Motueka wwoofs

From Kelvin and Paula’s I hitched to Motueka to stay a night in the Happy Apple back-packers before finding my way 10 km west up the Mot valley to my next host. Their drive starts at about 30m and ends after a kilometre and another 150m up (1:6 gradient), which I had to walk with my full pack. I chose this host because they are in the middle of building their own eco house, which really interests me as the works would involve construction.

I have just been under 4 weeks with them - Stephan and Natalie with Chloe (7) and Lotus (4/5 she had her birthday whilst I was there). The work was interesting and to my taste although most of the time I was there we were working on the roof in 30+ degrees. Which, satisfyingly, was finished on my last day with them after having stuck myself to every possible part of the plastic lining with litres of viscous contact adhesive.

My work involved layering the whole roof with ply board in preparation for the waterproof lining using 2000 screws - the plastic necessary as they were having a garden roof. And the roof was by no means simple, the house was interesting designed situated on about a 45 degree slope with absolutely stunning views for 50 or so miles down the valley to Motueka and across the Nelson bay to the Marlborough sound.

In amongst the 7 hours a day work were trips to a friends property on the hottest days where we played and lased in a beautiful pool and listened to jazz and ate organic home grown fruit and berries.

Despite this, life with the family was stressful at time, which was not in a health balance of positive and negative. With a relief my time there was terminated due to one of the hosts becoming ill. Fortunately I was able to move tot he host I’m with now the following day.

I had had my eye on this host as the Husband was a blacksmith, and I have always wanted to do some forging. Incidentally they are a really lovely family, who are interesting and musical and arty. The highlights have been learning to milk their goats! Which is great fun, so there is fresh un-pasteurised goats milk every day and gorgeous cheese most of the time. The food is also very good with allot of veggies coming from their garden. As well as this, Red, the blacksmith, is very open and i have now spent a few hours on the forge with him experimenting with making faces and doing a few other jobs, which has been so wonderful! I am also going to make a bushcraft knife which I have been planning for months and now have the opportunity to forge myself.

I may accompany Red and his son Angus to the Nelson market tomorow morning (6:30) depending on weather I can get up!

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