I found the hostel I wanted, but they wouldn't let me check into my room until 1 pm, so I remained awake drinking coffee, reading my book, and looking for potential wwoofing farms online. After 42 hours without sleep and over two continental regions, I finally hit the sack. Fifteen hours later I rolled out of my bunk at 5:30 am... almost beat the jet lag. No mater, my mission for this day was to find a wwoofing farm to get to a.s.a.p. The first farm I had e-mailed was "Fruit Vans" and they had responded to me while I was in hibernation. Several others had contacted me because of my wwoofing hot list post.
I followed it up and continued with my culture shock day... mellow, although I almost got run over because they drive on the left hand side here and I'm used to checking left first when crossing streets. I best get used to it as at Fruit Vans I would be driving. By the end of the day I had my next two weeks planned out for me, and, after a walk through downtown, I had readjusted to Europeanesque landscapes. Then the fireworks began... apparently New Zealand is still considered a colony of England and November 5th is Guy Fawkes Day. Guy Fawkes Day is a celebration to commemorate the failure of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 when Guy Fawkes was arrested while guarding explosives the plotters had placed beneath the House of Lords. So now people blow stuff up once a year to remember how something was NOT blown up... makes perfect sense!
In the morning I was up at the jet lag adjusted time of 7:30 am. Grabbed some food and tried to post a blog entry but the pictures wouldn't upload, so I bailed out of the hostel and headed for the train station a few blocks away to catch my ride out to Sunnyvale near the Auckland suburb of Henderson. Unfortunately for me, (I love trains), the tracks were having maintenance done over the weekend so buses were being substituted. Around 11 am I stepped off yet another bus and started the 1 km walk to the Fruit Vans farm.
Apparently I arrived on the right day! after some introductions to the first 5 or 6 people of the 25 I'd be living with for the next two weeks, we constructed a teepee sauna, lit the fire for our "hot tub", and prepped for spa night. People slowly trickled in as they returned from selling that day and the campfire grew until campfire shish kebobs showed up. After eating, the sauna rocks went into the fire while people had natural foodstuff facials.
Fruit Vans, the place I just landed in for two weeks, is an oasis of alternative living. Taryn and Marcelo, the owners, come from Australia and Brazil and they are following their permaculture dream. Fruit Vans is simply a step towards a self-sufficient eco-tourism/education community in Patagonia where much of what is tested out here in New Zealand will be applied. Working as middlemen selling fruit, Fruit Vans brings the New Zealand public the food commerce culture of South America to pay for land rental and to generate capital for the Patagonia venture. Wwoofers ensure a cosmopolitan climate as well as a self-sufficient labour force working as a close-knit commercial community resulting in comfortable "off-the-grid" living.
Leo, the Chilean permaculturist, care for the composts, soil generation, and he manages grounds projects. The land in this region of New Zealand is of high clay content, so soil building is a huge priority. There are four ways in which soil building is done here: hot composting, Bokashi composting, vermiculture, and soil reclamation from surrounding unused land. The high volume of food waste from up to 25 wwoofers at a time generates plenty of organic matter. Much of the food prepared here is simply made up of fruits and vegetables from stock that is unfit for sale. As summer gets into full swing, the many veggie beds will provide the majority of house/wwoofer food stuffs.
The work schedule at Fruit Vans generally runs as such: 1 day working on the farm or around the house, 3 days selling fruit, and then 3 days off. My first day was a farm day. I helped Leo turn some hot compost, build some soil with reclaimed dirt, horse manure, and hot compost, and then I got to dig a hole for the last stage of the Bokashi composting process. Bokashi composting uses an anaerobic inoculation to produce the compost. Once a starter culture is made, it can be used to extend the culture indefinitely, like yogurt culture. Since the popular introduction of effective microorganisms (EM), bokashi is commonly made with only molasses, water, EM, and wheat bran. In home composting applications, kitchen waste is placed into a container (often known as a bokashi bin or bokashi bucket) that can be sealed with an air-tight lid. These scraps are then inoculated with a bokashi EM mix. This usually takes the form of a carrier, such as rice hulls, wheat bran, or sawdust, that has been inoculated with composting micro-organisms. The EM are natural lactic acid bacteria, yeast, and phototrophic bacteria that act as a microbe community within the kitchen scraps, fermenting and accelerating breakdown of the organic matter. The user would place alternating layers of food scraps and Bokashi mix until the container is full. Liquid "compost tea" is drained once or twice a week and can be diluted 1:100 and added to plants as fertilizer, or poured directly down drains to help clean them. Once the container is full, it is left to ferment for one to two weeks in the container, and then buried under 6-8 inches of soil, in ground or in a non-reactive container. After another two weeks buried under soil, the food scraps should be broken down into rich humus.
Day 2 had me out training for fruit selling with Martin the Frenchman at one of the slowest spots Fruits Vans sells at. No matter, I brought a book, some sudoku, playing cards, and an MP3 player. Day 3 had me selling fruit on my own, and day 4 had me training a new wwoofer, Manon, a Belgian girl wwoofing with her boyfriend. Day 5 was my first day off and I was looking forward to exploring some New Zealand nature. Elfion, a Welsh wwoofer, and Jana, a German wwoofer, were renting a van from the farm to take a scenic drive through Waitekere Ranges Regional Park, so I joined them. We got a beautiful view of Auckland and the surrounding area before disappearing into the lush forests on our way to Piha beach. Before exploring the beach we stopped for a picnic at the head of the Kitekite waterfall trail and then checked out the falls... freezing!!
Piha beach is a sight to behold with its dramatic stone outcroppings, water-eroded bays, and emerald green ocean. We climbed one of the stone outcrops to get a panoramic view and have a snack. Piha beach is credited as the spot where New Zealand surf culture began. In 1958 two American lifeguards visiting Piha, Rick Stoner and Bing Copeland, brought their fibreglass surfboards to ride there. Lightweight longboards of this type had never before been seen in this country, and they were enthusiastically taken up by local surf lifesavers.
After a stroll we piled back into the van and headed a little ways south to Karekare beach. This beach extends for several kilometres with beautiful cliffs overlooking scrub covered dunes and vast plains of beach where the endless Pacific stretches to the Indian Ocean, then to the Atlantic, and finally to South America where it meets itself again. We hiked until the sun set, then, mapless, found our way through the dark winding roads of the Waitekare Ranges back to Henderson and haven of Fruit Vans.
I spent the next couple of days relaxing on the farm and getting to know the other wwoofers better and taking care of some errands and getting ready for my next run of four days working. By this time the owners had figured out I was more useful to them on the farm, sp my fruit selling days were over and my fix-it-up days began. Handymanning on the Fruit Vans farm is much like handymanning at Oak and Orca... get done what needs doing with what's available.
Day 1 was constructing stairs out of pallets, driving the forklift around, and preparing a pumpkin patch for planting. Day 2 had me giving the greenhouse a facelift and puttering around the house... that evening I ran a "workshop" on how to fix different types of drips in 3 kinds of taps or faucets. Day 3 was Leo's day off, so I was nominated to be "Leo for a day". My crew and I managed to transplant tomatoes, lettuce, pumpkins, and basil. we prepared a few beds for planting on the next day, and climbed on to the roof of the house to clean the gutters in preparation for installing a rainwater reclamation system. That night was Salsa dance night, so a bunch of us piled into a couple of fruit vans and headed into town. Unfortunately, we had forgotten that in New Zealand foreigners need passports to get into adult venues, so we ended up at a patio lounge exchanging stories. Day 4 we finished the greenhouse and planted a bunch of veggies before preparing yet more beds for further planting over the next few days.
With my departure day coming close Taryn invited me to stay on with Fruit Vans as long as I might have wanted... she even offered me a five month position to help develop a bio-diesel program on the property (many of the Fruit Vans vans run on diesel)... maybe in a couple years I'll take them up on it. In the interim she was quite excited about the possibility of getting some permaculture student exchanges happening, who knows what is possible!?
Tomorrow I get a lift in the morning with one of the Fruit Vans which sells at a spot on the south end of Auckland. From there I plan to hitch-hike my way south towards Wellington using the awesome signs I made yesterday. I also bought a tent so I can camp along the way in some of the volcanic regions covering the middle of the north island... should be an awesome adventure!
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