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!