Beardless

Cat and Mel, I am mainly writing this for you.  After bugging me all program about shaving my beard, I have finally done it now that you guys are gone.  See, pestering does not make me want to do it :).  And I told you that when this happened I'd show you a picture:

By the way, I kept in the braids for about 5 days and then the hair bands started falling out on their own. (You should pester Nico to redo them, I hear pestering works better on her).  For everyone else... I'm going to a hot climate, no need to wear my fuzzy chinstrap anymore!

In other news... I'm leaving here tomorrow, and we never did quite finish a cabin.  Got pretty close on both though, as they are all closed in, roofed, have windows and doors and even have the floors varnished.  They still need wiring, flashing, insulation and the interior lining.  Anyway, here are a few more pictures of the cabins.

              

        

In only 2 more days I will be in Sydney and I'm getting really excited about being on the move and seeing loads of new things again.  I am really gonna miss the dogs though.

Last week in NZ

Today might very well be the last day that I just get to chill and relax for quite a while.  On Friday, Jon, Bexie, Cat and Mel left for their road trip to Northland.  Due to "logistical complications" this left Nico and me back at the house for a few days on our own.  This is actually working out quite well for us to get all our shit together, learn some Indonesian language and forge any necessary return documents for our future travels.

There's all of us together on the last night that the girls were here.  Also it seemed it was time for a new hairdo, and Mel braided my hair.  I kinda like it.

I keep talking about making some cabins, but I dont think i've put in any pictures yet.  Here on the right is the first cabin with all the walls up and rafters on.  Below is another picture from when I was putting on the roof.  Here, the construction is so simple.  This is a testament to that, since I've never built anything like it, yet with a bit of Jon's help I wrote up the plans and did all the framing on my own.  For a foundation all we've got are 3 4"x4" bearers that I levelled with bricks.  Then the floor joysts sit right on those bearers.  The walls as you can see are all 2x4.  The roof that goes on top is just some chicken wire to hold up the roofing paper (acts as a vapor barrier) and then there is roofing iron that gets nailed in on top of that.  Right now the walls are nogged and some plywood has gone on a couple of the walls.  The second cabin has all the walls up and rafters on as well, but no roof yet.  It was crazy to see all that happen in just one day.  With 6 people working on it and the walls already built, it really goes up fast.  In this last week, I think that we'll continue to work on getting these cabins finished up.  I doubt they'll be totally done by the time I go, but it would be nice to have at least one totally closed in.

Big Plans

Big news!  Some onward plans have been made from New Zealand and on the morning of July 5th I will be heading to Sydney.  One night in Sydney and the following afternoon onto Darwin (on the north shore in the middle of Oz).  Then on July 11th I fly to Singapore, and on the 14th of July it is on to Jakarta, Indonesia.  Indonesia will be the next place that I plan on staying a month or so.  This should be a cool adventure as I know very little about Indonesia, but have heard some good stuff.  You can get a good Pacific Island experience and see the culture without heaps of tourists.

So the reason all this is happening now, is that on Sunday, the winter program here at earthwise ends.  From there Nico and I had 3 choices.  If we come back to help out Jon for the spring program, we could use the van and work on organic farms or get a job for the next 10 weeks until the beginning of the program.  Option 2 is to not come back to Earthwise and wander about NZ trying to find work, but with no vehicle or home base.  We finally decided on option 3: leave the country all together.  It would have been pretty expensive to stay in NZ and wander and we decided that it was just time to move on.  This is closer to the original plan of spending 4-6 months in NZ.  In the past week we've decided on all three options and then changed our minds.  But now we have flights purchased and it gonna happen!  I am getting really excited to experience another culture and see some totally new stuff.

On a different note, we finally got the needed supplies to move on with the cabins.  In about a day and a half of everyone going hard, we've got all the walls up and a roof on one of the cabins already.  Most of the work figuring everything out and making the walls and bases I had already done myself.  Now it is cool to work with other people and see it really come up.  I'll post again on this soon and add some picts and stuff.

Peace.

Road trip

Last wednesday to saturday we headed out from the valley for a bit of recreation.  First thing was a day of rock climbing at Whakapapa South.  It felt so good to get back on rock and climb!  There were loads of small climbing areas and since it is winter here, we had the entire place to ourselves.  And winter here is like a cool spring day back in NY, so really not cold at all.  All the routes there are bolted which is awesome for me as I was the only one comfortable enough to lead and I got to set up all the ropes.  Nico, Jon and I all have some experience, but Cat, Mel and Bexie are all new to climbing.  We started out on a couple easy climbs and taught belaying and got everyone on the rock.

Me leading and setting up Ninja, while Cat climbs Teenage Mutant

Then I set up a slightly harder one for Nico and Jon and myself.  After lunch we headed over to a different part of rock and I got to lead a beautiful route called "terror incognita".  It was actually quite difficult as it was about 80 feet and sustained difficult the whole way through.  It was good that I got to do something that really got the adrenaline pumping.  That's me going through the crux of it on the left.

Then another thing that this trip was about was going to Field Days.  This is a huge agricultural expo sort of thing.  It is a huge fairgrounds and there are all sorts of stands set up trying to sell you agricultural stuff, everything from wood mills to tractors to hats and food.  I spent a lot of time finding the free samples of food and whiskey, and just wandering around.  They also have this "Good Keen Bachelor" contest where a bunch of dudes compete in things like making breakfast, chainsawing, and the part that I saw - herding mama and baby llamas into pens. The best part though by far was a show by this dog trainer and seeing all the cool stuff she made the dogs do, like hopping on their hind legs in circles around her and then jumping up and off her back.

Then the last day we spent a bit of time in Rotorua and went to a Kiwi house.  There are so many conservation efforts for the kiwi, cause they are cute and dying off and important to the ecosystem and of course, they are Kiwis!  So this place will get kiwi eggs from all over the place and raise the chicks until they are big enough to fend for themselves.  In the wild only about 1% of kiwi eggs make it to older than 1 year.  There are so many mammalian predators that are not supposed to be here that they all go after baby kiwis.  It is now almost impossible to see a kiwi in the wild unless you are on a special island reserve.  So anyway, this place is trying to help prevent the kiwi disappear to extinction.  Unfortunately I have no live pictures of them cause they dont let cameras in, but here's a stuffed one from the lobby:

Trees and Cabins

Yup that's pretty much what's been going on here.  Over 2/3 of the 1200 trees have been planted and the cabins are going a little slower but the bases and walls have been built for both cabins - all by my lonesome too.

Oh, I have been learning more about household appliances though as yesterday the washing machine stopped working.  I managed to take it apart to find the exact little fuse on the motherboard that blew.  Now we'll see how good my soldering is if we can find a replacement part.  Its kinda fun getting to take this stuff apart knowing that it is junk unless i can fix it, so I cant make it any worse!

Now we are off on a 4 day trip to go rock climbing! and to Field Days and Rotorua.  Field Days is this huge yearly agricultural festival that goes on here. It should be interesting, especially the good keen bachelor contest :P and especially especially all the free samples of food.

Tis all for now.  Bye!

Back at Earthwise Valley

About 10 days ago now, Nico and I ended our road trip and made our way back to Earthwise Valley to help out with the winter program here.  The first day back we made a little glasshouse for the lettuce garden to help them grow during the winter.  See!?:

And then... we flooded the house!  See:

And in the process I learned a valuable lesson... about how to properly drain a water tank.  No, not call the plumber, I can do it.  Maybe... cause then I burned out the heating element in the hot water tank cause I left the power on when there was no water in it.  So due to that I completely took apart the hot water system here, got a replacement element and put it all back together and 4 days later.... we have hot water again!  Yay.  I guess I forgot to mention... the whole reason for this was that we were changing the wood burning stove here to a better one, but this new one is not connected to the hot water system like the previous one so I needed to take out those pipes and in the process.... flooded the house.

Now we are 6 total here.  There is Nico and me, Jon and Bexie, and then two 18 year old french Canadian girls named Mel and Kat.  They are young and full of energy and happy to plant loads of trees, so this is working out well, especially since there are 1200 trees to plant this month!  This is Nico's baby.  My big project for this month is to build two small cabins that will be used as an additional bedroom and an office.  I just got started today and got the bearers and floor joists all put together for one and its laid out for the second one and just needs to be nailed together.  Not bad for a days work all by my lonesome.

Oh, and what else I did today was move our tent back to the old location.  To explain... in the past couple weeks we have gotten multiple times more rain than we got for the entire summer here.  It's wet.  And we found out that our tent is not totally waterproof.  We got a lot of rain one night and in the morning there was a wet spot on the bed (nope, not pee) and then we went to elevate the mattress to let it dry out, but found the whole underside soaking wet.  It took 2 days to dry and then we put it in Jon's tent.  He doesn't actually need it since he's got a bedroom in the house and I do not.  But his tent is in the front yard right near the house and cars.  That location kinda works... but just isnt so nice to live there.... so today I moved the mattress and tent back down to our old tent site.  Yay.  I'm excited for a good nights sleep there tonight.

The End of the Beginning

The summer program here at Earthwise Valley has come to a close a few days ago.  In the last few days here we had some time to wrap things up and share all our photos and music and all that good stuff.  We also had an afternoon of the Gnome Olympics.  Laura and Hannah went down to the land to set up some random games and stuff like a scavenger hunt, obstacle course, egg toss, blind/dizzy race, and a frisbee game (similar to cups).  We split up into two teams and competed for nothing in particular, but it was a good ol time.

On saturday, Nico and I took Jon, Laura, Hannah, and Dani over to Coromandel town, as their ferry to Auckland was that arvo.  It is defo a bit weird, and much quieter here now without all them.  I think we may meet up again, since we all are going to be travelling around this country for at least the next month or so.

I have also gone through all my pictures that I've taken since being here and chose a whole bunch as a greatest picts sort of thing.  It is on my picassa site here.  There are some good ones in there, so enjoy.

Nico and I are now getting ready for the next part of our adventure.  Main thing right now is pimpin out the van.  We are building a bed in the back and getting all sorts of gear together that we are borrowing from here.  Then on Monday we are going to start driving south and do tons of hiking all over the place.  Since we'll sleep in the van and cook most of our food, diesel should be our only big cost.  We also have only a few ideas of places we definitely want to hit, and I am optimistic that we will have time to randomly go and stay wherever seems nice.  Our main limitation at the moment is that we are going to be helping out Jon to run the winter program at Earthwise which begins in June.  So we'll have to be back by then.  I am really excited though to get down to the south island and get deep into some awesome mountains and glaciers.

Anyway, hope you enjoy the pictures, and here's one last one of the group.

Flax, Passover, and a Piano

Hello, I figure its about time for an update.  This past week was Passover, and thanks to Mom, a box of Matzoh and some lollycones (passover candy) showed up here on the first night of passover.  Since no one here knew anything about passover (other than Nico) I led a short and simple seder, telling the story and talking about some of the food symbology and sharing the matzah.  It was cool that everyone was interested and that Nico was there to back me up on some of the "facts" as she has actually read the bible before and i have not.  Matzah has been a small part of every meal since until we finish it up.

We have also done a third round now of harvesting and planting flax, bringing the number up to about 600 flax plants that we've harvested and planted in the valley.  After the first time we did this, I wrote about it and why flax is so important.  So if you missed that one, check it out here:  http://nomaddave.blogspot.com/2010/01/flax.html. This time we also planted some by the ocean, right across the stret from the valley.  I think a flax god dressed as an old man stopped by... Laura, Hannah, little John, and myself were planting off the side of the road and suddenly a couple old guys walked by wondering if we lost something.  They came from the sea and it is a dead end road, so basically they appeared out of nowhere.  When I told them that we were planting some flax, expecting to explain why, the one old guy who asked replied something along the lines of "Good on ya.  I planted over 30 flax plants just yesterday."  Then just as they appeared, they went on their way, with no vehicle, and no where to go within walking distance.... random.

And.... a piano!  On our way back from getting flax we stopped by the storage in Thames to bring back a big piece of furniture.  There was also a piano in there that is quite out of tune, but works just fine.  Jon was going to donate it... but then I played "the luckiest" by Ben Folds...  messing up quite a bit and didnt even finish cause its been so long since i've played, but it was good enough!  We all convinced Jon to bring it back to the house instead and now we've got a piano.

Oh, and while we were in Thames we stopped off at the community pool where they had this huge blowup obstacle course floating in the pool.  There was a line of kids, probably none older than 13, waiting to get on, and we just hopped in with them.  I was the only one out of our group to actually make it all the way to the end, mostly cause I used the leap-frog method learned from some scrawny 10 year old kid.  It was good fun.

People again!

Finally on Tuesday night everyone came back from the epic trip.  It is so nice to have people around again here at the house.  It defo was a relaxing week, but now I am glad to have company again.  That night we had another spa bath.  It is an awesome thing to be able to have it basically whenever as long as we plan ahead a bit and start the fire early.  Before everyone left we filled up the vat with water from the river and filled the fireplace with wood.

Then the first day everyone was back we finished up Jorge (the composting toilet).  Put up the door, added stairs, and varnished the inside.
Now we have our new
place to poo
with a view.
Shitty poetry, huh?  Below here is a picture of the finished product:

Then two days ago we tried out the earth oven for the first time.  I dug out the sand in the middle of it which was holding the shape while it was built.  Then I got a fire going in there for a couple hours.  Laura and Dani had spent most of the afternoon making pizza dough and bread to bake in our new earth oven.  And then when we go to bake... its barely hot at all.  I think that first fire was needed to dry everything out, and right now we've got another fire going that will hopefully heat up the oven this time.

Other than these couple projects its been a quiet few days here.  Today was a free day, and we went to the beach even though its been slowly getting cooler here.  I was the only one to get in the water.  I also went for a very light jog to test out my leg which has been feeling better.  I doubt it is back to 100% yet, but I might be able to stop worrying that I will strain it at any moment now.  Tonight is the end of daylight savings here and so tomorrow there will be 8 hrs difference to the east coast.

 Fijoas are my new favorite fruit.  And here's some to the left.  Yesterday Jon went over to the neighbor's house and got 2 huge bags of them.  I have eaten about 40 of these in the past 24 hours.  Yum.

Composting Toilet

Another major project we've been working on recently, with the brains of it coming from Nico and I, is a composting toilet for the house.  I have so far really enjoyed working on it, and there are only a couple more things to until it is totally complete.  I just felt like writing about it now, since I'd like to be working on it in my solitude here, but cant really do much with a bummed leg.  I put a couple photos in here, but you can see more on my picasa site: http://picasaweb.google.com/dave.dayan/CompostingToilet#

So why make a composting toilet when we have a perfectly good one inside?  Good question.  One huge reason is to save on water.  With 8 people in the house, flushing the toilet takes up a large amount of water and since water is still scarce around here it will be good to use less.  Also we will be making less waste in general by using an outdoor toilet.  Sounds counterintuitive to leave your shit where it lies, but I'll explain in a moment.  Another good reason for this toilet is; with 8 people living here it'll be good to have another place to take a crap when someone jumps in ahead of you.  And yes, it will actually smell better than a conventional toilet!

This is it here to the left.  It could still use some stairs and a door, but we're almost there!

So how is this all possible? Less waste, and smell better?  Simple - let worms eat it up!  The way that a composting toilet works is by pooping into a bucket with some worms and mulch in it.  We use the half barrels which are about 3 feet in diameter and about 2-3 feet high.  After each poop, the "flush" is a handful of mulch to cover it all up.  This prevents the flies from coming and prevents it from smelling.  As the bucket fills up, the worms go to work breaking down all the worm goodness in the barrel.  There are actually 2 barrels in the system, and once one fills up, it gets put aside while the other is put into use.  During this time the worms break it all down more until it just looks like some nutrient rich dirt.  At this point you can feed the trees with it as it is great plant food.

So there you go, you can even turn your poop into something useful instead of using loads of energy by sending it to a waste water treatment plant.  Ewww...  city water that most of us drink, could have been flushed down the toilet with your poop...

Not only was this a fun project in getting to do carpentry and having the satisfaction of seeing the progress on a daily basis (instead of monthly or yearly as it often goes with conservation), but now I have written down plans and can reproduce this fairly easily some other time in my life.

I do know that this all works, because we have a composting toilet on the land that we've been using the entire time we've been here.  That is also where I got the plans from.  Jon has had very little to do with this project, so I've gone to the other one a few times to study it and take a whole bunch of pictures on how it was put together.  So who else wants to poop with a view?

The Creation of a Spa Bath

Hello everyone.  I am alive, no worries.  Just been busy recently doing many things here like constructing a composting toilet, making cornhole (yay games), clearing out storage in Thames to save some cash for the trust, weeding, mulching, planting, hiking, fishing, and bonfires.  But a lot of energy has been spent making a spa bath here which works in a totally unique way that I thought I'd like to highlight here.

First thing, we need a big ol' bath tub to have our spa bath in.  We chose a spot right by the gazeebo that is near my tent, and started digging a hole.  Next was to make a frame to hold the tub and also create a deck around it that joined up to the gazeebo.  I may have mentioned before, but it was interesting building a structure on non-level ground. Something I had never thought of before was to drive big posts into the ground (or even auger out holes to put in even bigger posts) and then attach the main supports to these posts so that it is all level.  Then we added joysts between the inner and outer frame which gave us a complete frame to put the decking wood onto.  Below is a picture of the tub and deck all completed (minus the bench seats that Nico and I added on later).

The next part of this spa bath is to have some way to hold and heat up a whole lot of hot water.  Here, there is an unexhaustable source of firewood, so we made a fire pit!  We also got a 1600 Liter vat to hold the water.  I learned a whole lot about concreting and brick laying in this part.  A hole was dug into the side of a little hill to make a flat area to have the firepit.  We mixed and poured concrete into the bottom to make a level ground to build the walls up from.  We then built walls on three sides to support the huge vat, and added a concrete pipe as a chimney in the back.  And vuallah! a cheap way to heat tons of water.  

The fireplace and vat are uphill of the tub so that when the water is hot and ready, we can open the valve to let water flow down.  We used 50mm alkathene piping (I dunno if it is called something else in the US, but it is a black barely flexible plastic tube).  There are valves both at the vat and at the tub so that we can have control at either end of the water flow.  Once you are in the bath sometimes it is good to top up with some more hot water without having to get out.  It was a bit of a puzzle to get all the fittings together and get it all connected, but once we did, we were ready to have a bath!

Since we've been a bit short on rain (and hence water at the house) we filled up a tank of water from the river on the land and pumped it into the vat.  It took about an hour and a half of having a fire in the new pit to get the water up to about 140 degrees F.  Then with the gravity feed and the 50mm (2") piping, it took only about 3 minutes to fill almost the whole tub!  We even had to mix in some cold water cause it was too hot!

Then finally, enjoy :)

There are some tarata leaves in there which is the New Zealand lemonwood.  It makes the bath smell all nice. Also in the background there are the benches in their finished state.  As far as I know we are the only people who have a spa bath (or hot tub) set up in this fashion, but it works great here and costs very little.

I've got some more pictures of the whole building process up on my picasa site: http://picasaweb.google.com/dave.dayan/SpaBath#

Little hike for today

Today was a free day.  A few people decided to go with Jon to Thames for the day, while the rest of us hung out here for the day.  Nico and I went on a little hike up a ridge right near the house.  It was short, but we took our time looking at the views and trees.  We passed some puriri trees that were over 7' in diameter and were 800-1000 years old!  We also came out to a really nice (and random) lookout.  Check out the picts, they are really nice.

Also today, I met our neighbor.  The dogs were in their run and barking and then I hear some guy whistling on the side of the property.  He was looking for Jon, but I told him he wasnt around.  The guy didnt look happy, and I thought he was going to complain about the dogs barking.  I went down there and he says "Do you like apples?" yes "Do you like pears?" yes  "Well come with me" Okay! Do I need a bag?  He pulls two plastic bags out of his pockets.  Well then.  I felt like a kid being lured by candy from an evil stranger.  Turns out David (using all 5 letters of the name) was a nice retired old Brit/Kiwi.  I went over to his yard and he gave me bags of apples and pears that he picked right in front of me.  This was a very pleasant surprise!

Past few days of projects I've started building a cabin in the woods.  I am really excited about getting to build more stuff.  I'll have to get some pictures of the progress to show off.  But for now, bye bye!

Earth Oven Plinth and Spa Bath Fireplace

These are a couple things that we have been working on recently.  We are soon going to be making an earth oven, but need a base upon which to build it (plinth in kiwi terms).  This is just a mound of rocks that I have carefully placed and we've mortared together so that the earth oven will sit at a height that is comfortable to work at.

An earth oven is basically a hollow dome with a door that is all made of clay.  You build a fire in the oven and let it burn for a while to heat up the inside of the oven.  Then after 30 mins or so, you can take out the fire and put in the food to be cooked. supposedly it is significantly more efficient than a normal stove, and since we have more firewood here than we could ever possibly use, it is way more sustainable too.








Another thing that I have been putting a lot of energy at is building a fireplace for the spa bath.  We cleared out an area and concreted a level(ish) base.  A couple days ago we started building the walls that are going to enclose it on 3 sides and will also support the vat of water and a chimney.

Here is a picture of the vat and the bricks that we have laid so far.  We still have a couple more courses to add on, but it is surprisingly sturdy so far considering I was leading the charge for the day and I have never done this before.

Anyway, the vat will sit on top and we will plug up the holes except for a chimney in the back.  Then we can have a fire underneath the vat and heat up the water which will then be gravity fed down to where the bath is.

PS, I was up early this morning and caught a beautiful sunrise that I thought I'd share.

Best Birthday Surprise Ever!

On the 22nd of February, a new volunteer, Liz, was supposed to arrive from England.  Then when late afternoon rolled around and Jon came back with the new vol, I took a peek outside to see what she looked like.  By golly, she looked a whole lot like Nicole!
Everyone did a really good job at not letting me on that since October her flight was actually set to leave on the 20th of February and not the 1st of March!  Well done. She even came with socks and trousers which were the second, and less important thing that I asked for and received.  When I casually said that she should come early I certainly did not expect it.

That night we had some celebrations with homemade pizza and some drinking games.  We also had a couple of Jons friends around, Kelly and Julie.  It was neat to have some random people hanging out for a couple days.

Epic Kayak Trip

Last week was our week long rec trip.  I posted some of the picts on picassa: http://picasaweb.google.com/dave.dayan/EpicKayakTrip#

It started off with some paintball for some of us.  It was supposed to be a club game but since there was a tournament nearby, only three other people showed up.  It was actually sweet with only 7 people playing.  It was way easier to keep track of what was going on.  Anyway, later that day we met up with everyone else in Rotorua and then headed out to our first campsite way off in the middle of nowhere.  The next morning we took a hike, and of course ended up wandering off the trail and getting lost.  But we made our way to the river that the campsite was along.  I thought the hike was going to be easy so i wore my Teva's, which in the end worked out great, as everyone else tried to stay out of the water and one by one everyone fell in.

Later that day we made our way to Lake Waikaremoana.  It is amazing that this huge lake has no houses around it and very few people.  We saw only a few other people the whole time.  The water is even clean enough to drink.
That first afternoon we got everything packed into the kayaks in the rain, but as soon as we launched it stopped raining.  Apparently the lake was 4 feet higher than last time Jon was there, and what was supposed to be our first campsite was underwater.  We paddled on and actually made it to what was supposed to be the second nights campsite.  This was a sweet place with a big hill and an inlet for swimming and snorkeling.  Since we did all the extra paddling, the second day on the lake was just a completely relaxing day with no planned activities... except for celebrating Rich and Hannah's birthdays, which were that day and the day before.  We planned on bringing two bottles of liquor, but through a minor miscommunication ended up with two vodka and two rum.  It was a bit of a sloppy night, and because of that day three was also a chill day while everyone recovered from their hangovers.  The next day though we paddled on and then went for a hike.  We went to a new campsite that night.  The following day on the way back, we went to a place on the lake where a 50 footish high waterfall is that you can actually paddle behind and through.  It was quite a beautiful place.  Then the trip ended with a trip to the polynesian spa in Rotorua.

We got back here at about 2am, and the following day I went to pick up the new volunteer, John.  We did a weed bash on wild ginger and wooly nightshade.  And we've also started getting our own spa bath setup.  We've got a big tub set up next to the gazeebo at the house.  The past couple days, we've put in some posts and have started framing up a deck to come off the gazeebo and go around the bath.  Jon has been busy with some administrative stuff recently, so it has been mostly up to me to plan how we are doing this building.  It's quite interesting since I've never really done this before, especially with leading other people to build it.  Once its done I'm sure i'll get some photos up.

This whole post might be a little disjointed... this would be because we are all watching Team America right now and I am not so good at blogging and watching at the same time.  So, bye for now.

Whats Happening

I've realized I've been pretty terrible in actually saying what's been going on aside from the few things that i specifically mentioned so far.  So lets see, starting at the house...

• We've made some new picnic tables.  I planned them out and got some people to help out.  Just yesterday we finished putting together the octagonal one which is sweet.

• Eradicated all the mistflower here, which is a foreign weed.
• Planted flax.
• Made a new garden
• Set up the Extreme Hammock!
• Built a wood box and filled it up
• cleaned out and organized all the crap under the house
• Shoveled out a pile of dirt left here and added it to the dam on the land
• Cleaned out and reorganized the garage
• Setup a tree nursery to grow native trees until they are big enough to plant on the land.
• Turned the house that we just moved in into a home.

Then on the land we've done a whole lot as well:

• Clean crap out of the river from the flood a couple months ago.  (like a once in 50 years type of flood, it is amazing to find doors and picnic tables about 2 kilometers away from where they started)
• Make a new garden and plant loads of veggies.
• Make pumpkin heaps.
• Put up a chicken house and fix up the chicken run.
• Release and mulch hundreds of trees
• Harvest flax and plan more on the land
• Dig up pohutacawa trees off the side of the road for the tree nursery
• Bash wooly nightshade, another weed from europe.
• Make shelving and clean out the containers on the land
• General clean up around the land.
• We've also set up a fishing net and caught and filleted a whole bunch of fish.  We made a smoker out of an old gutted stove and smoked thie fish which was quite tasty.

Then we also have a bunch of rec trips mixed in here.  Much of these I've mentioned already, but here's another list:

• Today we went horseback riding and hung out on the beach.
• Seakayaking to the Gannett Island, and a couple other mini trips
• Loads of snorkeling
• Whitewater rafting on the road trip south with additional picnics and beaches
• A couple forest walks out the back of the property
•  Bonfires, making american and kiwi smores.  (the kiwis dont know what they are doing, Bonesaw was right, you need to bring your own marshmellows)
• Gnome treasure hunt!  Jon and I set up a rope follow and got the volunteers to follow it all over the place while blindfolded.  It was hilarious, especially messing with them, muahaha.
• Then this saturday we are leaving for an Epic Trip! of 5 days of seakayaking on a lake and camping and hiking.  Dont know where yet...  also on the way there some of us are going paintballing.

We've also had one or two free days each week to just chill and enjoy the beauty here.  Read, play games, nap in the extreme hammock, use the interwebs (like right now!) are some of the stuff we do on these days.  So here you go, this is whats been happening.

Flax

On monday we harvested and yesterday we planted slightly over 200 flax plants.  Listening to Jon talk about it, it sounds like we are saving the NZ ecology by doing this.  Its flowers are an important source of food for the birds here cause they are too deep for the bees.  Then more birds eat the seeds that grow after the flowers are gone.  It is also really good at getting its roots deep to get water and stabilize the ground.  Then with the leaves of the flax you can weave to make rope or linens.  Dont know if we'll get to do that since we just transplanted them...

This is flax

Harvesting was one of those things were you just have to accept that you are going to get wet and dirty and then it becoms a lot of fun.  But until then it kinda sucks.  It was a rainy morning and we stop on the side of the road somewhere that Jon knew about, and cut our own path through the thick wet brush.  At this point all of us had on our raincoats and were pretty cold and miserable.  Once we got started though and warmed up, we all didnt care it was raining and had a good time cutting up these plants.  It is amazing how brutal you can be to it and have it still survuve.  We had spades and would cut up one fan from the rest of the plant, keeping some roots intact.  Then you cut off all of the leaves except for the middle one.  The "brains" of the plant according to Jon.  Then just throw it in the trailer until two days later when we got to plant them.  

Like I said... a dirty job.  That shirt was blue and green to begin with.

Then planting was relatively simple... dig a hole, put in the plant, fill it back up.  Of course we decided to put 2/3 of the plants in swampy areas, where digging was more efficient with our hands.

 

Hence we got dirty...again.  Left to Right: Laura, Hannah, Dani, me, Rich

 

What's Earthwise all about?

Lots of great stuff has been happening here, and honestly I dont really like spending time on the computer which is why I dont update much.  But now it is 11:30 pm and everyone else has been in bed for a while, so i guess this is a good time...

When I first got here in Tuateawa, it was Jon (the guy who runs this whole thing) and two girls Bexie and Sadie helping out.  They had just moved into this house right before xmas, so a lot of work was going on to get it ready for the other volunteers that arrived on the 9th.  So anyone that I have mentioned Earthwise Valley to is probably wondering exactly what it was all about, and all that i knew was that it was some sort of sustainible living project.  Maybe about 18 months ago Jon bought this piece of land here which used to be grazing land for cattle.  He plans on turning it back into native forest with areas for people to live and learn and grow their own food and be sustainible.  This will take years, as the soil is really dry with no trees and a lot of cleaning up needs to be done.

This is the land!

Last summer about 1000 trees were planted on the land and we'll continue to nurture those and plant more.  One huge project which will help the land a lot is getting water there.  We'll need to lay about a mile of pipe up into the forest to get enough height to run a microhydro and also pump good water to the highest point on the land which will be used to water everything.  It is actually quite dry here in the summer (winter in the north) and so not much planting can happen right now.  And since there are no accomidations on the land we have a house nearby and so some work is going into making it a good home as well as reducing the ecological footprint of this place.

Here is another view for the house from a nearby hill.  I'm working on uploading some more shots around the house on picasa

Along with all the work that we do, there is a whole bunch of recreational trips that happen.  I have already been snorkeling and sea kayaking a couple times and there will also be lots of hiking, camping, rock climbing, and whatever else we all decide on.

I am actually taking on a more significant role than the rest of the volunteers.  I have been helping out with the overall logistics and planning and group orientations and all that good stuff too.  I think this will be better experience for the rest of my life than working in engineering... since i am thinking more and more that i probably dont want to sit in a cube and be an "engineer" for the rest of my life.  Permaculture and outdoor ed seem way better.

A few days ago now, the rest of the volunteers got here.  there are two from the US, two from the UK and one from Mexico.  So far everyone in the group has been awesome and I am really excited to live and work with these people.

Just the beginning

Yea, so I've been in New Zealand for two whole days now... wow, only two days ago that I was in the airoprt. This place is awesome! Right now I am staying in a house that is in Tuateawa on the Coromandel Peninsula. Tuateawa is a town that only has about 100 houses. The closest commercial anything is about 20 km away but on a tiny windy road that takes about 40 min to drive over. The rainforest here is crazy cause it is so different than anything that is in the US. The first day we took a hike back behind the proprty and got to a rata tree which starts off as a vine growing down to the ground from the canopy, and then bigger and bigger vines grow. Jon and I climbed up into this tree where there is a whole ecosystem growing there! There is dirt and plants that are only found up high in this tree!

And wow is it a nice change to have daylight until 9pm. Even I keep forgetting about dinner cause it seems like it should be early, and then suddenly it is 10:00!

So right now it is Jon, the guy who runs this place, me, and Sadie who has worked with Jon before (like me) but is only visiting right now and will be gone in a week, and Bexie who will be helping out here and there but wont be here the whole time. This week we are getting the house set up and preparing things for the rest of the volunteers to arrive in a few days.

So much to say, so little time. Its definitely freeing not using a computer much. Not gonna lie, i kinda wanna go be outside right now! Maybe soon I'll get some more time to fill in more details, and also take some pictures of this place and post them to make everyone jealous.

Ciao!