Pukahu Revisited

When we left Wolfgang and Sabine's house in August, after living and working with them for two full months, we made a promise to visit again before leaving the country. We had loved the friendship, good food and interesting work we found at Pukahu and wanted to be sure to close our trip with a dose of the inspiration we felt wwoofing there the first time. Although we only had a short visit at the beginning of March, we had a wonderful time in the company of old friends! Our activities included picking lots of fruit, digging up potatoes, hunting for green shield bugs and feeding them to the chickens, scything grass for the cows, harvesting amaranth, and pulling weeds. And, of course, enjoying some of the beautiful fresh fruits and veggies you see below. We especially loved all the ripe tomatoes and basil for pesto, and fabulous homemade cheeses.

Summer bounty: cucumber, zucchini, peaches and chilies

We also made some new friends. Sean studied this interesting fellow for ages, even watching him devour another large insect

I don't think we posted a picture of our little house at Pukahu, the "barn," the last time we were here. As you can see it is a far cry from a barn and a really comfortable place to settle in to. In the winter we had the wood stove blazing away and stayed nice and cozy. The sleeping area is up the stairs in the loft, where we found our winter bedding of thick down comforters replaced by a light summer blanket and a wrap-around curtain of mosquito netting.

"the barn"

We were lucky enough to arrive in time to enjoy the end of peach season and got to eat our fill of the beautiful fruit every day. It was heavenly! The Black Boy peaches you see below were our favorite -- always sweet and juicy with a complex, almost spicy flavor.

Peaches

We couldn't end this post without mentioning our brush with fame. We are going to be on T.V.! ...In Germany :) For a full day, there was a German director and her cameraman filming us and our hosts for a short piece on ecotourism and wwoofing in New Zealand. They followed us around all day trying to capture the most interesting parts of farm work: "Okay, pick an apple...preferably a pretty apple." "Now, do it again, same apple, different angle." "Smile!" They also interviewed everyone, us in English and Wolf and Sabine in German. We are most interested to see if we are dubbed or subtitled in the final edition!

The main interview. Lou got to hold the reflector thingy :)


We're famous!