This is a guest post written by Marina and Heloisa – two interns from Brazil who have just finished their time with us. 

“Exciting!” That was the last word I heard from Dani before she came to pick us up at the bus station and since then this is what has been happening. 🙂

Every day a new discovery, a new point of view (I’ll never look at the bare hills with the same eyes again), a new lesson, a new challenge, a new chance of earning Verti’s love again 🙂 , a new farm adventure and lots of problems and solutions to be found. As Nelson says, there is always an emergency – this is a farm!

Every day when we wake up, there is always a list:

Based on the priorities (if there is no emergency like taking rebel chickens back to their coop or rescuing lost goats) we move on, usually performing:

2 jobs in one – Digging the pond…

… and transferring the clay to protect a sliding bank

Transforming a liability (fallen leaves on the road)…

… into an asset (the leaves will work as mulch to retain the water in the soil)

Along the way we had some communication problems due to our native language being Portuguese (like: “there is a buffalo in your property”, but actually it was a bull 🙂

Buffalo

Bull

But as Dani and Nelson are “natural born” teachers, confusion always ended up as a lesson.

Nelson and Dani complete each other: Nelson is a very knowledgeable person that is completely transforming their land to give back all of the resources to nature that have been taken from it in the past and Dani is a very open and people person – always giving some key tips and willing to transfer all her knowledge no matter what (yipee, two more people trying to make the world a better place and accessible to everyone!!). By the way Dani, you are a really brave woman: mom 24 hours/day, Spanish teacher, Kindy teacher, Internship teacher, consulting professional and you still can find some time to cook, eat and sleep J

This month and half we had at Kaitiaki farm was a really intense experience – we had lots of internal conflicts but what helped us to learn how to respect others way of life and Nelson and Dani helped us to transform ourselves – as Nelson says, permaculture is about changing the way you think.

Nelson and Dani, thank you very much for opening your house and life to us! We’ll feel eternally thankful for that (and will try to put in practice all the lessons learned as well as spread everything you taught us). Thank you very much for all the moments and all the great and organic meals 🙂 (this is something that the interns will never feel… hungry!!)

All grown at Kaitiaki: chicken, pumpkins, courgette, tomatoes, potatoes, lime, rosemary, thyme and much love!

-Marina & Heloisa