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Published: April 7th 2010
First wwoof experience - Kaeo
After spending 4 days with my 'relatives' in Warkworth, just north of Auckland, I headed to my first wwoofing experience in Northland. The town was a small place called Kaeo. It turned out that the wife was away for the week and so it was just me and Bruce who was a conspiracy theorist! Then his 24 yr old son came for my last night and he also thought that Hitler had invented fluoride to control people's minds... He was also a religious zealot. Hhhmmm, I booked my bus and headed off after only 3 days. But, I did get to do some of this earth bag building. And Bruce took me out on the back of his motorbike to see the gorgeous coast up there, some beautiful bays, and I swam in the ocean! Warmer than Perth water 😊
The place in Kaeo was very basic, a junk yard of sorts! They weren't living very sustainably either - smoking, using harsh chemicals in their 'home', lots of motorbikes and cars that were just lying around rusting... Disappointing for my first wwoof experience.
The outdoor 'kitchen and dining area'. They are on solar
First wwoof experience
The earth bag buildingpower so the fridge they had wasn't plugged in but they bought bags of ice every few days. It stunk! I ended up cleaning it out - big job, dirty job! And so many flies around as it's all open.
The Bay of Islands
So... I got on the bus and head down to Paihia, which is the tourist centre of the Bay of Islands. Beautiful place. I stayed in my first backpackers in NZ and it was lovely. I met some nice people and drank cheap NZ wine.. I went on an overnight boat trip. We kayaked at night under a full moon looking for phosphorescence (but it was too light to really see anything glowing), we fished off the back of the boat, we snorkelled and swam and visited this bay for some sights at a height. It was great to do something touristy.
So that's the boat and you can see our kayaks. And you can see it is lovely weather! I packed thermals, a beanie, gloves, scarves... And I didn't pack a single pair of shorts! Just 3/4 length ones. And it's been hot!
Waiheke Island wwoofing experience
Kitchen
Outdoor, overlooking the valley, just beautiful. But it was all open so the flies were pretty bad. I got a call from a wwoof host who was doing some earth building (what I was keen to try) saying to come down after Easter, so I decided to get in touch with a wwoof host on Waiheke Island off Auckland and see if I could spend Easter with them. They are a middle aged couple living in an Eco Village. They said yes! I had an amazing 4 days with them. They live as I would love to - in a mud brick home they built, in an eco village, with a seemingly normal toilet but it is composting, an outdoor shower overlooking a gorgeous valley, solar power, water tank, big veggie garden, chooks, compost.. But it's only a 40 min ferry ride to Auckland if you want a city, and the coast with gorgeous beaches is 5 mins away. This is the view from inside their house to the outside. Oh, and his name was Bruce too 😊
I did have noisy chooks outside my room, and I did share it with spiders, insects and the odd mouse, but I had a gorgeous view and I must admit, I was just so happy to be
Me in the Bay of Islands
Beautiful weather, gorgeous place. in a lovely spot!
They had an earth oven outside that we cooked homemade pizzas on one night. We drank red wine in the evenings after working really hard with the compost, in the garden weeding and pruning, digging up kumara (sweet potato), picking the pumpkins or beans...
Cambridge wwoofing experience
My third wwoofing experience was in Cambridge, near Hamilton. They are building a second earth house to rent out as accommodation. The first one is finished and was made with mud bricks. The second is what we are working on and the technique they are using is called cobbing. Basically you get a wheelbarrow full of clay which they've bought from a local quarry and you put it onto a tarp on the ground near where you are building. Then you slowly add straw and stomp it in with your bare feet. When the texture is good, you just use your hands to form brick-like shapes and carry them to the wall and add them on. You smooth in the edges so it doesn't look like separate bricks, but just a mud wall. It's a very labour intensive way of building and quite slow,
Our boat
Our boat and kayaks in the little bay we stopped at. but you can use cheap, local materials and it's a proven method of building. The buildings last and last and last and are insulated really well. The website that these guys have set up documenting their building is http://earthsteadlodge.blogspot.com/ if you are interested. You can find a few pics of me on there... 😊
In our usual workday we also feed the chooks and collect eggs, move the cows into different fields, help with the milking of the one dairy cow, help with cooking (she makes her own bread, preserves, yoghurt, you name it) and cleaning and any other odd jobs that arise. For example the electric fences haven't been working and the cows keep getting out so we (the other 2 wwoofers and the owners Suzie and Al) went round the whole property cutting back trees and bushes and removing grass and things touching the fence in the hope that this was the issue problem. It was a big job, and only partially successful in the end!
Suzie is a great cook and we are well looked after in the food department. We get weekends off so I went to a small surfing town not far from
Second wwoof experience
View from inside the house. here on the West Coast called Raglan. I stayed in Manu Bay.
I finished up at the wwoofing place in Cambridge after 2 weeks or so and it was sad to leave as I'd had a really good time there. I got a lift with the French Canadian couple, who were also wwoofing there, to Rotorua for the weekend. What a smelly town! It's the only place I know where you can fart at anytime with no worries about being caught, as the whole town has a rotten egg kind of smell! But it isn't too overpowering or unpleasant. Everywhere you walk you see steam coming from the ground, hot pools, bubbles of hot mud emerging from the earth... It's a very interesting place. Bec and Shaz had given me a voucher for entry to the thermal, mineral hot pools at a flsh spa in Rotorua so I spent my first morning there, soaking in the pools and gazing out at the lake. It was lovely and relaxing. I also did some souvenir shopping there as it's such a touristy place that there are heaps of places to buy pressies for people! We did a little walk through an
amazing Redwood forest just outside of town, I visited the museum and went to a little maori settlement in town. It was a lovely weekend off from wwoofing.
Hamilton wwoofing experience
Then I got the bus to Hamilton and my next wwoof host met me. Judy is a middle-aged woman who lives alone on a big property and so has wwoofers for the company as much as to help I think. A german girl, Angelika, and I helped in her Permaculture garden a bit, did some cooking, fed the chooks, moved the chicken coop, removed some old fences... just odds and ends. She had some great books on Permaculture so I read a bit and learnt a lot. Judy was so helpful and took us to the Hamilton Gardens, which are amazing, and to an Enviro meeting one night where a guy came to speak to a group of locals about the idea of green economics. One guy made an interesting comment about how uninspiring it is if our main goal is to just have no impact on the earth, to reduce our carbon footprint to 0. He said we need to start focussing on having
Shower
View from the outdoor shower Waiheke Island a positive impact. He suggested a name for the new generation - Re-generation. I like it. 😊 I also went to a lovely little local community ANZAC Day ceremony while I was at Judy's. As always, I found it moving, but especially so, as locals spoke about their memories of the war, Maoris sang, and a Korean choir sang 2 beautiful songs and said it was their gift to the New Zealand people for fighting for them in the Korean War.
A week of touristy stuff
I stayed at that wwoofing place for a bit over a week and then it was time to make my way down to Wellington for the Regina Spektor concert. I had 8 days to make it down and so I had 2 nights in Waitomo where I did a caving adventure to see the famous glow worms. (I must admit I'd been especially excited to see the glow worms!) We abseiled 28m down into the cave, walked through a bit looking at the amazing glow worms lighting up the dark cave like stars on the roof, did a bit of black water tubing (but it was pretty tame), then rock
Waiheke Island
The house and garden. climbed up to get out. We were also told lots of info about the glow worms, the caves and the local area too. It was fun, but not as adventurous as I'd hoped (and I'm not an adrenaline junkie!).
Then I had 2 nights in Lake Taupo which is a lovely place on a lake and surrounded by mountains. I did a kayaking half day tour on the lake out to the Maori Carvings. It was a gorgeous day and the lake was still and calm and so clear. I also walked to the natural hot springs where really hot water comes from a spring near the river and cascades into the river so you get a lovely mixture of hot and cold water. I met a Maori guy and his Swiss girlfriend and they drove me out to the Huka waterfalls just out of town which were great. The lovely weather was continuing.
Then I had 2 nights in Napier which is a funky, art deco town on the East coast, right near a big wine region. It was almost entirely flattened in an earthquake in 1931 and so was rebuilt as a cool, modern (at the
Third wwoofing experience -Me and the newly harvested pumpkins
I don't think Joel has to worry about me picking up over here in NZ without him! time) art deco town. I walked up to the lookout on the Bluff, walked along the pebbly beach, visited the farmers' market and admired the interesting buildings.
Wellington
Finally, I made my way to Wellington. Let me start by saying - I love this city! As a backpacker, it's always a little exhausting just thinking about rocking up in a new city. The bus station is always out of town and it's always a mission finding your way into town, to your hostel etc. But in Wellington things just went right for me from the start. The bus drivers were friendly and helpful, I found my hostel easily, the Opera House where Regina played was literally 350m from my hostel as was everything else I could want or need. An hour after I had arrived and checked into the hostel (which was the only down side of Wellington - noisy, dirty, typical city hostel) I asked at a tourist centre if the movie 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' was playing anywhere as I've been wanting to see it for ages now, after loving the book. It was playing a a funky cinema just down the
Cobbing
So here I am adding the straw and stomping on the clay to make the mix we need to make bricks and build up the walls. road and started in half an hour! So off I went! Things like that just kept going right for me.
When Joel arrives for our 2 weeks sightseeing in the South Island, we meet in Wellington so I didn't do too much sightseeing as such, saving it for when he comes, but I wandered around Monday killing time before the concert that night. I was in the middle of said wandering when a guy came up to me and said "Excuse me, but I saw you walking on Wakefield Street last night." I thought, oh god a weirdo, but said oh ok. He said "Hi I'm Dave." I said "I'm Meagan." He asked where I was from and I said Australia. He said "Oh, we just played in Australia." He asked where in Aus I'm from so I said Perth. He said "Oh, we started our tour in Perth." So I asked which band he played for. "I'm the drummer for Regina Spektor", he said. Oh my God, I thought. "Oh right", I said. "I'm off to her concert tonight." He asked what I was doing now and invited me to go with the other 3 guys from his
Cobbing
Not a great picture, but you can see me making a brick shape form to transfer to the wall. band Jupiter One up to Mt Victoria. I had a bit of a sore throat and still thought it was a bit weird how he'd approached me, so I passed but said thanks. He said to come say hi at the Merchandise Table after the concert. Later that day I passed him again (their hotel was close to my hostel I think) and he asked what I was doing in NZ. I told him about wwoofing. It was so strange how he was drawn to me as I was just cruising round the city with my little orange backpack, in my white Bolivian hoody and jeans, hair unbrushed... Anyway, that night at the concert (oh, another thing that went right for me in Wellington was that by chance I met a young English guy at the hostel who was also a Regina fan and going to the concert, so I had someone to get excited with and walk there with!) Jupiter One played, and there was Dave from the street playing drums. They introduced themselves and Dave said hi to the crowd and told us how they'd climbed Mt Victoria today and that they'd met some wwoofers today too and
Cobbing
Me adding the brick of mixture to the wall. Then you smooth the edges so you don't have separate 'bricks' but just a wall of clay. he thought they were at the concert so he wanted to say hi and welcome them. Weird, and wow! So that's my strange Wellington story!
Taranaki
After the concert, I headed up the West Coast to an area called Taranaki, so named because of the huge, awesome volcano that dominates the landscape there called Mt Taranaki. I've been in this area for about 3 1/2 weeks now, and I swear I've looked at him over 200 times! He draws you to him.
Actually there's an interesting story about Taranaki. According to Maori legend he belonged to a tribe of volcanoes in the middle of the North Island but was "forced to depart rather hurriedly when he was caught with Pihanga, the beautiful volcano near Lake Taupo" (which I saw when I was there by the way!) She was the lover of Mt Tongariro so you can imagine why he had to flee quick smart when he was caught with her! "As he fled south, Taranaki gouged out a wide scar in the earth (now the Whanganui River) and finally settled in the west in his current position. He remains here in majestic isolation, hiding his
Manu Bay, Raglan
This is a famous beach among surfers I've heard. face behind a cloud of tears."
My first wwoof hosts in Taranaki, Alex and Aileen, were right on the coast and as I worked in the garden I looked out one way and could see the ocean glimmering in the sunshine (I had fantastic sunny weather) and Mt Taranaki was overlooking their property in the other direction. I was lucky enough to see him in all his beauty without the clouds covering him, for 2 weeks!
This was my first wwoof experience with kids - Oralee is 18 months old and Ranui just turned 4. It was a whole different energy, that's for sure! The kids were great, and it was really good to see how people parent, but it was hard to 'knock off' from work as I always felt I should be helping with cooking, cleaning, playing with the girls etc. I escaped from the madness one afternoon and headed to the beach on bike - only took 6 minutes! It was the first grey, wintery day in a while and the beach was one of those soft, alluring beaches - a black sand, smooth pebbles, driftwood kind of beach. Very moody, which suited the day.
One
Rotorua
The awesome naturally occurring, hot springs. afternoon it was really hot and I'd been working hard digging in the greenhouse where it was even hotter, so I had the arvo off and rode to the beach again and I even swam! Ok, I was only in the water for about 4 minutes as it took my breath away it was so cold, but it was hot enough out of the water to warm me up. Later I asked Alex and Aileen what they thought the temperature was that day and we found out it had been the hottest place in all of NZ that day, and the hottest day for that time of year in over 20 years. It was 21 degrees! I was so shocked that I'd felt hot enough to swim and it was only 21 degrees!
I did heaps of work in the garden - clearing beds, composting, mulching, planting. I pruned and cleared paths. I paved a small greenhouse with bricks (so proud!), dug the beds in and planted broccoli. And I planted leeks. About 4000 of them I think. They want to sell them and so I dug beds, mulched and transplanted clumps of little leeks from the house garden, to
Rotorua
Hot steam bubbling up in the mud. This was taken in a public park. the back paddock where they were to grow big enough to sell. They were only about as big as a blade of grass for now and had been planted in clumps of about 30. I had to pull them up, trim the roots and tops, make a deep hole in the new bed, add a little compost, put the little leeky in and cover him up. This went on for a few hours over a few days, then Alex's 18yr old apprentice (he's an electrician), got roped into helping me to get it done fast. At least I had someone to chat with and time passed much faster. We kept trying to test each other by holding up a blade of grass and a little leek and asking the question - Leek or grass? Leek or Pine needle? Ah, the joys... 😊
I also made some chutneys with Aileen which was fun and so easy! I baked a pumpkin pie from scratch - short crust pastry and all, and was again very proud of myself!
Aileen hosted a Mothers' Day get together with her friends and we celebrated Mother Earth. It was nice to meet some of her friends and
Rotorua
The awesome Redwood trees eat yummy food. All in all, it was a great wwoof place.
I then moved to another wwoof place, just round the other side of Taranaki. The whole organic community of Taranaki is not so big and Alex and Aileen know my new wwoof hosts through a Permaculture course. Peter and Kama are really knowledgeable as they run Permaculture courses, she was a member of some Soil Board, they work at the Taranaki Environment Centre and Peter runs the Enviro Schools programme round here. Oh, and Kama started the Farmers' Market in New Plymouth (the big town round here). Anyway, you can say they are pretty in touch with the organic scene here and know their stuff. So I was lucky to be there and I learnt lots. I did 2 things I'm especially proud of - I designed and built something for their passionfruit plant to grow up, using split bamboo and tying it with flax. And to keep their ever-escaping duck (aptly named Runaway) from flying over the gate and eating their broccoli, I used bamboo and made a woven barrier.
I went to a talk in New Plymouth on Friday night which Kama had organised -
Wwoofing in Hamilton
Judy's Permaculture Garden a guy came to talk about Sustainability in Taranaki and I actually knew some people there who I'd met through Alex and Aileen. We went to Ranui's 4th birthday party at the Aquatic Centre on Saturday and I knew almost everyone! We went to the Farmer's Market in town Sunday morning and ran into a few people Kama and I both know. I must say it's been really nice to get to know an area and the people who live here.
I went to the local pub with Kama on Saturday night to see Salmonella Dub play. They were pretty cool, and it was such a novelty for me to put on 'normal clothes' (and earrings!) and go out to a drinking establishment and have a vodka and orange juice! I've been wearing my 'work' clothes every day and hanging out with chooks, ducks and seeds... 😊
I should mention that the only negative thing about this wwwof place is that it's a filthy, stinking pigsty of a house. The 5 year old pees and shits his pants every day, at least once. The 3 cats pee and shit in the house, the toilet was broken the whole time I
was there (10 days), they didn't have any toothpaste, soap or shampoo when I arrived and didn't seem too phased, Finn the 7yr old didn't bathe once while I was there, Lochy the 5yr old peed on the living room floor one night when I was cooking dinner (Kama was at netball).. I could go on. So I just tried to deal with that and just learn what I could from the situation. I've learnt a lot about how I want to run my household and bring up my family that's for sure!
Peter and Kama went to Wellington the second weekend I was there, so I went back to Alex and Aileens from Fri night till Mon arvo. It was lovely to be back there and I transplanted some little broccoli seedlings which I'd planted as seeds the last time I was there, we collected seaweed from the beach to use on the garden as mulch, I watched the kids a bit and cooked dinner... It was a lovely weekend. Taranaki is covered in snow now!
Then, it was goodbye to Taranaki.
Back to Cambridge
I decided to head to Gisborne on
the East Coast to have a break from wwoofing and see something different. But, silly me, I decided to just have a look on the wwoof website at places to wwoof in Gisborne and there happened to be a lovely sounding winery and olive grove, so I thought I'd just email them and see if they needed a wwoofer for a week and they said yes! When I looked on the net to book the bus from Taranaki across to Gisborne I saw that the bus went via Hamilton (near the earth building wwoof I did in Cambridge) so I decided to see if they could host me again just for a few days to break up the looooong bus ride over to Gisborne. I was also excited to see how the Cob House was coming along and catch up with Al and Suzie.
So Monday I got the bus to Cambridge and I stayed until Friday arvo. There were 4 wwoofers there, from USA, Thailand, UK and Germany and it was lovely to be around other wwoofers as I've been the only one at my last few places. It was also great to see how the cobbing was
going. The wall was up to about chest height when I left, and we completed it right up to the ceiling when I was there this time, adding in some glass bottles up the top, near the ceiling, to let natural light in. We also planted native shrubs on the grass roof of the Earth House (the one that is finished and is ready to be rented out), which was a novel job!
Over to Gisborne
Then I headed over to the East Coast to Gisborne.
At one of the stops along the way I saw Angelika, the German girl I'd wwoofed with in Hamilton! She got on the bus and we discovered she was also heading to Gisborne. She was going there to wwoof. She was headed to Wright's Winery - the same place as me! What a coincidence! As it turned out, we were lucky to have each other because the owner, Geoff, had a very condescending tone about him and was a hard task master - our first day on the job was an 8 1/2 hour day on the vineyard involving pulling out the vines after he'd pruned them, digging
up big clumps of grass that had grown up around the base of the vines, hoeing and weeding the veggie garden ready for garlic planting, and other equally labour-intensive jobs! We both got a blister on our thumb from the hoeing, bruises and sore muscles! But... we got the next full day off and so we hitched out to Eastwood Hill, the national Arboretum.
It was the Sunday of the Queen's Birthday long weekend and so unfortunately the country road leading out to the Arboretum was pretty well deserted, which meant we walked more of the 30km trip than we'd hoped! But we ended up getting 3 short lifts with locals, and while the weather looked threatening, it didn't rain on us, so that was good. Everyone had told us that we'd just missed the best time at the Arboretum, which is Autumn when all the leaves are looking so colourful and putting on a real show, but it was still just gorgeous out there with some coloured leaves around, and some awesome bare-limbed trees too. The place really is cool, with such a variety of trees, bushes and flowers. We did a few of the walks out there
then were faced with the task of finding a lift back to Gisborne in the slow but steady drizzle that had set in! Again, we walked a fair way while waiting for any car at all to go by, let alone one that would stop for us! We kept amused by the cows in the fields we passed who would all stop and just stare at us with such curiousity. When we got too far away from them along the road, they would run up ahead of us, then stand still and stare at us till we passed them again! So funny! And the sheep, chubby-legged little fluff balls that they are, were just as curious, but with a good dash of fear thrown in too! They'd stop still where they were in the field and stare at us, then realise they felt too exposed and they'd suddenly all run to the furthest reaches of the field and huddle together, with their scared but curious eyes watching our every step.
Anyway, we finally got a lift with a lovely middle-aged woman and her grandson who took us all the way back to Gisborne, invited us in for tea, which
we declined, and then dropped us off at the supermarket, after a little scenic tour of the Gisborne coast! We even got a little bit of a history lesson from her. I thought she'd been talking about Young Neck's Point, where the New Zealand coast was first sighted by a young boy in Captain Cook's boat, but soon realised she meant Young Nick (the boy's name)! Ah, that lovely kiwi accent.
So after the first hard day of work Geoff seemed to soften and our next few days weren't quite so hard. His wife Nic made up for his at times offensive comments and nature, and the vegan food was fantastic. Also they have 2 little boys aged 6 months (Elijah) and 2yrs (Noah) - Elijah was such a smiley little thing and Noah had an awesome cackle on him! It was some of our coldest weather while we were there, with a frost one night that ended up on the windows INSIDE the little caravan in the backyard that Angelika and I shared! My -5 degree sleeping bag saved me though 😊 For some reason these guys didn't like to put their fire on and had an old,
Ranui (4yrs old) and Oralee (1 1/2yrs old)
The gorgeous girls at my first wwoof place in Taranaki. uninsulated house that was just freezing. So it was hard to keep warm at times. It was also some of the warmest weather I'd had in NZ for a while, with one day especially reaching 20 degrees or something, almost unheard of at this time of year. All in all though, we had lots of spare time in our week in Gisborne to also walk up Titirangi to see the views over town and along the river to the Botanic Gardens in town.
Final wwoofing - Levin
Then it was onto my final wwoofing experience in a small town about an hour and a half north of Wellington, called Levin. Annmarie and Derrick live in a little place about 2 mins walk from the beach and have some land a bit closer to town too. It was lovely to be so close to the beach and when the weather was nice enough and I had spare time, I'd head down for a walk and collect interesting bits of driftwood, dodging the traffic, yes traffic, on the beach. Cars and motorbikes drive along the long, hard beach and there's even a 30km/hr speed sign sticking up,
The veggie garden
I cleared the dead veggies, mulched and planted almost this whole garden when I first arrived at Alex and Aileen's place. looking out of place on the beach. I saw one old guy who'd drive his car down and 'walk' his dog by driving along behind it and it'd run along, all the while barking in joy at being 'chased' by his owner in his little car, who was texting away as he drove!
Basically I did a lot of weeding, pruning and hacking back of trees on their property. Oh, and I watched about 3 hours of FIFA World Cup games every day too! Derrick is English and has been watching World Cups for nigh on 40 years he said, and they had Sky TV so we would get up at 6am to watch the live telecast of the 6.15am game, then follow it up with the previous game (1.45am) which he'd taped. Then, we might just skip through the third and final game of the day to check the score. It was good to be so involved in it all (World Cups are pretty special and I don't mind sacrificing precious sleep to watch a good game. Unfortunately the Aussies didn't provide us with a good game for the first 2 matches!) I also went to one of
A moody day at the beach...
The beach just down the road from my wwoof place in Taranaki Annmarie's yoga classes with her one morning which I was in desperate need of as my back sure is feeling all the gardening and digging I've been doing!
Anyway, the 10 days went quite quickly and now my wwoofing adventures are over!
The end of wwoofing!
I spent 3 days in Wellington waiting for Joel to arrive - he gets here this Saturday 26th June and we head over to the South Island for 2 weeks of sightseeing. I'm so excited to see him again after 3 1/2 months, and to see the iconic scenery on the South Island.
So for now, it's the end of the wwoofing journey and I'm sure over the next few weeks, months and years I'll reflect on my experiences and be able to take even more from my time here on the North Island.
I'm so grateful for every experience, good and bad, as I've learnt so much about permaculture, biodynamics, earth building, organic growing and living sustainably. And that's just the stuff I set out to learn about! Not to mention all the unexpected lessons I've gladly received from wwoof hosts, usually not explicitly but
just from living with such diverse people and becoming part of their life for a short while. I've learnt more about things like relationships and how people make them work, bringing up children, running a family and household, cooking, different ways of viewing the world, dealing with stress and a bit about the rules of rugby (although I'll never really enjoy the game I don't think!).
I've also learnt so much from the magazine that almost every wwoof host has had, Organic NZ, and Good magazine which a few have had. They've given me so many ideas that I can't wait to put into practice when I get home - from which plants to plant together to reduce the number of pests in your garden, to natural and safe ways to clean your clothes and house, ways to reduce waste in your home, recipes to give you ideas about cooking with what's in season, which herbs can help with common ailments, tips on how to slowly eradicate plastic from our lives and our reliance on it, the list goes on! And I've been guided to so many fantastic websites to get more information.
To meet so many like-minded,
The greenhouse - you can see the beach in the distance
This is the greenhouse which I bricked the floor of, dug, and planted broccoli. knowledgeable and passionate people has restored my faith in the world and our ability to keep walking together in the right direction. I know my journey is still just beginning and I plan to continue slowly, step by step along this path when I get home.
I went to a concert at home not long before I headed over to New Zealand and Blue King Brown (awesome music!) said at the end of her set, "Remember, don't ever feel alone when you're standing up for our planet." And I won't, because I'm not.
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Brendan
non-member comment
They even make wine from sheep!
What a country.