My Shitty Day – a day in the life of a wwoofer by Rachel
So, we are new women after today. No more manicured nails, no more moussed hair, we no longer have clean skin. You know those expressions ‘a load of shit’ or ‘holy shit’ or ‘shitbuckets’? Well, let us tell you, we now know exactly how much a load entails, what shitbuckets look like, and let us be clear, there is absolutely NOTHING holy about it. Today Margaret and I shovelled 176 gallons of horse shit. Literally.
The best part: that’s 176 gallons loaded and unloaded THREE times. That’s 528 gallons of pure, unadulterated, fly-loving, worm-loving, odoriferous shit. 528 milk cartons of dookie, turd, poop, logs, cocka, funky crap. We spent two hours in front of 4 x 44 gallon metal drums (like up to my chest) in which we shovelled from a nearby horse farm into the truck (in the sun of course) and then drove back to the organic garden (you know, gotta have the best compost possible) where we unloaded it into a trailer and then unloaded it AGAIN around the different veggie gardens, subtropicals, herbs, you get the picture. we’re new women….and that’s no load of shit.
So we are at the Waihoihoi Women’s Lodge for a weeks wwoofing – check it out! and it’s breathtakingly beautiful with an entire glass wall overlooking the green hills and valleys and the ocean right out front. we spent the morning hiking along the ocean and then laid out on the beach and wrote in our journals about how beautiful it was (that was BEFORE we had to work today!) we are here until Sunday, and then we’re going to go the very top of the island, known as ‘Cape Reinga’ where the Pacific Ocean and the Abel Tasman Sea come together to create some amazing surf along ’90 mile beach’—we’re going to take a bus tour up the peninsula coast, as it is too dangerous to drive our own car.
The women here are so nice (besides making us shovel shit), Rosemary teamed up with Margaret last night and they made homemade granola and yogurt and then for lunch she made us homemade hummus and dairy-free bread. We should have email all week, but aol wasn’t working for Marg just now, but time to go to bed, as we’re ‘pooped.’ 🙂 Love, margs and rach
*wwoofer = willing workers on organic farms, a world wide network of people and places who exchange four hours work a day for accommodation and meals.
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