Earthwood

Sunday, September 27, 2009

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.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

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!