Fruit Galore

Last time I left off I was on my way to my next farm in Roxburgh. That didn’t last too long. I didn’t like it. So now I’m on the road again! Right now I’m blogging from a hostel in queenstown… Buts let’s rewind to the farm in Roxburgh…

The last farm I was on was a huge sprawling orchard with cherries, apricots and many, many, many more fruits and veggies. The only problem was that the fruit was just starting to grow, so I couldn’t eat any of it. Actually for being a fruit orchard the farm didn’t have any fruit at all, which was disappointing and annoying.

It didn’t take too long for me to realize that I didn’t like this farm. The host was crazy, work boring, accommodation limited and food sparse.  

The name of the host was Dave, and he was just a rotten guy. On three separate occasions he told me to pack my bags and get off his farm, when I had done absolutely nothing wrong. After a while I started to feel very uncomfortable around him and avoided him the best I could. It was at that point that I decided it was time to leave.

At this farm I realized that I have no patience dealing with tediously repetitive jobs. In this case it was fruit thinning on apricot trees. Every apricot tree grows lots of fruit very closely packed together. You may think, oh that’s good, more money for the farmer. Wrong. If he left the trees to grow normally the fruit would push on each other ruining most of it. Our job was to pick off most of the immature fruit to give enough space for the apricots to grow.

A branch would start like this:

And end like this:

Do this for 28-30 hours a week. I was honestly ready to shoot myself. No lie.

When I slept I felt like I was in a jail cell.

Sometimes our host would just disappear and not show up again till the next day leaving the group of 

us to cook dinner from whatever we could find. So sometimes it was just toast for dinner!

Now that I’ve properly vented let me describe the things I DID like about this farm.

The people. This farm had a lot of wwoofers like myself. At one point there were 31 of us, from France, Germany, USA, Ireland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Canada and New Zealand.  Of those, about 90% were either from France or Germany. This abundance of people made it easy to made friends, play cards and just be social. I actually became really good friends with a guy my age named Jonasch. He was a German who had a really similar sense of human. We would always work out in the fields together and hang out after work and at night.

Another great thing about the farm was the free wifi. Wifi, or internet in general is tough and expensive  

come by. If I had to rank the top things I spend money on it would be, food, alcohol J, hostels and internet. So the fact that this farm had unlimited free wifi was fantastic. I was able to torrent a lot of the TV shows I was missing and skype family.

The final good thing was dinner. When the host was present at dinner time he would made really delicious big dinners. I had Asian, French, Spanish and American food, as well as many others. After a hard day at work it was a welcomed relief.

I only stayed there for a week and a half before leaving for Queenstown, where I am currently staying. Look out for another blog post soon about my Queenstown adventures!

Cheers

Adventure

Same Post + Pictures

Wow.  So a lot has happened since my last blog post. I’ll start from the beginning.

I left the farm with Jenny and Perry last Tuesday because we had finished the work and I was getting this subtle vibe from them pushing me to move on. I left Tuesday with only that day planned and a goal to be at my next farm on Saturday. I had a little anxiety not knowing what I was going to do for the next week but I figured that everything would work out.

I took the bus down to Wellington on Tuesday and stayed the night there. I didn’t really do much that night. I went to the bar with the guy in my dorm that was from England and found out that they don’t call the city windy welly for nothing. The wind there literally blows you over as you walk.

I got up really early the next morning so that I could catch the 8 o’clock ferry to Picton, which is on the sound island.

It was a biggg ferry.

You know, just putting some tanks on the ferry.

That was basically the end of my planning. I knew kinda where I wanted to be, on certain nights but nothing super solid. I planned on trying to hitch hike to Nelson that day where I would stay the night and move on the next morning. It kinda worked out like that. I was able to get a ride from Picton to Blehiem, both of which are very boring towns. After waiting in the pouring rain for about 45 minutes another older man gave me a ride to Nelson. He was really nice but loved to talk. A lot. Don’t get me wrong I do too but by the end of the car ride I was tired. He had pulled over at some tourist spots for me and showed me around. I had the sneaky suspicious he was a little lonely. He dropped me off at the Accents on the Park hostel.

I booked my room for one night. I remembered about a bone carving class that I saw that looked kinda cool. I called the guy up and booked a spot in two days because that was all he had. That led me to book the hostel room for another night.  I didn’t do much for the rest of that day, just Skype my brother, call my dad and spend hours on the phone with my credit card company only to get little accomplished.  I also watched the latest pirates of the Caribbean moving which was playing in the bar downstairs.

The next day I rented a bike and explored Nelson:

Self-portrait obession

At one point I sat by a tree and widdled it

I made this myself for dinner. Breaded chicken with onions. I felt like a boss.

Doin' some rock climbing.

The place in is a back alley in a warehouse. It was cool space

The next morning I did a bone carving class, with the two girls I met the night before.

My next target to get to was Greymouth, which in retrospect was optimistic. A more realistic goal was Westport. Getting out of the Nelson area can be a real pain the ass. I hitched for a while. Then hiked for a while to get to a bus station, then took to bus to Richmond (about 15 minute ride) then hiked to a good hitching spot. Luckily I only had to wait there for about three minutes before a local drove by and stopped to give me a ride. Unfortunately he only gave me a ride for about 20 minutes before having to turn off. He dropped me in the middle of nowhere. Literally. I remember scoping out trees to sleep under in case a car never drove by.

Me, Abby and Gillian

I somehow got a ride. It was with the guy my age who was driving down to visit his girlfriend in Greymouth. I swear to you, Levi, could have been my older brother, Chris’s twin. He wore worn out clothing, was rocking a neck beard and had some crazy blonde hair. And he was really cool. We were both the same age, got along really well and had some things in common. So much so that, at the end of the three hour car ride he invited me to his house for dinner and a few beers. I slept at the Duke Hostel that night.

The next morning I got up bright and early to get a head start on any other hitch hikers. It was a little of a hike to get to a good spot to hitch hike but after 30 minutes of walking I had a good spot. I waited for about 15 minutes before getting a ride about 10 km, which if I had known I probably would not have gotten with him. After hitching for a 45 at my next spot a taxi offered me a REALLY discounted price to the next time. I said what the heck and went for it. After that is when my real adventure started.

After that ride I ended up in a town called Hokitika. It’s famous for the Jade you can find laying on the shore. I waited for about 45 minutes before a German girl, Anna, walked up to me and offered me a ride. She was traveling in a van and gets lonely on the road. In addition to her she was traveling with three other people in a truck turned campervan.  I stayed with them for the next three days.

That is the caravan we drove. I slept in the big white one.

This group of people was very eclectic. We had an American(me :), two german (Anna and Selena), a Japanese (Aya) and a Kiwi (Richi). Despite the obvious language barriers as well as social ones we all got along really well. Actually, I had a lot of fun, the most I have had all trip!

After I got over the initial awkwardness of meeting new people I was part of the group. Ricki actually told me that I was officially a hippie.

The day they picked me up we stopped in Franz Jose and went to the glacier hot pools. It was $20, which was kinda expensive but when I think about the fact that we spend THREE hours chilling and relaxing I figure it was worth it.

After we got out Ricki and I went to buy some beer (which I can legally buy) found a side road to spend the night, parked and made some dinner. I felt uncomfortable about eating their food so I bought a sandwich. We played cards for a while then went to bed. The sleeping situation was funny. They had four or five mattresses in the back that we would lay over the bed of the truck. We put some sheets on top grabbed a pillow, comforter and passed out around 12. All 5 of us next to each other.

The next morning we got up around 10, had some cereal and then drove to the Franz Jose glacier. We spent about 3 hours hiking and exploring. Came back made some sausage for lunch with white bait fritters. (Google white bait, I’m not a fan) Then we drove at little and went on another hike around a lake which I thought was a little boring. Then we drove for about an hour and found a spot to park on the ocean shore.  Ricki then made us some DELICIOUS curry over rice. Even though we are travelling around in this ghetto camper we ate like kings. We played a round of cut throat gin rummy, which I substantially lost, and decided to watch a movie. We hooked up Aya’s computer and all layed in bed and started to watch a horror movie. After about 20 minutes I was the only one awake which was GREAT. Not. I was in the middle of new Zealand in the back of sketchy camper, with no cell service, watching a horror movie alone.  Needless to say, I wasn’t too fond of the movie. What was nice was that when I eventually turned the movie off, I feel asleep listening to the waves crash on the shore.

Glacier (Why doesn't that word follow the i before e except after c rule?) 

The next day was basically a driving day. We drove through the Southern Alps of New Zealand. I have never seen such a beautiful place in my life. Any explaining will not do the beauty or the area justice. I promise you if you drive down the west coast of the south island down through Wanaka, you will be rewarded. We spotted at a lake and had some lunch, and split with Anna. That meant I got to ride in the back of the truck. It was a roller coaster to say the least .

Selina and Anna

The gang

Having lunch on Wanaka Lake before going separate ways

Unfortunately this is where my story with them comes to an end. After spending two nights and three days they dropped me off if Roxburgh to be picked up by my next farmer. I wanted nothing more than to continue on with Selena, Aya and Ricki, but knew I couldn’t. I do plan on travelling back north and visiting Ricki where he lives.

On a different note, I realize I tend to paraphrase most of my adventures or write in choppy sentences. I hope it doesn’t convey any sense of unhappiness because I am thoroughly enjoying my time in New Zealand. I’ve met SO many new people, tried so many new things and learned a lot about myself in the process, and I’m only a month in! That’s the longest  I’ve been away from home.  When I think about this I get homesick sometimes. I can miss having my own bed, great parents who always support me, or my cellphone, but then I remember that it will all be there when I get back.

Anyway, enough of my rambling. Sorry for the huge post. I’m actually gonna try to proof read this time. Cheers

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.