WWOOFing at Awarua (Two Rivers)

Hello and here we go again! I know you have just had our last post but we are still soooo far behind with our stories (about three weeks!) that'll you have to live with the "information overload". ;)

As promised, you'll get a new story about us exploring farm life - this time in THE SHEEP country and luckily, we chose exactly the right place to have the most intense SHEEP experience ever! We are SHEEP experts now, I'd say. But let's start with first things first: Awarua is about an hour North of Wellington, situated in a typically New Zealand landscape with green, green, green rolling hills, a little creek, and, of course, lots of rain. Yep, we only had one day without rain but hey, who complains about that when you have a roof, a bed, work outside all the time, and the sweatest family to keep you company?

The Palmer family, that's everbusy, energetic and lovely Julia, fun and laid-back Brett (who, unfortunately is not on the picture because he was at work at that time), Jordan (13) who couldn't beat David in playing 4x4 and almost cut his hand off while we were there!, Theo (10) the living answering machine of the family ("Hi, Theo speaking... no she's not, sorry... yes, see ya!") who won David's heart in an instant with his computer game Diabolo and mine with his beautiful blue eyes, and Lily (8), the strongest little personality I have ever met with her wonderful energy for life and her cute "s'il vous plait" when she wanted something from David. Do I have to say anything else or can you imagine the awesome time we spent with them?!

Ah ja, as the place was not lively enough yet, there were also some 97 SHEEP, a couple of cows, two horses and a pony, two dogs, several chicken, a regular cat and a cat with only three legs. I guess we can say that Awarua kept us very busy! Regarding the work, we once more learnt heaps and enjoyed most of it. First, we had to repair the 1km gravel road leading to the farm, which meant loading the quad trailer with heavy gravel, driving to the huge holes in the road, and filling those up. I can tell you, it was hard work. Then we attacked a huge hedge in the garden but even after two days we had not quite gotten through the thing! Notice our fashionable clothing on the pictures - the only way not to get soaking wet most of the time!

Of course, besides those and numerous other tasks, our most interesting work concerned the SHEEP. Have you any idea how extremely stupid those animals are?? Well, if you have some idea, tripple the amount and you might get close to their true stupidity! No, seriously, you know that I love SHEEP but they are truely the most stupid animals I have ever met! We had to drive them from a paddock high up in the hills down to one near the farm in order to be able to count them and prepare their shearing. Well, SHEEP apparently don't like to walk downhill but the gate through which we had to get them was at the bottom of the hill - we ran quite a bit and I can tell you, SHEEP are a lot faster in climbing and running on those hills! However, finally we had them all in the wooden enclosure in order to count them. You cannot imagine how stupid they behaved! They actually ran against the wooden fence, they jumped on each other, they ran in circles, in short, they did everything in order for us not to be able to count them! (Maybe they knew that based on this numbers the little lambs would be sold to the butcher???)

The next day, we had to drive them along the gravel road to the shearing shed and luckily we had Julie on the horse and Theo on the quad, otherwise we would have lost half of them on the way. Of course, they didn't want to go into the shearing shed and we actually had to grab them by the neck and push and pull them in there! We ended up with all their kaka and pipi on us, but we succeeded. Then, it was shearing time. Very, very interesting, the guy (shearer) really knows how to handle those SHEEP! (Pictures in David's post because of his SHEEP photo story) David's job was to always drive a couple of sheep from the flock into a small inclosure where the shearer could grab them easier and I guess he gained about 1 kg of muscles during the day! I had to take care of the wool, collect it, spread it on a huge table, take of any very disgusting parts like mud and kaka and then roll it up and put it into bags. On the picture, the wool is to dirty because the SHEEP spent one night in the shed and as they were soaking wet due to the rain and they slept on the ground, they had lots of dirt and pipi in the wool. So our work was really clean!

At the end of the day we could say that we are SHEEP experts now. We have guarded them, we have driven them over the hills, we have shorn them (yes, I also had my go but the picture is very blurry), we have taken care of their wool, and we have had a hearty laugh at how ridiculous they look once they are shorn. I still love them but the next time I'll buy a wool-sweater, I'll think of the poor persons who have to take care of those SHEEP!

Overall, our stay at Awarua was truely special and wonderful. We learnt heaps, we had lots of fun even though we couldn't really go out in our free time, and we met a very, very warm, welcoming, fun, lively, amiable, and admirable family. We'll never forget how good the diner tasted after that bottle of wine (Cheers, Brett), how loud Lily can scream, and what a wonderful mess there was every morning before the kids went off to school and every evening when they had to go to bed. I guess, we can only say: Thank you all very much for the wonderful opportunity to become part of your family!