Stewart Island - Church Hill Cafe

Well, let's start with a few facts. Stewart island is home to not only half of NZ's Kiwi population but also the southernmost fish & chips shop in the world. In a town with a population of around 400 everybody knows one another.

The trip from Bluff to Stewart Island was rough. The waves got to be about 8 feet high at times, and I had my first experience with seasickness. I was really surprised how much of a whole body experience it is, it's not like motion sicknes, it's more like being drunk (and not having fun) and having a fever at the same time. Alyssa and I weren't the only ones who threw up, and I played the gentleman and let her go first. I said to Alyssa "I think that was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life."

Once ashore, we didn't want to do anything but go to sleep for a while. Flopped down in the information centre, just by the dock, the staff came over and asked if we were ok, we just needed time to recuperate. After we'd dozed for a few minutes Alyssa walked me over to Just Cafe and we replaced our recently lost lunches. The woman at the counter was from Idaho. It's amazing how quickly we can pinpoint American/Canadian accents when we're out here with all these other nationalities.

I'm writing this post from Invercargill, we just came back on the ferry yesterday and stayed at a campground last night. There's so much to say about Stewart island though, such a different world than we've lived in so far. Any supplies or special items have to come "from the mainland", and people just don't mind waiting a few days or a week for them to arrive. The whole time I was conscious of the feeling that we were at the bottom of the world. In fact, if you were to get into a boat and head south the next stop would be Antarctica.

Church Hill Restaurant is situated at the top of a hill overlooking Halfmoon Bay. It has a nice old fashioned feel with Tigger, the cat, lounging on the couch by the open fireplace. There were lots of birds as well, Kaka, gulls, etc. Out back of the restaurant there was a small vegetable garden, where Gary (the owner) and the other wwoofers collected some of the ingredients for the nightly meals.

Gary told me he used to work around 100 hours a week, but recently he's let most of his staff go and runs the place with his manager, Nic.

There were three other WWOOFers there, Marko, from Slovenia (former Yugoslavia), Rotemm and Dor from Israel, and Bryn from NZ. Oh yeah, wait, that’s four, MOVING ON!

This host wasn’t like a ‘typical’ WWOOFing host, as we didn’t spend our time outside in the garden. In fact, we spent the past week learning how to wait tables at a high-class restaurant – something that neither of us ever expected. We learned about pairing wine with food, serving and bussing tables, and acting as accommodating hosts.

We got to play in the large kitchen as well and served everyone our speciality, Lemon Caper Chicken. For the vegetarians we made some delicious lentil burgers, along with the Church Hill signature salad at we are already missing now.

I had some time to play around with Gary’s two computers. He mentioned that he couldn’t get internet on the desktop, and at least four other WWOOFers had taken a whack at fixing it. I sorted it out in about 40 minutes. It was a Stupid broken firewall program, and disabling it didn’t work, I had to uninstall it. (Dad?!?!) Then I borrowed an iPod sync cable from the nice woman down at Just Café’ and hacked my iPod with rockbox since I’m so far away from my own computer, now I can add and play whatever I want without wiping my whole collection. (google it :-p)

The local library was interesting too, I think they had about 2000 books in total. I overheard one of the locals say “it’s so great that you have internet now”, welcome to the 21^st century guys. J Not only that, but it was run by volunteers, there was only one person on staff at a time, and only open four days a week for an hour each day.

As for the home life, we got to stay in the shed behind Gary’s house. There was some critter scuttling around at night, but we never did meet face-to-face/ face-to-beak/ face-to-snout, maw, whatever, with it. The beds were nice and we did get about a dozen pillows to work with. We’re getting quite used to adjusting to new beds/ showers/ kitchens/ toilets every day or so…ahh, the hidden joys of travelling.

After a full week of work, we’re heading to Fiordland, possibly NZ’s most famous landscape, the Milford Sound. After that, a visit to Queenstown and Wanaka, and some driving up the West Coast until we reach the sunny Golden Bay.

Wairuna Organic

My favorite place to sit in the afternoon at Wairuna Organic is on the hammock in the orchard. If I'm still enough, the free-range chickens forget that I'm there and get back to their normal routine - chasing each other, burrowing in the ground, digging for rotten apples.

Since we only work from morning to lunch time, we spend a lot of time in the afternoon hanging around, which means chatting with the French guy, Yann, and Charlotte from Belgium, good quality reading time, extended cat naps, etc.

My dentist, Dr. Mike, asked when all the 'working' happened. Honestly, we do work hard but just don't write about it as often because it's not as interesting as all our terrific sightseeing. We're building muscles and learning a ton about farming (especially with organic principles). We've tried many new vegetable that we've never heard of -mostly because they're not available in any grocery stores back home. Some are multi-functional. For example – today I was harvesting a crop called “Broad Beans.” It's great cooked in meals, and can be dried in the winter and used in soups & stews. It also functions as a “cover crop,” that is – it can be planted in a plot to restore particular nutrients to the soil. Instead of farming a field of only corn or what or strawberries, organics allows the rotation of crops to restore a proper PH and nutrients to the soil.

We've also learned a lot about efficiency. In permaculture practice, people design their property to produce the most results with the least amount of energy. This could be something like placing the garden between the house & chicken coop, so that excess by-products of the garden can go to the chickens, and chicken manure goes to the garden. A great example of this we saw at Earthwood with their wood stove. While it was burning, the family was cooking dinner under the fire, and heating water for tea on the top. The stove was heating the house and the excess heat rose to the roof where it heated the water stored there (for showers, dishes, etc). One tool with many different different purposes, strategically placed to be most efficient.

There are many other lessons we learned, most of which I am storing in my brain for when I build my own dream homestead. I'm sure I've only scratched the surface, but at least it's a start.

So anyway, we're trying to mix up the tourism with the hard work, and maybe get some paid work apple picking in March or April.

After we leave Wairuna, we venture South East to the Catlins – NZ's rugged Southern Coast for a bit of site seeing of fabulous waterfalls, penguins and sea lions.

Shortly thereafter, we will head to NZ's third largest island, Stewart Island, for a 1-week stay at Church Hill Cafe – a restaurant that grows all its own food before cooking and serving it.

Work we've done at Wairuna

-WEEDING! (preparing for winter lettuce, weeding onions, herb garden)
-PAINTING (Steve sanded and painted parts of the house)
-HARVESTING (as a pair we dug up 1000 heads of garlic, cleaned and hung them up to dry)
-PACKING (prepping carrot bunches for sale before the Farmer's Market)
-COOKING (Alyssa made a curry with Carlotte for dinner one night)
-CUTTING (a paddock of thistle – a mean & nasty plant with many venomous thorns)
-DISHES (WWOOFers are always responsible for dinner dishes at every farm)
-GRAND INQUISITORS (asking many, many questions to our hosts about crops, cultivation, harvesting, etc.)
-EXPLORING (wandering around wondering how farms always have so many buildings, sheds, abandoned cars in the field)

Lastly, I wanted to acknowledge how special it is to cook a meal and know that every ingredient came form your back yard, and was picked when perfectly ripe, full of nutrients. To eat honey made from the flower of the crops you planted with your own hands, that's what it's all about – self-sufficiency, awareness, respecting the earth, eating clean, whole foods that nourish your body.

I love this stuff!

Dunedin

On the way to Dunedin we visited the Moeraki Boulders and had our first yellow-eyed penguin experience. I can't remember exactly how they were formed, something about liquid hot magma (muahahahaaa) flowing into the cold ocean water.

After that, we had lunch at Fleur's -alongside where these really cool flowers. It came recommended by our friends at Treehugger Organics and the Lonely Planet book. They do mostly organic vegetables, with their main specialty being the seafood they fish for and cook you the same day.

Following lunch, we were pretty keen to put some kilometers under our (tightened) belts. We'd just been spending too much time in one area, so we headed straight down to Dunedin and spent the rest of the day shopping. It was good to feel like we're actually doing the travel part of traveling.

Alyssa had an excellent treat when we found a vendor selling gluten free crepes. I told her to spurge. Most of the time I'm fine with peanut butter and jelly for lunch. We drove out to the Otago Peninsula, to see if we could catch sight of some of the only land-dwelling albatross in the world, but that didn't happen. (oh well)

The best part of Dunedin so far for me has been Sandfly beach. It was a tricky hike down steep dunes, sometimes it felt like skiing hand-in-hand in slow motion. I think it will be one of those simple pleasures I'll remember for years to come. A few Hooker Sealions were basking on the beach, they are the rarest species in the world, but what we went to find were the yellow-eyed penguins returning to their nests after a full day of feeding out on the continental shelf. Now usually Alyssa is the gasper, especially when we're driving in the mountains on New Zealand's many one lane roads, but I definitely gasped when I spotted the little guy hopping around on the rocks. It must have taken him a full 40 minutes to climb the little hill to his nest. Once again, the binoculars have proven to be just about the best thing we remembered to pack this trip.

Today is our last day in Dunedin. We actually got to scope out our next host since he was hawking his wares at the farmer's market this morning. He seems pretty cool. Alyssa was a little embarassed when I started jumping up and down saying “The crepe people! the crepe people!”

Well at four o'clock local time is the Chinese New Year's Parade. Yeah, exactly, those things you see pictures of on every single tourbook everywhere, with the long dragon going down the street. This will be our first time ever seeing one, I'm totally psyched.

Tomorrow we're heading off to our next host, Wairuna Organics (in Clinton- between Dunedin and Invercargill) for 10 days, but they do have internet, so we'll hopefully be able to share a bit about the parade.

Earthwood

Our stay at Earthwood was shorter than expected. We were anxious to move on. But we did have time to build fences with Wal, our host, and play games with the two girls, Ami and Shannah. What we're most proud of is our cabinet. Alyssa designed and jigsawed the top facing, and we did a few fix-ups on the shelves and bed in the van.