Te Ahuru Ora

March 17th, 2010

Yesterday around 4pm we arrived at our fourth WWOOF stay. We are about 80km south of Dunedin in a town called Milton (the marquee to the town reads “Welcome to Milton: The town of opportunities”). We met Jack at the info station and followed him to Te Ahuru Ora, which in Maori loosely means “A Safe Place”. Jack and Debbie relocated an old-style church to this 10 acre property in 1993 and converted it into a cozy home. They took out only the pews and pulpit, leaving the natural rimu wood interior walls, added a loft which serves as their bedroom, a coal burning stove with wetback to heat house water, and built two sets of French doors along one of the long walls. Out the doors, they built a conservatory out of bricks, some old stained glass windows and translucent corrugated ceiling. The conservatory is about as big as the house and stays warm in the cool weather so is a nice place to relax. It is also home to Jessie, their 2 yr old fox terrier, and some start up plants.
Jack is Maori and after an accident rendered him unable to continue logging, took up teaching and now passes on the Maori language to high school students as well as working on their lifestyle block. Debbie does various odd-jobs and caretaking for people in the community as well as working their property…which is beautiful and organized. Debbie is building their third glasshouse (all of which she has gotten for free, secondhand), the other two house peppers (capsicums) and tomatoes. There are two large, possum-proof veggie beds, and some fruit trees as well as a variety of herbs and flowers. Debbie and Jack are both into herbs. Debbie makes all kinds of extracts, decoctions, and mixtures from them; it’s her hobby. About the possum-proofing, one year possums decimated their veggie harvest so the proofing is necessary. So is having Jessie for hunting them and keeping them away in general. Possums are a real problem in New Zealand, responsible for eating copious amounts of native vegetation. A dead possum is a good sight for any kiwi, and they are even compensated for killing them. Their fur fetches about $7 per pelt (you can also pluck the fur from a fresh carcass, bag and sell that). It’s as good as wool for insulation, and mainly woven into socks and sweaters. A powerful pesticide called 1080 was recently dropped in the Taranaki region, and has caused quite a controversy as it is pretty heavy stuff. Kris wrote more extensively about this toward the beginning of our journey, see his site for more info.
Back to Te Ahuru Ora, they have animals here too. There are 2 kids and 6 goats which are used for milk and meat. On Sunday Jack and Debbie will get two piglets (called wieners) in addition to the two pigs they have already, also raised for meat. There are a small flock of about 8 sheep, but usually not slaughtered until they are older. And about 15 chooks (chickens). Jack does the slaughtering and butchering and we just missed one. It was a goat or a pig, I can’t remember. Bummer. As a one-time vegetarian and now meat eat, I feel I should experience the slaughter at least once.
The milking shed and animal areas are kept pretty clean here, which is a big change from being surrounded by cow shit and general filth during our stay at the dairy farm. Seems like we will learn a lot here during our short stay. Our days are packed though, breakfast at 8am, begin working around 9. Break for lunch at noon-ish, and continue until 3-ish. No matter though, we both have a good feeling about this place and look forward to our short time here. We can only stay here until Saturday morning.