Wanganui was our (Kara and I) destination immediately after we decided to leave Wellington in pursuit of other ventures. It is an old town about two hours northwest of Wellington with idyllic riverfront markets and museums and a nice small-town atmosphere despite being rather larger than it appears. We were in contact with a family that requested help on their lifestyle block, the Woodhouses, so we hit the road and headed north.
Murray, the patriarch of the Woodhouse clan, had been in contact with us earlier, and his emails gave us a great first impression of the family and their property. Murray himself is a funny correspondent and a generous host. He gave us the dossiers of everyone currently living in the house (some of their grown children live elsewhere) and we were sure that we would get along grandly based on his emails.
We arrived at the lifestyle block a bit late on our first day, so we had a quick tour of the house and the loft we would be staying in before dinner. The loft was easily one of the best accommodations we’ve had in our time in New Zealand, and probably nicer than my apartment in Chicago. We had a full kitchen, a living space, a full bathroom, and a bedroom to ourselves. Sometimes wwoofing is fabulous. Dinner was great too, and we got a chance to hang out with Lisa and the kids after dinner. Kara and I played a bit of Scrabble, but we quickly terrified the family with our lengthy consideration and intense rivalry. I made fun of Kara for being ruthless, and they made fun of us both for taking way too long to play a game of Scrabble. Fair.
On our first real day of wwoofing, Murray took us out for a stroll of the lifestyle block to meet the animals and see what was growing on his property. They own roughly five acres of land, separated in five paddocks. Murray grows pear trees, apple trees, eucalyptus, citrus trees, walnut trees, cherry trees, and a small covered garden, and he keeps a small herd of Suffolk sheep, several alpacas, some outdoor guinea pigs, and a single Awassi sheep named Swazi. However, our first day was pretty relaxed, so we just helped Murray prune some rose bushes and hydrangeas around the house. We were going to do more pruning around the rest of the property later, and the we figured out pretty quickly that the catchphrase for pruning is “maybe I can cut a bit more.”
Our next day of work was all about pruning eucalyptus trees that Murray is growing for either furniture lumber or maybe just firewood. We went to the trees with pruning snips and handsaws and got to work with minimal instruction from Murray. Our main rule of thumb: take about a third off the bottom. Well, that meant a bit of ladder work for me, and plenty of advising from Kara (she did some heavy sawing too though). It took us about four-and-a-half hours to prune everything and clean up of the cuttings, but damn if it didn’t look good when we finished!
We split up the following days to work on separate projects. Kara and Lisa planned and executed a mural painting project for Erin’s room, the end result of which is a fantastical tree silhouette spreading over two walls. I went with Murray to finish painting the office and assemble some desks, and then cut up some fallen trees and collected firewood back on the property.