Advertisement
Published: October 1st 2007
Edit Blog Post
Before I start I will just remind you about the whole WWOOFing thing - don’t laugh. When we were still at home planning our big trip we had decided to do some WWOOFing in New Zealand (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) as it’s a cheap way to live, a good way to get to know the locals, great for learning about organic gardening and sustainability and of course Geoff had great WWOOFing memories from his last trip. With this in mind we had bought the WWOOFing book when we first arrived in Christchurch, this gives you the contact details of all the places around NZ and a brief description of what they do. I know that was months ago and we were now into our last week or so, but we thought we would try to squeeze it in.
So we had got in contact with a place run by a bloke called Boggy a week or so before our small accident in Auckland and had arranged to go up and stay for a while. When we called him about our ill fated day and that we would be a bit late, it turned out he had forgotten we
were coming and was still in Wellington! No problem though and he told us to pop over to his place anyway and make ourselves at home, he would be back in a day or so. The next day we did just that and we found ourselves at Morning Star Farm tucked away down some muddy roads in the countryside near Wellsford. I have to say I was wondering what to expect and had a certain amount of apprehension. My first impressions were that the place had lots of character, musical instruments everywhere (3 pianos - Geoff heaven), old buses, cars and a general look and feel of chaos. We were met by Dave who owned the neighbouring farm and he showed us over to Boggy’s house, a very cosy rustic place and told us to make ourselves comfy. Some WOOFING places in the book seemed a bit commercial and like they were just tapping into a cheap resource, such as cleaning hostels or working on farms that didn’t seem particularly organic, but this place definitely seemed genuine, down to earth and just what we wanted.
There was torrential rain the first night and day at the farm
and things got very boggy at Boggy’s. Nevertheless, Dave found us a job to do between the showers, hacking back the gorse and placing it around the fruit trees for its nitrogen fixing effects - getting his own back on the English for introducing it in the first place we reckoned!! There was also a river that ran through the property, a small jetty and a couple of kayaks that we used to paddle downstream through the mangroves, towards the sea.
After a couple of days Boggy turned up and we moved from his house over to his old touring bus, that he had used for years, touring with his band “Shayn Wills and his Blue Buffoons” and later for housing woofers as they passed through. He was English and had come over to NZ with his wife Emily and all their possessions in another old bus. That one used to form the back half of the house, but was now parked up under another shed and undergoing a bit of a refit. We also learnt that around Christmas time they organise a Folk and Blues Festival at the farm and many people turn up with their tents
for a few days of musical fun. Boggy was still playing in Blues gigs around North Island, in between trying to move his family, wife Emily and 2 kids to Wellington, other odd jobs and mechanical work. As we had arrived in the middle of this big move there was not a whole lot for us to do. Geoff did a bit of car maintenance and I managed to weed some of the veggie patch, with the help of a rather over friendly duck with an interesting history. Emily had been just about to bury a clutch of eggs as the mother duck had abandoned them, when one started to hatch. I guess it looked at Emily and thought ahhh Mummy! Since then it was carried everywhere, taken to dinner parties and left to wander around the house, hence it now thinks it’s a human. The duck had been away from people for a few days so when we turned up it attached itself to us and was very affectionate, in a kind of biting nibbling sort of a way. It was impossible to go anywhere without being followed, check out the video for a taste of what he was
like!
As for the organic/permaculture side of things, the house had composting toilets and a wee bucket that could then be diluted with rain water and poured over the fruit trees each day. The poo was left to rot for a while and we learnt that given enough time human waste is safe to use as compost, although I’m not sure our neighbours in Winter road would appreciate us starting this back home. There was also an outside shower that I loved, but again it would turn a few heads in the terraced gardens of Portsmouth! All the hot water was heated by the wood burning stove with a “wetback” and we had just about got the hang of lighting it and bringing it up to the right temperature for cooking by the time we decided to leave.
After 4 or 5 days we had completely recovered from the traumas of Auckland and we felt like we were just hanging around a bit at Boggy’s, particularly as we weren’t really doing anything useful. It was great to stay in such a peaceful place and it gave us some great ideas of things that we would like
to try back home, but with our flight to South America in less than a week, we decided to hit the road again and make the most of our last few days in New Zealand.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.192s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 18; qc: 133; dbt: 0.1401s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.4mb
Chico
non-member comment
Sweet.
Hello. I just saw this place in my Wwoof book and emailed them to see what is up. Thanks for the preview!