WW137 Eve 21 September 2009

Eve (wwoofer number 137) is our second wwoofer for our 5th wwoofer hosting year and shared some of her time with Shani. And surprise, she is from New Zealand. I mistakenly assumed she was from the States, until I found out after three days she was from NZ. Our 5th only wwoofer from New Zealand. Eve fitted in just like a big sister- we just had so much fun- can't really remember what Eve did but we had a good time. Eve drew the first entry in our new scrapbook and made a great job of it drawing the family, 1sheep, 2 goats and Jess the dog all in silhouette. ( and Eve-if you read this please send us a photo- we had lost our camera while you were here.)

WWOOFING 2008/09

Our 4th woofing year started with wwoofer number 80, Kristen on the 5 September 2008.

Pauline was our last wwoofer (WW136) for the 2008/2009 summer season concluding on 28 August 2009.

We had wwoofers this season from the U.S., Hungary, Japan, U.K., Germany, Canada, France, Malaysia, Israel and Mexico.

All in all we had 56 wwoofers stay in 2008/2009. We are grateful for everybody's assistance and certainly enjoy the multinational multilingual exposure to a variety of people. Thanks for coming to see us.

Jordan & Joya 12-21/8/2009

We loved having Jordan and JOya, two sisters from California. At nights they played Chinese checkers & solitaire, read magic pony books to the girls AND finished a 1000 piece puzzle we had started which was really challenging.

They helped dig a trech for the fence to fence off the greywater system and then we covered all that ground under the pear tree with carpet. Wal took them to help out with some volunteer work at Bushtown and they completed the shade house. They dug the turnip bed, helped Rusty lay some edging down the drive and put up an electric fence in the paddock.

Nicolas & Pauline 24-28/8/2009

Nicolas and Pauline did some more firewood, weeding, helped Wal construct the pumpkin patch, planted seeds, transplanted a couple of trees, tidied up the garage and made French crepes.

Nicole & Christopher 5-7/8/2009

Nicole and Christopher helped to put a collar on the goats- catching them probably took awhile. They also helped to cut some wood. We have had some free firewood lately so we are nearly a couple of years ahead, which means our wood will be nice and dry and burn cleanly.

Natsumi 20/7-5/8/2009

Natsumi helped with a variety of jobs from weeding, shoveling, planting onion seeds, carrying firewood and housework.

Dave & Nieves 26-30/6/2009

Dave and Nieves have both been all over the place so we enjoyed the stories of their travels. Of course, they helped with the vegetable plot, fencing, cleaning the old house and pushing the car in the muddy paddock.

Liz & Emily 24/5-3/6/2009

Liz and Emily were here for part of the time Shauna was and helped to do the Earthwood mosaic filling in a gap in the floor between the hall and the kitchen. Wal and Shannah had been stubbing their toes for the best part of a year so it was a great project to finish. On the arty craft side of things they helped make Rusty's pukeko costume for the Waimate Wearable Arts and Liz ended up being the model as Rusty was really sick. The costume won a special prize for the amount of work which had gone into it.

Liz and Emily dug fenceposts, turned the compost and helped with the kitchen cupboards. Not exactly sure what Emily did with the knife??????

Shauna 19/5-3/6 & 1-22/7/2009

We really enjoyed Shauna's time with us and invited her back to look after the house and the dog and the sheep and the goats etc..

During Shauna's first visit she helped with concreting and digging and construction of garden beds and did the Earthwood mosaic with Liz and Emily. She helped sow some seeds, weeding and put the kitchen doors back up in the old house.

On her second visit while we were away it was too wet and too cold to do anything much at all except keep the house warm, but Shauna cut a huge stack of kindling wood, which has made the firelighting easier for a few months!

Shauna was here for Ami's birthday and a potluck tea, and taught us how to knit flowers.

Katrin 3-5/5/2009

Katrin helped out at the old house with some sanding and painting of cupboard doors.

Katie 28 April-2 May 2009

A very short visit by Katie as she found herself a job and had to start immediately.

Lauritz

Lauritz helped out with some weeding, cutting firewood, and enjoyed the atmosphere of the house. He also ran around entertaining the dog, Jess!

Family time April 2009

We had the delight to host our second family, this time a family of 5 from Israel. Elad and Anat with children Oria, Maayan and Michael.

Oria was very close to Shannah's age and they got on quite well. Although the children didn't speak a lot English they could understand a bit and Rusty learnt a bit of Hebrew.

Elad and Anat helped plant some trees, more concrete around the raised beds-to-be, laying out some carpet and lots of picking up gorse as we just had about 100 metres of gorse ripped out with a digger. They put a new mud layer on the pizza oven-adding a door, and added some soil and planted the back garden.

Naoko 10 March-5 April & 23 June-4 July 2009

Naoko wrote "Painting the kitchen wall (nice!), making peach jam (bloody awesome!!) and gardening (great!). Naoko worked on the new garden on the east side of the house to fill in a corner between the house and the drive. We have put grasses around the edge and a low spreading plant in the middle. Unfortunately, the rabbits have found that one a bit tasty.

Good to see Naoko picked up a bit of Kiwi lingo! We really enjoyed having Naoko here and, in fact, we got tho enjoy her company for a second visit. Naoko scored an "R" for being a
"R"-eturnee wwoofer.

On Nao's second visit she did some planting, finished the garden, which is called Nao's corner, vacuumed the carpet and did some cleaning in the old house.

Markus WW116 26-31/3/2009

Markus helped to lay some bricks and do some concreting- the edges around the grave plots!! Wal had macrocarpa sleepers cut to sit on the concrete berms to make the raised gardens.

Zach & Melissa WW114/115 24-27/3/2009

Zach and Melissa are friends with Matt and Carrie, (woofers 9 & 10)-it was great they could squeeze in a visit to us. They helped us make a start on our vegetable garden. The first step was to dig some rectangular patches out of the turf. It looked like we were going to start a cemetary!

Melissa was heading straight back to Matt and Carrie's wedding when she left so we prevailed on her to take the wedding present...Thanks Melissa.

Steffen WW113 12-21/3/09

Steffen's visit overlapped with Rebecca's so he picked apples and peaches for jam, helped to paint the old kitchen and make new cupboards and the kitchen bench.

Steffan and Nao came with the girls and I to the Waihao Box for a picnic. It was bitterly cold so it was a short one!

Rebecca WW112 5-14/2/09

Rebecca was here for most of the same time as Jocelyn and Annie, so she did lots of peelig, chopping, boiling and bottling of pears as well as making tomato chutney. We needed to redo the kitchen in the old house so Rebecca helped Wal gut the old kitchen, washed the windows and fixed some of the willow baskets.

Jocelyn & Annie WW109/110 3-8/2/09

Jocelyn and Annie helped out with the preserving. Our beautiful 6 metre pear tree was loaded so they picked, peeled and preserved pears. They also cleaned down the old house, took the tomatoes out of the garden, turned the compost and put down Astro-Turf for weed control.

Derren WW108 22-28/2/09

We had a bit of rain come in the roof with the wind blowing from an unusual direction. Derren helped to fix the roof, did some concreting work, bottled apples and cleaned the wwoofer accommodation.

Soo WW107 8-16/2/09

Soo was our first wwoofer from Malaysia. He helped with weeding and fencing and picked plums to make jam. Soo is pictured making the calendar envelopes with Stefanie and Jessica.

Stefanie & Jessica WW105/106 4-11/2/09

Stephanie and Jessica kindly housesat for us looking after Jess, the dog, etc while we went away for Waitangi weekend. They did some weeding and housework to help out, too.

We enjoyed making some envelopes out of calendars with Ami and Shannah and got a couple of crazy puzzles done.

Alyssa & Stephen WW103/104 2-5/ 1/09

Alyssa and Stephen helped do some fencing and built a cabinet. This cabinat is extra space for preserves and jams.

Simon & Viktor & Niels WW100/101/102 30/1-2/2/09

Simon ,Viktor and Niels were here for the same period as Mike.

Simon and Viktor helped Wal fence the front paddock and to the west of the house. They tidied the last of the wood in the back paddock from when the house was built, cutting and stacking it and putting the last pieces into a bonfire stack.

Niels helped Rusty clear some brush away from the neighbour's fence, tidied the tyres, grubbed out some dock from the paddocks and helped Rusty make a carpool hut at the road end of the drive. Mind you, I don't get to use it very often as I am always running late and the car is usually there already!

Mike WW99 30/1-2/2/09

We need to protect the prchard trees from the sheep so Mike helped to build some protectors for around the trees and moved the watering trough.

Martina WW98 27-28/1/09

Unfortunately, Martina could only stay a day, but she helped pick apricots and apples and cleared a space for the worm farm. Wal has made a dedicated worm farm to receive the compost from the toilet.

Jessica WW97 23-26/1/09

In the notebook Jessica didn't list what she did but wrote 'Thank you for sharing your knowledge and fresh bread"...so I guess she ate lots of bread while she was here!

David WW96 6-9/1/09

David came to join up with his friends David and Stefan. He was cycling so he came a bit later than them. He left in such a hurry he left a nice New Zealand cap behind, which Haldor inherited gratefully.

Haldor and Catherine WW93/94 5-15/1/09

Haldor and Catherine stayed 10 days and quickly became part of the family. Both had a lovely sense of humour and we enjpyed their stay. Haldor was instrumental in helping to set up the solar power as he was an electrician and he helped wire in the battery bank. Solar power at last! Since then we have added two more batteries for a little extra storage capacity.

Catherine did lots of painting, painting, painting....gardenig and weeding. She also played lots with Ami and Shannah and fell in love with the sheep! Catherine is pictured with her 2008 edition of the essential Kiwi souvenir, an Edmonds cookbook, and Rusty has her 1951 version
!
This was their first WWOOF in New Zealand, but they had wwoofed in South America which was really interesting to hear about.

David and Stefan WW92/93 2-9/1/09

David and Stefan helped clean the windows, did some digging, fencing and concreting. The most fun was building a hut for Shannah under the pear tree and making a tree hut for Ami.

They borrowed Wal's fishing rod and went down to the river mouth with a bit of luck on one night. The next night they got rather tangled in the bushes.

Ken for Christmas WW91 21-29/1/09

Ken stayed for a week over Christmas 2008. We had a quiet time with my parents also visiting for a couple of days. Ken wrote he learned about how to be more patient and about commitment to family. Ken helped us screen lots of soil for the garden and did a bit of weeding around trees to help them grow. We were really impressed with Ken's effort to cycle around New Zealand ! On Boxing Day we went to the Waimate Rodeo and enjoyed the show.