Life is good.

So, I clearly haven’t written in a while, but I assure you that there have been infinite things to write about. The farm experience in New Zealand was surreal and amazing, filled with some of the most genuine and interesting and intelligent and compassionate people I have ever met. Luthien has written quite a bit about that as far as the day-to-day tasks went, so I’d like to add a bit about the people we met down-by-the-river. And yes, it does include a man with a van, down-by-the-river, but also a Kiwi self-proclaimed Deadhead with a great little place called the Magic Hut…

Many of the evenings at Pakaraka Farm were spent by me chatting about life down-by-the-river with two wonderful Kiwi men filled with all kinds of crazy stories of the things they have done over their past 40 years of friendship and inspirational travel ideas. It was a great environment that definitely reminded me of hanging out with my parents and Mark and Mary up north, drinking beer and listening to great music. After moving around so much on our Tour-de-NZ, the farm was a perfect peaceful solution to cure my frustration at being trapped inside a white Toyota Corolla for too long. Harry and Jeanette were wonderful and inspirational, I felt more connected with the world again after getting my hands in the garden soil and after milking the House Cow, and I was always surrounded by good conversation or a peaceful place to read. And the swimming hole. Probably one of my favorite places on the earth so far; it made me fall in love with rivers again and want to read the passage in Siddhartha again about rivers.

It was also great to WWOOF at the farm during the same time that the Young Greens workshop was going on. My 50+ year-old friends James and Dick moved out of the Magic Hut for the season and about 30 or so young progressive New Zealand environmentalists moved in, holding thought-talks and campaign-planning meetings, and singing and playing guitar at night. They reminded me of how there is still hope for change and inspired me with their dedicated towards a common goal. It was also incredible to see their respect and admiration for Jeanette and to feel so lucky to have been WWOOFing for such a great couple on such beautiful land in the Coromandel Peninsula….

And now I am in India, finally feeling completely at peace in the south in beautiful Fort Kochi, Kerala, after a whirlwind of craziness in Mumbai and hippie overload in Goa. It is a world completely opposite of New Zealand, but I still love it. The colors and smells and people are so vibrant, sometimes too much so. I think I’d love to come back for a longer period of time, because our two weeks here is a good preview, but not even close to enough time. The food is amazing, the locals’ smiles and waves are reassuring (except when they come from too many men in the street), and being able to stop in and have a chai with friendly folks has been great. Julie and I are definitely living spontaneously and oftentimes we just look at each other in amazement regarding the days events– filled with new friends, beautiful views, and sensory overload.

Namaste,

Anne

City Mouse Goes to the Country

Realistically, the majority of the time at the farm was spent either swimming in the river (at least 3 times per day, often more) and picking piles of green beans from the garden to eat for all meals. However, every now and then, work with the animals would come up and Harry would patiently explain to me, who has never fed a chicken in my life, that you add small rocks to the chicken food to make the egg shells thicker (who knew?). Then I would skip down the hill shaking the plastic bucket of chicken feed and the chickens would run after me in a single-file line until we got to the chicken coop, where I would dump the food in the trough and shut them in for the night. It’s the simple pleasures in life, “they” say, but, really, the hilarious sight of a chicken running (”waddling” is probably a better word) as fast as she can down a hill may very well be enough to keep me on a farm for a very long time.Another notable task was herding a bull from one paddock to another farm across the road. After Jeanette, Anne, and I finally found the bull in the woods, we cornered him against the fence and then chased him down the hill, from one paddock to the next. By “chased”, I really mean that we chased him. In my Old Navy Jeans and Chacos, waving a rod sort of like a ski pole, we ran this giant bull down the hill, onto the road, across a bridge, and then eventually to the other farm…”adrenaline” doesn’t even begin to describe how great it felt.On one of the last days at the farm, when Anne and I were officially in charge because Harry had hurt his leg badly and was in the hospital and Jeanette had political stuff to deal with, Jeanette called us and told us to herd all of the sheep from the top paddock (about 50 sheep) to the “house paddock”. Given the size of the farm and the paddocks, this sounded like an incredible task, but we grabbed our herding rods and hiked up the hill to the paddock. The great thing about sheep, we soon realized, is that they really do run in packs and stay together no matter what, so after Anne had gathered all of the stray sheep out of the gorse patches (very awful, dense spiney plants) and I’d more or less pushed a few very old sheep towards the others, it was just a matter of convincing the sheep that their only option for running away was towards the open paddock gate by, again, running after them and waving our rods threatening.

The tasks that I did on the farm were pretty menial, but nonetheless very exciting for someone who hadn’t actually ever seen a sheep in real life. In addition, as I was running around the countryside chasing farm animals, there was a split second where I thought about the fact that on my trip around the world, on the other side of the world, I was chasing a bull down a hill- who would’ve guessed?

-Luthien

Finding My Dreams in New Zealand

After a two week road trip around the circumference of the South island of New Zealand, we took the ferry to the North Island and drove straight through in four days (stopping in Mordor and Mount Doom in National Park Village, a very small town in the middle of the North island), where Julie dropped Anne and I off at a farm in the Cormandel Peninsula and the drove to Auckland to catch her flight to Cairns, Australia. While Julie scuba-dived in the Great Barrier Reef, Anne and I lived on the farm of Harry and Jeanette, about 7km from the nearest town (Thames) but seemingly hundreds of miles from anything.

Harry and Jeanette quickly made us feel at home. With 30+ WWOOFers staying on their farm every year, plus a multitude of other people living in their house, barn, and sleep-out on any given day, they were accustomed to people inhabiting their space and making them feel like they were not imposing in the least. Harry is a 67-year-old retired sheep sheerer (used to be one of the top sheep sheerers in the region until an accident involving a sheep falling on him ended his professional career) who seemed soft-spoken for most of the day as he gave us instructions for the work day. Yet as we sat around the dinner table at night, conversation always escalated and suddenly we were learning everything there is to know about the New Zealand political system and environmental issues. Realistically, despite his proclaimed profession of farmer, Harry was the man to learn about New Zealand politics from. He is on the committee who interviews, chooses, and ranks Green Party candidates for the national elections that are held about every 3 years, which generally includes 100+ potential candidates that are narrowed down to about 50 candidates for the final ballot. Because NZ assigns Parliament members proportional to the number of votes the party receives, having more candidates on the ballot will increase the number of votes for the party in general, even though only about 6 of the candidates will likely sit in Parliament.

If that wasn’t exciting and educational enough, his wife, Jeanette, was only around for about half of the time that we stayed there because otherwise she was at Parliament, as the co-leader of the New Zealand Green Party (the Green Party requires a female leader and a male leader). Not only was she the first woman in Parliament when she was elected 12 years ago, her position in Parliament marked the first time that the Green Party was represented in the New Zealand Parliament. Today the Green Party holds 5% of the seats in Parliament, but the upcoming election in November is causing some concern, since a party cannot hold seats if it does not receive at least 5% of the vote and the percentage of votes for the Green Party in the last election came dangerously close to missing this mark. In addition to these credentials, Jeanette is cited as THE expert on climate change in New Zealand, so dinners with her also provoked some very interesting discussions.

The most impressive thing about staying on the farm was that Harry and Jeanette, despite her prestigious-ish place in the government, lived as simply as two people could possibly live. By using energy-efficient light bulbs and only using electricity when absolutely necessary, they were able to cut their energy usage to less than 10% of the average house of four. The farm is not registered “organic” because there is one strain of disease that can hit sheep and kill them within 3-4 days that can only be stopped by a chemical. However, while most farmers spray this chemical on all of their sheep every two weeks no matter what, Harry and Jeanette instead do weekly examinations of the sheep and only spray a sheep if it displays symptoms of the disease. At night we would have giant dinners of green beans with garlic and butter, red potatoes with rosemary, lettuce salad with olives, tomatoes, and other vegetables, and delicious fish with lemon…and the only item on the entire table that was not grown on the farm was the fish, which was purchased from a local farmer at the market.

All in all, when it comes to WWOOFing, I can’t imagine a more educational and inspiring set-up than we had in New Zealand.

-Luthien

Tramping through Middle Earth

We just returned from a three-day tramp through the Fiordland National Park in the southwest. It was called the Kepler Track and is one of the nine great walks in New Zealand. The hike began early on Monday morning with a flat walk around Lake Te Anau, a crisp, clear glacial lake surrounded by mountains. The trail then brought us into the forest (aka “the bush”) and we began to climb Mount Luxmore. After alternating between huffing and puffing over the elevation and being in awe at the countless shades of green mosses, ferns, and trees surrounding us, we reached the treeline several hours later and were treated to a panoramic view of the area. To one side, we could see patterned yellow-brown farmland and the lake, and on all other sides were jagged, beautiful mountains and fiords. We lingered at the viewpoint for a good hour, watching the clouds and the landscape, quite content with the world, before continuing on to the first hut of the hike. Most walks in New Zealand have huts maintained by the Department of Conservation that come with basic cooking, sleeping and toilet facilities. The huts were a great place to meet other hikers, and we met other trampers from Germany, Austria, Israel, New Zealand, and Australia. Most impressive was three generations of a family that hiked up the mountain together: kids, parents, and grandparents.

The next morning we were awoken by the hut ranger and told that we needed to get moving as the weather forecast called for gale force winds of 90 km an hour later in the afternoon. Apparently we would be blown off the mountain if we waited around (eek!), so off we went. Whereas the view was sunny and clear the day before, for our second day of hiking we were walking through the clouds. We could see about 20 to 30 feet around as as we walked through light rain and wind over the ridge line of the mountain. While the view would have been great, the effect of staring over sheer mountain drop-offs into nothingness was pretty spectacular in itself. We could see silhouettes of mountain peeks in front of us as we went, as the clouds swirled around rock formations all around and water ran down the path. We climbed the summit of the main mountain of the hike, Mount Luxmore, and continued onward over several more misty mountain ridges. After about four hours of hiking, the path began its steep descent into a mountain valley through a rainforest that seemed to have awoken with the fresh moisture from the rain.

After another hut stay and more adventures meeting fellow hikers, our last day of trekking was quite mild and pleasant (only a bit of rain and then sun), as we walked on a mostly flat track through fern covered forests, past another glacial lake, Lake Manapouri, and on to the Waiau River and Rainbow Reach. For the Lord of the Rings fans out there, this is where they filmed some of the scenes of fellowship sailing down the River Anduin to Gondor. (: Looking back as we crossed the final bridge, we could see the mountain ridges that we had just crossed in the distance.

All too soon, we were whisked back to reality as a shuttle bus driver picked us up at the trail lot and returned us to the small town of Te Anau. Tomorrow we head to Milford Sound and then we’ll begin to make our way north past glaciers and more fiords. If you’re a fan of hiking, definitely add New Zealand to your trip list.

Kia Ora,

Julie

Thanks from New Zealand

I’m in Christchurch, New Zealand now and for the first time on the trip I’m actually staying at a youth hostel.  And while the hostel is quite nice and a bit eccentric really - it’s built in a remodeled historic jailhouse – it’s definitely still accommodations for the masses in my ten-bed dorm room. This led me to think that it is pretty wonderful that we’ve not had to stay at a hostel until now thanks to the kind generosity of friends around the world.  A few well-deserved shout-outs to them:

Thanks to Erin and Etienne in Tokyo, Japan who let us join them in their housing at the Canadian Embassy and showed us where to get the best sushi in town; to Kate in Nam Yang, South Korea who let us squash into her efficiency apartment and joined us in our travels south; to Josh in Bussan, South Korea who let us squeeze into his even smaller efficiency; to Rebekah, Andrew, Juno, and Alastair for welcoming us to their home right before Christmas – Alastair even gave up his room for us!; to the Kienhius family for kindly hosting us over the holidays in Melbourne and Ocean Grove and introducing us to lots of Aussie culture; and to Graeme and the crew at QDOS for welcoming us as wwoofers and giving us fine tree house-style accommodations.  And thanks as well to the many other friends (old and new) we met along the way who helped us experience the places we were visiting in ways we never could have on our own.

Tomorrow we are picking up our hire car and heading off to explore the south island.  I already miss being able to pop down to the Lorne beach, but it’s hard to be sad when New Zealand awaits. (:

-Julie