Moving from Oamaru to Palmerston

Hello everyone,

my journey continues with the third WWOOF stop in Palmerston. But before I went there, I had two more days at Carolyn's place. I will tell you how they went and also about my first days at my next station. Enjoy! 😊

Monday, January 23rd - Wednesday, January 25th (noon)

My last two days at Carolyn's place can be summed up quickly. On Monday, I had to load the piles of grass that were left behind when I worked on the areas around the trees onto the wheelbarrow and take them to the compost. On Tuesday, I continued painting the fence. I managed to finish painting everything except for the long side, which was more difficult to paint because the wood was rougher. Unfortunately, it started raining in the afternoon, so I had to stop. Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Carolyn and her housemates. The work was varied, the food was excellent, the house and the garden were beautiful, Carolyn was very nice, and we got along well. The only thing that could have been better was the weather, as it was often rainy 😣🌧

On Wednesday, I spent some time at the Public Gardens, especially at the bird cages, before taking a relatively short bus ride to Palmerston, which is about 50 kilometers south of Oamaru.

My time in Palmerston

After about an hour's bus ride, the bus stopped in the small town of Palmerston (about 2,000 inhabitants), where I was welcomed by my host Lorna and her three children. As soon as I got in the car, I knew: I was in for a fun two weeks with this family. The car ride was already full of action ☇The kids were talking to me, fighting with each other, and I was trying to talk to Lorna 😂 I can tell you, the first impression was not wrong. There are plenty of stories to tell about the next two weeks. Instead of describing them chronologically, I will organize them by topic.

Family

There are five people living on the farm: the married couple Paul and Lorna, and their children Eve (8 years old), Jordan (6), and Annalicia (3). Paul works as a supervisor and has an interesting work schedule: he works for five days and then has five days off. When he works, he has to get up at 4:30 am and doesn't come back until evening. Lorna sometimes works at the hospital, but only on call. Most of the time, she is at home taking care of the household, the children, and whatever else needs to be done. Her days are already very full! Eve is definitely the calmest of the children. She can be wild too, but she can also sit still for a long time and stay focused on an activity. She is very interested in science. For example, she has her own microscope and often catches insects flying around the house to examine them. She also enjoys crafting and is very good at it, and she is an enthusiastic archer. Last year, she switched to a school that only has a total of ten students, spread across six grades! So there is a lot of individual teaching there. Eve and Lorna have recently started doing karate. Just like her brother Jordan. He is the only boy and has a lot of energy. You can tell that he is constantly trying to climb on objects or people (like me) or get others to play-fight with him 😆 This is probably partly because he plays rugby. With all his excess energy, it occasionally happens that he neglects his food a bit and takes longer to eat 🍴😪 But he is really good at crafting and creating things. He is also very interested in cooking, and from time to time, he shows that he can be quite charming at the age of six. He and Eve also love riding their small motorcycles around the garden. Annalicia, the youngest family member, is even wilder. According to Lorna, she is known throughout the town as the most difficult child in Palmerston. She is almost always on the move and is in the phase where children try out everything. For example, she tries to take off my glasses even though Lorna, Paul, and I tell her not to 😈 At the end, I managed to deal with that by tickling her 😅 Sometimes she found that so funny that she would say to me, "Tickle me. But fast!" and I would tickle her for ten minutes straight 😅 If things are not going her way, she can get quite aggressive, even if she doesn't like the food. Sometimes, she even climbs out of her high chair and runs around the dining table. But she is generally very sweet. She talks and laughs a lot, and her energy is somehow contagious. I don't always understand what she is saying because she still needs a bit more time with her language development. So sometimes I was confused when she suddenly started crying. What she loves are horses and especially dogs. And being held upside down. One of the few things that can get her complete attention is watching a movie with dogs. Then she is immediately fascinated ❤🐕🐎 All three children have a passionate interest in dinosaurs. Jordan and Eve know almost all the dinosaurs by name and constantly play with them. I think there are about 35 in total. It brings back memories of my own childhood 😉 I was just like that. Since the farm is 4 kilometers outside of Palmerston, the children have to be driven into town in the morning and picked up in the afternoon.

Pets

There are many different animals on the farm. First of all, there are the two dogs. Alfie, the little poodle, always wants to go outside but has to stay inside because there is a risk of him running away. Maddie, the big dog, always wants to go inside but has to stay outside because she has caused some chaos in the house before 🐕☝ Despite her size, she is actually a very nice dog. Although she often jumps on people, which you definitely notice given her weight, or comes over while we are working and wants to sniff and lick us 😉 There are also two pigs on the farm, who sometimes get food scraps if there are any, a few chickens with a rooster, who lay eggs, four alpacas, who are unfortunately afraid of the pigs and often retreat into their enclosure, 31 sheep, which were actually shorn during my stay - more on that later - and the horse Flicker and the pony Silver 🐎🐄🐓🐔

Work

I had a variety of tasks during the two weeks, so I hope I don't forget anything in the following. Inside the house, my main task was washing and drying dishes. Fraser's place doesn't have a dishwasher, so everything has to be washed by hand. The two of us worked together and it went relatively quickly. One person washed, the other dried. It was a bit of an adjustment for me because I had only washed my own things in my apartment in Trier for the past few years, and now I had to wash dishes for six people. But I did my best to do it as well as possible. Occasionally, there were also some "special tasks", like practicing reading with Eve. Outside, it was very varied. In addition to my main task of weeding, I also did tasks that I was already familiar with, such as cutting branches with a saw, collecting firewood, flattening cardboard boxes, or mowing the lawn. I also got to do some completely new tasks, like helping to set up an electric fence, digging water ditches, planting a tree, cleaning the horse pastures, or herding sheep. Herding sheep was especially interesting. Since the sheep were supposed to be shorn, Paul and I had to move them one by one from one field to a horse trailer. Unfortunately, I found out that sheep are often used as an example of animals with a low IQ 🐑💡❌😆 It was a struggle to get the sheep even close to the trailer. Every time we thought we had them in a corner, one sheep would suddenly run away - and the others would blindly follow. Great! With the help of Eve and Jordan, we managed to corral them. However, they steadfastly refused to set foot in the trailer! So Paul had to grab one sheep at a time by the neck and carry it into the trailer while I stood guard, as the sheep occasionally tried to run out onto the field again. In most cases, I was able to prevent that with a firm grip. Unfortunately, one sheep managed to escape to the area next to the horse pasture. When I tried to block its path and stood between two posts in front of it, I slipped on the muddy ground, fell on my bottom, and the sheep just ran past me 😂 Luckily, it didn't get far, and Paul was able to catch it. The next day, a friend of Paul's sheared the sheep, and I got to watch. It was amazing how much wool was collected, and how different the sheep looked after the shear. When we tried to move them back, there was another memorable incident 😩 Instead of simply walking towards the trailer with their fellow sheep, two sheep squeezed through the barbed wire fence onto a neighboring field where someone else had their sheep. At least we were able to transport the other 29 back home, one by one. In between, I had a scary moment to overcome. The shearing location was about 1 km away from the farm. Lorna was supposed to follow in the second car with the children, but she encountered a fallen tree on the way (the farm has a huge forest), so she had to leave the car there and walk with the children. After Paul and I cleared the tree from the road, I was supposed to take the second car to Lorna. As I left the property, I drove a few meters on the right side quite comfortably. It was the first time I drove in New Zealand. Suddenly, I heard loud honking behind me, and when I looked in the rearview mirror, I saw Paul gesturing wildly. I thought to myself, "What's wrong with him?" but just to be safe, I stopped in the middle of the road, which was not a problem because it is very lightly traveled. Still on the right side. I still had no idea what was actually going on. When Paul passed me and didn't change lanes, it finally dawned on me... in New Zealand, they drive on the left! So I quickly changed lanes, and not ten seconds later, a car actually approached from the opposite direction. The driver probably could have stopped, but who knows what would have happened if a speeding car hadn't seen me in time and crashed into me! Luckily, we immediately continued herding the sheep, so I didn't have time to think about the shock. But it was intense 😱

I was about to experience more intense pain the next day 😭 I was almost finished weeding when Lorna pointed out a weed that I had mistaken for a plant and left behind. Just as I was about to put my foot on a board to kneel down, a hellish, stabbing pain shot through my foot 😣 Reflexively, I jumped up and saw where the pain came from. There was a thick, long nail sticking out of the board that had pierced my shoe and gone directly into my foot, which was now bleeding. Luckily, Lorna was right next to me and guided me to the house. There, I was perfectly treated and given two large bandages. I couldn't walk for the rest of the day, let alone work. So I spent the rest of the day on the couch. When I googled the injury, it didn't improve my mood. Reports from others said things like, "You won't be able to walk for two weeks, and it won't be pain-free for four weeks." Luckily, I recovered much faster. I was able to work again the next day, and after five days, everything was completely healed. Lucky me :)

😊🍀

In the next report, I'll tell you about all the activities I did in my free time. There's quite a lot to share 😄

Until then,

your Max