Child of the Planet

As I did at Awhi farm, I departed early. The hosts gave me a pot of caviera to take away which was a great parting gift.

We call this room in the Wwoofer residence, 'the dungeon'. This room is centrally located within the house and there are no windows. The previous owners of the site had a bondage room installed. Entrance to the dungeon room This is the dungeon door

I've been doing some building work here and had a brush with mortality when I fell through the roof we were resealing with corrugated iron. This is a shot of the hole that I fell through and a couple of curious peacock chicks. That diagonal piece near the top is what snapped when I stood on it, and the length of timber on the right is what I caught with my arms to catch myself. Pretty damn exciting and possibly the first time I've experienced that sense sharpening adrenalin kick, cause I dangled there for a bit and hauled my self up pretty easily. I've never been good with chin-ups in the past. This does reinforce my opinion that 'I am in fact, industructable'. I'm pretty happy about knowing how to seal a roof with corrugated iron now. Ripping the roof off

Building a floor for the pottery shed Steve the builder cut all the timber and marked it up

My first attempt at blocking the escapees There are two sheep that regularly stage an escape, to munch on grass elsewhere in the village. My hosts are worried that one day, they’ll wander onto the train tracks and become high velocity mince meat. This is a record of one mans efforts to tame the wild spirit of these sheep. The smaller and more tenacious of the two managed to squeeze out between the trunks of the trees. The other was left behind. The one left behind mooched around, including walking straight up to me and looking me in the eye as if to say 'hay mate, could you just walk over there and open up that there gate for me'. I dropped a pallet into gap between hedge and building in an effort to keep them contained.

Folk here were discussing which hen was laying, and where? It was a bit of a mystery. I'm told that a hen squarks when she has completed her busness and the rooster joins her in a cacophonous duet. I'm on my own digging up bricks when suddenly the normally placid cock gets excited. The shed with the wood pile I wander over to a pile of wood in shed and notice her peeking out. We had to completely remove and re-stack the wood pile to get at the eggs. hiding in the wood pile She tries to draw me away

Cute little buggers Keep to themselves and don't try to escape. Make noises more reminiscent of birds then camels, to which I'm told, that they are related.

Spent part of the day unearthing these reclaimed bricks which are worth much more then the modern ones. Must have some sort of heritage value? The chickens dart in to pluck out any grubs they spy as I turn the earth over. I like that the animals follow me around as I'm working. I've started talking to them if there is no human company.

I'm wwoofing at a new place near Ongarue Waikato . Driving into this dead little town was a bit strange. Felt like i'd driven into a western and was entering a ghost town. Expected to see an old codger with a donkey heading back out of town on his way to his dried up gold claim. The Timber Trail Center is three main buildings and a farm shed, all sitting at the front of a large chunk of land that leads down to a trout filled river. The buildings include a restored church, a school building with expansive sun spilling windows, and a more modern cottage which is where the Wwoofers are billited. The property was bought with the intension to re-locate the chuch building to Auckland. The hosts fell in love with the area and now they want to develop the site into an Eco-retreat to take advantage of a new cycle track that ends in Ongarue . One of the free range pigs Lots of livestock on the property and it's all free ranging. There are fences and gates d...

There was a major frost. Ice caked the windows of the van, and i had difficulties opening the sliding door. Feathers of ice on windscreen wipers made them look like moth antenna Water left in dish washing bowls had grown a hard brown rind, but brilliant sun sparkled on every surface. I took a piss against the metal corrugated sides of the pig pen, and said goodbye too the piglets who were dozing on their straw nest Josie (the head gardener) gave me a couple of eggplant to take with me. I'm heading North, up to Ongarue to a new Wwoofing position at the Timber Trail Centre.

I've been having a prick of a time dealing with Blackberry here. It's pretty much organic barbed wire. Many of the small gardens have been carved out of the mass of blackberry the threads its self through the property. I'm regularly pricked and scratched while tending the field and found myself hacking at the garden boundaries with tools to fight back at the spiky loops. Blackberry as food and security. Turns out that this introduced plant is useful as they can be eaten, and they can be beaten back to form a hedge that is impervious to man and dog. The tendrils knit together to form a habitat for small animals. A third of the plants mass dies during the year, returning nutrients to the soil. The heart When clearing the village in preparation for clover seeding, I discovered that the plant establishes clumpy nodules underground. I've come to think of these woody nodes as the heart of the blackberry, and I'm enjoying unearthing these, with the feeling that I'...

As part of the Permaculture coarse, I was too prepare a document detailing the potentual introduction of rabbits to Awhi farm. Keeping animal healthy Rabbits are sensitive to heat, but not cold. Rabbits are terrotoral and don't need to be penned up, but I would advise a pen system to ease management of animals. The rabbits love the shade and a hiding place. Doe's need a nest box when pregnant. As sweet as a rabbit can be they can also rip your arm up with claws that are incredibly sharp. Keep nails trimmed and wear long sleeves. Rabbits predominantly graze on grass but you certainly can supplement with comfrey and other prernial herbs. supplement a bit of feed with a commercially available rabbit "muesli" which is essentially a mix of grains and lucerne but we also throw them any edible weeds from the veggie beds and any carrots and apples. What prep is needed before introduction to eco sys Easily be incorporated into zone 1. They can be utilised to mow smal...

Javier (the Spanish architect) has calculated that the older earth bag structure will have problems supporting the weight of the dome so we are having to add reinforcing pillars to the buttress structures. The original structure has been abandoned for a while and has been decaying. The plastic weave bags that are filled with packed earth are splitting. Much of the buttress needs to be re-built Gravel foundations The buttress structures were designed with curves, which doesn’t strike me as a structurally as sound as building them out in a straight line, out from the curved wall of the building. The buttress are made from piling up plastic mesh bags full of compacted earth. The bags are held in place by gravity and a loop of barbed wire. Barbed wire is a total pain to work with. We had to wear gloves and were constantly in danger of being spiked by the strands which want to spring back up. Part of the international workforce Building the formwork

Just off the main artery of the farm, is a pretty impressive structure rising up out of the bush. Packed earth and brick dome house Dome and guide for vault This is an earth bag building (or Super Adobe), with the addition of a dome which is the current construction task. The bags are a plastic weave that is filled with a mixture of earth and concrete. The bags are stacked and pounded to form the structure. The bricks for the dome are made from cement, clay, and pumice. It's squeezed into shape in a brick press. There is a plan to puncture the curve of the dome with round wood framed windows.

Awhi farm is built on a Reconditioned industrial site so the whole area is very level, hard packed dirt, with a stony layer lying centimetres below much of the surface. Despite the small river and the odd lengths of drainage channel that run through it, lots of water pools about when it rains. After three days my hiking boots were sodden and my feet were wet pretty much all of the time. I found some gumboots up at the neighbouring squash club. That is where we go for showers, or to participate in the Perma-culture coarse that the trustees have offered to us 'long termers'. We were sitting around at breakfast discussing the change in the weather. The German girl said that it was a result of ua 'not finishing our meal the night before'. What was funny, was that no one at the table knew what she was talking about, and no one said anything. We had finished our meals the night before, and gone back for seconds, so what the hell was she talking about? And ...

This cute little bugger is a fantail (Piwakawaka in Maori). Witnessed one of the cats that we adopted pull a fantail out of tree. This was sad. I like fantails cause they eat flies. They like to chirp at us, as though they are saying 'thanks for all the flies you dirty monkeys' They swoop around us like biplanes buzzing king Kong They nip through tent openings, clear the area of insect, then they artfully manoeuvre around tent poles as they leave I was sitting talking to Sean at the dinner table. A fantail perched in a tree near his shoulder was chirping at us. There was a black and white blur, and the bird was gone. The destruction of the local fauna right there in front of me.

There are some hot springs just a short drive from the property. For a treat we bundle up some food (Kia in Maori) and cook it the traditional way. It's usually big chunks of meat, some Kumara (local sweet potato), greens such as Puha (like spinach), all bundled up together. I reckon it would be cool to try cooking Chinese dumplings, or a steamed pudding this way.

As part of the Permaculture coarse I was participating in a Awhi farm, I was placed into a group of three. Our mission was to develop a plan for the village area. This is a horseshoe of shacks that Awhi farm is in the process of converting to accommodation. Pee Posts Line of lemon trees Linen screen spiraled around to provide a screen Highly visual reminder to pee in the environment Instructions on where the pee post is to be 'planted' are sown into the fabric of the screen Invisible structure Annotate the village Large map on walls facing onto main drive and 'shortcut' directing people to functions within the village Instructions on managing the storage area are painted on everything within the room Stencil phone number on shelf underneath bed linen so customers can call up when things run out.

Continuing from this post... Final thing I had to do was mount a couple of shower hooks. The hooks were moulded out of some short lengths of re-bar, by a visiting blacksmith. See hangers before painting... See video of shower build here... And another example of the graffiti we found when clearing out the prison cells The other examples are here... And here...