Feb 13/11 8:21pm
It's the eve of our departure from Cwmglyn (pronounced coom-glin) Farm. We've been here since the 10th and it's a farm with 3 milk-producing cows that they use to make farmhouse cheese. They also have a set up of a model railway that they open for the public for a small admission fee. So it's been a bit interesting although we're both suffering from clutter-induced anxiety. We haven't really been able to take part too much in the cheese-making and we haven't been able to do anything in the rail display but sweep and clean glass so I guess we were expecting it to be a little different. We did get to weed about 5-7 acres of paddocks though... So yeah we haven't clicked quite as well as some of the other stays but well everyone is different.
We did end up having a nice clear ferry crossing on our way up so some of that scenery was very pretty. Very much like the Gulf Islands of BC but still it was lovely. The water seems to get to a nicer shade of blue down here. And the bonus was the ferry wasn't packed like it was on the way down and there weren't a bunch of kids squirming in the seats across from us. The ferry got into Wellington around 5pm so just in time for peak traffic so we made our way north and drove through some massive valley with green rolling hills. We found a free conservation campsite for the night that wasn't too bad. Then the next morning we went up to a larger town called Masterton. We had the kind of day where we wouldn't have stopped in this place if we weren't killing time before the woofing stop. Masterton was less than an hour away and they couldn't host us until the 10th so we just did some laundry and nearly had the holiday park to ourselves which was very rare. I think because there's not much going on there it's not a big touristy spot. On Thursday morning we arrived at the farm and started mowing the lawns. On Friday night they had a bunch of neighbours over for a potluck dinner and it was great because we haven't been to a buffet or potluck for ages so I was stuffed. We chatted with a few of the people there through the evening but it's a relatively close-knit group and they hadn't gotten together for a while so we also made chit chat with some of the kids there. Although I guess 17 isn't really a kid - he recently got his pilot's licence and had been flying over the area earlier in the day. We cleaned up and had a late night - after 10:30pm!
We have enjoyed having some of the cheeses they make here, the closest style would be like a cheddar and some of them she put flavours in like Fenugreek seeds or coriander. She tends to keep the milk from each cow separate and you can taste the subtle difference between the cheeses. Sounds like they have had quite the battles with the food safety agency though because they are so small and the rules are based on much much larger operations so they don't really work. But they have persevered and the agency has agreed to make a separate set of rules for small-scale production so they are still waiting for that to happen. They get a fair few visitors through during the day and a dairy farmer from Texas was here - he was amazed that she could make money off of only 3 cows. Of course he had a few thousand cows on his farm. There was a fellow through today from Richmond so I chatted with him for a bit. So it's an interesting little stop for people but they only run the trains on the weekends now that the summer holidays are over but during the week you can look at the static set up. There's quite a system of tracks set up and it's meant to resemble an English town so there are different stations and areas. Must have taken many hours to get all sorted!
From here we continue north and have about 5 days before our next woofing stop. We plan to meet up with a friend in Hastings and in Napier they are having this massive Art Deco festival so apparently lots of people dress up in 30's style but we don't know what else goes on. Not sure that we'll be able to put together any outfits but we might try to see about it. I reckon all the costume hire shops are booked out though. Napier is the city where I lost a hoodie on our last visit so I plan to go to all the op-shops and hope that somehow it's still around. haha. I loved that one. We haven't had any surf luck lately but will be back closer to the coast so hopefully that will work out!
We've started to look at our plans for Australia now that we're just under 7 weeks away from that. We fly into and out of Perth but want to go up the coast about 1200 kms to the Ningaloo Reef. Dustin will be diving as much as he can there and we'll be there during the whale shark season so you can dive and snorkel with them as well. Given that our total time in Western Australia is about 19 days, and given that we also want to head south of Perth about 500 kms - we were preparing for doing some serious driving. We looked into hire cars and some companies don't even let you drive that far north and others charge you like an extra $200-500 to do so. Then we reckoned that it was a 2-3 day drive each way and the petrol we'd end up buying would be adding up as well. We looked into taking a bus tour or just hopping on the Greyhound but the cheapest Greyhound ticket was about $350 each! (A car hire was going to be around $1000 for the time we were there.) However a bus would allow us to just go in one long, long day without worrying about driver fatigue. So, luckily Dustin looked at the Qantas page and found they had a seat sale on! So for $99 per person each way we are going up to Exmouth which is the city off the reef that most of the dive companies operate out of. Yipee! So that saves us a good few days that we can now use to travel south of Perth without such a crunch for time. We'll be staying for 5 nights so that also gives us more time to spend in the city of Perth and visiting with Theresa who has moved over there from Melbourne. We do pick the most inopportune times to research this stuff though - we had about 2 hours before we had to report to the ferry terminal so we went to the library in Picton and found the flights. We didn't book right away because our time was up and we had to have lunch anyways. Rather than miss out on the deal we did decide it would work best so tried to book while killing time before the ferry. Of course the first dates we picked were already unavailable! The dates we ended up with still work out well - although yet again we will be traveling on our anniversary! We did that going to Thailand a couple years ago. But there were only 2 flights a week to pick from so that will have to do. Maybe we can get bumped up to business class haha. Not sure the plane will be that big.
The cows here are all very tame and we've been able to walk up and give them a pat or let them lick us which they love to do. They have a bull and 4 calves as well - 3 calves are about 6 months old and 1 is about 18 months old. We've been feeding them willow branches which they just gobble up. So it's been neat to see a small scale dairy farm and also to have raw milk, freshly milked each morning. I don't know what all the fuss is about selling raw milk, we've been drinking it and it's been fine. The cows produce on average 10 litres of milk a day! We've though about keeping a cow for milk and hadn't realized it would mean heaps and heaps of milk! Guess we could always make ice cream and teach ourselves to make cheese and not to mention yogurt... not a bad idea. We did get to eat some venison that a neighbour brought over - he went hunting and was sharing some of the kill. It was so tender! All this good food and Dustin reminds me that a mere 2 and a half weeks after we arrive home I have a bridesmaid dress to fit into... sure wish it wasn't already being made haha. Well, it's been cool to see this part of the island because we didn't get to it before and it really does look like art all around us. So back to a bit of familiar territory soon and then some other new cities after that!
It's the eve of our departure from Cwmglyn (pronounced coom-glin) Farm. We've been here since the 10th and it's a farm with 3 milk-producing cows that they use to make farmhouse cheese. They also have a set up of a model railway that they open for the public for a small admission fee. So it's been a bit interesting although we're both suffering from clutter-induced anxiety. We haven't really been able to take part too much in the cheese-making and we haven't been able to do anything in the rail display but sweep and clean glass so I guess we were expecting it to be a little different. We did get to weed about 5-7 acres of paddocks though... So yeah we haven't clicked quite as well as some of the other stays but well everyone is different.
We did end up having a nice clear ferry crossing on our way up so some of that scenery was very pretty. Very much like the Gulf Islands of BC but still it was lovely. The water seems to get to a nicer shade of blue down here. And the bonus was the ferry wasn't packed like it was on the way down and there weren't a bunch of kids squirming in the seats across from us. The ferry got into Wellington around 5pm so just in time for peak traffic so we made our way north and drove through some massive valley with green rolling hills. We found a free conservation campsite for the night that wasn't too bad. Then the next morning we went up to a larger town called Masterton. We had the kind of day where we wouldn't have stopped in this place if we weren't killing time before the woofing stop. Masterton was less than an hour away and they couldn't host us until the 10th so we just did some laundry and nearly had the holiday park to ourselves which was very rare. I think because there's not much going on there it's not a big touristy spot. On Thursday morning we arrived at the farm and started mowing the lawns. On Friday night they had a bunch of neighbours over for a potluck dinner and it was great because we haven't been to a buffet or potluck for ages so I was stuffed. We chatted with a few of the people there through the evening but it's a relatively close-knit group and they hadn't gotten together for a while so we also made chit chat with some of the kids there. Although I guess 17 isn't really a kid - he recently got his pilot's licence and had been flying over the area earlier in the day. We cleaned up and had a late night - after 10:30pm!
We have enjoyed having some of the cheeses they make here, the closest style would be like a cheddar and some of them she put flavours in like Fenugreek seeds or coriander. She tends to keep the milk from each cow separate and you can taste the subtle difference between the cheeses. Sounds like they have had quite the battles with the food safety agency though because they are so small and the rules are based on much much larger operations so they don't really work. But they have persevered and the agency has agreed to make a separate set of rules for small-scale production so they are still waiting for that to happen. They get a fair few visitors through during the day and a dairy farmer from Texas was here - he was amazed that she could make money off of only 3 cows. Of course he had a few thousand cows on his farm. There was a fellow through today from Richmond so I chatted with him for a bit. So it's an interesting little stop for people but they only run the trains on the weekends now that the summer holidays are over but during the week you can look at the static set up. There's quite a system of tracks set up and it's meant to resemble an English town so there are different stations and areas. Must have taken many hours to get all sorted!
From here we continue north and have about 5 days before our next woofing stop. We plan to meet up with a friend in Hastings and in Napier they are having this massive Art Deco festival so apparently lots of people dress up in 30's style but we don't know what else goes on. Not sure that we'll be able to put together any outfits but we might try to see about it. I reckon all the costume hire shops are booked out though. Napier is the city where I lost a hoodie on our last visit so I plan to go to all the op-shops and hope that somehow it's still around. haha. I loved that one. We haven't had any surf luck lately but will be back closer to the coast so hopefully that will work out!
We've started to look at our plans for Australia now that we're just under 7 weeks away from that. We fly into and out of Perth but want to go up the coast about 1200 kms to the Ningaloo Reef. Dustin will be diving as much as he can there and we'll be there during the whale shark season so you can dive and snorkel with them as well. Given that our total time in Western Australia is about 19 days, and given that we also want to head south of Perth about 500 kms - we were preparing for doing some serious driving. We looked into hire cars and some companies don't even let you drive that far north and others charge you like an extra $200-500 to do so. Then we reckoned that it was a 2-3 day drive each way and the petrol we'd end up buying would be adding up as well. We looked into taking a bus tour or just hopping on the Greyhound but the cheapest Greyhound ticket was about $350 each! (A car hire was going to be around $1000 for the time we were there.) However a bus would allow us to just go in one long, long day without worrying about driver fatigue. So, luckily Dustin looked at the Qantas page and found they had a seat sale on! So for $99 per person each way we are going up to Exmouth which is the city off the reef that most of the dive companies operate out of. Yipee! So that saves us a good few days that we can now use to travel south of Perth without such a crunch for time. We'll be staying for 5 nights so that also gives us more time to spend in the city of Perth and visiting with Theresa who has moved over there from Melbourne. We do pick the most inopportune times to research this stuff though - we had about 2 hours before we had to report to the ferry terminal so we went to the library in Picton and found the flights. We didn't book right away because our time was up and we had to have lunch anyways. Rather than miss out on the deal we did decide it would work best so tried to book while killing time before the ferry. Of course the first dates we picked were already unavailable! The dates we ended up with still work out well - although yet again we will be traveling on our anniversary! We did that going to Thailand a couple years ago. But there were only 2 flights a week to pick from so that will have to do. Maybe we can get bumped up to business class haha. Not sure the plane will be that big.
The cows here are all very tame and we've been able to walk up and give them a pat or let them lick us which they love to do. They have a bull and 4 calves as well - 3 calves are about 6 months old and 1 is about 18 months old. We've been feeding them willow branches which they just gobble up. So it's been neat to see a small scale dairy farm and also to have raw milk, freshly milked each morning. I don't know what all the fuss is about selling raw milk, we've been drinking it and it's been fine. The cows produce on average 10 litres of milk a day! We've though about keeping a cow for milk and hadn't realized it would mean heaps and heaps of milk! Guess we could always make ice cream and teach ourselves to make cheese and not to mention yogurt... not a bad idea. We did get to eat some venison that a neighbour brought over - he went hunting and was sharing some of the kill. It was so tender! All this good food and Dustin reminds me that a mere 2 and a half weeks after we arrive home I have a bridesmaid dress to fit into... sure wish it wasn't already being made haha. Well, it's been cool to see this part of the island because we didn't get to it before and it really does look like art all around us. So back to a bit of familiar territory soon and then some other new cities after that!
haha, your dress will be lace up in the back, so you'll have a little bit of extra room ;-) haha.
ReplyDeleteLife on a farm, I think it is always different then people imagine. Sounds like an interesting place. Glad things are going well!
ReplyDeleteContinue to enjoy your travels and thank you for telling us about them on your blog. It makes for great reading!
ReplyDeleteLove ya,
Mom & Dad