Our fourth WWOOFing farm we went to was a horse farm in beautiful Governor’s Bay, Bank’s Peninsula, near Christchurch. Our hosts, Penny and Rob, lived on the coolest piece of land – a huge peninsula all to themselves, surrounded by water and hills and with its own private beach. Rob worked at the university in Christchurch while Penny looked after her 25 or so horses and the farm as a whole.
Our work here was poop scooping in the horse paddocks and moving firewood from all over the farm to a spot closer to the house, all the while looking out at their amazing views. We were pretty jealous that the horses get to see that view every single day! We also got to groom a few of the horses, which is something I had never done and it was so much fun!
We spent our days working in the morning and exploring their property in the afternoons. We absolutely loved walking out along the peninsula and looking out over the water or going down to their beach to look at shells. Our trusty companion, Ollie the border collie, would usually accompany us on our little tours and play catch or just chill with us. We had so much fun with him! We often found him sitting outside our little cabin waiting for us to come and play!
We went out and sat on the hill of the peninsula quite a few times and dreamt about the future and never wanted to leave. It was so peaceful sitting there with the gentle saltwater breeze and watching the birds fly over the water. The water was such an incredible colour in the sun – bright teals and blues. You could see a little harbour across the way and a ton of huge houses sitting on the hills, which had us dreaming of what it would be like to live there. It would be pretty incredible!
We visited the horses a lot as well. Ashley was in heaven! They were so cute and there were so many of them! Some would come up and say hello but others would just ignore you once they found out that you didn’t come bearing food. They were all so different from each other in looks and personality – we had so much fun hanging out with them!
The beach on their property wasn’t a swimming beach really, but there were a ton of cool shells and at low tide (which got super low) we were able to walk along the side of the water on the rocks and saw a ton of little sea creatures hanging out in pools of water in the rocks. There were also a ton of tiny crabs hiding under the bigger rocks and if you moved one they would scatter super fast. Sometimes when you walked past one you would hear them all shift and it kind of sounded like someone was following you. I didn’t have my camera on me, unfortunately, so we have no evidence of this. But I swear it happened!
One of the days we were there it was super hot, like 31 degrees which with their high UV ratings felt ridiculous. So we only did a couple of hours of work and Penny took us to the most gorgeous beach called Camp Bay Beach just past Diamond Harbour. The water was cold but felt so good on such a hot day. And there were some pretty fun waves to boot. Again the colour of the water was ridiculously beautiful – it felt like we were swimming in a magazine picture! We feel so lucky to be able to visit such incredible hidden beaches. And on the way home, Penny bought us ice cream! So great!
Another little adventure we had was Bee Club. Penny keeps one little bee hive on her farm but wants to do more so we went to a little workshop on beekeeping with her and learned some interesting things about the hives and different bees that work together to run the hive. It was really quite interesting and we learned a few things, but we didn’t have the right clothing or equipment or the bee hats to wear during the tutorial and so everyone stared at us funny (we did look quite strange and obviously unprepared, so I don’t blame them!). And I got told three times by the same man that bees don’t like dark clothing, and of course I was in all black. Oops! Guess I know for next time!
We really loved this farm and really didn’t want to leave. As I said, the views were just ridiculous and the people were super nice, and we had a cute little hut to stay in on our own, and we loved their dog. But alas, we had to move on. Our next farm was in the hills of Canterbury, but that’s a tale for the next blog!
A Couple of Runaways 