Farm #3

I left Farm #2 on Friday morning.  It was so sweet for my final dinner at Uli and Waltruad's farm they asked me what I wanted to eat and I said pizza.  One reason was because I love pizza and the other is because they had this really great pizza oven in front of their house and I wanted to see it in action.  So they heated up the oven all day and made me a wonderful pizza.  The crust was amazing.  The oven heats up to 500 degrees celsius and the pizzas cook in about 3 minutes.  It was hard to say goodbye but off I went, North, up the coast to an area called the Bay of Islands.  I am in a town called Russell and the farm I am at is on a small piece of property over looking the water and the islands off the coast.  It is an amazing view I can't even believe it and so far I have been having a great time here.  I mainly work with Kristina who is originally from Sweden but moved here to live with her partner Edward.  Kristina is a retired dentist and now just works in her garden.  Eddie is a carver and makes beautiful jewelry out of jade and bone.  They have two very well trained dogs and several chickens.  They have several fruit tress and plants and vegetable gardens.  I have been working here for three days so far and my work generally includes pruning, weeding, and cooking (see next post for Pumpkin Soup recipe).

This is the view from the house.  It reminds me of the San Juans.

This was the sunrise my first morning here - this is the view from my bed.

A recent decision I made was to buy a ticket to Thailand, to leave on June 13th and come back to NZ at the end of July.  I got a message from Caitlin (good friend from Olympia) saying that she was planning on traveling this summer because she had just finished up with a masters program.  She asked if I would want to meet up anywhere and I told here I wanted to go to SE Asia.  She said that sounded great.  I thought it was a good idea because I wanted to go there and it is moving into winter here in New Zealand, so I would miss the darkest coldest month here in NZ.  I am happy about my decision, I had been worrying about how I was going to fit in SE Asia on my trip.  I only have a couple of pictures of the scenery and since it is raining today I don't want to take any today.