WWOOFing

Hi all,

Sorry about that last post, it was rushed and I actually forgot to add the Flickr link! My apologies about that. The link to my Flickr is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/amoss-hawkinsphotos/. I am uploading photos as we speak! Hopefully I can get all the ones I want up because I really want to share them with you.

I am curretnly sitting on a computer in our Hostel just south of Tongariro State Park, we are headed to the Blue Mountain Adventure Center Tomorrow. Super excited for that.

WWOOFing the past week was absolutely amazing. I don't have much time on the computer, Lord of The Rings Two Towers starts in about 30 minutes. But here his a quick day by day of my wonderful farm experience.
Day 1: Arrive at around 5pm to Tom and PJ White's beatiful farm. They mainly raise cattle and sell them for profit. Which involves having cows that they milk in order to raise the calves. They also have free range pigs and sheep, a very cool farm. It is tucked east of the Ruahine Mountains, providing wonderful views of there snowcapped summits. This evening was spent hanging out with the family, Tom and PJ have three little kids, Ben, George, and Rosie. Who are all super cool. We then dined on an amzing feast of Lasagna, which after our diet of fried breads and indian food in Rabulu, was a wonderful change of pace, which I'm sure my colon was quite happy about. Sam, Beans(Colin T), and I are acutally staying in a trailer outside of the house called big blue. However, we have renamed it Bag End, after Bilbo Baggins Hobbit hole from the Lord of The Rings.
Day 2: This morning Jamo, Dylan, and I removed thistles from one of the grazing fields on their farm. It was a nice walk throughn there property with some bush removal as well, a fun morning. The afternoon we fixed some holes in the fences surrounding some of the cow pens on the farm. I am not very good at nailing, but we got it done. We dined on some delish morrocan chicken cooked by some of the Carpe group!
Day 3: Spent the morning thistle grubbing again on a different grazing field, there farm is 500 acres, so there is plenty of thistle grubbing to go around. In the afternoon I helped weigh and sort some of the calves. This involved wrangling them onto a scale, weighing them, then sorting them by weight. This was fun because it was my first handson experience with animals, only got pooped and kicked on once, so I consider that a good first go. We dined on juicy hamburgers with potatoe wedges grilled up by the kitchen crew.
Day 4: This morning, beans and I helped Tom with the process of dehorning some of the calves on the farm. This involved having two specialists come in to help us, Bob and Stuey. Beans and I would grab the cattle by the neck and the tail and wrastle them into a cage sort of thing where stuey or bob would then clamp down there head securely, then they would take a specialized blow torch and burn off the cows hair around their horns, the coterize there horns. It was a very painful proccess for the cows and really hard work to wrastle them into the contraptions. However it is a needed part of farm life, for a bull with horns cannot sell and is dangerous. All in all, we helped dehorn 204 calves in 3 hours. Hard work! We got the rest of the day off except for some cow herding into different pastures in the late afternoon. Dined on some make your own sushi, nothing like the stuff we make...
Day 5: Kitchen duty day! In the Kitchen with Beans, Brooke, and Rebecca. We made standard oatmeal for breakfast. Heated up leftovers for lunch, and I took the reigns of grillmaster for dinner with some beef kabobs. Something that happened today that was interesting was that we were able to see a pig slaughter. Tom and Pj hired a slaughterer to come over and kill two of there pigs. He did it by first shooting them between the eyes, killing them instantly, then cutting there neck to make them bleed out. Then second pig did not die on the first shot however, he took two shots. This was a interesting experience for me. It definetly has made me more grateful for my meat and I am more aware of what has to happen for that piece of bacon to end up on my plate. I encourage any meat eater that has not seen a slaughter to contemplate seeing one, I am still processing my feelings about it, I am in no danger of going vegetarian though.
Day 6: Early Morning Duty! got up at 5:30 am with Jamo and Lydia to go help Tom bring in and milk the cows. They have 55 cows that they milk twice a day to provide milk for there calves. This still isn't enough to feed all of there calves though, they also have to mix up some powdered milk. I am willing to do the milking work, but I cannot say it is my favorite. We then spent the rest of the morning feeding the calves and pigs. Came in for lunch, then repeated it all again. Did not get pooped on today. Dinner was delish corned beef and mashed potatoes, these meals never dissapoint!
Day 7: Final Day! Early morning duty again, this time with Dylan and Lucy, did the same thing as I did on day six, except Tom allowed me to drive the quad bike today. They have a quad bike with what a container of milk traling behind, and today he let me drive it, it was pretty easy and VERY fun! We dined to wonderful last meal of roast pork, from the pig that was slaughtered two days ago, so it was nice and fresh. This whole time we have been having fresh raw milk, which has been so good, going three weeks without milk was a challenge for me.
Day 8: left early in the morning by bus and got to National park in the late afternoon where we are for one night before heading to BMAC!

My next Check in will probably in another week or so. Since I'm not going to post until after, just gotta give a little shout out to my sister G, who is turning 21 in three days! SO crazy!! Enjoy it you old geezer, missing you more than expected.

Hope everyone is well,\

-Arthur

P.S> Fun fact: PJ and Tom's farm is actually not certified organic, they are still working towards it, it takes a lot of money to become certified in New Zealand.