The problem with living in a hostel is that inevitably your friends are going to leave. Yesterday our longest-term friend left. We miss him already, although we did manage to hide some lost and found undies in his car before he left. So, sometime in the near future he will find a little present to remember us by.
Lenny is one of the most genuine people I have ever met. He is incredibly open to learning new things, and spent many hours in the garden with us here at Solscape and at Kai Whenua. He also laughs at all the same things I do. I haven’t giggled nearly as much since he left. Grasshopper, little brother, the soul of solscape, we’ll see you sometime soon, I’m sure.

In the meantime though, we are searching for a new apprentice. This is Sequoia. And these are her strawberries. She is high on enthusiasm and energy, but low on hard skills.
Nelson, didn’t you read the sign?

This is Phil, the owner of Solscape, in the garden we’ve expanded. High on skills and enthusiasm. Low on time.

This is Charles, Ernesto, and Pablo (not pictured). On their first day wwoofing we tackled the compost pile turned hornets nest. Notice how Ernesto is wearing shorts while battling hornets? Meanwhile Charles and I were wearing at least 3 layers of rain gear. I was still afraid I would get stung and end up looking like Sloth from the Goonies. I think theses guys have potential.

Oh, by the way. I love where we live.

Pearl (9 yrs old): Wow mom they look like fairies!
Dani: Tinkerbell wouldn’t sing this song.

Yes… those lyrics were “I don’t need irrigation help, when I want to grow stuff I mulch myself”. Did you catch the line about N,K, and P (Nitrogen, Potassium, and Phosphorus)? Reediculous.

Who is that 70’s porn star reciting Nelson’s poetry?

Most people argue that going green only works if you are willing to spend more money that conventional products and/or are willing to lower your standards. This argument is used most often in building design and construction. One of hte best parts of going to Rainbow Valley Farm for the PDC was seeing working beautiful examples of green buildings.

Chook houses and worm bins made out of reclaimed materials:


The willow circle is an outside classroom and fire circle. The walls are made of willow which can be coppiced for animal feed, firewood, or mulch:

It takes 6-20 liters of water to flush a toilet. Each flush means combining good drinking water with good fertilizer to make a waste product that we spend millions cleaning and sending out to sea. Composting Toilets make much more sense:
During the course we got the chance to take a one day earth building course with Graeme North, a leading earth builder. His house is another great example of green design:
Here we are mixing mud, straw, and gravel to make earth bricks and morter:
Graeme talks about creating indoor/outdoor flow. His house is a series of rooms all under a giant greenhouse roof. The top floor is a year-round garden:He also has garden beds inside his living room that continue outside:
The walls and cielings are made of a mix of natural and recycled materials:


We also got a chance to visit Otomatea eco village and saw Wolfgang and Sabine’s house. Yes, this is an eco house. Among other things, they use a cool cupboard system that uses the thermal mass of their house and air currents to keep their food cool and don’t need a fridge.
Along the way we got to stop at our friend Billy’s house. They are using straw bale construction that will eventually be sealed with eath and plaster:
Nelson and Bo were exhausted from all the learning:

We are in Hamilton for a few days doing some much needed catch-up on school work. The nice quick internet connection at Waikato University will also allow me to post lots (oops I mean heaps) of fabulous pictures from the Permaculture Design Course I just finished. (It is by far the quickest internet I’ve found in New Zealand).

Permaculture is a tricky thing to define because it encompasses so many things. But the general idea is that by looking at the world holistically, as a series of systems, we can design ways to live sustainably. Nelson has been practicing permaculture for years, and now so have I, first on our farm in New Hampshire, and then here in New Zealand. But, even though we’ve been doing designs, teaching classes, and growing veggies for a few years I’ve never taken a PDC. I figured it was about time.

My PDC was at Rainbow Valley Farm in Matakana. It is one of the most amazing places I have ever been, and is an example of a thriving permaculture farm. Trish Allen developed the farm over the past 20 years with her husband Joe Polascher, who died suddenly last February. RVF produces honey, fruit, and vegetable for sale and runs educational courses. They raise enough milk, beef, eggs, chicken, and rice to provide for the 6 people who live on the farm. And, its gorgeous. Here is Trish, and below the house she built with Joe (it has earth walls, a living roof, and a pergola with grapes they use for wine):

The next 2 pictures show what a huge impact they have had on the land by practicing permaculture. These pictures show the boundary between RVF and their neighbors, who raise beef cattle:
While I took the course Nelson played carpenter and was busy with all sorts of projects. Joe’s tool shed made him homesick for his own tool collection. Here he is building a bench on a shavehorse. He clearly has not shaved his own face or had a haircut for a while (long hair is not a permaculture principle, but it could be).
While we were at Rainbow Valley our home was a little building they call “the capsule”. It is a model for quick durable housing that can be made from local materials after a natural disaster. We shared it with a few mosquitos and secadas who were hiding out from the daily torrential downpours.
Our teacher, Darren, who liked to be called Dr. Doherty or Professore, had so much information that I’m still trying to digest it all. His background is in large-scale farming, a different perspective from the human-scale production I’m used to. Here he is teaching a lesson on patterns in nature in the willow circle classroom:

I feel really strongly that permaculture is the best form of sustainable development out there. Helping people to understand natural systems and design with them, as opposed to against them, will allow them to become more self-sufficient. I came out of the course feeling energized and inspired by the material and all of the wonderful people. I’m ready to go to Nicaragua right this minute! (But there are a few essays I need to write first). I have a lot more to say about the PDC, but I’ll leave you with one last photo of a bench from the farm:

We are up at Rainbow Valley Farm in Matakana for a Permaculture Design Course. I’m loving it! Here are some photos our friend Paul snapped. I’ll post more when my brain isn’t imploding from too much info.

Nelson and I began surfing 2 months ago. While we are certainly not expert, or even intermediate surfers, today we moved beyond grommet status.

Raglan is known for three world-famous breaks (See Bruce Brown’s 1964 surf classic Endless Summer): Manu Bay, Whale Bay, and Indicators. Supposedly Raglan has the longest left-hand break in the world. By the way, according to Lonely Planet NZ, due to all of the surfers “Raglan may also be NZ’s best-looking town”. But I digress.

Although we live in this town of beauties and renowned surf spots our surf career thus far has been limited to the lesser-known Wainui Beach. Rather than being the site of an infamous surf movie, this beach is the site of dozens of surf lessons a day teaching pasty white kooks how to ride soft-topped foam 10-foot boards. The surf is dumpy, you can’t help but get slammed by the waves while paddling out, and strong rips might pull you either towards the rocks or out into the harbor. It isn’t ideal, but there are lifeguards, generally small waves, and after a few days it isn’t too hard to be one of the better surfers in the water.

We have avoided the famous spots because of what I suppose you could call a surfer inferiority complex. What if we get in someone’s way? What if we can’t get out past the breakers? What if some big tough local guy bullies us?

Well, no longer can say I’ve lived in raglan and never surfed the big breaks. After some coaxing from equally beginner surfer friends Nelson and I surfed Manu for the first time today. It did happen to be a particularly small day, but it was a milestone. I equate it to my niece Matilda sitting up for the first time (minus the crying and drooling).

Martin, who also owns a Canon G9, reminded me how much I miss my camera. The insurance report is being filed, so maybe some time this year we will be able to afford to replace it. Unfortunately the G9 is no longer produced, meaning that the insurance company will need to give us enough money to by the new G10? Let’s hope so. Until then, here are some shots of the evening from martin’s camera.
Slacklining is an international sport. See their website if you don’t believe me. There is even a slackline wizard. Do you think there’s a slackline warlock? Maybe I can put that down as occupation when I apply to extend my visa in June. It’s harder than it looks. The turn-around took me a week to master (although for two of those days I was couch-ridden due to illness). I’m still working on the sit-down and the jump-on. I live a very difficult life.

Despite my red hair, freckels, and gleaming white skin I am a sun-lover (sun-ophile?). Part of the allure of coming to New Zealand was that I would get four summers in a row due to my niece Tilda’s birth and my upcoming graduation from SIT. My tatoo is of a sun and I even briefly thought of changing my name to Sunny (OK, that was a lie). But this weekend I found my limit.

Yesterday our friend Paul brought us to the Tainui Tribal Pride Festival, a Maori music festival. Yes, I was by far the whitest person there. He was hired as a consultant to help them organize their recycling system. He needed on-the-ground help, and offered us free admission to the festival if we helped keep the recycling system up and running all day. If I am a sun-ophile Nelson is surely a recycle-ophile and the offer of spending a day sorting recyclables was too good to pass up.

It turned out to be quite a long hot day of reaching into rubbish bins and recycling bins to pull out rogue items. People were generally pretty good about sorting, but one item kept throwing them off. I must have pulled at least a hundred watermelon rinds out of the recylcing bins. They were being sold cut in half with vanilla ice cream in them. Delicious? yes, recyclable? are you kidding me?

We saw some of our favorite New Zealand bands, learned some new Maori words, helped save the world and got home around midnight. A pretty good day. But, today that viscious orb of death in the sky is wreaking havoc on my internal organs. I suppose, even though I drank gallons of water and put on heaps of sunscreen, I got some kind of sun poisoning. I’ve been throwing up and fevery all day. Nelson has been a dream, cleaning puke buckets, dragging me into cold showers. Ugh. Finally around 7pm I’m feeling barely alright. Yuck.

This is how kiwis talk. Seriously. It’s hilariously true.

I love that we live in a place where hitch hiking can be our main mode of transportation. Yesterday we traveled 350 kilometers hitching and didn’t wait longer than two minutes for a ride. True, we do live in Raglan, a hippie surf town. And true, we were traveling from the Parihaka Peace Festival. I suppose you’d have to be of extraordinarily questionable character to not catch a ride from the peace festival to the hippie surf town. We apparently looked reputable enough to get picked up at the gates of Parihaka by a van full of kind anarchists who deposited us only 40k from home.

Hitching home was the end of a great birthday weekend at Parihaka. Nelson arranged some free tickets for us in exchange for volunteering at the Permaculture New Zealand tent. Work for two hours a day giving presentations and helping in various ways, in exchange for spending the rest of our days, as my little brother would say, chillaxing amongst the music, food, and good vibes of the festival. Definitely a good way to transition from my mid-twenties to my late twenties… Ugh.

Getting immersed in the Aotearoa (New Zealand) music scene was good. We saw our local band, Native Sons, perform on the mainstage. They were great. Like always.

I found more fresh-fruit yogurt. It was great, like always.

And I had my first hangi, a traditional Maori roast cooked underground on hot rocks. It was pretty good.

I think, though the highlight of the weekend was Olmecha Supreme. Here’s how they are described on their myspace page:
“olmecha supreme is afro futuristic roots music. painting sky pictures through light speed sonic fiction… it has been described as an intense surreal sound scape complete with giant robots powered on pure spiritual energy in combat for the future of our planet and life as we know it throughout the galaxy”

Um, how could they not be totally rediculously awesome. I danced my bum off. Hooray for being 27.