Green with NZ: Everybody Must Get De-Stoned (Apr. 16

Or if you prefer Jerry Lee to Bob, Great Bulbs of Fire? After the rush of Queenstown, we once again felt ready to do a bit of wwoofing in one place for awhile, and found a farm located in a rural Central Otago valley, outside of Alexandra. Their wwoofing blurb sounded good, describing themselves as an organic garden that sold their produce at farmer’s markets, with ample recreational opportunities in the area. These things were all true, per se, but of course the description is designed to sell you on a place.

The farm is the creation of a Kiwi horticulturist, Lon, and his partner Gilly, a British singer and now erstwhile farmer as well. While in New Zealand for a tour, she fell in love with both Lon and the country, and now resides here. She still tours and records CDs, but also does a bunch of work on the farm. We saw her play a small concert in nearby Alexandra, ‘Alex’ to the locals, and she has a great, expressive voice and a natural entertainer’s flair.

As to what they do at the farm, their main crop, which probably brings in 90% of the revenue, is garlic. In a somewhat amusing turn, this fact is not mentioned at all in their wwoofing description. According to Lon, the dry weather, native soil, and somewhat harsh climate of the Central Otago highlands is well suited for growing garlic, producing particularly strong and fiery bulbs. He sells some other produce like strawberries and potatoes, but mostly sells sundry forms of garlic: regular, smoked, in plaits, and his beloved brainchild and ticket to fortune, garlic walnut pâté. We tried all of his products at one point or another and found his garlic to indeed be tasty and fiery, and the pâté was quite good, going nicely on crackers, sandwiches, and any starch really.

Lon is quite a garlic devotee, which you would have to be to be a garlic farmer, as we learned. A few hours on the farm soon taught us that, and repetition over a week drove the point home convincingly. As we discovered, cultivating garlic consumes untold hours splitting/skinning/planting cloves by hand, maintaining the plot, and our personal favorite, de-stoning the fields by hand. We spent a few days fishing rocks from the fields, and determined over the many hours that no enterprise could feel more futile than that. On this topic we would urge everyone to trust us, as we’ve had plenty of time to think about it. Planting garlic isn’t much more exciting, though it rates far better on the futility factor, so yay for that.

In truth, we’d be hard pressed to really say why we stayed at the farm as long as we did. The work was tedious, unrewarding, not educational (aside from learning that garlic farming involves heaps of thankless work), and at times we didn’t really feel entirely appreciated for our efforts. And it wasn’t as if we were eating terrifically either; meals were generally satisfactory but the highlight may have been omelet night, which I helmed. Last, Lon and Gilly were also quite busy working outside of the farm while we were there, so we were often left unsupervised, which prevented us from developing a strong rapport with our hosts that seems integral to a good wwoofing experience.

For perhaps the first time in our stay in NZ, we felt like we were just killing time until our next gig, wasting time for no good reason. [Note: the following gets a bit philosophical so we understand if you feel the need to skim, but this is our soapbox so we’re leaving it in, thanks!]

On a few days we came close to actually packing it in early and leaving a ‘Dear Lon’ note on the bench, but didn’t. As the haiku below alludes, even on the first day at the farm Becky was almost ready to pack it in:

On a windy plain,
Pulling rocks from dusty fields,
Becky meets her match.

So why did we stay? Besides a probably-misguided sense of honor in not leaving a host before the time we indicated we would, we had a surprisingly difficult time coming up with an alternate plan on the fly. We entertained some thoughts of possibly going to Stewart Island or other backpackers for the next several days, but after splashing out at Queenstown the week prior, we realized we probably wouldn’t enjoy spending money just to entertain ourselves at this point, and so nixed that plan.

We also thought about going somewhere to pick apples, or getting temp jobs in Christchurch or Dunedin. At least if we were doing tedious manual labor, we should be getting paid for it, since by our calculations the intangibles we experienced at the farm weren’t equal to the potential income we’d be getting elsewhere. But to be honest apple-picking hasn’t sounded tempting quite yet, and temping in Chch/Dunedin seems like something we could do at home and be better paid for it.

Probably what sunk our escape most was that it would interfere with the carefully arranged plans that we’d been making over the past month. Well to be honest, it wasn’t much of a plan as it mostly consisted of wwoofing at the farm for a week and a half and then wwoofing at a café in Lawrence, another town in central Otago, for a few weeks. Still, even this rather modest plan required time and effort to make, and so when it came down to it, we determined the work/food/vibe wasn’t so bad that we needed to change course, and thus we were compelled to stay in place.

We’ve learned that when you’re traveling for as long as we are, having a plan is a wonderful security blanket, letting you know what to expect in the next few weeks as opposed to having to figure it all out and decide on the fly every night. Oh, you can travel on the fly for awhile, but after a month or two the lack of an agenda begins to wear on you. Even the most decisive traveler would probably experience the fatigue that comes with trying to spontaneously generate an entertaining plan over an extended period. Abandoning plans that sounded so good before seems as if it should be easy, but in reality becomes oddly mentally exhausting Thus, it makes the devil you do know (planting garlic in a dusty field for an unappreciative Kiwi) much more appealing than the one you don’t (having to make a new plan that promises to be much better than the one you already have).

So we stayed for a week and half at the farm, mostly bent over planting or de-stoning garlic fields, and watching Lord of the Rings in our downtime. In what I reckoned must’ve been an example of Providence at work, one of the handful of non-LOTR movies they owned happened to be our favorite film, The Big Lebowski, so we got to watch that for the first time in what seemed like forever. We like to joke that in 2007 we’re getting our holiday time in for the next 25 years or so, but if that’s really the case I think I’ll be appealing the past week and half, as it hardly felt like vacation. To which I’m sure everyone is thinking: Poor Andrew and Becky… Or perhaps not.

In any event, it would seem that not all wwoofing spots can be winners, but I guess even a less-than-fantastic stay has its lesson, which I’m happy to share with you: If anyone ever asks you for help in planting or de-stoning their garlic field, run, don’t walk, in the opposite direction! Hopefully our next wwoofing experience goes better, else we probably should just get on with it and get paid work like the rest of the backpacking vagabonds. Still, even if you were so inclined, don’t feel badly for us as our adventure continues, get us to Lawrence, Ron!