.   We then ear mark each ear, one with a M (the Johnson sign) and the other with two bars.
8.    If the lamb is a smaller male Perry puts a ring around the male parts…
9.   Finally he cuts off the tail of the lamb if necessary.
10.    Repeat steps 5-10 until all ewes and lambs have been sorted and docked.
11.    Count the ewes and return them to their homes.
12.    Do this for 2000 sheep!

Those two are the main Jobs. We are almost done with those though so I should be off to my next farm soon! 

Pictures

Sooo many lambs.

Baby, maybe a week old.

Taupo

                 Just recently our gracious hosts, Perry and Jenny, let Matt and I have two days off. We had been planning a day trip to the nearest big city of Taupo since we had gotten to the farm because we both like to travel. The timing of this past Wednesday and Thursday was convenient for all of us because their relatives were leaving and could give us a ride to the nearest town, Taumarunui. We left with a REALLY open ended plan; make it to Taupo and back.

                Our only problem was that Jenny’s relatives couldn’t take us very far. They could only take us to a place about 2 hours from our destination. SO how were Matt and I going to get to Taupo. Well…we hitch hiked there! (sorry mom)

 We started out going west on State Route 41. Their highways are a little different from ours by the fact that a New Zealand highway is a two lane road winding through the mountains. We waited for about 45 minutes with only seeing a few cars. At one point it started to pour rain and one nice lady offered us tea at her house down the road. We told her thanks but we were going to wait for a ride. (to be fair I wanted tea but Matt wanted to continue to hitchhike.)

First ride

Luckily about 5 minutes later a van pulled over to give us a ride. It was a SUPER nice couple who own a local camping ground. They have a lot of travelers stay there so often give people rides. They told us they were on their way to hot springs right outside of Turangi. That sounded kind of cool to us so we decided that would be a good stop.

I wanted to swim the the pool below but they only let you swim in these. It's basically a hot tube.

After the quick stop at Tokaanu and the natural thermal springs the couple offered us to give us a ride to Turangi. That was fortunate for us because that was the city at the junction for State Route 1, which is the road that heads straight to Taupo.

We only had to wait for about 10 minutes to get a ride from a man in a truck. We hoped into the cab of the truck headed for Taupo. He was more of a quiet man, we talked for a little until we just ended up driving in silence. He dropped us off in the middle of Taupo right on the lake’s edge.

We milled around for a little walking along the shore of the beach. I found some rocks that float which I thought was really cool. After a while we got bored and I decided to look into the guide book for something fun to do in Taupo. Most of the stuff in Taupo was pretty expensive, bungee jumping, skydiving, lake kayaking etc. We did find what looked like a cool hike that ended in a waterfall. We walked about 2 km before getting to the start of the hike. The start of the hike was in the middle of Thermal Park. They had a fun jungle gym at the park with an even more fun zip-line.

Zip-line in the middle of the park.

After the zip-line we headed for the trail, but got distracted again. It turns out right at the front of the trail is a thermal stream. Think hot tub in stream form, that flows into a big cold river. There was a big group of kids swimming there that invited Matt and I to join them. We made friends with a guy from Auckland who was kayaking down the Waikato river, two welsh boys following the world cup, and a kid from Germany doing the same thing as me!

Thermal Stream

After about 2 hours of chilling in the nice hot stream the two welsh guys, matt, me and a crazy local were the only people left.  We decided to leave the crazy local, and the ladies he was convinced were going to show up at the stream. The two welsh guys offered to give us a ride to a free camper park outside of Taupo that they were staying at. We decided to put off the hike till tomorrow and took the ride! It was there that we pitched Matt’s two man tent and milled around the countless other tents and campervans in the park. We made friends with a Canadian couple who were also wwoofing!  By the time we got situated and all it was 8 and we called it a night around 10.

Waterfall

The blue tent is ours. It was smalll.

The next morning we woke up 9 and started on hike. We got to the waterfall at 10 and finished the hike at 11. After that we walked back into downtown Taupo and got some lunch. After lunch we started hitchhiking home. Which was IMPOSSIBLE. We literally had to wait 2 hours before getting a ride, and that was just pure luck. If you are ever in New Zealand don’t try to hitchhike out of a city, it’s really hard.

We ended up getting picked up by a crazy Maori fellow. I couldn’t understand a word he said so he talked to Matt most of the time, and touched his leg a lot…after that we got FOUR more rides to eventually make it home. One was a mom and her older son, one ride was with a Scottish man who loved NZ so much he sold everything and moved down. Another ride was from a local shepherd who would cruise through these crazy mountain passes at like 110 km/hr. I was a little scared. Not to mention it was raining. Our last ride was with a woman who lived in the town we were trying to get home too. All in the entire ride home wasn’t as successful as the ride to Taupo. It took 6 hours to go what should have taken 2 hours. But we got home safe, and had a good time doing it!

 Mountain on the skyline of Taupo

Give me a ride!

I didn't do that I just thought it was funny

On a less positive note, both my credit cards got denied, and neither company had any record of me even trying to use them.  So neither company could help me at all. AND the call that told me that cost me $18. Woooo

PS. I didn't proof read this cause I was in a hurry sorry.

Kings Country

I am currently in the middle of nowhere New Zealand, and it’s amazing. When I thought of what this farm I’m staying at was going to be like it is exactly what it is like

                When I originally got the email from Jenny (one of my hosts) saying that her house was at the middle of a dead end road with no other house in sight, I was a little nervous. HOW out there was I going to be I thought.  Now that I’m here I cannot think of any other place I’d rather be. All around me is rolling green mountains dotted with sheep and cattle. The sky is bright blue with puffy white clouds, and more stars than I’ve ever seen at night. I can constantly hear the baaa, mooo, cluck or song of the native birds and the occasional bark or the sheep dog, Chief, herding sheep to be docked.

View outside my window

                I’m staying with a couple, Jenny and Perry who are organic farmers with 600 chickens, 400 sheep, two dogs, two horses, wild boar, wild deer,  a few hundred cattle, and two wwoofers. That’s right TWO! I have a companion staying with me. His name is Matt Neil and he comes from Ohio. He is easy to talk to and we get along well. One night we even jammed out on his guitar. In addition to Matt, Jenny and Perry are super nice. They are truly interested in what my story is and also teaching me about their farm and way of life.

Matt 

Matt and Perry

                Jenny is also a terrific cook. So far for dinner I’ve had: steak and potatoes, wild venison pot pie, beef sausages with veggies, sheep shoulder with broccoli, and roast veggies, and tonight I had steak stir fry. For breakfast I usually just have cereal with some of their unhomogenized, unpasteurized milk, straight outta the cow. It sounds gross but trust me its good. And for lunch every day we have some egg dish because they are eggs farmers as well. It also probably doesn’t hurt that all their food is free ranch… I can tell you it makes a huge difference. The steak and eggs and everything is just so much better.

Chickens always end up in the car, which is manual, which I can now drive!

                In return for their delicious food and a bed to sleep I have to work for 4-5 hours. What I have to do ranges from collecting eggs to docking sheep (which will have to be a different post entirely) to power washing to just about anything else you can think of.  It’s not bad, and I secretly enjoy the work. The best part is that when we finish early Matt and I can do whatever we’d like.

Tilt-shift shot of a hike up a mountain to herd the sheep.

                So two days ago we finished at 3 so we decided to take out the ATV’s and go exploring. We drove them to the edges of the farm and as far up the mountains as we could take them. At one point we hiked up a creek and found a beautiful 20 foot waterfall.  Matt and I also hiked through the native brush, which is a legit jungle. My secret desire is that later on they’ll let us take out the horses on an adventure.  Perry also mentioned he owns a rifle that other wwoofers hunted deer with…

Drinking from a natural spring.

                Even if you don’t like farms you would love this farm. It’s everything I’d hoped for and more. 

Rainy Auckland

I’m backed up  a few days on posting what has happened to me recently. I’ll start with the second plane ride.

I sat next to a nice New Zealand man named Cory. He lived in Auckland New Zealand. We chatted awhile about his business trip to China, and about my travels and plans for the future.  Eventually after the flight was off the ground and hovering at 37,000 feet we both decided to take a break and watch a movie. I watched the hangover two, and ironically so did he, except he was about 2 minutes ahead of me, so I knew something funny was coming because I saw him laugh.

After the movie we ate dinner, and had some tea. I can’t remember what dinner I had but it did have rice in it. While we were eating Cory offered me a ride to my hostel which I gladly accepted. We chatted a little until I fell asleep for a little. It was after all like 3 in the morning my time. I can’t remember much of the rest of the plane ride. I had some breakfast thing  (it was an oriental dish) watched most of Cars 2, wished myself happy birthday and slept.

When we got off the plane we agreed to meet at the baggage claim area because he had to get something at Duty Free. We departed and while I was walking to baggage claim I bought a sim card at a store, so I could have a cell number.  Ironically enough he was there also there at the same register. It was there that he invited me to stay at his house! He said his wife, Nicki, and him would be glad to have me stay over the night and have a good birthday dinner! I was in awe. I gladly accepted.

Fast-foreward a bunch and I’m in his living room skyping my mom telling her I had a good trip. Cory took me to see around Auckland, and watch his son play squash. We watched some rugby, which I can now say I understand. Kinda. For dinner we had some salad, pork and chicken with stuffing and roast potatoes. IT WAS AMAZING. I cannot tell you how great it felt to have a nice bed for a nap, a hot shower to relax, and a delicious meal after a 24 hour plan ride. Their kids, Jake and Connor were just as kind. It was a GREAT way to start my trip. We also had a DELICIOUS dessert. It was ginger bread with some merengue like topping with raspberries and custard. ROCKED.

After going to sleep in a food coma and with a food baby I woke the next day to delicious porridge or oatmeal as Americans call it. I took the train to Auckland and then the bus to my hostel. It checked in then went off on an adventure. I had some Korean food for lunch and walked to the Auckland Museum.

MASSIVE CANOE

Maori house. The Maori are the indigenous people to NZ. 

This cool archway guarding against spirits. 

HUGE tree outside Museum.

I tried to go the the Auckland Art show but got to it just as it closed. Then I decided I’d check out the Sky tower. Got to it to find that it was totally covered in the overcast clouds. Then I decided to go to the Viaduct Basin which apparently has some cool bars. It started to pour when I got to it, so I ended up just taking the bus back to the hostel. The hostel wasn’t very friendly, but I did make friends with a Scottish guy who I played pool with. He told me that it was abnormal to have such a unfriendly hostel. I grabbed at late dinner after the rain stopped then hit the sack! It was a disappointing day, mostly because of the rain. But hopefully when I come back through It’ll be nicer and I’ll be able to explore more!  

Turkish Kabob. Yummm

The day started off early. I got up at 5:30 and took a shower. I quickly realized how much less shampoo you need with short hair. (I buzzed my head.) I then did some last minute packing, putting away my computer and other electronics into a smaller carry on backpack. My mom and I managed to get out the door by 6:09, which is closer than I expected to our 6 departure time. That gave us 2 hours to get go JFK in case we hit traffic and 2 hours to check in and get past security.           

          

                We ended up getting to JFK at 7:10 and along the way found out my plane was delayed 55 minutes. This posed a problem; I only had an hour layover in Hong Kong until boarding a plane to Auckland. Soooo, hypothetically I now only had a 5 minute layover? Yeah right, I wasn’t going to make my flight.  But it ended up being alright. It turns out that even though we are only leaving an hour later we only arrive five minutes later than previously planned. Go figure, I don’t get airlines. I said bye to my brother and other close friends and finally my mother, who drove me allll the way to JFK airport. She watched me go through security, waving the entire time. I then wasted the next 2 and half hours doing little things. One thing I did was I bought a new camera charger because I left the other one in my room.

                I was one of the last people to board at around 10:45. I sat down next to an older couple who are from Philadelphia. We talked a little and I found out their daughter used to live in Summit and worked at the GRAND SUMMIT HOTEL. I had just quit my job at the hotel. Small world!

                We took off right on time without waiting on the runway which was nice. I waited for about an hour then ate a Gobbler from the Millburn Deli. Delicious. About three minutes after finishing I was served some chicken and rice. Picture below.

                So this plane is definitely right off the line. The paint looked new. The seats looked new, and didn’t recline but did this slide thing which is similar. You walk through the first class section to get to the economy section. The first class has four sets which look SUPER nice. Fully reclining, greeted by name and all that jazz. Make me wish I was in first class desperately. Guess that’s what you get for an extra grand. Oh I forgot to mention in the economy section we have nine seats across. More than DOUBLE the first class.  The first class only had 3 seats across! Business had four.

                After brunch (that’s what they called it) I decided to watch a movie. I have a HUGE selection.  I decided to watch bride’s maids because I’ve heard great things about it.  I watched about half before falling asleep.  Took about an hour nap then picked up where I left off. I then went to the bathroom, and took a walk. At this point I’m only four hours into the FIRST plane ride. 12 more hours to go on this one and then 10 on another. Awesome. 

Then I watched pirates of the Caribbean, and took a nap in the middle of it, like I did during the first movie. Everyone says how horrible the fourth film was.  I personally thought it was okay. I mean it wasn’t amazing but it kept me entertained for two hours.

After the movie was over I had dinner! I was really physicked to get some pasta with marinara sauce only to find that they were all out of it. I ended up with a less than desirable chicken dish.

I found the utensils the give you really interesting. They were really fat and large. It was a huge waste of plastic. Unless they recycle, which I’m guessing they don’t.  The airline also gave you a super small spoon. I assumed it’s for coffee of tea.  That raised another question. They give you a spoon cup and cream but no coffee or tea. I guess you have to ask for it. You would think they would at least offer it!

At that point I was 10 hours into the flight. I don’t really know where the past six hours went… They went by fast which is good! I started to watch King of Thrones when this happened…

I was REALLY hoping that it was broken and I would have to get my seat changed to first class. J That wasn’t the case… It took twenty minutes and restarted. Apparently they were rebooting the system of the seat in front of me because it froze and it also restarted mine.

The rest of the flight wasn’t all that interesting. I watched another movie, ate some snacks and landed in Hong Kong. In Hong Kong I had 50 to get to my plane by the time I got off the previous one.  I ran through the airport looking for a way to get to the gate. It took me a little while, but I eventually found the transfer line. I had to go back through security which didn’t make much sense to me… I eventually arrived at gate 17 which was located directly next to the one I just got off of.  I basically went in a big circle.

I called my brother Chris on Skype briefly before boarding the plane at 3:00 but, didn’t get off the ground until 3:50, so my rush wasn’t necessarily worthwhile. I also saw a guy wearing a “Ithaca is Gorges” shirt which I found ironic. Small world AGAIN. My next few hours were eventful but that will have to wait for the next post because I want to go explore Auckland!