WWOOFin.

This is a little overdue, but I'd be remiss if I didn't include the tale of one of the most bizarre weeks we've had on this trip. At my insistence, Ed and I spent a week “working” on an organic farm 30 minutes from Dunedin on the south island of NZ.

The week we spent with our hosts, a couple in their 60's (we'll call them Ann and James) who moved from the city 20 years back to take up a back-to-nature lifestyle was 50% strange, 20% awkward, 10% fun, and 10% other. We spent an exhaustive amount of time on the Worldwide Organization of Organic Farming's website, trying to identify folks that didn't look crazy and accommodation with them that didn't look ranky janky. We did our best to vet them, but she was an absolute nutter and the cottage we stayed in was filthy, vermin infested and unheated. 

On the shelf in the "kitchen" area of the cottage.  I'm guessing expired. 

We worked about 4 hours a day in exchange for our narsty room and, actually, quite delicious board. The lady of the house fancies herself a gourmand. She's a good cook and seems to enjoy having an excuse to overeat which her WWOOFers happily provide. Our days consisted of weeding, feeding the animals, clearing brush, and prepping for the weekly farmers market. Oh, and listening to James talk about what he was going to do and then taking naps in a rocker. 

I actually quite enjoyed the work. Weeding for hours on end was hypnotic I just had one fundamental problem with the arrangement that took me a few days hurdle. The farm is horribly mismanaged and a sickening money loser. Ann has “diversified” potential earnings and now the farm raises pigs, sheep & chickens, breeds Jack Russell Terriers, grows lettuces, fruit, saffron, edible flowers & nut trees, has 25 planted acres for logging, makes beer, cultivates honey, etc., etc., etc....... As you may have guessed, none of these ventures is profitable and continually investing in Ann's new ideas has forced her to keep working past retirement age and James to talk about working and also to take out a reverse mortgage on their home.

James is a certified builder. He and Ann both talk about the home they've lived in for 20 years as if they moved in last month. Out of 15 generously sized rooms only 4 or 5 are inhabitable. The rest are collapsing, unfinished (no insulation), have holes in the floors or walls, or are stacked with junk. The gorgeous, 100 year old home and cottage have fallen into ruinous squalor in the hands of these two. There are rats in the walls, animal feces on the rugs, and a cluster fly infestation in the bedrooms.  She's a candidate for hoarders without a doubt.  If it were our house we'd burn it down and take the insurance money.

Perhaps I would be less critical if Ann wasn't also a giant bitch. At first, I thought they were just wacky hippy anti-establishment farmers. That was until night number two, when I got into a dinner-long argument with the lady of the house. She began to lecture us on the massive conspiracy behind Western medicine – how Dr.'s push people toward unnecessary, risky surgery because it “makes them feel clever,” that the entire medical profession is already aware of what causes cancer but doesn't want to out the truth because it would diminish profits for the industry (plastic is the cause, in case you didn't know), and that even in life-threatening situations emergency room staff should consider holistic medicine before prescribing drugs. I held my tongue for about 15 minutes before I couldn't resist the bait any longer and then the joust began. 

Lest I paint too grim a picture there were some good moments. James is a lovely, if lazy Scottsman who's company we really enjoyed. When he could get a word in or wasn't being berated by Ann for his very existence he entertained us, ran interference, and taught us dirty Scottish folk songs. He played the accordion, was handy with a chainsaw and seemed genuinely saddened when we left.

The other best part was the puppy from the most recent litter that they were looking after while the new owner was on holiday.  Toby followed us from garden to garden, played in our cottage, and could be found in my arms anytime I wasn't holding a shovel or a hoe. Only 9 weeks old, he still had that puppy head smell of melting rubber and was happy exploring the world with his puppy teeth or sleeping on my lap. 

Oh, Toby.

We also really loved our day at the farmer's market which we spent half of wandering the other stalls and sampling the merch. We bought an outstanding pinot noir from the Otago Valley that we cracked open in our cottage that afternoon and Ed became expert at lighting roaring fires from wet lumber in our freezing cottage.

Given my urge all week to put together a proper business plan for the couple, and Ed's wont to get their business online and budgeted properly I'm not sure we're cut out to be farmers. But we did learn that we can sell the crap out of anything that grows if you put us behind a farmer's market table. We also confirmed our love of puppies. Oh, and that large pigs are really quite scary. 

 So. Effing. Big.