Beginning of February 2016
After hugging Maiwenn goodbye in Taupo, I hopped on the bus to Napier. In 1931, a devastating earthquake hit Hawke's Bay killing 256 people and levelling both Napier and Hastings (neighbouring cities). Because of the popularity of art deco architecture in the 1930s, Napier's downtown was rebuilt using this style. Currently the city houses one of the finest examples of art deco architecture in the world. There is even an art deco festival thrown every year where everyone (both adults and children) dress the part and ride vintage cars around.
I really enjoyed walking around the downtown area admiring the architecture and visiting cafes. I made a beeline for the gardens at Marine Parade, a large park and walkway along the coast.
The next morning I was picked up by Chris who works at Hohepa and taken back to the farm - Hohepa Homes, my third WWOOF farm and my last one scheduled on the North Island. Hohepa is a disability service provider for special needs children and adults with mental disabilities. They have sites all over the North and South Islands. The site I was working at was the Poraiti farm where there was a farm adults could work at, as well as a school and housing for special needs children. The Clive facility (quite close to Napier as well) includes a creamery and workshops which provide more jobs for adults, as well as another farm (mainly farming brassicas and a few other outdoor crops) run by Hohepa staff.
The Poraiti farm has three main parts - the fields, greenhouses, and the livestock - which are run by three UKers turned New Zealanders, Jenny, Andy, and Chris. Jenny manages the fields which included terrace farming of zuchinni, leeks, celery, asparagus, silverbeet, kumara, parsley, and lettuces. Andy manages the greenhouses which included basil, aubergine (eggplant), cucumbers, tomatoes, and capsicum (bell peppers). Chris manages the calves as well as some of the "young adult" cows. All the dairy cows live at the Clive facility because of the creamery, but the other cows, the ones that are too young to be dairy cows or are male, are kept at Poraiti until their fate is chosen. Some of them are sold off for meat, others become dairy cows and have their own calves.
Every morning the WWOOFers, farmers, and handicapped adults would meet up at the workshop and chat until it was time to start. We would discuss any major events going on in the world (I couldn't seem to stop bringing up the US primary elections) or locally. Then the farmers would bring up what tasks needed to be accomplished that day and who would help whom.
Many of the adults I worked with were excellent farmers and had been there for quite a long time. A few of them had been there their whole lives, having gone through the Hohepa school, graduated, and then lived nearby to transition into farming.
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| Tess and I taking some selfies |
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| Tim keepin' it real and Pablo (who normally works at the Clive location) |
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| Jenny wrangling Matthew and Robert, her biggest fans! |
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| Robert's grin is infectious while Matthew tunes us out |
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| Millie, Andy's dog, takes a nap in the back of the pick-up while we pick veggies |
Rudolf Steiner was quite an interesting guy, he died almost a century ago, but his message has resonated and is spreading across the organic farm community (and the educational world). Steiner was an Austrian philosopher, author, social reformer, architect, and esotericist. In 1924, the year before he died, he was asked to come in and present an array of lectures to German farmers that were having difficulty with their crops and land (due to the use of chemical fertilizers). These lectures became the basis for biodynamics.
Biodynamics does not equal organic farming - it is a specialized subset of organic farming. There is an entirely separate certification involved with growing biodynamic, regulated through Demeter International. Biodynamics utilizes an astrological sowing and planting calendar (particularly sensitive to the sun and moon). It also uses a series of preparations.
I have taken an excerpt from the NZ Biodynamic Association's website to explain the preparations... The biodynamic preparations act to improve the quality of soil and plant life. Three of the preps are applied as sprays and each has a different job. They stimulate activity of earthworms and other soil life in order to support and enhance plant vitality and structure, thus protecting from fungal and insect attack. The remaining six preps assist the composting process by stimulating fermentation, rotting, and breakdown. Prep ingredients include manure, quartz crystals, and common herbs such as dandelion, chamomile and yarrow. Most of these ingredients are fermented inside certain body parts of specific animals (cow, sheep, and deer). The chemical and microbial processes resulting from this interaction demonstrate the potency of the preps.
In other words, you walk by a strange looking bulb hanging from a tree and find out it's a stag's bladder filled with chamomile. These preparations are prepared using a vortex/stirring procedure akin to homeopathy.
Some people look at biodynamics as hocus pocus, pseudoscience, tom foolery, ballyhoo, alchemy, dark arts, or all sorts of other hullabaloo. I have talked with many farmer's that have used biodynamics and most of them look at it as a way to organically farm, they don't buy into the more mystical applications that invoke archangels and ruling planets. Others, do take it more seriously and do very much follow biodynamics like a religion. Ultimately I think the whole thing is fantastic and I loved learning about it every step of the way. I mean most people don't think Sasquatch is real and all of us intelligent people know he/she is... so, point made.
As for Hohepa, they do prepare the preparations and use the foliar sprays, but I didn't see any of it first hand. All information I received about biodyanmics came from my constant questioning. In the morning we would meet and discuss what the lunar planting calendar looked like and try to decide during the week when the best time to harvest or plant or sow was. The group would elect someone to read a Rudolf Steiner thought of the day which seemed to be a daily ritual everyone enjoyed.
My day to day jobs on the farm really depended on which farmer I was working with. If I worked with Chris, we would jump in the trailer and head out to the cows to feed them hay, move the electric fences to mark out a week's worth of pasture, dose them for worms (with apple cider vinegar and wormwood), or herd them into different paddocks.
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| Calves eating willow branches |
If I worked with Andy we would harvest veggies in the greenhouse, trim excess leads off the cucumber and tomato plants, or wrap the growing vines up the strings that held them up (helping to guide the new shoots in the right direction). Those greenhouses were HOT as Hades inside.
And if I was with Jenny (which I was most of the time), we would weed or harvest. Weeding is important on every farm, but especially organic farms. Harvesting the zucchini became a common task for me, and I really enjoyed it. Usually Matthew, Tim, or Robert would hold the bucket for me and I'd go down the row finding probably 100 zucchini or so per week to sell at the store in Clive. Kiwis for some reason don't like big zucchinis, so if it was longer than eight inches or so we'd take it home or feed it to the cows.
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| Leeks |
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| Parsley |
WWOOFers live in a hut on the farm property. It was really nice, we each had our own room and unlimited wifi which is hard to come by in New Zealand. We were allowed to pick as many fresh veggies from the vegetable shop as we wanted throughout the week as well as order any cheese from the creamery to be delivered once a week. I kind of went a little crazy for the cheese, I mean if someone tells you you can try all the cheeses... you try all of the cheeses. Fenugreek, lemon quark, ricotta, mozzarella, halumi, etc... For everything else we would hand Jenny a list once a week and she'd try her best to get the rest of the items. We were responsible for cooking our own meals and keeping the WWOOF cottage tidy.
I had a lot of time to myself at this farm. There was another WWOOFer, Hanna from Germany, who was doing a six month internship with Andy. Jinger (Australia) and Miry (Germany) were there for a few days during the beginning of my WWOOF stay, but left after that. So we had the whole WWOOFer cottage to ourselves. The volunteers were different than the WWOOFers. They didn't help at all with the farm, instead they helped the house staff prepare the children for school and then brought them back from school in the afternoon (nice walk through the farm). Most of the volunteers were German students in their gap year.
Waitangi Day is a yearly public holiday in New Zealand commemorating the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi between the European settlers and Maori people. The Treaty of Waitangi is quite controversial (not unlike Thanksgiving in America) for some New Zealanders. Many people believe that due to language manipulation Maori people were conned out of their land by the Europeans. But in this day and age, most people just appreciate having the day off work.
The WWOOFers work five days a week, getting Friday afternoon off as well as both Saturday and Sunday. There were bikes to ride into town but I enjoyed the peace and quiet of the farm on my weekends and prepared for my trip to the South Island.
My tooth had started to ache and I knew in the back of my mind that a root canal was nigh. I started to research dentists in the area and realized I couldn't very well see a dentist one day and get everything fixed, so I started popping the ibuprofen and set up a dentist in Blenheim, my first stop on the South Island. Because of this, I had to cancel my plans to walk the Abel Tasman Great Walk with Thea and her friend Sonia. I was really bummed but I knew that I'd be miserable the whole time on the hike if I didn't get my tooth fixed first.
So I said goodbye to Hohepa and my new friends and took the bus south to Wellington...
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