Wwoofing in the Hutt, Baby

We are so sorry it took so long to get this blog about whats been happening for the last month, but here it is in all its glory! So we arrived into Wellington on February 10th, and camped the first two nights in a park just outside the city, and in a top 10 site. Pretty uneventful – an uncommon event in John’s life occurred as we spent many hours in the library! We were busy looking for work and trying to pay my credit card bill.

On the 12th we arrived dirty, tired and hungry at the foot of the doorstep of Wendy and Conrad Adams. Actually, we met them at their shop in nearby Petone. The dynamic duo own a cheese shop that serves espresso as well, and also a coffee cart that they tote around and sell wonderful coffee from called, “Espresso Rescue.” If you know me, you would know that coffee + Marian = pretty darn happy. Needless, to say, we went back with them to their house that night to have a wonderful fish infused paella and shared some sparkling wine. Altogether, an incredible meal and sleep after living in a tent for the previous month, and mostly eating pasta and salads; I was pretty excited when I got to go to the restroom in the middle of the night without having to cross the lawns or step out into the night cold! Here are their businesses:


Henry the son (the boy in the blue) is in front of the cart begging for money for a 'roti'. Yes parents children behave the same everywhere.



Just a quick reminder: WWOOF is an acronym for Willing Workers on Organic Farms. In exchange for food and accommodation, the Wwoofers (us) work for the hosts for an arranged period of time. In our case, it was Tuesdays through Saturdays 9 – 1. As we found out later, these are pretty good working hours for Wwoofing.

The day after we set up shop, we woke to find their son Henry ready to show us and take us to the weekend market. Our task was to find Conrad at the coffee cart to obtain funds and shop around for that week’s groceries. Conrad, not being used to our need for specifics, just told us to buy whatever is in season, fresh and local, and hopefully cheap! Not knowing what is fresh or local, or what the family consumes on a regular basis, we felt like we were grasping at thin air. So we made a few purchases and evidently did “okay.” The rest of the daily tasks were to basically keep an eye on Henry while Wendy and Conrad ran their respective businesses.

On our days off following (we arrived on a Friday night), we explored Wellington a bit and continued to look for work on the local craigslist/ebay type site trademe.co.nz. We both basically looked for work in service industries in cafes, restaurants, etc. We were able to meet up with our friend Justus that first week, who had been in Wellington for roughly a year and a half. He let us know some tips on finding work and good places to live in Wellington. As far as our wwoofer duties went, we did things like add grass clippings to the compost, turn over the compost, hose down the pathways in the yard (which routinely collect duck and chicken poo), weed, cut down a fig tree, help out in the shop and coffee cart, and help get a room ready for demolition adjacent to the garage. The Adams call their wwoofing experience “urban wwoofing” because they don’t have a big farm, but a few veggie gardens, a greenhouse, some fruit trees, ducks and chickens for eggs, and compost. At nights we enjoyed getting to know the family and asking them about how things are done in kiwiland, and getting to enjoy some really nice food.

At the end of the week was the Jackson Street Fair. Wendy and Conrad’s shop happened to be on Jackson Street and we helped serve Ice Cream to all of the festival goers. Here is Marian serving the local organic ice cream with Conrad…



I also started these series of books, the Millenium series, which are quite addicting murder mystery novels and the family and John had a good time poking fun at my obsession. I had to have Conrad check the book out for me at the library because I was so involved!