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Thank you thank you thank you

happy thanksgiving!!

Yesterday Maggie and I made Thanksgiving dinner for Carolyn and her daughter. It was fun to spend a day cooking, since we haven't done that in a while. We definitely had to improvise a fair portion of the ingredients, but if I do say so myself we did a marvelous job. We made a chicken (first substitute) with stuffing and beets (that weren't so much a substitute as much as just a how could you not want a beet?? kind of thing.) We made green bean casserole and kumara casserole that did a damn good impression of sweet potato casserole. We made chocolate chip cookies because people here don't understand that their "biscuits" are no cookies and we've never been able to afford pecans. My favorite stand-in was apricot muffins in place of cornbread for the stuffing (let this be a shout out to the Lentz family stuffing recipe!!) which involved scooping out the jelly bits of apricot goo and letting them dry and then toasting them. Turns out the faint apricot flavor blends beautifully with chicken, so next year we might have to use cornbread in a fit of desperation when we can't find apricot muffins. But now that I've told you our secret recipe you all have to go kill yourselves now that you know it. Sorry.

Today we head to a farm in Blenheim with a couple who we feel good about. They need us to work in their vineyard. Apparently 'tis the season for "bud rubbing," words that I wish I didn't have to use in conversation with strangers for the next week. I'll let you all know what this actually entails. Something to do with grapes.

After bud rubbing, we go on a beach hike for a week, then back to Carolyn's because why leave a good thing? We really feel like part of the family now and actually want to work in the garden because we've developed a personal attachment to those little plants. Carolyn's got a new batch of hens that she was told would start laying in November. Well 3 days ago we got our first egg and there has been one everyday since. Just one, very small egg. Each day it is a little bigger, so today's might even look normal(ish) in an egg cup. Yesterday Carolyn was going through the list of what had been done and it went something like this: "fed pigs, fed chickens, watered tunnel house, planted kumara, collected the eggs - " Maggie and I shot her a questioning look, to which she rolled her eyes and corrected herself, "Egg. Collected the egg." Ha.

Life just keeps working out in our favor. Sort of in an eerie way. Little things just happen every day that we first referred to as "god jokes" (reference Maggie's blog for an example from a couple months back.) These jokes usually involve a prophetic quality or really strong coincidence. Last night the god jokes got to the point where Maggie said, "so maybe we are god....like in Harry Potter they find him and say, 'have you been able to control things and not known why, well you are a wizard.' So maybe soon something will find us and ask the same question and we'll turn out to be god." Not that we would presume to call ourselves gods for any reason other than our ability to predict the future and have things work in our favor. We apologized to god for being so presumptuous, it was just an idea.

Mom, remember how you used to run around gobbling for the week surrounding Thanksgiving? Never thought I'd miss that, but when will I learn to never say never?

Love and thanks to you and all.

We are alive. Do not read that lightly, as it is a much greater accomplishment than it may seem. Maggie and I are free. Free from the crazy and free to laugh with the joy of Carolyn and her household. I wish that I could adequately explain this past week to all of you. Maggie was awfully gracious in her "Ms. Nutty" nickname of our previous wwoofer host. I must call this woman She Who Must Not Be Named (SWMNBN) because I don't want to slander anyone's name, but find myself less capable of Maggie-grace. So SWMNBN is obsessed with two things: biodynamic farming and anthroposophical medicine. (You know what, SWMNBN is a bit cumbersome, so I'm switching to "A.") What are these, you might wonder? They are things that would be totally neat and interesting if taken with a grain of salt. But somehow A managed to suck away any neatness and totally negate the elements of her teachings that could actually be legitimate. Biodynamic farming involves gardening according to plant/seed/flower/leave days that are based on various cosomological determinants. Anthroposophical medicine steers away from modern medicine and focuses more on elements of the soul that must be tapped into for successful healing. It all seems quite interesting, I know.

But let me paint you a picture of A. She looks much older than she actually is, probably from years in the sun without wearing sunscreen, which is poison. Other substances that are poison include (but are by no means limited to) bug repellant of any sort, peanut butter and ice. All of things must be strictly avoided by anyone who cares at all about themselves or their loved ones. I get that bug repellant is, by its nature, poison. But no one, not even her, can make me malign the name of the peanut. So A was not especially nice and we spent a lot of our working time working on the garden sites of her future commune, an endeavor that she has taken on with the help of two other brave souls, Jacques and Jurgen, both of whom we have worked with, though neither of whom we've exchanged a word with. It seems that their anger for society seems to have made them forget that individuals can be good. A was full of interesting ideas like China isn't as poor as it seems, rather it is preparing secret, apocolypse-proof villages so that they will be the global superpower when the End Times are upon us. I realized that she may have been less-than-happy with me in particular one day when we were working on the commune site. We'd been working in the sun for 3 hours straight and I paused to get some water. When I got back she was sitting down and she said to Maggie, "We've got to pay attention to our Lowest Common Denominator: Miss Exhaustion." I mulled this over for a while. Asked Maggie is I was, in fact, particularly weak that day. I maintain that I was working with my typical ox-like strength, though the nickname "LCD" stuck and is used regularly at Carolyn's house.

The best part of our week there was meeting John, her 76-year-old neighbor. We worked in his yard for a day and ended up spending several hours at John's house, drinking tea, admiring his doilies and wall-hangings, talking about his wife and sons. His wife died a few years ago and his sons both live abroad, but he is so proud of all of them. It was so nice talking to him. He lives a sweet, quiet life and so clearly lives for the love of his family. He agreed that A can be hard to swallow, but pointed out that they've learned how to get along and that under it all she has a heart of gold. That said, when he sees her across his driveway he yells out, "what are you brewing in your cauldron today?" John forced me to see the good, so for that I am grateful. Also, as we were leaving John asked, "Do you like soft toys?" Not knowing what "soft toys" exactly are, Maggie and I just sort-of smiled and made vague noises of approval, which was enough for John to lead us into his wife's sewing room and let us have our pick of toys that she knitted long ago. I am now the proud owner of a little knitted duck in a cap and scarf that can come with us on our travels and remind us of John's kindness.

Also by the end of the week we had to acknowledge that A is truly gracious in her nursing job where she works the night shift at a "rest home" for elderly folks with terminal illness. Though her flippancy about death came off as cold, she left me with some things to think about. That's for sure. So we came away with a friend in John and some weird, but though-provoking lessons from A.

Now we are at Carolyn's, which rules. Yesterday Maggie and I built frames for several of the veggie beds using tools that you may have heard of like drills and hammers. All by ourselves!! If you ask nicely, I'll teach you how to use them when I come home.

Ok, so. Right now Maggie and I use "home" to refer to a little two room cottage on the top of a hill (that is maybe a mountain?) that overlooks a tree-filled mountain (not a hill this time). From our cottage we can only see trees, no other humans or structures that remotely indicate the presence of humans. Think Lentz Montreat house for those of you who have been there, but without other houses. We can't even see the house of the family who we currently wwoof with.

We are in the Wairoa Gorge, so at the bottom of our hillsides runs an absolutely pristine river. It looks like the very essence of a river. Exactly what every other river I've ever seen can only attempt to be.

Carolyn and family RULE. Meredith Morgan, you will be her someday. We are CERTAIN of it. Today we drove the trailer to a garden center where a bleach blond teenager in aviator sunglasses and rubber boots used a bulldozer to scoope loads of compost into our trailer. New Zealand rules in that way. Like a BMW we saw pulling a trailer or the well-dressed business woman getting out of a beaten red ute. People do what needs to be done without thinking twice about it. Practicality takes precedence over all else.

If we ever get too quiet, Maggie and I just fake laugh until they turn real. Takes about 2 giggles.Last night Carolyn took us and her kids to Rabbit Island with fish and chips and a bottle of local wine. Today we made over the old weedy rose garden. It is now a blossoming bed of color. We have assisted a home vet in flipping over a cow's uterus that was twisted with a calf inside. We have eaten honey from beehives that are a 2 minute walk down the driveway. We have callouses that I am certain will never ever be dirt free. We found Reeses Cups and carved pumpkins. Ron gave us his GPS system, so we can't even get lost.

Superabundant being wells up in my heart, so to speak.