Dec 13/10 9:00pm
We have spent our first day at our first WWOOFing farm. But to back up a little...
On Friday we were heading south by about 11am or so after a glowing response from our landlord to how clean we left the flat. With a Ned Kelly pie (baked beans, steak mince, an egg with a grilled cheese top) from the best pie shop in New Plymouth, we took the inland route which gave us some other vistas of the mountain. The sun was out and within a couple hours we had arrived at the Castlecliff Holiday Park in Wanganui. We had visited this city a couple years ago and to our delight we found that this holiday park was right across the street from this awesome playground we stopped at on our previous visit. So after setting up camp we played on the massive flying fox and this sort of merry go round tree-shaped thing. The wind had kicked up earlier in the day so the surf was blown out completely. I was surprised that our tent didn't get picked up in the gusts. Must have been Dustin's boy-scout pegging skills. The wind hung around all night and I'd say that other tents we have owned (ahem Ray's Outdoors tent in Aus...) would not have held up.
We packed up the next morning and made our way down to Palmerston North. Under clouds and a light drizzle we traveled for about an hour inland. Turns out that there was a bagpipe festival in town so the town square was full of people and bagpipes. After finding the holiday park and having some lunch we later walked back to the city centre in search of dinner. We found a delicious Thai place and brought a bottle of wine to have with it. (In many restaurants here you can bring your own wine and sometimes beer and they just charge you a corkage fee, usually $3-5.) We had time before the Rhys Darby show so we went to a pub for a beer - our favorite kind here, Monteith's. We went a bit early to the theatre which is large and ornately decorated. It was just gorgeous! Apparently we somehow were assigned to this extra wide seat so Dustin had double the space haha. We enjoyed the show and the first act was a character of Rhys Darby's - Bill Napier, a park ranger. Then another comedian came out for about 25-30 minutes and he was quite good. After a bit of a break Rhys was back. They kept doing this thing where they pretended the side of the stage was backstage so there would be a bit of back and forth with a lot of "oh that's ok, they can't hear us" kind of stuff. So the next hour or so we were treated to a high-energy performance that included dinosaur impressions, robot impressions, as well as a spot-on impression of a hydraulic lift. He had another couple characters worked into the show but overall based a lot of the show on stories of his experiences. Overall, we're glad that we detoured to see him. We learned that outside of New Plymouth, people make fun of the city quite a lot.
The holiday park was right beside a huge sporting field which was hosting a high school touch rugby tournament so there were heaps of teenagers at the park and the games went on all day. We were surprised that after only about 4 months in New Plymouth (about 70,000 people), coming into a larger town (about 100,000) felt like a big difference and a lot busier. Interesting what you get used to.
We hung around Palmy for a couple hours in the morning. Browsed in a few shops and got some strawberries at the farmer's market. Then we went about an hour southwest into a place called Foxton where we set up for some fishing but nobody was getting any bites even around us. Another half an hour south and we made our way to our farmstay. It's about ten acres and the woman who lives here raises some beef cattle and has goats, chickens and a few sheep and a dog and cat. It's not a big commercial operation and she's had the property about 20 years. She's built the house out of almost all recycled materials which is awesome!
We're getting into areas now where the beaches are fair game to drive on so that's going to be great to come across because surfing and fishing require so many bits and pieces that it's easier if you can just drive out.
Today we spent our four hours working on the house truck she has here. She bought the frame a few years back and turned what was a horse trailer into a bit of a caravan inside. So the first bit was that we had to move it closer to the garage so that Dustin could put a corrugated iron roof on it. But the engine doesn't run and one of the tires was flat so we snugged up the chains and towed it back and forth with our car and her tractor to line it up right. (Dustin was pretty stoked to put the 4WD to use!) Then Dustin was up on the roof and I went with Laureen to try to get a bull and a calf into a different paddock with a lady cow in it. But the other 5 cows wanted to go too so she ended up getting them all up there later on. We mended a bit of the fence and then I started to stain the outside of the house truck. Most of it is built out of wood. After lunch we called it a day and Dustin and I went down to the beach where he got in the water in some pretty messy surf. His allergies are acting up so it's just good to clear the sinuses. We still have to attach the roof but Dustin's prepped it. The roof is what used to be old roller garage doors that she got at the tip. I still have some staining to finish and I'm not sure what else is on the to-do list for us. We are here until Thursday and then we head towards Wellington. We've been trying to set up some WWOOFing there but are finding that a week's notice is not good timing as many are full. Plus it's close to Christmas so friends are visiting or people are out of town. We may end up camping in Wellington.
It's been great to be around the cat and dog here because they are nice animals. I didn't get too close to the other animals today so maybe we'll have a chance later. Since they aren't all pets you don't really just go pet the cows and that. It's amazingly quiet out here and at night it's so dark. We had a streetlight outside our window in New Plymouth and we always had noise from traffic or people.
So we have another week on the North Island before we ferry down south and have another WWOOFing stop!
We have spent our first day at our first WWOOFing farm. But to back up a little...
On Friday we were heading south by about 11am or so after a glowing response from our landlord to how clean we left the flat. With a Ned Kelly pie (baked beans, steak mince, an egg with a grilled cheese top) from the best pie shop in New Plymouth, we took the inland route which gave us some other vistas of the mountain. The sun was out and within a couple hours we had arrived at the Castlecliff Holiday Park in Wanganui. We had visited this city a couple years ago and to our delight we found that this holiday park was right across the street from this awesome playground we stopped at on our previous visit. So after setting up camp we played on the massive flying fox and this sort of merry go round tree-shaped thing. The wind had kicked up earlier in the day so the surf was blown out completely. I was surprised that our tent didn't get picked up in the gusts. Must have been Dustin's boy-scout pegging skills. The wind hung around all night and I'd say that other tents we have owned (ahem Ray's Outdoors tent in Aus...) would not have held up.
We packed up the next morning and made our way down to Palmerston North. Under clouds and a light drizzle we traveled for about an hour inland. Turns out that there was a bagpipe festival in town so the town square was full of people and bagpipes. After finding the holiday park and having some lunch we later walked back to the city centre in search of dinner. We found a delicious Thai place and brought a bottle of wine to have with it. (In many restaurants here you can bring your own wine and sometimes beer and they just charge you a corkage fee, usually $3-5.) We had time before the Rhys Darby show so we went to a pub for a beer - our favorite kind here, Monteith's. We went a bit early to the theatre which is large and ornately decorated. It was just gorgeous! Apparently we somehow were assigned to this extra wide seat so Dustin had double the space haha. We enjoyed the show and the first act was a character of Rhys Darby's - Bill Napier, a park ranger. Then another comedian came out for about 25-30 minutes and he was quite good. After a bit of a break Rhys was back. They kept doing this thing where they pretended the side of the stage was backstage so there would be a bit of back and forth with a lot of "oh that's ok, they can't hear us" kind of stuff. So the next hour or so we were treated to a high-energy performance that included dinosaur impressions, robot impressions, as well as a spot-on impression of a hydraulic lift. He had another couple characters worked into the show but overall based a lot of the show on stories of his experiences. Overall, we're glad that we detoured to see him. We learned that outside of New Plymouth, people make fun of the city quite a lot.
The holiday park was right beside a huge sporting field which was hosting a high school touch rugby tournament so there were heaps of teenagers at the park and the games went on all day. We were surprised that after only about 4 months in New Plymouth (about 70,000 people), coming into a larger town (about 100,000) felt like a big difference and a lot busier. Interesting what you get used to.
We hung around Palmy for a couple hours in the morning. Browsed in a few shops and got some strawberries at the farmer's market. Then we went about an hour southwest into a place called Foxton where we set up for some fishing but nobody was getting any bites even around us. Another half an hour south and we made our way to our farmstay. It's about ten acres and the woman who lives here raises some beef cattle and has goats, chickens and a few sheep and a dog and cat. It's not a big commercial operation and she's had the property about 20 years. She's built the house out of almost all recycled materials which is awesome!
We're getting into areas now where the beaches are fair game to drive on so that's going to be great to come across because surfing and fishing require so many bits and pieces that it's easier if you can just drive out.
Today we spent our four hours working on the house truck she has here. She bought the frame a few years back and turned what was a horse trailer into a bit of a caravan inside. So the first bit was that we had to move it closer to the garage so that Dustin could put a corrugated iron roof on it. But the engine doesn't run and one of the tires was flat so we snugged up the chains and towed it back and forth with our car and her tractor to line it up right. (Dustin was pretty stoked to put the 4WD to use!) Then Dustin was up on the roof and I went with Laureen to try to get a bull and a calf into a different paddock with a lady cow in it. But the other 5 cows wanted to go too so she ended up getting them all up there later on. We mended a bit of the fence and then I started to stain the outside of the house truck. Most of it is built out of wood. After lunch we called it a day and Dustin and I went down to the beach where he got in the water in some pretty messy surf. His allergies are acting up so it's just good to clear the sinuses. We still have to attach the roof but Dustin's prepped it. The roof is what used to be old roller garage doors that she got at the tip. I still have some staining to finish and I'm not sure what else is on the to-do list for us. We are here until Thursday and then we head towards Wellington. We've been trying to set up some WWOOFing there but are finding that a week's notice is not good timing as many are full. Plus it's close to Christmas so friends are visiting or people are out of town. We may end up camping in Wellington.
It's been great to be around the cat and dog here because they are nice animals. I didn't get too close to the other animals today so maybe we'll have a chance later. Since they aren't all pets you don't really just go pet the cows and that. It's amazingly quiet out here and at night it's so dark. We had a streetlight outside our window in New Plymouth and we always had noise from traffic or people.
So we have another week on the North Island before we ferry down south and have another WWOOFing stop!
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