Six days ago, We arrived in Auckland, NZ. We then spent two days in Auckland exploring the city and stocking up on everything from toiletries to snacks for our week of wwoofing (willing workers on organic farms). Auckland was absolutely incredible. It was a city nearly as big as philadelphia but with a completely different feel. People were quite friendly and there were beautiful views everywhere you looked. But what really blew me away was the diversity of the city. There were people from all over the world and a dozen different languages combined to make the constant but quiet hum of the city. We only stayed two days, but in those two days I knew Auckland is a place I want to return to.
From Auckland we left for our week of WWOOFING at Tom and Pj’s. We left Auckland around 7:30 a.m. and 7 hours of bus travel later arrived in Hastings where we were picked up by Tom and his mother. An hour later we were on the farm. We were welcomed with open arms, and a fantastic sushi dinner, by PJ and the kids when we arrived. Tom and Pj live on their 500 acre farm along with their three children, George, Ben and Rosie. The next morning we went to work.
We divide up into four crews every day for work. We have the kitchen crew, “Tom’s group”, garden crew, and daily crew. Kitchen crew spends all day in the kitchen cooking fantastic meals for the group. PJ provides a lot of the guidance in the kitchen but we have the freedom to find recipes and request them as well.Tom’s group is sort of the wild card crew. They follow Tom around all day helping him with whatever he’s up to. It varies from 6 am building projects to afternoon cow tagging. The garden crew is what you would expect, they work in the garden. Lots of weeding and planting. Daily crew takes care of the daily jobs. Mostly feeding the animals. That usually takes all morning and then the afternoon is filled with various odd jobs. The work is hard but it is fun and we are rewarded at every meal with fantastic food. The work here differs from the work we did in Nadala in that we are genuinely needed and valued as workers where in Nadala we were valued as guests and funders of the project but felt almost like a burden on the work site. Overall the week is going great and we look to finish strong these last few days.
Joe