Permaculture Farm Party

Originally published January 2018.

Sometimes a 6 month adventure starts off exactly how you envision it–arriving feeling energized, getting right on the road, and immediately going on your way into the middle the new world of beauty you’ve been looking forward to for months. 

But sometimes your friend gets a kidney infection on Day 1 and is super feverish and in a ton of pain, so you spend 5 days hanging out in one city, with not much to do… figuring out all of the boring logistical stuff while she heals. 

And THEN you change your original plans to go hike a crazy mountain and decide to go to a semi-off-the-grid permaculture farm with a group of the most interesting and wild people you have ever met. 

Since Danielle had a kidney infection and needed to rest a few more days before our 3500ft climb up to the Meuller Hut in Mt. Cook National Park on the 10th, we skipped our original plans to go to Arthur’s Pass National Park, which isn’t a big deal because we can can still go to it in a few weeks, when we are making our way up the West Coast of the South Island.

But what to do in the meantime? There were three days between Danielle being well enough to leave Christchurch and us having to be back in Christchurch to pick my dear friend/ex-roommate Kelly who is joining us for a couple days on the 10th. We still needed to do something pretty chill because kidney infections don’t really leave you wanting to hike super big mountains, so we ended up deciding to accept our invitation to a permaculture farm about 25 minutes north of Christchurch, in a little rural town called Tuahiwi. 

This was another random Couchsurfing connection. You can post your trips publicly for Couchsurfing hosts to see what travelers are going to be in their area at a certain time, and I had our time in Christchurch posted on my profile. A couple weeks ago, a man named Phil Rickard sent me a message inviting us to come out to their property for a few days to hang out, camp, farm, and help get the word out about their property, because though the farm has been established for 20 years, they are just now getting to the point where they are almost ready to accept WWOOFer’s full time (basically a program where travelers come and farm in exchange for food and accommodation). They hadn’t had anyone come stay yet, so Phil invited us to be their first guests as they are still getting some projects wrapped up to have the property ready to house WWOOFer’s full time.

Semi-off-the-grid permaculture farm in New Zealand in our first week? Pretty cool connection.

So we went with it. And our two days there were INTERESTING, in every sense of the word.

We packed up our little van, recently christened with the name, Beep-Boop, after its slightly awkward, robotic frame, said goodbye to Josh and Olivia, our amazing hosts and dear friends in Christchurch,

and then

hit.

the.

road.

After still being a little on edge learning this whole driving on the left side of the road thing, we arrive about 45 minutes later to “Mudhouse Chillzone” not quite knowing what we were about to walk in to.

Farmers, especially rural Kiwi (New Zealand) farmers who built their own house out of clay and basically live outside, aren’t the most clean or tidy group of people, which can provide an extra hump to get over in that first impression hug or handshake. And even further, when you meet those people sitting outside in a cloud of cigarette smoke in their outdoor kitchen chain area that they hand built, next to their house, which they also hand built, out of earth.

We sat down to join them and were soon taken on a conversational journey that stretched beyond the normal range of topics we were used to. We very quickly found out that this crowd had done things and experienced things that probably will never have the spine to do, including running away from cops in a speed chase, doing a 50km stretch over the span of a couple days completely naked, throwing parties that lasted for 4 days straight, and drinking sixteen 18-packs of beer in one day and living to tell about it.

There were four adults and two children living full time on this property.

There was Shane and Sue, the married couple with two boys that have owned the property for twenty years. Shane just recently turned 50 and they threw a party that lasted 13 days straight, and he does most of the handiwork and bigger farming jobs around the property. Sue makes a lot of jams, sauces, and chutneys, including her famous “Fuckelberry Jam,” a combination of raspberries and black currants, I think. Ironically, their children weren’t outdoorsmen at all, and stayed inside most of the time we were there.

Phil, the leader of the Aeotearoa Global School of Self-Sufficiency and Survival, who has been all over the world learning and teaching permaculture practices. His vision is to create eco-villages all around the world that create safe spaces focused on people and the land, instead of focusing so much on money. He really knows his stuff, and it doesn’t take long to find that out. Phil was the one who did the 50 km streak naked, he goes to a lot of festivals, and he also lived outside with only a backpack and two blankets for an entire year.

And then there was Bev, another farmer who had come to the property for rest and rejuvenation. He yelled when he spoke most of the time, as he was easily fired up about most things.

We parked our van at the back of the property, near the vege garden, my favorite are of their space. 

We woke up the first morning and had our first dreamy breakfast made out of the back of the van. Danielle and I recently bought a French Press, because though we thought we could go without coffee, we can’t. So having our first cup in a couple days was so nice.

But, as everyone knows, with morning coffee comes your morning poop.

But the funny thing about this place is that the toilet is literally just a room with a toilet in it, and there is only a curtain that separates you, sitting on that toilet, awkwardly trying to drop one without making much noise because there isn’t even a fan, and everyone else in the house. So, Lucas and I took a poop relay today in the toilet room with only a curtain, across from the 15-year old son’s bedroom… one pooping while the other stood guard (outside of the curtain of course) because getting barged in on by humans you don’t know very well while you’re pooping could be pretty traumatic.

We survived.

Later in the morning we helped turn over an old garden bed and planted seedlings of basil and potatoes, and we were soon covered in a layer of salt, dirt, and sunscreen that won’t be washed off until next week, as our next shower won’t be until the 13th (hopefully) when we arrive in Queenstown.

Then I helped Sue pit the most beautiful plums, which she was going to make plum sauce out of. I had plum juice dripping all the way up to my elbows.

Then we took old Beep-Boop over to the local beach, Woodend Beach, and went for a nice walk, stopping to throw a ball for a while on the sand, laughing our heads off because Lucas and I were being dumb and flailing around, throwing very badly with our left hands, looking like goobers.

Then we went back for our final evening with our eccentric Kiwi clan, made dinner, and sat around talking until bedtime.

There were plenty of moments that were a little (or a lot) out of our comfort zone, whether that be conversation topics, cultural differences, stories that went a little too far, or the bathroom set up. There were moments where we felt on edge, moments where we were laughing our heads off, moments of being super impressed, moments of raised eyebrows, (lots of them), and in the midst of all of the craziness, a lot of smiling.

These folks are some of the most interesting and eccentric people I have ever met, but nonetheless they inspire me.

They have committed twenty years to this place, and aren’t going anywhere. They are still continuing to dream, to expand their ideas of what it could become, which include tearing out their eldest son’s bedroom when he moves out and turning it into a bar, to which I say, why the hell not?

Because that’s the convenient part about staying somewhere and putting roots down. You own your property and you built your house; you can make a pool bar even though you’re 50 if you want to, and by golly you can do it yourself because you have the skills from 20 years of trial and error that have taught you how to build, tear down, and build again.

Shane told us a story about one time he and Sue were driving back from the West Coast, pretty hungover and high, riding their motorbike at 265 k’s, which is the equivalent of about 160 mph. On a motor bike. They passed a cop on the road, who put his flashers on, and did they stop? Nope. they went faster.

Cop calls other cops that meet up with them down the road and they continue to run, all the way back to their house. Got taken to jail, with a gram of weed on him, didnt get breathalized or searched, and came home with a ticket. We made the paper that time, they laughed.

Like I said, these people are crazy, in a good way, and full of life, and are completely unapologetic about living the life they have chosen, and though it involves way more “Do-Bro’s” (Double Browns, a canned NZ beer) than I could ever handle, they somehow make it work.

They have an amazing vision for the property, and are hoping to officially start it up soon and have WWOOFers and travelers start to come in a couple months for real. They want us to get the word out as we travel around. 

We ended the night talking about the importance of establishing safe spaces that are dedicated to two things:

1. The people

2. The land

Providing people with the tools they need to heal, grow, farm, love, and be loved.

We talked about how cool it is to be able to establish a tribe that stretches across entire oceans, through random encounters like ours, that brings unlikely people together, and after some tension and pushing through unfamiliar conversational waters and getting over the discomfort of being around people that are different from you, leaves people gathered around in a circle of chairs, outside under the stars, in a tiny rural Kiwi town, talking about life and love, the beauty in choosing to live a different way, and standing up for the life you believe in.

Mudhouse Chillzone was quite the wild experience, but it was so worth it.

My hair is now up in its classic greasy travel braid, though instead of resting at the middle of my back it now rests at the bottom of my neck since I cut my hair. The whispy layers that don’t quite make the length cut required to fit in the braid reach out and curl around its base, a change I’m still getting used to. But it is french braided straight down the back, where it will stay for probably the next six days or so, for like I said before, a shower is looking pretty far off at this point.

We are picking up Kelly Koon, my ex-roommate and dear friend, who is flying into Christchurch to meet up with us on the 10th, and I am PSYCHED. We area all backpacking together the 11, 12, and 13th, and then we will have a shower hopefully the night of the 13th in Queenstown, where we will be through the 16th.

Starting this trip off strong, in quite literally every sense of the word.

__________________________

Cheers to the Journey, and may your Spirit always reside in a state of wonder.