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Published: April 7th 2006
The Three Musketeers
as we were for the week.Pat flew out on Wednesday April the 5th and I headed on to another fun-filled experience of wwoofing.
Earthsong is a co-housing community located in the district of Ranui, within the city limits. I have been on two tours already. Pat and I came by on Monday before he left, to see the place and meet my two hosts, Lynette and Chris. I put in the link to the website because there is so much to explain that it's easier to just send the link.
One of the many things I have learned about in the couple of days that I have been here, is a practice called the Feldenkrais technique. It is a form of - well, exercise I guess, whereby one learns to use both sides of the body in order to avoid helplessness should one break or injure the dominant hand or leg or be in some other way incapacitated on one side. Lynette has also learned the "safe" way to fall to avoid bone breakage should she lose her balance. I am putting in the link to the website
here, but I haven't read through it carefully yet. Once again saving myself some explanation and typing!
The Before Picture
Lynette's window before treatment. Another thing I have learned about is a very different type of meditation, called Kundalini Active Meditation, involving 15 minutes of shaking, then dancing or moving the body, then sitting then lying down. It's just one new experience after another around here!!
I just happened to find a bit of info about it:
HERE YOU GO! Yesterday I assisted Lynette in the common kitchen to prepare the Shared Meal - enough for 46 hungry patrons. It was her team's turn to do the preparations. We began at 1, I sneaked out for meditation at 5 and the meal began at 6. Working folks without time to take a turn at preparing the meal pay $5 per meal, and the kids eat free. It's a chance to socialize with the rest of the community, and what a friendly chatty group they are. I helped with the serving and clean-up and after that there was a "visioning" meeting lead by a facilitator to make more plans for the next steps in the process. There are currently 24 families living here and the maximum number has been researched to be 32 dwellings in a successful co-housing group.
/continued Monday
The Equipment
Useful tools for the job. evening
I had the weekend off, and it was action-packed. I finally got a run in on Saturday morning and in the afternoon went to what we had thought would be a Permaculture class, actually a tour of an organic farm practicing permaculture. One of the members, Melody, stopped by on Friday to invite me to her class as she is taking a permaculture course at the local college. The farm turned out to be straight organic, without the permaculture, and I took a few shots of the weedy fields of crops. Root crops, kiwi orchard, a greenhouse for seedlings. And bought some nashi - a combination of apple and pear. On the way home we bought some small plums which are deep red inside and red on the outside. And very good. I think they called them Black Plums, but they are much different than those grown in Canada.
Shortly after I got back to Earthsong my friend Liz arrived with my wwoofing boots I had left at her house before Pat and I set out on our Big Adventure. She had her current wwoofer in tow and they were treated to a brief tour,
Chris applies the Saraclean
This can be applied to walls with a power sprayer but for joinery needs manual attention. We used rags.Leave it to soak in for 15 minutes meditation again and a lovely shared meal in the common house prepared by a different team. Saturday shared meals feature Pudding, or rather Dessert in North American terms. There was an excess of organic bananas in the supplies, so they baked them in trays with lemon rind and sprinkling of brown sugar. Topped with dairy-free ice cream or the real stuff or whipped cream for non-abstainers. Yum. Both helpings!
Sunday morning I went to the Unitarian service in Auckland, driving to the Ponsonby area of the city. I met Henri Van Roon again, a Unitarian I had met in December and January at previous services. He and his wife work in Planning at University of Auckland, and have been to Barrie Ontario Canada, where we currently live. He knows the head of planning in Barrie city council, who used to work under Henri. I just received a couple of papers from Henri, published by the Land Use group at U of Auck. and will share with my Unitarian group back in Barrie. Sustainable living is an area of interest for me, and has come up in discussion at the Unitarian group in Barrie.
The weather has
Chris wets the surface
After a 15 minute soak, the joinery needs to be moistened again for the scrubbing part. been slightly warmer this year compared to other years, but the rain is almost every day. Sun showers are frequent, and at night I often hear it pounding down in several short intervals.
We got several windows scrubbed Monday, and with some luck will be able to use the "water blaster" (known as Power Washer in Canada) to clean the cedar-clad walls outside the rammed-earth portion of the units.
I moved all my suitcases and boxes into Chris' unit, as Lynette is in the process of unpacking boxes herself, only having moved into the unit four months ago. I sleep in a third unit, upstairs from the first two, in Buffie's spare room. It's confusing at times trying to remember where my things are but I bumble along. Chris and Lynette take turns making lunch and supper - or lunch and "tea" as it's called here. I'm at Chris' at the moment, but she doesn't have a USB port on her old computer, so will have to wait for another day at Lynette's to upload pix.
/continued Tuesday: here are the pix. We finished the windows on the ground level today. The walls have
Scrubbing
Get a wwoofer to do the climbing and reaching for scrubbing. They are willing workers after all.And such cheerful folk! to be water-blasted and the whole thing oiled, but we have to wait until the top level is cleaned, or the solution will drip down and ruin our oiling work. A plan is in the works,..
Another lesson learned while at Earthsong is all about the Bokashi method of composting. My understanding is that it is essentially a concentrated method to inoculate the soil with useful bacteria by sprinkling powdered form of it on the compost first, and allowing it to ferment before putting it into the earth. After about two weeks, there should be a white fungal growth over the surface. ( some of us may have seen this even without using Bokashi if we left the compost too long in the [pail!) However, the Effective Micro-organisms that are added to the compost using the Bokashi Method include such components as Photosynthetic Bacteria, Lactic Acid Bacteria, Yeasts, Fermentative Bactieria and Actinomycetes.
The Bokashi Method uses two air-tight pails that fit inside each other. The top pail has holes which allow the liquid to pass through and be collected periodically over the two week fermentation period. This liquid can be diluted , at a concentration of 1
teaspoon to 5 litres of water and applied to soil as a natural fertilizer, or poured down toilets and sinks to assist in cleanliness and de-odourize.
You can even use the E.M. to treat septic tanks and for removing black mould from walls and paintwork, to replace other bleaching chemical compounds. At this point I must insert contact information for the greater Auckland area, especially because she lives right in Earthsong. Cathy (Gardening Angel) ph/fax 09 832 7155 or email cathy “at” earthsong. org.nz . Change the “at” for the symbol used in emails with no spaces anywhere. For districts outside Greater Auckland contact Mike Daly email nznfs”at”paradise.net.nz
I did bury some compost using this method for Lynette. However, I believe I forgot to dilute the juice before adding it underneath some bushes. Oops. I might be hearing from Lynette, wondering why one side of her bushes is growing at an exponential rate.
Well on the day of my departure,Lynette was doing further sanding with an electric sander on the windows before oiling them, as the scrubbing and hand sanding had raised some fibres and made a bit of a hairy effect in some spots.
And after the scrubbing
You can see what a huge difference a little elbow grease makes! I continue to receive bulletins of the progress of the oiling process,... Chris or Lynette told me that each new block of flats adds a few features or corrects something that was overlooked or discovered over time with the first lot, so perhaps the last block of units will have the wood treated a different way at first, or another material that doesn’t require as much maintenance. The rammed earth itself is very sturdy and absorbs noise very well. While on the first floor, one can hear others moving on the floor above, but not in a significant way.
It has been a good learning experience and one which I prize among many I have enjoyed while in New Zealand. I have always wanted to investigate voluntary community lifestyles. Co-housing is a form of this, but there are many variations.
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