Hey all! Tonight is our last night at the WWOOFing farm and, I must say, we are all a little sad to be leaving. We've had such a fun time getting back to our cowboy/farming roots. :D Our stay at Graham's farm has been very interesting and eventful. There are a variety of jobs here that we all participated in. Some days a group of us would ride around the farm, fixing fences as we went, while the other group got down and dirty with the sheep. I think most of the group would agree when I say that working with the sheep was a blast. My personal favorite sheep activity was drenching. Let me paint a picture for you. First everyone chases the sheep into a long, narrow pen. When they're all packed in like sardines two people hop into the pen with them. One person [the drencher] is wearing a ghost buster-like backpack complete with a squirt nozzle gun. The backpack is filled with a rich yellow liquid that supposedly contains key nutrients for the sheep. So, the drencher has to get a sheep in between his or her legs, grab the sheep's mouth, shove the squirt gun into it's mouth, and spray the nutrients into the back of it's throat. The other person [we'll call them the yanker] stands behind the drencher and pulls the sheep that have been done back behind them. Now, mind you, sheep are quite stupid and stubborn animals. On top of that, when they get into panic mode anything could happen. Elizabeth got taken down by one within the first 20 minutes of working with them [dangerous stuff! ;)]. Back to the drenching, you basically have to struggle to get them in a headlock position while they are fighting for their lives, trying to wriggle away. One tactic some of the sheep used, that got annoying quickly, was hiding their heads or their entire bodies underneath other sheep! The best part, however, was getting to climb on/crowd surf the sheep just to get the job done. Oh! And the entire time this was going on you could also be getting peed on [or in Chelsea's case pooed on] or somehow manage to get poo in your mouth [Kay-Lin] haha. In simpler terms you and the poo became attached at the hip, literally. We were all definitely dirty boys and girls. It was intense!
On an even more disgusting note, a few of us had the pleasure of witnessing a a sheep slaughter. Now, they didn't get to see the sheep get killed, but they did have the pleasure of witnessing a horrific and stomach churning skinning, hanging, and gutting of a sheep. I also heard that Snow, the man performing these deeds, was throwing various parts of the dead sheep at people as a joke. Drew was the receiver of that one haha oh man.
Another really cool thing about staying at this farm was that there was another family staying here as well. The family is made up of a couple, PJ and Tom, and their three kids: George, 8; Ben, 6; and Rosie, 4. They are the sweetest and cutest family ever with matching red hair. I feel like they definitely welcomed us into their family. PJ gave a lot of us good pointers on cooking, while Tom turned us into handymen. It was awesome :).
We are off to Queenstown in the morning to start prepping for our big hike coming up. I'll keep you guys posted on our groups crazy adventures, but it's getting late and I still need to pack! So goodnight and I'll ttyl!
- Shelby
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