Otamatea Eco Village

  Kaiwaka, New Zealand
Sunday, September 30, 2007

Tom and I left Auckland the minute we found our traveling van, a 1989 Liteace Toyota, 

Our van

complete with bed in back.  We rode north

The dome look out

towards our first WWOOFing farm in Kaiwaka.  We were to stay with a couple on a 5 acre plot in an Eco Village named Otamatea.  Check them out, I know they have a web site.  Anyways we stopped along the way to get our first glimpses of some gigantic Kauri trees and the infamous pastures of sheep.  At one time there was 4 million people and 40 million sheep in NZ, I am not sure the numbers now but it seems to be right around the same. 
We arrived at our farmstay in the afternoon, taking a small road off the main road and then a smaller dirt road, putting us in a valley surrounded by green hills and cut off on three sides by an ocean bay.  Wolfgang and Sabine welcomed us warmly taking us on a tour of their plot and letting us set up in the farmhouse, which had a loft bedroom and small kitchen and living room below.  Our new living space was bigger and better than any of our apartments.  The main house matches our barn and is an earthy tan with yellow framed large windows.  The buildings are made of light earth and are powered by wind and solar only.  Inside there is a simple comfortable decor keeping the focus on the outdoors with almost all floor to ceiling windows.  We knew immediately that we had found a special place.
The Eco Village runs on the principles of Permaculture.  Although I do not know all the details and it would be hard to describe in short, there is a focus on living sustainably and working with nature instead of against it.  Wolfgang and Sabine are working towards complete self sufficiency.  They make their own cheese, sausage, bread, beer and can and pickle many of their fruits and vegetables.

The vegetable garden

There are chickens, dairy cows, cattle, geese, vegetable, subtropical, meditranean gardens, an orchard and more to come at their disposal.  
For our first few days Tom and I helped weed the orchard, take down some overgrown willows, make firewood and cook cook cook.  We have helped with many meals including an amazing feast of lamb leg stuffed with homemade feta and spices paired with roasted fennel, beets and pumpkin.  Everything we have been eating is organic and super yummy. 
Our day goes as follows; we wake up and feed the chickens, have a breakfast of fresh yogurt, oranges and muesli (linseed, sunflower seeds, almonds and oats) with tea.  Then we are off to get our hands dirty weeding or as we did one day collecting cow pies for the compost.

The view from our Farmstay

At 10am we return to sit in the sun and have a cup of espresso and a piece of chocolate over an always great conversation, with many different and interesting guests.  After about an hour we are off to do some work and then comes lunch which consists of fresh bread, cheese, olives, sausage and salami, yum!  Then we may work for a bit more, have a time relaxing and showering, feed the chickens in the evening, collect their eggs and come back to eat dinner.  Sometimes our dinner is as simple as lentils and other times we have feasts like the one of lamb.  Not a bad life at all.
Wolfgang and Sabine are a wealth of knowledge and we have been learning so much from them about life and how we want to live it.  We could not have come to a better place for our first visit.
On Saturday we took the day off and traveled to both coasts.   It was wonderful to see the Pacfic again with its aqua clear blue, set by jagged rock edges and rolling green grass hills.  Much different from Samoa and yet the same ocean.  

The coast