My First WWOOFing Experience

Kia Ora! I'm in New Zealand! And I am so excited to start blogging again about my travel experiences!

So WWOOFing... have you ever heard of it? The term stands for World Wide Organization for Organic Farming, although I have heard people say it stands for different things. The concept of WWOOFing is that you work on an organic farm for about four+ hours a day and in return you get free accommodation and free food! Which is a pretty sweet deal when you are traveling. I first heard about WWOOFing while I was on my Europe adventure. I met a girl in Ireland who was going to work on an ostrich farm in Bulgaria. Umm awesome right?! Ever since then I had my mind set on doing some WWOOFing in New Zealand.

There are so many different WWOOFing opportunities in New Zealand. So many in fact that it was quite overwhelming to pick one. I decided I would do my first experience on Waiheke Island which is a 40 minute ferry ride from Auckland. My first WWOOFer host (who I will refer to as K) was kind enough to pick me up from the ferry and then take me for a brief walk along the beach. When I got to her place, which is situated on a hill overlooking the sea, I was greeted by a luscious yard filled with beautiful flowering trees and gardens upon gardens. I was even more pleased to find the place I was staying in. I had the most charming little cabin all to myself! After staying in hostels for the past two weeks, this was quite a pleasant change. I was immediately in love with my little cabin that became home for a week.

My little cabin from the outside

View of my cabin from the loft (where I slept)

Stairs to the loft and mini kitchenette

My bed

View from my window

K showed me around her garden, pointing out plants I had never heard of. From the moment I stepped off the plane in New Zealand, I was overcome with wonder by the incredibly strange and unique foliage I had never encountered before in my life. It was like stepping off the plane onto a different planet. K would point out different plants and pick me a leaf of this and a stem of that to taste. I found out very quickly that she is extremely knowledgeable about plants of all kinds.

Just a small part of her beautiful garden

K's quaint establishment is a series of small cabins. The main cabin contains the kitchen, an office, a cozy little reading room, and attached is a wash room and a bedroom. The second cabin is referred to as "the everything room" (everyone is bound to have one of those eh?).

"Everything room" on the left and main cabin in the middle and right.

The third building was the bathroom (aka a dry composting toilet) which is only for solid waste. She went on to explain, "If you have to pee, just find a discreet area in the garden." :-). Right next to the toilet was the shower and washing machine.

Toilet through the left doors and shower/washing machine through the right. You can see my cabin in the background.

Dry composting toilet (built by her son!)

K treated me to eating fish and chips (chips=fries) on the beach while we watched the moon rise. We finished the night with a cup of hot chocolate and a chat. I returned to my cabin with a hot water bottle to put under my covers to keep warm. Most people in New Zealand do not have internal heating, so I have come to find it gets quite cold at nights. I am very thankful for my cozy socks and hoodies that tagged along in my suitcase :).

1st official day WWOOFing:

I woke up and started the day digging up daylilies to transplant. Throughout the week I found myself thinking many times that I had no idea what I was doing. She would tell me to do something or the other and I would just do the best I could haha. I hauled branches and threw them down the steep bank. Later, I helped a French worker dig out a platform to put her water tank. K relies entirely on rain water for her water supply. Therefore, conserving water is very important. Her tank needed to be moved because it was starting to bulge and get too close to the house. We worked on digging out massive roots and vines and transporting loads of soil to make a flat area for the water tank. It was quite hard work.

2nd day WWOOFing:

Tuesday I started the day off by weeding asparagus weed which is a noxious weed that was brought in by the Europeans who thought it made a nice looking house plant. It has now gone wild and grows rampant throughout New Zealand, choking out other plants as it winds itself around them.

As you can see, the asparagus weed wraps itself around small trees and begins to choke them out, so it must be removed!

Later I dug up different plants and transplanted new ones in their place. After I was done with that task, I used a pick to dig up massive canna roots and pulled them out of the ground.

All the canna roots I dug up.

That night I had a bit of an experience as I found something swimming in our water pitcher at supper... I was a bit disturbed by that, since that was our DRINKING water. After that happened, I returned to my cabin to find a COCKROACH just chilling on my counter. I was absolutely horrified and froze dead in my tracks just staring at the thing for the longest time. I had seen cockroaches outside while I was digging and knew they were probably crawling around in my cabin (we leave the doors and windows open all day to let the air through, so of course I'm sure the insects also come through), but I was happy as long as I didn't have to see them. But there it was - ON MY COUNTER. I called my New Zealand friend asking him what the heck I should do with the thing. He coached me through using a piece of paper to pick the massive thing up and definitely laughed at me as I shrieked multiple times while trying to pick the thing up. I finally gave up as it scurried away underneath the counter. I am not a girly girl, and am usually not afraid of bugs at all. Cockroaches however freak me out because I've never really seen one in real life and the fact that it was living in my house where it could crawl on my face while I was sleeping was not the most pleasant thought. I decided to do what the Kiwis seem to do and "live one with the spiders and bugs." I'm not kidding, I don't think New Zealand people believe in killing spiders or bugs. In every house I've been in, there are massive spiders living in the corners of the ceiling. I have come to accept them as friends haha.

3rd day WWOOFing:

Wednesday was a very rainy day and I spent the day hauling logs and large branches to cut for firewood. I used a hand saw to cut the logs into manageable sizes.

OSHA would not approve of what I was doing :-)

I also built a base for the firewood out of bamboo. I actually really enjoyed this job as I find bamboo so cool! I was very proud of the result.

The firewood base I built out of bamboo.

K was kind enough to give me that night and the next day off since we worked longer on Monday and Tuesday. I took the ferry back to Auckland to visit a friend during that time, which was nice to get back to "civilization" for a little while haha.

A little girl enjoying the view on the ferry ride.

4th day WWOOFing:

I pulled more asparagus weed, lots and lots of it. I made lunch and then dug more roots and shoveled and transported more soil. My last task was to dig up ginger root and put it in bags.

5th day WWOOFing:

I was blessed to have the opportunity of attending a Waldorf kindergarten workshop which K led. This was an amazing experience for me and being a future teacher, I loved every minute of it. But this is a topic for another blog post :). The rest of the day I got the chance to explore the island and had my first hitch-hiking experience (sorry Mom). Hitch-hiking is very common in New Zealand and as long as you have common sense, it is generally very safe. Since I was taught at a very early age that hitch-hiking is NOT something you do in the United States, I was very leery about trying it. But after realizing I was very far away from K's house after exploring the island, far away from any bus stop, and the fact that it was getting dark soon, I decided to give it a shot. I stuck my thumb out and the first car I saw, immediately stopped. It was a very nice middle aged lady with two kids and two dogs in the car. They were so so nice and took me exactly where I needed to be, which saved me having to walk about 5 more km.

Overall, my first week of WWOOFing was amazing. I learned so much in a week that I can't even begin to tell you. I lived a bit ruggedly and all my experiences definitely toughened me up, both physically and mentally. And all that hard work really does get rewarded with the fact that you have a place to sleep, free meals, and the chance to explore beauty like this: