Turning twenty whilst wwoofing.

I'm no longer a teenager! I started the week as a nineteen year old in Picton where I went for a few sunny day walks and munched my way through many free cheese scones provided by my backpackers.
On Tuesday I took a bus to Spring Creek, just North of Blenheim, where I was met by Kerry, one of my wwoofing hosts. She took me up to the house which is surrounded by beautiful, mature gardens; full of fruit and vegetables and a few chickens and cows. Here I met Tim, Kerry's husband, and Misty the dog.

 The photo above shows my room here; I have a little holiday cottage to myself, complete with a bathroom and a kitchen which I don't need to use as Kerry cooks me lovely meals.
Each morning I work in the garden on a variety of jobs, including bonfire building, stringing up onions and garlics, compost heap turning, weeding, manure spreading, vegetable picking and mulch spreading. This is broken up with tea, coffee and cake breaks. I then have the afternoons to myself so I can take one of their bikes out for a cycle ride down to the beach, walk through the vineyards or swim in the river. As an afternoon snack I just pick whichever fruit I want from the trees. To the right is a lemonade; it tastes like a lemon but is less sour so eaten like an orange :)

 In the evenings Kerry cooks us delicious meals, mainly comprised of food from the garden. After a very nice beef casserole she informed me that they were running out of beef in the freezer so their highland cow (pictured to the right) would soon have to go :( After dinner, most evenings, the three of us watch a film, generally French, before I head back to my little cottage.

 On Saturday it was my 20th birthday so I spent a lot of time skyping home and replying to messages on facebook. It wasn't quite your usual 20th birthday; I spent the morning trimming the hedge, turning one of the compost heaps and stringing up garlics (all pictured above). In the evening they had some friends round for a 3 course dinner with roast pork, some very nice wine and a lovely chocolate and hazelnut birthday cake. All four friends were well over 70 so much of the time was spent discussing hearing aids and eye sight and how the youth of today has gone wild and Kerry and I were the only ones able to eat the toffees she had laid out. It was certainly a memorable birthday meal and it was very sweet of Kerry to bake a cake for me.

I've really enjoyed my time here with Tim and Kerry and I've been taught so much about organic gardening. I definitely hope that I will have space to grow my own fruit and vegetables when I'm older as the flavours are amazing and it makes eating much more rewarding.
I'm now reaching the end of my travelling time as I'll be heading back to Wellington on Sunday ready to get back to what I'm meant to be doing out here... studying.