jforbess.org

This morning Nathaniel drove me to almost hit him. I compromised by
grabbing him in a big bear hug and squeezing. The second time I just
shouted at him. He had some noisemaker that made a large crack, and
after he established that I hated it, he would come in behind me and
crack it every five minutes or so. I lost the battle since I let him
know it bothered me. His mother didn’t do anything other than say,
“Nathaniel…” in a fairly mild voice. I was so ready to be out of
there. I wonder if everyone else was ready to see me go?

I cycled a good 70 something km and the last 15 or so was accompanied
by another biker from Auckland. We had a good time chatting, and it
seemed as though he was interested in staying in the same place for
some extra company. He wanted to stay at a backpackers, but I felt
more like camping, and he ended up passing up the backpackers to find
the camp. I really wanted some personal space after a week of
WWOOFing, so I turned down his suggestion of fish and chips at the
camp store, and ate by myself, but joined him for a cup of tea
afterwards, and enjoyed the chat.

Courgettes hurt. The leaves and stems are almost as prickly as
thistles. If you have a choice between weeding courgettes or beans,
choose beans. I welcomed the change from beans for about 45 seconds,
and then I started hating the courgettes. They were molding and we had
to cut off the moldy leaves and flowers. I broke down and wore
gloves. I hate gloves, as Victor and Death can attest.

It rained hard all morning, making my delay a wise decision. I hid in
the bedroom with Cinnamon, the cat, who wasn’t supposed to be in the
house, but had a window in during the downpour. There was
cheese-making in the kitchen. Nathaniel and two other kids were
celebrating their first day of vacation in the living room.

Stefan, Will and I stayed up late watching music videos on J2. An odd
range of videos, from Yes (Owner of a Broken Heart?) to Paula Abdul
(something horrible, not her two hits), to Jon Bon Jovi’s “Blaze of
Glory”, as heard in Young Guns. It was amusing to see how much
pop culture Will and Stefan knew from the 90s that I had missed since
I was in college. I’m so old. I was able to identify two alpha-level
cliches in music videos, though. The band playing in a desert, and
people singing and acting underwater.

Today I did a tiny bit of yoga before breakfast. I was almost thwarted
by Jim sitting in the kitchen preparing to do battle with the computer
email support people. But he went to the computer, so I had some space
to myself. Three Sun Salutation As, one B (my arms were getting tired,
and I didn’t want to wear myself out), a bit of standing sequence, a
few forward bends, and a few breaths in pigeon pose. Maybe tomorrow
I’ll do more.

Today I did battle with the new beans. Yesterday I had been tasked to
get the beans to wrap up the stakes better, and failing that, cut off
the bottoms so they wouldn’t get tangled and start rusting. Yesterday
I couldn’t make myself cut much off the bottoms. Then I went to prune
the rusty bits off the mature beans and was horrified by all the rust,
which made me return to the new beans to mercilessly prune back all
the lower leaves. If a branch even looked like it was thinking
of touching the ground it was cut.

I decided that summer pruning has some maze/jigsaw puzzle aspects to it, as
you have to trace back the offending leaf to its source, which can be
difficult with layers of green leaves that look similar and move a
lot. There is also the pattern recognition practice that you get in
jigsaw puzzles when scanning all the pieces for the one you want,
because you have to check all the leaves for bits of rust and
rust-causing detritus. It’s very easy to get into a zen state of mind,
if you let yourself.

Rotary cow milking stations? Those wacky New Zealanders. Watching the
cows carefully back out of their milking stalls was peculiar. Will was
apparently checking out the cows more closely than I was, because he
said, “Whoa, you’re not going to get much milk out of that one,” and
all of us looked over. Apparently the bull doesn’t want to feel left
out, so he goes for a ride in the milking-go-round every day too.

This was my first visit to a working dairy farm since I was six. An
organic dairy farm, even. Jim had to pick up 40 liters of raw milk for
the cheese-making. Ah, the cheese.

I have now experienced the joy of cheese-making. It involves a lot of
temperature monitoring, curd separation by hand, timer-setting, and a
lot of patience. We made three different kinds of cheeses in one
standard kitchen at one time. Julie hadn’t made cheese for at least
six months, maybe a year. Things were a little bumpy, but it all
seemed alright in the end. I got to stick my hands in freezing bleach
water over and over again. It felt quite a bit like brewing beer, with
the paranoia for sterilization over and over. I was in charge of the
feta (from cow’s milk?!), Leah did the haloumi, and Julie and the
other Jessica were in charge of the camembert. I didn’t get a decent
description of the difference between brie and camembert from
Julie. She’s not too verbal. Which is frustrating when you’re trying
to get instructions on what pitching the cheese means. (Waiting for
the curd to solidify a little more, I have gleaned.)

There was a lot of standing around. And washing and sterilizing
things. And then the sterilization water was contaminated with a dirty
towel, because Leah was confused, so we had to sterilize everything
with boiling water. Thank god for automatic electric kettles. This one
was excellent, because you can set the temp you want, and you can tell
it to hold it at temp. So nice.

The other Jessica was Stefan’s driver, and was WWOOFing at a nearby
household. She was told she had to leave because of her hygiene
issues. What issues, she asked? She didn’t shower every day. (She
bathed in the river.) Most WWOOF hosts seem to prefer less showering
to more. So Julie and Jim took her in. Six WWOOFers! Plus Blair was
back for the night. Ten people at dinner with a dining room table all
covered in cheese. I think we ate at about 8:30.

Today the origin of the word barbecue came up in conversation again. I
forget if it was triggered by the comment I made about how barbecuing
to me means slow cooked meat in spicy vinegar sauce, but in
Massachusetts and California it seems to mean grilled meats (and
veggies) in general. But in Wisconsin we know that you call that
‘grilling out’.

The pocket Oxford dictionary in the house said it’s Spanish, from
Haitian. By which William speculated they really meant from Carib or
some other Native American tribe, as Haitian isn’t a language, being a
creole of French and Spanish in these modern times. I’m sure the
online OED has more info. Hmm.

OED Online: [ad. Sp. barbacoa, a. Haitian barbacoa (E. B. Tylor) a
framework of sticks set upon posts; evidently the same as the babracot
(? a French spelling) of the Indians of Guyana, mentioned by Im
Thurn. (The alleged Fr. barbe a queue beard to tail, is an absurd
conjecture suggested merely by the sound of the word.)]

etymonline.com: 1657, from Amer.Sp. barbacoa, from Arawakan (Haiti)
barbakoa “framework of sticks,” the raised wooden structure the
Indians used to either sleep on or cure meat. Originally “meal of
roasted meat or fish,” modern popular noun sense of “grill for cooking
over an open fire” is 1931.

It poured today. It’s supposed to rain a lot this week. I was
thinking of leaving tomorrow, but that’s not happening. Maybe
Wednesday, but I need to check the weather. I heard one radio report
mention hail. Hmm. Yeah, looks like Thursday is clear. Should I stay
and work while the sun shines, though? Probably not.

Up at 6:13 having to pee. Got up and stayed up, getting more and more
frustrated the later everyone else was. Stefan, Will and Alex were
going horseback riding on the beach at 11, so they were resigned to
working in the afternoon. Leah and I were not.

Tomorrow I’m going to get up early and run through some yoga in the
kitchen before breakfast. It’s a nice spot for it, and I know it will
be really good for me.

Leah and I took matters into our own hands at 8:30, and went over to
the hothouse to ask Jim what we could do. So we were tasked to pick
leaves with fungus off the beans. Fine. Then, at 10 or so, we all were
hustled into the car to go move the sheep from their hideout at the
neighbor’s back to their home field. As Jim assigned us places to
wait and routes to run, and we strode across the dewy field, I
suddenly felt like I was playing Capture the Flag. I said as much to
Stefan, and he said, “I hope we win.”

There was a stare down as we got closer to the sheep. Stefan was
taking photos every couple of minutes. The sheep kept moving further
back onto the neighbor’s property, so we had to corner them and get
them turned around. The ram was the most hesitant at the beginning,
and the most likely to turn around in the middle. Also, his genitalia
were shockingly huge. They hung low.

It turns out sheep are decently weak willed, so as soon as we had them
cornered and turned around, it wasn’t too hard to keep them going the
direction we wanted. It helped that we wanted to go somewhere they
knew the way to.

Then there was the confusion as to whether Leah and I were going to
cool our heels on the beach or work through our four hours. Jim didn’t
plan for us to have tools to stay at the orchard, and so there was a
ridiculous amount of time wasted figuring that out, then getting home
and figuring out what we were going to do. Finally we were
assigned to weed the home veggie garden, getting some specific
instructions from Jim in a very vague way.

Weeding the new raspberry shoots last, I realized that it’s much
easier to properly care for plants if you care what happens to them. I
love raspberries fresh off the bush, so I had a lot of respect for
those raspberry canes, and cleared them well. None of the other stuff
in the garden was that compelling, and I wasn’t going to get to eat
it, so the weeding I did was less focused.

Dinner was a barbecue at friends of Jim and Julie, Bernard and
Deborah. Bernard had an extensive tabletop train in his shed. As we
were preparing to serve the pudding (a huge chocolate eclair and some
amazing lemon pudding cake), Jim collapsed in the kitchen. He had had
a heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery in September. He remained
conscious, and was quickly sat in a chair and the ambulance
called. William spent some time speculating what it could be, as he
had majored in pharmacology, and had a good knowledge of biology. He
mentioned the vagus? nerve in the neck, which is what it likely was,
according to the EMTs. Jim had been rubbing his neck and then fell
forward. Julie was smiling big as she walked out of the house as the
EMTs left. Such a relief to know your husband isn’t closer to death.

Awake at 5:06 having to pee. Damn my bladder. I’m sleeping in the top
bunk, and I’ve had to get up to pee in the middle of the night every
night but one so far. I never wake up in the middle of the night. Damn
inconvenient bladder.

The market in Ohope was a nice big craft market, with minimal fruit
and vege. We purchased a huge bag of apricots and nectarines for $5,
homemade ginger beer (non-alcoholic), apple and feijoa juice and
boysenberries. Oh, and Stefan bought The Poisonwood Bible on my
recommendation. I thought of getting Trivial Pursuit for
entertainment, but then noticed it was the New Zealand version. And I
think Sports questions are hard normally.

We walked down the beach for an ice cream or latte. The public art
around the beach areas was really nice, and well proportioned. Just a
few bits of mural worked into the cement pad and rock border. New
Zealand seems to do that well all around the country.

More sitting around waiting for Jim. Will was getting antsy by the
end. Though it was entertaining exchanging information about lame and
cool slang terms in French and German.

More time spent in the sun with the cat and the chickens on the
swing.

Stefan and I went out to a bar after dinner. Two drunk guys acting out
left almost immediately after we entered. The bartender was a woman in
her late 40s, maybe, who chatted with us for a couple hours about her
son who’d just been dumped three weeks after the honeymoon by his
tv-corporate-ladder-climbing wife from Illinois, her husband with a
motor-neuron disease, and the awful state of the world.

In bed by 11.

I woke up early this morning thinking I would get some blogging time
in. Ha. I ate breakfast and read my crappy cheap novel
instead. Thankfully, I’m done with it now, so it will not distract
me. I need to find a second hand bookstore to trade it in.

Today we spent some time weeding the hothouse, which was close work,
with the radio, making me antsy. Then when it got “hot”, we were sent
back to the house for a glass of water before departing to the
orchard. We waited around, and I got antsy, and when Jim showed up to
direct us, it was too late, so we got some more grapevine pruning
in. I got to dig out a bunch of Russian iris, which has huge roots
like ginger, and is very satisfying to pull. I wonder how hard it is
to grow ginger?

Jim is frustrating to work for because he doesn’t answer a question
you ask directly. It’s impressive how if you ask him a very simple
question “Did you bring the tools back from the hothouse?” he will
avoid answering it at least twice. Painful. He also has a tendency to
talk about a tangential issue for a long time before assigning us a
task. Also, he mumbles. Man, I’m a grouch.

After lunch we went to the beach. After Kuaetunu, it was rather boring
and bad. Dark grey sand, medium nice water and waves, boring shells,
no pohutukawa trees, though probably interesting driftwood up at high
tide mark. But the waves sounded nice and there were blobs of
jellyfish to peer at.

Leah, the German girl, traded me The Botany of Desire for some
murder mystery, as she couldn’t stay interested in the non-fiction,
second language book. I’m excited, because I’ve meant to read it for a
long time. WWOOFing is definitely teaching me that the essence of
growing things is not putting off tasks like planting and weeding, and
patience waiting for things to grow. But you can’t put things off,
because you need things to always be growing. Or you need to weed them
out before they take over the world. Of course, pulling out the big,
healthy Russian iris today made me wonder if there wasn’t something
that could be done with them. Huge tubers like that should have
something useful about them.

Nathaniel, the eight year old, is having an end of school dealio
tonight, and we were invited to go, but I just couldn’t do it. Too
many shouting kids, too much chaos. I feel like Death, a big
curmudgeonly hermit. Instead, I planned my days down to
Wellington. It’s two weeks including taking a suburban train from
Masterton to Wellington. I am debating taking a bus or maybe train
from Napier, to cut off four more days. I’m starting to feel a bit of
a time pinch. The South Island is big. And I really want to see the
Fiordlands which are at the very south bit. I am wondering how far
south I will actually bike, and thinking of taking a bus
somewhere. Partly because I am not interested in Queenstown at all,
and it’s between Fiordland and the rest of the South Island,
basically.

Ooh. The dishwasher broke. Seven people at dinner. Lots of dishes.

I spent bits of freetime today skimming the book Making Artisan
Cheese. It seems a bit like brewing beer, except a little
harder. The back had a listing of the raw milk sale laws on a state by
state basis. Sadly, it’s illegal in Wisconsin. In Nebraska it’s
legal, but not legal to advertise it, which includes telling someone
on the phone if you do. Crazy. The most expensive equipment seems to
be the cave, which usually means a refrigerator with an external
thermostat so you can insist upon 60 degree temps if you need
them. The difficult bits of cheese making seem to be temperature
control and sterility, with a bit of patience.

I also learned how to do a summer pruning of a grapevine. Cloudy Bay
vineyard, here I come. Well, I learned to prune the vine two leaf
nodes out from the outermost grapes. I don’t know if there are more
technical points for classy wine grapes.

The food at this WWOOF is plentiful and good, if not fancy. And there
is always pudding. I should probably dial down my consumption a bit,
since I’m not biking.

It’s funny how I always end up sore after WWOOFing, even though I’ve
spent less time exercising than when I bike. My hamstrings really get
exercised from all the bending over weeding, I guess.

I am having a bit of a hard time dealing with all of the people around
all of the time. And Julie likes to listen to the radio, which
grates. I was thinking yesterday perhaps I would stay a good week and
a half or so, but now I’m thinking I won’t last that long. I have to
stay through Monday, because that’s a cheese making day, though.

Another beautiful morning. 25 km before breakfast (which was awesome)
in downtown Whakatane. Thank god for poached eggs. I’m a believer
now. I just have to figure out how to make them myself. Also thank god
for hollandaise and spinach. And lattes.

Today I finally spent some serious internet time with my own precious
computer. How I love it.

Anyway, finished up, looked for a replacement shirt for my white
biking jersey, which has travelled over 7000 km, and is looking rather
bad. No luck. I’m trying to decide if it’s worth getting one shipped
from the US, or if I will be able to find something here. Really, it
shouldn’t be that hard to find something here. I’m just a
perfectionist.

Headed out, and up the hill to Ohope. I had been warned there was a
hill, but it was just a cute little thing compared to the Northland
and the Coromandel. Lovely biking after that, with a tailwind much of
the way.

Another feature of my Fujifilm Z1 camera is that when it hits the
pavement at 25 kmph, it survives. If only I had another camera to
document the scraped up edges, etc.

Today I finally treated myself to a Magnum ice cream bar. I fell in
love with the Magnum bar in Belgium. It is still good here. A nice
thick chocolate shell that survives until the end. Rich ice cream.

Do I talk about food too much here? Yeah, I bet I do.

I got to the WWOOF home, and found it full of people. An English
couple in their mid twenties, a 20 year old german girl and I are all
sharing a room. The house already holds Jim and Julie, plus Nathaniel
the 10 year old and Blair the 20 year old who works on a dairy farm
and therefore has to get up around 4. Plus two cats, a dog, chickens
galore (pullets, chicks, laying hens, and a rooster or two), and some
sheep that have a tendency to wander.

I was given a tour almost immediately, which involved a visit to the
hothouse across the road. They had purchased the hothouse property
from commercial flower growers, so they had to work the soil from
scratch, to be anywhere close to organic. The flower growers treated
the soil as a foam to hold the fertilizers they poured on.

The hothouses were covered in ripped plastic, one filled with a good
number of plants, beans, tomatoes, courgettes (huge plants, harvested
twice a day), and some other stuff I can’t remember. They supply a
cafe and a few stores in Wellington.

The other hothouse was full of weeds, except for the rows that had
been weeded by the English couple over the last couple of days.

The yard between the house and the street is full of native bush, and
there is a kitchen garden, and a lot of fruit trees. Lovely. An acre
and a half can be very productive in this very mild climate.

Dinner was huge, with the WWOOFers as sous chefs.

There is one bathroom, american style, for eight people. Yikes.

I like the WWOOFers here. All of them are chatty. The German girl is
only hesitant speaking English in a group, not one-on-one.

Awesome breakfast on the waterfront.

Out of Tauranga by noon, I think. Maybe 11am. I make a few errors in
judgement navigating the industrial section of town, and end up on the
expressway before I head towards the beach developments. Oops. It’s a
beautiful day, but I have a headwind.

I arrive in Te Puke and have a bit of a break. Yup, Te Puke. A young
Maori man stops me to chat about biking. He bikes a bit, but couldn’t
imagine biking for months, pulling things. His closing comment was
funny, saying, “And it’s so cool you’re a woman doing it….I mean, if
you can do it, I can do it.” Which wasn’t the most PC way to look at
it, but I gave him the thumbs up and said, “Absolutely.”

Kept on trucking to Matata. Pronounced Me-ta-TA. Unfortunately that
didn’t stop me from singing “Haruke Matata” from time to time. I’ve
only seen “The Lion King” once, for god’s sake.

The pohutukawa trees are lovely. They are all along the coast. They
look like feijoa trees. Ah, but that doesn’t help you either, does it,
my fine North American friends. Silvery-green leaves like an olive
tree, and red spiky flowers like a sea urchin, but not prickly. I love
them. I got to camp out under one.

At the campsite I was welcomed by the hosts, who told me I had nothing
to worry about in terms of having my stuff stolen. People at the camp
were convinced that NZ was going to hell in a handbasket, what with
everyone doing P and stealing stuff. I was invited to tea by one man
in a huge almost American-sized motor bus, and decided to take him up
on it, since the last invitation had been so pleasant.

Unfortunately, the man, Colin “Digger” Edwards, was not on the same
wavelength. He showed me his bus and proudly talked about how he could
generate electricity with one button push to turn on the
generator. And one button push for something else, etc. All the
comforts of home. Meh. Then to make me feel even better he started
talking about how crazy it is for bikers to bike on the highways up
north, because there isn’t any room on the roads, and if I thought a
truck driver was going to choose to avoid a biker when he would end up
hitting a bus, I was crazy. He said that about eight times before I
finally couldn’t take it anymore and said, “Look, I know how
unpleasant it is for everyone, can’t we PLEASE talk about something
else.” I think I was a little rude, but I didn’t care. Also, I felt as
though if I asked him a question I wouldn’t a relevant response at
all. Blah.