Flashback: WWOOFing in Blenheim

Sooo.... I've neglected my blog lately. What else is new? Now that I've had time to catch my breath (more on that later), I've decided to dedicate some time to catching up. There's a lot to catch up on, I know...

Let's flash back to Blenheim. Besides the Daily Pupdate and our stint with NASA (you're welcome for that), how much have I really told you about our WWOOFing experience? Surprisingly little, given the fact that it was about so much more than puppies... Good thing Mariah kept up-to-date.

Working on this farm let us see so many things in action. We helped on their vineyard, helped with the sheep herding, helped feed the animals (including puppies, cattle, and pigs), and we nervously removed eggs from some hens that looked ready to peck our hands at any moment.

Mariah working up the courage to get the eggs from underneath a hen.

I helpfully took pictures as she struggled.

They spotted us and high-tailed it to our car.

Just stopping by to say "hay."

Me, Greg, and the friendly bull.

Because this farm is so huge and well-established, they often have tour groups come through to see sheep shearing and learn some other real life information about farming in New Zealand. Mariah and I were able to help out with one of these tour groups, which was comprised of mostly UK and US citizens. They were extremely enthusiastic about the experience. Mariah and I coolly pretended like we were used to the farm life by now, and answered any of their questions with our one week's worth of expertise.

The cool thing about the tour groups is that it's another way that Greg is dedicated to spreading his sustainable farming ideas around the world, without actually traveling around the world himself. These people had, like me, surely never seen a farm like this before. Because Greg had their attention and was able to explain some things, educating groups from around the world helps get the message out to basically everywhere. He's really doing what he can to better the world.


The best thing was that Greg, Ron, and Helen were continuously teaching us about everything--New Zealand history and ANZAC Day, sustainability at the farm, climate change and how it affects farms, and the daily chores that every farmer has to deal with. I learned that managing a farm like this is not a full-time job--it's a 24/7 job.

But out of everything, our work with sheep stands out the most to me. Maybe it's my Minnesotan background (no sheep to be found on our farms at home), making sheep behavior a totally unique thing to me. We learned about the different attributes that make some sheep healthier or more valuable than others; we learned how to combine two sheep with differing characteristics to produce a lamb that is balanced; we learned that these surprisingly large animals aren't going to break, and a certain amount of force is necessary when handling them (a tricky lesson for a city kid whose main experience with animals was her collection of tiny pet rodents).

These sheep had been sorted by drawing green chalk on their noses. The green-nosed ewes go with the green-nosed ram, so Greg is able to sort them according to which genetic traits he wants combined.

Mariah helping to keep some of the rams under control as Greg assesses them.

Along with any work we did with the sheep came the herding dogs. There were easily nine or ten different of them that Greg had bred and trained for herding the sheep. He communicated with them via whistles, telling them to come towards him, speed up, return home, or stand down. Having thousands of acres to run on, they were in amazing physical shape. I've never seen happier dogs.

Hercules and Spot taking a rest in the back of the truck.

Hercules welcoming me back to the house.

"A bit of a walk"

We got a real sense of how huge the farm was one day when Greg decided to bring us for a "bit of a walk" while he was running after some sheep. Mariah, Stephanie, and I were basically dropped off on the side of a massive hill and given some basic directions for where to meet Greg later. After going through those directions quickly, Greg raced off after his dogs and was gone. 
Imagine you doing an amazing hike in the mountains. Now imagine there was no path at all, nor any signs direction you to go, nor a map for you to use. This is basically what our "bit of a walk" entailed.

We looked at each other, shrugged, and decided to choose one direction and go there. Our feet slipped sideways as we traversed a foliage-filled hillside. All of us took a couple falls as we went. Mariah re-injured her sprained ankle. We took turns leading the way, since Greg's directions didn't exactly tell us how to get around the massive, thorn-covered bushes that were so overgrown that only some short-legged sheep could get through it unharmed. 

At some point, after probably 45 minutes of struggling, we decided we would need to go through one of these sheep runs to get around the menacing bush of thorns. We got on our hands and knees and crawled through the tunnel formed by dozens of sheep speeding through it. We came out on the other side covered in scratches, but continued on in our attempt to find Greg somewhere at the bottom.

It took us about two hours to finally find Greg. He was sunbathing when we got there. Apparently he had expected us to arrive far sooner - I decided not to comment on this. To be fair, the hike itself was absolutely amazing and the views were unmatched. Although we were riding the struggle bus, it was indeed a ton of fun.

 Mariah and Stephanie, keeping a smile on their faces despite Mariah's sprained ankle and the fact that we were totally lost. It's not a bad place to get lost in, that's for sure.

Easter & Blenheim

We stayed with Ron and Helen for Easter. The Easter Bunny even made it all the way to Blenheim and put chocolate bunnies at our places at the table! Mariah and I were irrationally excited about this. It was a lot easier to be away from home over Easter when we had a nice family to stay with, who we felt totally at home with.

Over the Easter weekend Ron and Helen took us around to explore and learn more about the area. We visited a historical part of town and saw Blenheim itself, which is a charming town of about 30,000. I would happily return there sometime soon.

Painters from Space

I think Ron and Helen got to know the "real" Mariah and Hannah when we were assigned the job of staining the fence. Helen told us to use a couple of the suits she had left out so we wouldn't stain our clothes. She then went out into town for a few hours and left us to our own devices. We went out the the garage to get started on the fence. We put on the suits. And then we looked at each other and cracked up for the following twenty minutes.

These suits are more hilarious than you can ever imagine. They're basically all white, unflattering, hooded space suits that are supposed to be used for painting stuff. The picture on the package doesn't do them justice. We managed to stop LOLing just long enough to snap some photos, which of course inspired that infamous NASA post of mine. We got the paint job done while listening to cheesy audio books and enthusiastically singing along to Disney music. We later made the whole family chuckle by showing them the photos, barely able to contain our own giggles. It had been a while since I've laughed so much.

Floating awaaaay!

Nostril city.

To put it simply, everything about this experience was amazing. We learned tons, we worked hard, we giggled a lot, and we were very, very sad to leave. But the time had come - Mariah had less than two months to go until she abandoned me to return home, so we had to make sure we saw as much of the North Island as possible before that time. And before we could do that, we had to start earning some serious money again. Our destination? Wellington.

To be continued...