Jinkies! First month on the Jury farm in Tikorangi, Taranaki.

Greetings and salutations one and all.

Time just keeps slipping away from me lately and my current host has lots of different jobs that need doing and is a lot of fun to chat with that I just don't seem to get around to writing up my missing posts!

I arrived at Mac Snack world headquarters on the 8th of January, after spending some time with familiar faces over in Australia. It was simply lovely to spend Christmas with J-Bo and New Years with the ladies Lahey.


This is the first fully organic farm that I've stayed on, and it's a beaut! It's been in the family for generations (since it started to be settled by Europeans), and is the site of the first (legally) imported macadamia nut trees.

Blue dot is the farmhouse, their property is pretty much
bordered west and south by the roads, and north and east by
the trees.

I'm not the only wwoofer at this location, however the 4 German lads are fresh outta high school and pretty much stick together, so I spend most of my time with Daniela and her daughter (9 yrs) Cassia. Chris generally stuck to himself, working on various tasks. There are quite a variety of trees (grapefruit, various apples, various plums, oranges, lemons, limes, macadamia, avocado and starfruit) and vegetables (beetroot, carrots, cucumbers, lettuces, onions, garlic, zucchini, sweet corn [of Chris' own design], beans, sweet peas) also some raspberries, blueberries and I even found a pineapple. They also have about 400 sheep, flocks of chickens, ducks and turkeys, 3 horses, a sheep dog named Sam (who looks like Fraggle Rock's Sprocket come to life), and graze cattle and rent a couple paddocks to 'the bee man' who keeps his buzzy friends in a couple of the orchards. OH! There's also a big eel who lives in the creek just before the horse stable.

I was lucky to be around for sheep sheering, and got to help out with wool sorting while the sheerers did their thing. It was an interesting event to participate in. Had I not been busy running around with armloads of fleece, I'd have been taking pictures. 

Shifting the rams from one paddock to the next.

There are some days that I spend sorting macadamia nuts to be prepared for roasting, packing, ground into spread or... put into chocolate bars. Oh yes. Delicious, organic chocolate imported from Germany, simply to die for. http://www.macsnack.co.nz/ to order from them. Seriously, it's great stuff. I highly recommend the dark chocolate bars, but they are all good. The milk chocolate ones aren't super-duper sweet.

The farm is located about an hour away from Mt. Taranaki and from New Plymouth. We're nice and close to the sea, so when we get our work done early enough, we head out for a swim. 

Unfortunately previous wwoofers abused the wifi privileges, so, the best time to catch me for a chat is Sunday morning (9-noon, New Zealand time) when I'm in the New Plymouth library (I help with set up and tear down of the farmer's market stall every week).

Apologies for the fairly short post and few pictures, but I am a bit pressed for time. I'll try and get things better prepared ahead of time, but I'm not making any promises.

Happy February!