The first Scanlon family vacation in over twenty years, it was the perfect weekend to come together as it was Stuart’s birthday and Mothers Day.

Happily ensconced in the MGM Grand Signature condos, the birthday day started with a foray to the MGM Mighty River pool where we enjoyed a few cocktails and an easy swim and float around the river shaped pool.

The family spent many hours chatting and catching up and strolling around the Vegas Strip.   We enjoyed a really nice birthday evening meal at Sensi Restaurant in the Bellagio and then a stroll through the opulent hotel lobbies!

We also caught two shows (I recommend using Tix4Tonight to get discounted theater and attraction tickets):   Cirque du Soleil’s Beatles Love show and La Reve – The Dream.   Both were awesome.  It was my fourth Cirque show and I was not disappointed.  Spanning several decades of Beatles music, it tells the story of life during the World Wars in Britain and then the ensuing Vietnam and post-Vietnam hippie era of the 60’s and early 70’s.    Lots of dancing and acrobatics, all to heart-pumping tunes of the iconic foursome.

La Reve was our backup choice to Cirque’s “O” show which was sold out.   Created by the same director as many Cirque shows, La Reve, also a water show, was thrilling and quite visually stunning.   We held our breath as performers were lifted 100 feet into the air and then performed crazy acrobatics as they dove into the pool below.  The fact that the stage was a giant pool of water really added to the amazing feats that were performed.   I highly recommend this show.

Vegas was a great location for our meet up and we are now all scheming for the next Scanlon vacation.

Viva la Scanlons!

We kicked off the month celebrating Bruce’s 47^th birthday, starting the gorgeous morning with bluff oyster and champagne.   Friends came over in the afternoon and we basked in the backyard’s sunshine while eating my homemade black forest cake along with ice cream.   Not a bad way to start one’s new birth year.

Over Easter weekend we went south to Oamaru to friends’ Pete and Kat’s Autumn Arena gathering where approximately 150 of us gathered on his one-acre permaculture property to enjoy a weekend of music, workshops, communal sharing, and lots of dancing!   The weather was just gorgeous which made for camping in a paddock much more pleasant.  It was lovely to hang out with friends Steph, Tom, Emma, Rob, Steve, Ian, Briar, Ollie, Ursy, Puple and al the others whom we don’t get to see that often.

The following weekend we entertained friends in Wainui, with Alex, Tobi, their three animals, and Dennis & Colette joining us for a long overdue visit.   Another fine weekend afforded us much outdoor opportunity – we played tennis each day and went for a hike in the Akaroa township hills where we met with some unusual surprises.

But it wasn’t all play and no work.   We finally got our septic tank pumped by the appropriately named Charlies Takeaways.   The previous owners of the property of five years never had the septic pumped and we’ve been there for four years now, so I figured it was time.  And not a day too late for the tank was chokka full!   It almost didn’t happen at all because the guy’s truck was a bit too big to make it around the bend in our driveway but he reversed it all the way, taking out a few shrubs which was a small price to pay for the service!   He said we had mighty fine poo sludge which I certainly took as a compliment.   Years of organic food eating makes for excellent waste matter!

We also finally got around to getting the Airfoam guys out to inject foam insulation into our walls.   Three guys arrived for a six-hour day, drilling small holes up our exterior walls about 2-feet apart.   One guy then dons a backpack with a variety of hoses going into it which mixes the chemicals to create the foam.    The next day they come back and fill the holes, sand them, and slap a coat of primer on them.   Our warmth retention in the house is supposed to increase phenomenally as a result of the added insulation.  It takes 30 days to fully ‘cure’, but we noticed a change within the first 48 hours as the house felt warmer and less damp.   The true test will come this winter.

We’ve also spent a bit of time with our Kiwiburner friend Tim who’s working on an awesome project here in Christchurch.   Called The Temple For Christchurch project, Tim (and a host of volunteers) is going to build a temporary art piece in the form of a Temple, as a tribute to all of us who have been through the emotional and physical rollercoaster of experiencing thousands of earthquakes since September 2010.   The temple is in the same spirit as the Burning Man temple – temporary art, for community, with community input and participation which will burn to ashes at the end of it’s time.   We’ve been helping Tim with paperwork and Bruce has gone with him to City Council meetings as many government bodies need to be coordinated and sign off on the project before it even starts.  Tim’s gotten the go ahead from the City but there’s still heaps of details to work out before construction starts in July.   The project is expected to cost around $40,000; he’s received almost $10,000 in grants and the rest needs to come from donors, so if you’ve got a few extra bucks to spare, consider making a donation to this worthwhile project.    Check out the photos on the webpage to see it’s unique seismic design.

Oh, and it’s been the heart of harvest season and I’ve been whipping up jams, sauces and tinctures from peaches, apples, quince, crabapples, and hawthorn berries and dehydrating sage, rosemary, nettle, dandelion, and other herbs for culinary and medicinal uses.   Have made our years’ worth of jams and apple butter and have frozen enough fruit to satisfy our kefir smoothie needs.    There is never a dull day at Birdsong!

And as  I wrote in my last post, the month finished up with mature woofer week where heaps of work got done on the property.

Next à airplane trip to the United States for family gatherings and celebration of my parents 50^th wedding anniversary.   Stay tuned.

Woofer Sue, from Australia, wrote to us a few months back, saying she was coming to New Zealand and wanted to woof on similar properties as her own.  Not only was she our age-peer, but she had experience in renovating properties and was a woof host herself.     We thought she’d be great to have.

So we booked her in and decided that we were going to have a ‘mature’ woofer week and set our intentions to find some other age appropriate woofers.    Kathy and Craig soon came to mind – they were new acquaintances whom we’d met twice in the previous six months and both had expressed an interest in coming to see our property and give us a hand.    It just so happened that we bumped into them at last month’s Sally Fallon talk and we asked if they’d be keen to come in April.   They were and we set our minds on a project that they could really, really help us with.

We decided that it was time to tackle our garage and that Kathy and Craig were the folks to help with the mountainous job of clearing it out,  sifting through our stuff, putting up shelving, and organizing it all back into the garage.       Here’s a photo of what the garage had turned into over the last four years – a pile of stuff all crammed on top of one another and very difficult to get to.

Craig’s the kind of guy that can do anything and both he and Kathy were not daunted at all by this project.   Without even waiting for us to get up one morning, they set to the first task of getting everything (well, most everything) out of the garage and onto the drive.

Next,  we inventoried our materials for which Craig could make shelving.   Three sets of the old kitchen cabinets were to go on my side of the garage along with several old bookcases we had stored in the upper garage.   Bruce was to get a wall of shelves made from the amalgam of wooden boxes that were previously also used in the kitchen and upper garage.

Craig was able to get those shelves up and placed within a couple of days.   Oh my gosh, total transformation.  The next daunting task was to get me & Bruce into the garage to figure out where to put things.    We made good progress with my side getting all the gardening and painting paraphernalia and Bruce getting all his tools and random bits and bobs.

Craig helped me organize the garden tools nicely on the wall.   YAY!  No more lost or misplaced tools!

But wait, there’s more.   Heaps of other things happened too.

Sue set about the task of fixing things for us and her primary focus was to strip and repaint the windows of the upper sleepout.   Without even realizing what she was up to, she’d sourced the materials from around the property and busied herself up at the sleepout.    She also did several days of work in the lower garden, digging up tough grass and trenching out a new path which we then weed-matted and mulched.  Because of what she accomplished in the garden, I was then able to tackle some surrounding areas, putting a few dozen seedlings into the ground and mulch heavily for the upcoming cooler months.

Craig and Bruce got busy in the evenings getting revenge on the wasps as I’d gotten stung earlier in the week.   I had now identified four wasp hives, all relatively close to the main house and they needed to be gone.  Period.  Dead.  Bye-bye.    Donned in bee suits and equipped with petrol and torches, they methodically attacked each hive until there were none.   One of the hives had been made in an old enormous tree stump and Craig monitored it for several days to ensure that no rogue wasp would re-settle in it.   As if they could, because Craig ended up burning half the stump away and then pouring concrete into any remaining orifice.   Go Craig!

Kathy, I’d been told, was an incredible artist and friend Amba said I should have her paint something for me.  Voila.   Had an old cement washtub sitting along the back wall of the outbuilding as a planter which I’d wanted to paint up and re-use.   The damn thing weighed a ton and the boys couldn’t lift it, so Craig very cleverly came up with a technique using rollers to glide it along into place on the sunny porch where Kathy could bask and paint.     The piece is really beautiful, though not yet finished.

And then there was the day of felling trees as Kathy and Craig were eager to test out their new chain saws.   Appropriately geared up, they took down a few silver birches and two eucalypts behind the house, one of which fell the wrong way and hit part of the water pipes and guttering to the house.   Whoops!  Luckily no one was hurt and the bits of the house will come right in no time at all.

All that work certainly made us hungry.   So we feasted.  Every day.   Fresh salmon from the pier,  foraging for mussels, roasts from our organic cow in the freezer.   Veggies galore and cheesecake made by Craig.

The week was so pleasurable and we worked hard and laughed alot.  It was hard to believe that nine days had come and gone as we were all enjoying our time together.  We didn’t entirely finish the garage or the art piece and there’s still more trees to come down, so we’re expecting Craig and Kathy to come back again in June.   There’s no telling what else we’ll get up to!

Thank you Sue, Kathy, and Craig for a truly miraculous week!

Why the new GE-corn strain?  Because the weeds growing in the current farm fields being sprayed with the herbicide Roundup (Glyphosate) are now no longer dying off.  Dubbed ‘superweeds‘,  these weeds are causing enormous problems for farmers.

The industry (Monsanto, Dow Chemical DuPont, Syngenta, and Bayer)  has responded to this problem by deciding that an even more lethal herbicide should be sprayed on America’s crop fields-   2-4-D  – to control the weeds.  But the problem is it will kill the crops unless the crops can be made resistant to this herbicide.  Voila –  Agent Orange GMO-Corn to the rescue.

So what’s the big deal you might say?  2-4-D is currently being used in the US and is the third most commonly used herbicide in the country.  But so far, it is only being used on lawns, golf courses, and the like.   It is not used on food.    The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is supposed the be the government body that determines that safety of these types of products and should be relying on independent sources for data.  However, it is often the same companies who want to get their product approved by the EPA that are providing the research data proving its safety for the public.   Hmmm, something seems wrong with this picture.   And in the case of 2-4-D,  the EPA is very close to giving is seal of approval.   Take a few minutes to read these two articles (The Natural Society’s EPA’s Scandalous Policies and Business Weeks EPA Paves Way for ‘Agent Orange’ GM Corn).

With GMO corn being grown in 86% of America’s corn fields, you should be concerned for this next level of seed that’s going to likely be approved by the EPA and USDA for release into the market.   There are many organizations fighting against this happening.   Food Democracy Now and Organic Consumers Association are two.

Take another moment to quickly sign this petition here to send a message to the USDA to ban Agent Orange corn from entering the US market!

(Note:  While GMO crops are not being grown commercially here in New Zealand,  GMO foods are allowed into the country.  This was the only article I could find relating to 2-4-D / Agent Orange food coming into the country)

A ballot initiative is happening in California right now to try and make GMO labeling of foods a legal right.   California needs to collect over 800,000 signatures by the April deadline in order to get the initiative on the November ballot.     For those of my friends in California,  I really, really, suggest you take a moment to stop and sign a petition or even get involved in this campaign. (And I’d love to hear if you’re already aware of this and have done something about it).   For those of you elsewhere,  think about donating a small amount to this campaign.   California can lead the way for the United States in fighting Monsanto and the other bio-tech conglomerates and change the way food is labeled and thought about by the average American.    You need to know what is in your food and what it’s doing to your bodies.

The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) and a consortium of other non-profit organizations are working together on this initiative.  The OCA has an awesome website and a weekly e-letter:   why don’t you subscribe?

Here’s a piece from the latest OCA e-letter:

GMO Labeling.

Dear Friend,

Big Biotech is using you as a lab rat.

The Union of Concerned Scientists, doctors at the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, and many others continue to warn us: Genetically engineered (GE) foods are making us sick. Auto-immune disorders. Liver and kidney damage. Nutritional deficiencies. Allergies and autism. Accelerated aging. Infertility. Birth defects.

Between 75% – 80% of all processed foods on our grocery store shelves now contain GMOs. They’re in almost all non-organic foods containing soy or canola oil, corn, sweeteners, artificial and natural flavorings, and in common ingredients like aspartame.

Yet believe it or not, there’s no law requiring food manufacturers or food retailers to tell you if the food you buy contains genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

We can – and we must – change this. You can help.

Please help the Organic Consumers Fund raise $150,000 in the next two weeks so we can pass California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act in November, and require mandatory GMO labeling. You can make your secure online donation, or donate by mail or by phone.

We will use your money to pay signature gatherers to collect 830,000 signatures by the April 22 deadline in order to get this initiative on the ballot, and to run an effective PR campaign against Monsanto, Dow, Cargill and the rest of the Biotech Bullies.

GMOs have NOT been proven safe

The FDA has allowed biotech companies to introduce GMOs into our food supply – and into the food supply of the animals we eat – without requiring scientific proof that these organisms are safe.

And increasingly, the facts point to anything but.

After reviewing more than 600 scientific journals, world renowned biologist Pushpa M. Bhargava concluded that GMOs are a major contributor to the sharply deteriorating health of Americans.

Last year, the scientific journal Reproductive Toxicology published results of a study showing that pesticides associated with GE foods – Bt toxin, glyphosate and gluphosinate – were found in pregnant women and their fetuses. According to the study, the women’s diets included GMO corn.

Other studies of people who have eaten GE soybeans have found that the pesticide gene used to modify the soy had actually transferred into the DNA of bacteria in the humans’ intestines, where it continued to thrive.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Who’s most at risk? Biologist David Schubert of the Salk Institute has warned that children are the most likely to be adversely effected by toxins and other dietary problems related to GM foods. He says without adequate studies, the children become “the experimental animals.”

In other words, lab rats.

California is ground zero in GMO labeling

You and every other person in this country – regardless of your zipcode or political affiliation – have a stake in this fight in California.

Why? Because once food manufacturers and food retailers in California – the 8th largest economy in the world – are forced to admit that the foods they sell contain GMO-tainted ingredients, it’s only a matter of time before people stop buying GE food – and food manufacturers stop making it.

We’ve already seen this happen in the European Union – the largest agricultural market in the world – where there are almost no genetically engineered crops under cultivation. Not because the GE crops are outlawed. But because GE-foods must be labeled.

More than 50 countries, including Japan, Russia, Hong Kong, Australia, South Korea – even China, have either passed mandatory labeling laws or outlawed GMOs altogether. Why hasn’t the US? Because Washington’s indentured politicians are more concerned about protecting the profits of Big Food and Big Biotech, than they are about keeping your food safe.

That’s why we have to win in California. A win in California will effectively guarantee that the rest of us, no matter where we live, will finally have the right to know what’s in our food.

I believe we can win in California. Polls there show overwhelming public support for GMO labeling. And after years of lessons learned, and strategies honed, we have built the strongest, most powerful, most impassioned GMO-labeling coalition in history to get this done.

But we need your help, and we need it now.

The Biotech Bullies are going to spend millions to defeat this initiative in California. We can’t outspend them. But we have enough science, enough people – and more than enough passion – that if we pool our resources in California, we’ll have the best chance we’ve ever had to take back control of our food. And our health.

The Organic Consumers Association, Organic Consumers Fund, along with other coalition partners, have already raised over one million dollars to get this initiative on the ballot. We need to raise $150,000 more, as soon as possible.

Thanks,

Ronnie Cummins
Director, Organic Consumers Association and Organic Consumers Fund

Well, as usual, there’s just not enough time to write regularly.   I’ve finally got a few days now with a wee little bit of downtime, so here comes a post or two recapturing what’s been going on over the last few months.

January flew by as we prepared and then left for the north island for Kiwiburn.  We were gone from the 15th to 25th of January, making the 24 hour journey to and from the site at Whakamaru Domain in Taupo District Council.    This was our sixth Kiwiburn and it was by far my hardest.   Being part of the Committee and crew means that one is almost never off duty, even if one is not officially on-duty!    The crew suffered from lack of enough volunteers which taxed the workload of those on duty.  A few not-so-good things occurred which kept us all busy and left us with a long list of improvements that need to be made for next year.

However, from a participant standpoint, the festival was a huge success and we maintained our population numbers with 536 attendees.   There were lots of daytime activities and lots of good fun to be had in the evenings with Illuminati, Headless Duck, and Balrogs Playpen throwing down the beats.   The Green Fairy hosted another successful opening party with around 200 people in attendance and the wait at the bar for an absinthe drink was at least seven people deep.  People just love the black lights and love to adorn themselves with black light paint.    Always a winner.

We also hosted the first ever Green Fairy Gong Show Karaoke.   Based on the 1970’s US television show, The Gong Show, we had contestants perform karaoke of choice and three judges watched and rated and had the opportunity to gong folks who were not cutting the mustard.    About 40 people turned out for this Friday afternoon event and even I, shy me, got up there and belted out my best “Build Me Up Buttercup” and managed not to get gonged!

The artwork this year exceeded expectations with the Man being its biggest ever and requiring full community assistance in getting him erected into place; and the Temple, made out of driftwood and formed like a seashell, just blew people’s minds.  It was awesome to sit contemplatively inside it and ponder is structural feat.   The burning of these two iconic symbols went without a hitch and were massively fun.

We had a few journalists on site, one of whom produced quite a lovely video about Kiwiburn.  You can see this one and others on our Kiwiburn video channel here:

Only back to Wainui for a week, we then shot up to the top of the south island, to Takaka Hill to attend the Luminate Festival which I’d been wanting to go to for years.   It’s another spiritually, sustainable, and community oriented festival with various musical stages and performances at night, and several marquees hosting very interesting talks during the day.    I went to several talks on nutrition based on the research of Weston A Price and on the Mayan Dreamspell Calendar; I did a yoga class; and I participated in Yoga Nidra, a guided meditation which is supposed to take you into conscious deep REM sleep.   It was all lovely, especially since we got to camp with our mates Steph, Tom, Steve, and Shona, all of whom we hadn’t seen in quite some time.  There were also a bunch of Kiwiburn folks in attendance so it had that ‘family’ feel despite being 1500 to 2000 in attendance.

Back to Wainui, we then hosted woofer week 1 from Feb 12th – 20th  about which I wrote a previous post.

Next saw a dear and long-standing friend of mine, Sinead, fly out from San Francisco for a weeks’ visit with me from Feb 22 – 29th.    We spent a few days in Wainui, heading over to Akaroa for a day of kayaking and birthday celebratory lunch.   It was the first time I’d gotten in a kayak here on the Akaroa harbour and it was quite peaceful and fun to paddle around the secluded bays and inlets.   We saw two dolphins and lots of little fish.

We then went on a road trip to Mt Cook which is about a four hour drive from Christchurch.  We splurged and spent two nights at the Hermitage in Mount Cook, the fancy hotel in the tiny Mt. Cook Village where most rooms have stellar views of ol’ Mt Cook should it choose to show its face.  We upgraded to a pretty nice room and Mt. Cook did not disappoint us.  Both evenings we were treated to the most amazing sunsets on the mountain.   Sipping wine and eating cheese & crackers, we captured some stunning photographs.

During the day we did the Hooker Valley and Glacier walks.   The highlight though had to be the helicopter ride we did around Mt. Cook, landing on a small ice pad on a mountain equally high but across from Mt. Cook.   It truly ranks up there as one of my all time favorite things I’ve ever done.    Thank you Sinead!

Back home for a week and then it was time for us to host the Kiwiburn Executive Committee Summit weekend at our place in Wainui but not before my friend Tobi & I spent the day at the Ellerslie Flower Show on March 7th – the annual gardening show of the year for Christchurch.  This was my third time going in the last five years and it was still fun – loads of showcase landscaped designs;  free food samples;  free plants and seeds; and heaps of gardening-related vendors to poke one’s nose around their tables.  We came home with lots of goodies!

But back to the ExCom weekend.  Five ExCom members flew down from Wellington and Auckland, joining three of us from Christchurch for a weekend pow wow from March 8 – 12th.   Folks started flying in on Thursday afternoon with the remainder coming on Friday evening.   We also had a young Chinese woofer named Lulu stay with us for the week to assist with cooking and cleaning for our large group.

Again, the white board came in handy as we jotted down all the things we wanted/needed to talk about for our two day work gathering.   As you can see from the photo, this was not for the faint of heart.   Many, many, many hours of discussion ensued ‘officially’ on Saturday and Sunday and of course, being who we are, we ‘unofficially’ kept talking about Kiwiburn throughout the rest of our time together.    Emma, recently new to the Committee, was a superstar, keeping the Minutes of the meeting (for you curious readers, you can see our summary minutes here on the Kiwiburn forums)

We are a merry band and do enjoy each others’ company.   Lulu made an awesome meal for us on Saturday night complete with homemade venison dumplings.   Hmmm, hmmmm, good!   We all managed to belt out some karaoke and go on a few walks down to the beach and the surrounds.    All in all an excellent bonding weekend!   Now if we can just tackle the list of ‘to dos’ that came out of our gathering!

A week later and it was time for the next batch of woofers to come which I just posted about.  They were here from March 20 – 27th.

Then a mad rush back to Christchurch where Bruce & I went to a lecture on nourishing traditions by Sally Fallon.   This is worth a post in itself which I don’t know if I’ll get to, but at a minimum, the reader should look at this link.

Oh, in between the crazy weeks of the last month, I also managed to squeeze in two short courses on herbal nutrition and medicine.   This is an area I want to pursue and I found a great teacher in Karen McGrath, an herbalist and more.   I have learned so much about herbs that my head is swimming in all the details, but we came away with many seedling samples which will be perfect additions to our food forest garden.  I can’t wait to put the learning to practice!

And there you have it. My life – fragmented, highly stimulating, and immensely rich.  It’s exhausting at times to keep up this pace and I’ve been feeling it lately.  I am often tired – both physically and emotionally and I’m starting to look at ways to make it more stable and calm though I don’t know if that is possible given the lifestyle we’ve created for ourselves.   Time will tell.    Thankfully the earthquake tremours have substantially lessened this quarter and I think I’ve only felt a handful of shakes in this three-month time period – a record for sure.    Every day is an opportunity for new learning, new insights, new improvements.   Let’s see where we go!

Both couples wrote to us independently about their common shared interests with us:  sustainability,  introvert-minded,  board gamers.   They seemed like a good fit with us and with each other.    And we were right for both couples had a lot of synchronicities going on in their lives including quitting their professional jobs for an opportunity to go traveling for six or more months.  New Zealand was on the top of their respective lists.

We started the week making a list on the white board of all the possible tasks/chores we could tackle during the week.

As you can see from the photo, we managed to get to almost all of them:  house gutters cleaned;  cracking and shelling walnuts;  making peach jam;  mowing;  transplanting and sheet mulching around new trees;  fixing the woodshed; pruning trees; chipping the 10’x10’ high pile of branches we accumulated in the last few weeks; and clearing and fixing the lower paddock garden beds.    We also harvested and dried some hops, flowers, and herbs.

Nick, having previously done some landscaping and having worked as a groundskeeper was keen to get my sad full-of-weeds and inconsistent shaped veggie beds in order, complete with brick borders and proper wood sides for terracing down the mild slope of the paddock.   The crew set out to achieve this task over a two-day period and worked hard trenching and laying a brick border; weeding the beds;  and laying weedmatting on the paths and filling them with many wheelbarrows full of eucalyptus chips.

We finished by transplanting celery and broccoli seedlings into the beds and mulching with pea straw which the ladies found quite satisfying!

There was lots of good cooking going on too thanks to the team:   brussel sprout and carmelized onion pizzas;  venison Bolognese pasta; and gourmet Mexican were just a few of the dinner items.

Gaming occurred as well as a few quieter nights of reading for us introverts.

All in all a good week, with over a 100 hours put into the property.  We couldn’t do it without da’ woofers!    Thanks team!

We have finally started to host woofers after almost a year hiatus.   The last time we had woofers was during the big Feb 2011 earthquake.   Quakes, house renovation, visitors, and our travels didn’t allow much time for anything else last year and I’ve missed having the opportunity to host interesting young folks.

We are also trying out a new woofer hosting model – to only schedule woofing for one week a month, but to take anywhere from three to six woofers at a time.    More bang for your buck.  Get them in at once, have a really good and fun hardworking week, tackle some big projects on the property, and then have a few weeks to recover and live some semblance of a normal life.

In mid-February we started up our new model and had four woofers:  Corentin and Rosalie from France;  Leandre from Belgium; and Kimba from California.   All twenty-somethings with lots of energy and good attitudes.

It was a great week though a bit chaotic early on until Bruce and I could get ourselves into a routine and stay focused.  The schedule generally went along the lines of:  everyone up and down for breakfast between 9 – 9:30;  work from 10 – 3 with breaks; a few hours in the afternoon free time for fun;  dinner prep around 6:30;  dinner and evening activity 7 – 11 pm.

The big project for the week was to start getting the new woodshed loaded.   A pile of chopped wood was sitting in the orchard from last year and needed moving – this required the gang to wheelbarrow endless piles of wood uphill and into the trailer and then take the trailer around to the woodshed for unloading.  We must have done about four rounds of that.     Then it was into the forest to chainsaw and haul out wood to the trailer – that took a few rounds.  And lastly the boys moved all our excess building timber from the garage and into the storage bays of the woodshed.   All of which took several days to accomplish.    But we now have one new bay full of wood (the right hand side in the photo) and this wood will now sit and ‘cure’ for the next one to two years.

The ladies helped with the wood hauling and also got in an afternoon of weeding with me in the lower paddock.   My poor garden beds have been virtually overtaken my weeds and twitch and it took a few hours to completely uncover and clear a few areas.    The ladies also spent a good day cutting blackberry in the gulley – we ended up with about a cubic metre of blackberry cuttings to dispose of!

But all was not just hard work – we had some glorious summer weather which we took advantage of – almost every afternoon we’d go down to the beach and have a swim or a poke around.  We foraged for fresh seaweed for seaweed salad and cockles (small clams) for a delicious pasta meal,  and we stopped by the side of a road to collect these beautiful yellow plums which we made into jam.    Kimba offered haircutting services and Corentin made friends with a crab.

The kitchen was humming all week trying to keep the six of us well-fed.   I also now ask all woofers to select and prepare a meal during their stay and we were well treated to chili, tuna bread, and lots of crepes!

It was a great week and we got a lot done!