Last Week in New Zealand

We're coming down the home stretch.  One week from tomorrow, we leave Tuateawa for an overnight on the benches of the Auckland International Airport.  What's new?

Tree Planting:  Mission Accomplished

We started off with about 1,200 acacia, eucalyptus, and fruit trees, as well as several dozen natives, like nikau palm, pohutakawa, hoheria, and even a few kauri.  We planted well over 1,000 of the non-natives, and a large chunk of the natives, as well.  Cat and Mel together were planting machines, and I estimate that I personally planted around 300 trees.  There are around 125 non-natives left in the nursery that will be used for in-fill in sparse areas and to replace seedlings lost to rabbits.  I might plant for another half day in the next week, but for all intents and purposes, the massive tree planting effort has concluded.  Cool!

Bye Bye, Cat and Mel :-(

Our cute little Canadian friends are on a plane to Canada right now.  Both Dave and I had a great time working with Catherine and Melanie.  The work here is not easy and is quite tiring, but they always managed to have a sense of humor about it (even when I wasn't in a smiley mood!).  The month of June wouldn't have been nearly as fun without them.  I'm so excited for Mel to be heading to med school and for Cat to pursue her dream as a vet!

Enough Rain, Already!

Rain usually doesn't bother me.  I like sleeping in the rain, the pitter-patter of the drops lulling me into peaceful slumbers.  But, golly darn it, I don't like torrential downpours that soak the ground to the point of standing water under the tent, which the mattress soaks up like a big sponge!  After removing our soaked mattress from the tent for the third time in as many weeks, Dave and I have (finally) decided to move out of the tent into Cat & Mel's old room.  Strange to sleep inside again!

Finishing Cabins

The walls for both cabins are up.  The lower cabin has a roof, walls have been nogged, and we're starting to hang plywood.  The upper cabin needs a bit more work--it has rafters but no roofing iron, partially nogged walls but no plywood.  This week, we're going hard on the cabins to get them as close to done as possible.  I got to cut roofing iron one day, which was fun because it involved playing with power tools, and painful because of all the sparks flying everywhere.

That's All, Folks

It's been a quiet weekend.  I'm catching up on emails, arranging couchsurfing hosts for our ~2 weeks on the road, talking to family on skype, and doing a crash course in Bhasa Indonesia (literally, "the language of Indonesia").  Plus, it's nice to have some time with just Dave, since we won't get a lot of quiet time while we're on the road.  Time to make dinner...  maybe I'll bake cookies or watch a movie tonight.  :-)

Long Walks on the Beach, Etc.

Today, I took the doggles for a scamper down the beach at Kennedy Bay.

kennedy bay

Dogs are so "in the moment."  Evie and Ninya chase seagulls like every seagull is a demon that will end the world.  No matter how many seagulls they have already tormented, as soon as any bird comes within barking range, they explode down the beach with the speed of a rocket entering the stratosphere as if they've never seen a seagull before.  At one point, Ninya found a half-rotten fish head.  Nothing I could do--including grabbing her muzzle and trying to extract the gooey fish bits from between her clenched jaws--would persuade her to leave the fish head alone.  In her mind, she and the fish head had become one...  and I was standing in the way of her realization of reality!

dogs with wings on their feet

I was surprised by the variety of critter remains I found while walking on the beach.  Puffer fish...  starfish (or whatever the seven-legged version is called)...  shells...  things I couldn't identify...  I don't remember ever seeing diversity like that on the Jersey Shore.  Sorry, JerZ friends.  :-P  (And I think our beaches here are cleaner, too!)

Also, today I made three loaves of bread:  one whole wheat loaf with poppyseed; one whole wheat loaf with currants and mixed spices (cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, cloves); and one whole wheat and rye loaf with mixed herbs (celery seed, coriander seed, mustard seed, and dill).  It was the first time I've done three loaves in a day, and they all turned out well.  I'll be a baker by the time I leave New Zealand!

Guess I don't have much to say, but I did want an excuse to share some hopeful news:  next week, I'm looking forward to rock climbing.  It's been months since I've climbed anything, and...  my heavens...  it might be a year since I've climbed on real rock.  Is that even possible?!

Welcome Back to Tuateawa

We've been back in Tuateawa for almost two weeks, and the June program is in full swing.  What's new and not-so-new?

Tree Planting
My main focus lately has been tree planting.  Over the next month, we hope to install 1,200 trees in the earth of the valley.  We are planting mostly acacia species for ground cover and mostly eucalyptus species for shelterbelts.  In the first week, with the equivalent of 3.5 days of a 3-person planting team, we've planted just about 30%...  an excellent start.

There is just as much non-planting work, however.  I've recovered and saved seeds, and planted seeds into root training trays.  We also have to pound stakes into the ground, paint the stakes, staple plastic tags into the stakes, and label the stakes with the code of the tree that will be planted next to it.  It's a huge effort with logistical challenges, as there are only 6 of us, certain people must do certain tasks, and certain tasks must happen before other tasks.  So far, I'm loving it, as one of my main motivations for coming to New Zealand was environmental conservation work.

Lettuce House
On one of our first days back, Dave and I built a glass house cover for our lettuce beds.  Since the weather is cool and rainy, the little lettuces need some extra warmth and protection from downpours to flourish.  It was only a one day project, but it turned out quite nicely.  We built this out of two old windows and some scrap wood.  Creative building material reuse:  check!

Plenty of Water; No Heat
It all started when the wood-burning stove inexplicably began to leak smoke into the house.  Time for a newer stove!  The old stove, however, was connected to the hot water supply, a smart way to use excess stove heat to reduce energy use by the hot water heater.  In the process of draining the hot water tank, we accidentally "drained" the tank all over the living room and the kitchen, resulting in an inch of standing water in most of the house.

Ooops.

To make matters worse, the heating element in the hot water tank burned out once the tank was empty.  Result:  no heat from the wood-burning stove and no hot water.  Hilariously, one of the burners on our electric cooking stove short-circuited, leaving us with an electric kettle as the sole source of heat in the entire house.

There is a happy ending to the story, however:  handy Dave figured out and repaired the hot water tank.  My hero!  :-)

New Friends
Two French Canadian young ladies, Melanie and Catherine, have joined us for June.  They are so much fun...  always laughing and telling stories!  I really appreciate their enthusiasm for tree planting and working outside.  I think we are going to have an awesome time working and playing together.  (And I'm not just saying that because they might read this!  :-P )

Quality Time with the Doggles
I actually don't have anything to say about the dogs; I simply love this picture of "smiling" Ninya.  The doggles are an endless source of entertainment and companionship.

Hiding from the Rain
All of the rain that we didn't get this summer has fallen in the past few weeks, and it will probably keep falling for the rest of the month.  It is certainly winter, the rainy season, here in our temperate rainforest.  The air is always damp and the weather changeable.  It's still warm enough to sleep outside, though, so we are happy in our tent.  It is mostly dark by 5:30 p.m, and it doesn't start getting light until 7:00 a.m.  North Americans, enjoy your daylight!

Let's Talk About Flax

Let's talk about flax.  This summer, we harvested and transplanted approximately 600 flax plants into the valley where we work.  What is flax, and why do we spend so much time working with it?

New Zealand flax is actually a member of the lily family (although parts of the plant can be used for making fiber, like European flax).  Flax has extremely long, sword-shaped, stiff leaves.  These leaves grow in a fan shape, and one plant growing from one root system can send out 8, 12, or even more fans.

This is New Zealand flax, complete with flower stalks with seeds.

In the spring, the flowers of the flax are an important source of nectar for birds, as they are too deep for bees.  In fact, the flowers of the flax plant curve at the same angle as the beaks of the tui birds!  In the summer, the flax sets its seeds, which are also an important food source for birds.  It's also a great shelter for birds, snails, and other insects.  (Remember, NZ does not have native land mammals, so birds are an extremely important part of the ecosystem here.)  Flax roots do a great job of penetrating very hard soils full of clay; their roots also do a great job stabilizing erosion-prone soil.

Flax has been used for many purposes by traditional Maori society.  Known as harakeke in Maori, flax fiber has been used to make clothing, ropes, canoe lashings--even baby rattles!  Nearly every part of the flax plant also has medicinal uses.  The leaves and flower stalks are used to stabilize and treat broken bones and other wounds.  A juice made from flax root is also a great disinfectant.

In this little video, Dave talks about flax and why it's important in New Zealand ecology.

   

Harvesting flax is a very dirty, very tiring job.  We work in pairs; one person uses a spade to dig around the fan of flax leaves and to separate the roots of the fan from the rest of the plant, while the other person grasps the fan by the outer leaves and tugs and pulls until it comes free.  We aim to harvest 200 plants every time we go into the field; this week, it took us only 2.5 hours to gather 181 plants (practice does help!).

If we're not going to replant immediately, we dump the flax in the river so it doesn't dry out.  Then we have to pull all of it out of the river and throw it back on the trailer.  (We usually make Dave do that part.)  Planting is simple--yank out the grass, dig a hole, pop in a plant, tap down the soil, use the grass as mulch around the bare soil.  Planting in wetlands is muddy and sloppy; once you get past the dirtiness, it's actually fun.

Here's a series of portraits from our last time harvesting flax:

...complete with lucky spade!  Yeah, we're having fun!

To get the flax from the bush to the trailer, we set up a fire line and toss each plant from person to person:

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures from planting.  Imagine a spade and lots of dirt and you'll get the picture.

Yeah flax!

Summer 2010 Slideshow

Over the past few days, I put together a little compilation of the best photos from the summer 2010 earthwise valley residential conservation volunteer program.

It's 50% pictures, 10% captions, and 100% feel-good cheesiness.  Bring on the crackers and wine; you're in for a show!

The Next Chapter

Today the other summer 2010 residents are catching a ferry out of Coromandel to Auckland.

summer 2010 residents at the gate of the valley

from left to right:  laura (nyc), hannah (yorkshire england), dave (upstate ny), nicole (upstate ny), john (georgia), bexie (minnesota via ecuador), daniela (mexico)

Two days before everyone left, we played a silly little series of games.  Two of the very creative residents came up with an obstacle course (incorporating activities we do frequently: hand sawing wood, mulching, eating watermelon, etc.), a scavenger hunt, egg toss, frisbee target shoot, and a blindfolded dizzy walk.  Hilarious and a lot of fun.

I can't believe that I've been in New Zealand for seven weeks--the time has gone by so quickly!  Overall, it's been a positive experience.  I've definitely learned some stuff...  stream of consciousness begins, Nico-style (with bullet points, haha!)...

• kitchen stuff:


• making non-loaf breads by hand (pita bread perfection, tortillas)
• first time making a quiche
• working with beets (they're so great; how did I not know about them?!)
• working with eggplant (likewise!)
• baking and cooking without a recipe (definitely not new) but with a general idea of what I want the end product to be (definitely new!)
• construction:


• design (especially the composting toilet project)
• intermediate carpentry
• first time doing any sort of masonry
• earth/ mud construction (earth oven)
• backpacking:


• new backcountry recipes (i.e. vermicelli with dried tofu, seaweed, shitake, peas, and soup mix)
• very lightweight entertainment (yahtzee and iPod--never used either in the backcountry before!)
• more experience hiking on very unstable scree
• philosophy:


• general thoughts and specific details on how I want to live my life back home in Upstate New York
• remembering why I left in the first place--to find out what's really important--making small steps in that direction
• more observations about people, animals and the earth, and the general nature of things

may all of your storms end with rainbows :-)

Believe it or not, it took me a few weeks to get accustomed to not going to an office every day, not being constantly stressed out, not eating processed foods, not staying up late, not sleeping inside, and all of the other maybe-not-so-positive-but-not-bad-enough-to-kill-you things I used to do to myself.  I don't feel like I was totally awake over the past seven weeks.  Even though I haven't left yet, I'm really eager to come back to Tuateawa to realize my full potential here during June and beyond.

Dave and I are sticking around for another week while the program admin is out of town to watch the dogs. I never used to like dogs, but I really like Evie and Ninya, and I can't wait to play with them all week!

We'll be setting up the van to be our temporary home for the next five weeks.  Who knows where we'll end up during April and May!

Sailing Clouds, No Rain

Right now, we're in a major drought here in Tuateawa.  This is an issue because we use rainwater for all of our water needs.  No water means we get to drink beer (=good), but it also means that we don't shower (=bad).

It hasn't rained during the day since I arrived, one month ago.  We'll get some clouds, maybe a bit of drizzle (it's called "mizzle" here, and "ithacating" at home).  There have been a few rain showers at night, which is very exciting inside the tent, because it sounds like the heavens are falling.  Unfortunately, the showers don't last long and, although they sound loud inside the tent, they're not very heavy.  It's not replacing the water we use, much less filling up our water tank.

On the subject of weather, here's a video I took of the clouds sailing over the bay.  9 minutes, 17 seconds compressed into 16 seconds.  Unfortunately, the clouds didn't bring rain.

A storm brews over the bay...  but no rain.

Mizzle over the water brings rainbows, though.

Coromandel Roads (Subtitle: Motion Sickness)

The Coromandel Peninsula is very rural, and part of that rural character is its unpaved roads, potholes, and one lane bridges (just like being back in Ithaca, minus the snow).  Of the roads leading to Tuateawa, the road from Thames to Coromandel is paved, and the road through the hills across the peninsula from Coromandel to Tuateawa is unpaved and incredibly winding.

Here’s the topography of the peninsula:

View Larger Map

Google Maps doesn’t even show the road between Coromandel and Tuateawa:

View Larger Map

As we were driving the other day, I took some video out the window of our rickety old Toyota van.  Hold on to yer hats (and yer stomachs)…  we’re going for a ride.  You might want earplugs.

 

Enjoy the quail jumping out of the way?  Not feeling the motion sickness yet?  Here’s another short clip, where you can get a sense of how narrow the roads are as the hillside nearly takes out my camera.

 

As a note for my Yankee friends and family, Kiwis drive on the left side of the road.  Kiwi vehicles have the driver’s seat on the right and the passenger’s seat on the left.  I’m sitting behind the passenger seat to take these videos.

House Tour

Thursday was a free day, so I had plenty of time to play around on the computer, including uploading photos and making a video tour of my temporary home here in Tuateawa.

Welcome home!

Elbow Grease

As beautiful as Tuateawa is (and it's beautiful), there's a lot of work to be done here.  We work either on the land doing projects directly related to conservation or at the resident house doing projects to make life more enjoyable for the folks doing the conservation work.

Dave did a great summary post of some of the things he's worked on here.  This is a very quick outline of some of the work I've done in the past 2.5 weeks.  It's definitely not a complete list...  actually it's based on the projects for which I have pictures!

Trail Clearing:

(at the land - one of my favorites)

Planting Flax:

(at the land - flax is a really important plant for stabilizing ecosystems here, especially wetlands and flood plains.  this was the dirtiest i've been in a long time)

"Tree Love:"

(at the house and the land - digging up seedlings, settling them into the nursery, & prepping to transplant them)

(one of my favorite projects)

Building a Spa Bath...

(at the house - a spa bath will make working in the winter much more tolerable, and the cool, damp winter months are the best times to plant seedling trees here.)

...building the deck of the spa bath:

(the "ol' fashioned" way - with a hammer and saw)

...bricks and mortar:

(building the structure to contain the wood fire and support the vat)

(the woman in the picture is laura, not me)

So there you have it:  good days of work in the fresh air and sunshine.  Not always glamorous or interesting, often uncomfortable, always tiring.  Yet for every tree I settle into our little nursery (we prepped 92 the other day), I think of the future, when that little eight-inch seedling will stand eighty feet tall.  I probably won't be around to see that day, which is both a humbling and reassuring thought.

Good Morning, Sun

One of the residents here has a background in marketing and media, and she's been taking a lot of photographs and video of life in the Valley.  One morning last week, we had to wake up before the sun to take care of some issues on the land.  She took the opportunity to create a time-lapse video of the sunrise over the water from our deck.  This is 20 minutes of video condensed into 30 seconds.

The birth of a new day.  Enjoy each one.

Surprise! ...and Welcome to Tuateawa

Yes, I've made it to New Zealand.  Two plane rides, three bus rides, and a very winding, bumpy truck ride over the hills of the Coromandel brought me from frigid Ithaca to bright Tuateawa.  Except I didn't actually leave on March 1.  Back in October, I bought a plane ticket for February 20 and told everyone except for Dave.  What do you give as a birthday gift for a guy whose belongings all fit in a backpack?  One hell of a surprise.

So, I'm here, and I've been here nearly a week.  How's life?

View from the deck of the house, Tuateawa, New Zealand

Pretty sweet.

A lot of people have asked about what I'm doing here.  Dave spent the summer after he graduated college living and working at Tararu Valley, on the other side of the peninsula.  The man who ran the previous Tararu Valley project is working on starting a brand new project here in Tuateawa.  The "project(s)" vary by season, but the end goal is to create the physical and non-physical infrastructure to support a small community in an environmentally sound manner (so, basically, we're building a commune).  I ended up here because I figured it would be an interesting, less expensive way to stay in New Zealand for a while and maybe do a little good in the world while I was at it.

What do I actually do?  I expected that I would be doing more to help organize and manage the residential part of the program, but the program director's partner has been living here and volunteering her amazing meal planning, kitchen organization, and cooking skills.  She left today to travel for a few weeks, so I may be doing more in the kitchen soon.

A typical day (let's take today) goes like this: