WWOOF #8: Family Time

We arrived at the Squire's home after a bit of confusion with the directions just before dinner time. There were no doubts that we were in the right place since Nathan (8) had drawn us a little welcome flag of the US and a note with our names on it. John greeted us and told us to make ourselves comfortable since the rest of the gang was at the pool. The house was quite large with high ceilings and lots of wood, but very comfortable and lived in.  There wasn't a lot going on in their area. The closest town of Tapawera had barely more than a school, grocer/post shop, community center/op shop and that was about it. You'd have to drive about a half of an hour to Motueka to find much beyond that. But their property was beautifully set in a valley on the outskirts of the Kahurangi National Park. One could stand in their yard and have a 360 degree view of the mountains surrounding you as far as the eye can see. Steve and I both agreed that they had the best view out of all of our hosts up to that point.

John and Maree own about 50 sheep for their Lamborganic company, which is much less than they had on their prior property – 5,000 – from which they moved from about four years ago. During the past year they decided to start their dune buggy business, Wild Tracks, with only partial support from the neighbors. Many of them believed it would be too noisy and there would be too much traffic on their gravel road, kicking up heaps of dust. A few neighbors went so far as to take up their complaints with the local council, resulting in a hearing being scheduled for all involved. Fortunately for John and Maree, a law was changed just before the hearing, making it unnecessary. The new law stated that unless someone was doing something that could harm the environment, people's opinions were of no importance. Noise is not a valid complaint – especially in a farming area where machinery and spray-dumping helicopters are far noisier than a few dune buggies and their occupants playful screams. The council also remained behind John and Maree during the whole situation, so although unfortunate that it took so long to get started, they eventually opened and said that the extra time just allowed them to make the track that much better.

The Squires' gorgeous property and view.

John and Maree met when Maree was in her last year of high school and John went to his mate's holiday house during the summer. Maree just happened to be his friend's sister and, much to his mate's dismay, it was love at first sight. Apparently Maree laid it on thick according to John, and she didn't deny it, saying that she wasn't going to let him slip away. They had a long distance relationship for the next several years while she studied to be a teacher.  They wrote each other heaps of letters and sent one another cassette tapes that they recorded themselves talking on.  John said he loves her even more now than he did then. Their 14 year old son Matthew is very talented at a large number of things: graphic design, guitar, piano, mountain biking and others. Their other son, Nathan, was a ball of energy and imagination. His creative ideas were endless as we conjured up the plan to make a pirate movie! Definitely a leader, Nathan took pride and was very comfortale with directing others both in film-making and Nerf-gun battles. He was very fascinated by all of our suburban wild animals, especially squirrels who he begged for us to return to NZ with several times. He had a great sense of humor and enjoyed Steve's silliness.

Oops.

On our first day of work, after a bit of the normal weeding, John sent us to work cleaning the water troughs throughout the property that are used for his sheep. We had to empty them with buckets and shovels, then scrub off the mold and build-up and add a little concentrated hydrogen peroxide that basically sizzled off any remaining dirt. We stacked some wood and moved some rocks after a little debacle with a huge metal fork on the tractor piercing the rear tire of John's 4X4 ute (pick-up). Kelley and I breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn't us and Steve felt horrible, but John was great about it and shrugged it off since we all make mistakes.

Kelley and I in front of Split Apple Rock

The next day we had off, so we used it to do some hiking. We got our first taste of the Abel Tasman National Park by checking out Split Apple Rock and then a wild and windy walk along a long sand spit in nearby Motueka. It was nice to be out and about on a beautiful day. Some work that kept us busy throughout the rest of the week was cleaning out the chicken coop, some wood-staining, housework and helping organize their life-sized chess and checkers games at an outdoor movie in town.

We took another day off on Friday to meet up with Dylan and Amanda for a hike at Nelson Lakes National Park. It was recommended to us by quite a few locals and it lived up to the hype with beautiful views and LOTS of sandflies.  We did a short loop track before having lunch on the end of a jetty (dock) surrounded by eels, ducks and black swans. After lunch we went on a long uphill hike on the other side of the lake.  After about an hour or so we reached a great overlook of all of Lake Rotoiti and spent some time taking it all in. Kelley and I (as the least capable hikers) led the pack so our endurance had pretty much hit it's peak and we all headed back down after that with ice cream on our minds. After our ice cream fix and a bit of time hanging out, we headed back to the Squire's to begin filming our pirate movie!

Nelson Lakes National Park

Pirate movie cast and crew

After seeing Nathan's starring role as a heroic Knight in a trilogy made with a former French wwoofer, ideas started forming for a pirate movie and soon enough Nathan was hooked! Every waking moment was spent planning the sets, the lines, the costumes! Every time he saw you, he interrogated you about whether your costume was prepared and when we could start rehearsals. Finally the time came for filming and the whole family took part – each family member having anywhere between 2-4 parts each. Much of the filming process was a bit unorganized and confusing, but it was fun and I think Nathan was relieved to see all his hard work and planning finally come together. Matthew had a hand in filming and we just barely finished it all before daylight disappeared.

The next day we did our last bit of work on their property and then it was time for our much-anticipated buggy ride! Kelley rode with John, Steve drove the two of us, and Maree and Nathan brought up the caboose as Matthew and Jordan borrowed our cameras, literally snapping hundreds of photos. It was a blast – with steep hills and tight curves and a huge mud pool where we all got totally soaked from head to toe. The work that went into all the details of the track – with sprinklers soaking you at different parts and always a new animal sculpture or something interesting to spot – was obvious and very much appreciated. John is incredibly talented at not only dreaming up amazing things but also making them a reality.

In addition to the extensive and well-thought out buggy track, John had created an awesome remote-control tank course that was a lot of fun. There were two tanks, each with a pin at the end of a moving arm and there were several balloons throughout the course that the tanks had to pop as they maneuvered all the obstacles. There were bridges and ramps and moving bits and bobs like an elevator and merry-go round contraption that the tank had to climb on, roll across, and swing it's way to the other side. There were routes with different levels of difficulty and it really took focus and some walking around the track to inspect all your options. It was really awesome and great for problem solving and even team building skills.

While we were there, John explained that they ask for a gold coin donation for the life-size board games which they give to a local charity, usually the volunteer ambulance group. Rather than having a boring bucket to throw the money into, John wanted to make something that encouraged kids to keep asking their parents for another dollar coin to donate – something like those things in shopping malls that look like a huge yellow toilet bowl where your coin spins round and round until it falls through the hole in the middle. Instead, he drew up an extraordinary wooden track that would be over a story tall, involving weights and a spinning piece at the bottom where your gold coin would disappear. After watching a few YouTube videos to get some more ideas and perfecting his blueprintt, he got to work on it the next day. Within a day or two, it was complete and absolutely fantastic! It had a lot of moving parts and was beautifully carved out of plywood (his favorite material to work with) and stained. He has made several beautiful 3D puzzles that were very topographic, showing off all the different shades of plywood. He even made one in the shape of New Zealand. He made four or five incredible pirate swords for our pirate movie and Nathan let us each take one home, signed by the whole family.

Arthur

One of our favorite daily chores was feeding their baby lamb, Arthur, every morning and evening. Once when Arthur didn't come running when we called like usual, Kelley and I went looking for him in the paddock where all the pet sheep were, and all of a sudden they all started charging us – we totally freaked out. Fortunately they were just interested in the bottle and some attention.

We had a nice time with the Squire's and enjoyed the visit from their friends Ted and Sally and son Harry on their camper-bus which was super awesome! They definitely lived the vagabond lifestyle. But when our time came to an end, we were excited to begin our next adventure! We weren't able to do our kayaking trip like we had planned because the weather was a bit too rough and windy, so we changed our plans to spend two nights camping at Awaroa Bay in the Abel Tasman National Park. Little did we know about the adventure that was before us...