WWOOFING

WWOOFing is incredible. I've been working for the past two weeks on a farm on Te Autu road in Bethels for a woman named Sherab. She's my hero. Seriously. She was a traveling gypsy when she was younger and now she's bought this farmland on a hill and is transforming it into the land of her dreams. We work 3 hours a day, ending at lunchtime, then have the rest of the day to do whatever we want. We get fed really REALLY well- it's like a holiday dinner every night, tons of food all family style (though the cuisine is seriously mixed on any given night.. like nachos with stir fry..?!). So I don't go hungry... no worries on that. Lots of fresh food from the garden, like lettuce and chives, and local avocados and cucumbers... god it's so good. And one night we had lamb. Dear god, I wanted to cry it was so delicious.

The family is wonderful. Husband Jo is a beast of a Maori man, and a very sweet one at that, he's good to us. Thier son Tutira is the COOLEST nine year old boy ever, I want to keep him. I took him to a rock shop the other day and I kept telling him about rocks he liked... there's really not enough time to talk about how great he is. Then there's Shanan and Vajra, Sherab's sons from a previous marriage (to a Californian!). THEN there are all the other people that pay rent and live at the house- Kristen the artist, who i've commissioned some paintings from; Sonny the 18-year old musician who's a little anti social but is really cool (dreadlocks... drool..); Nick the just turned 20 year old that drinks at 11am and is NEVER allowed in our car ever EVER EVER again; Amy, Shanan's baby mama; N'Ryan, Sonny's older brother who's a selfish jerk and never cleans up after himself and always tells people if they're not a Hare Krishna then they're closed-minded. Then there are all the other WWOOFers (so many Germans! and one other american) and the people that randomly show up to hang out, like Hank, the 90 year old man from down the hill that has an amazing amount of land where Xena and Hercules filmed... at any given time there can be as many as 15 people running around the house- you can imagine how insane dinner time can get. But it's great. I wouldn't want it any other way.

The farmwork too is varied and fun. I've planted pumpkins, potatoes, kumera (Maori sweet potato), which involves lots of clearing weeds.... so. much. weeding. We actually just bought our own gum boots and gloves cuz we were borrowing them from Sherab. We do odd jobs too. We have a lot of fun. We've really transformed the land in the last two weeks.
Shit time is out. I'm great! Headed to Bay of Plenty tomorrow! LOVE!!!!!!!!