Country Life Weekend

Last Friday I hopped a bus with Carie and Dale to the south for Country Life Weekend. the Country Life Weekend is an IFSA sponsored event where interested students go work and stay on a farm with hosts Keith and Kaye. The bus took us to Oamaru where we met an IFSA girl who is abroad at Otago named Ellen. The four of us caught a shuttle out to the farm.

That first night on the farm we arrived in the dark. We were fed a huge dinner and a desert which consisted of a piece of cake, a hunk of pavlova, and ice cream. The four of us watched the rugby and stayed up considerably later than our hosts just chit chatting and getting to know Ellen.

The next morning Dale and I got up around 7 because we figured "it's a farm, they probably start early". We were greeted with a tasty breakfast and the task of transporting some hay with Keith. We got in the car and drove about 8 minutes to someone else's farm, loaded up Keith's truck with bales of hay, drove back, unloaded, and repeated three times. Then we took a break and had a coffee with Kaye and the ladies who had woken up. We took them with us for another 4 trips which finished the job.



We then had a hearty lunch. I had some lasagna which was made with beef from the farm!

We spent the first part of the afternoon shlumping. The ladies took a nap, Dale read some Asimov, and I listened to some bluegrass and admired the property. Feeling like we hadn't done quite enough to deserve another huge dinner, we asked if there was anything else we could do. Kaye told us there wasn't anything on the farm but that we could go down to their friends' vineyard and help out there. I woke up the ladies and we walked over to the vineyard.

Beautiful panoramic by dale

We all accidentally brushed up against one of these nettles which were growing throughout the vines.
Puppy.
The majority of our work up there we termed as "consolidation of guards". Basically, those plastic guards around each vine were coming off and they needed to be stacked on eachother so that would take up far less space when stored.


That night we had an awesome dinner and watched the All Blacks beat the hell out of the Wallabies. We woke up at 4AM to check out the stars which were beautiful; There was a new moon that night.

The next day we woke up, ate, packed, and went on a sweet 4-wheeling adventure all before the shuttle arrived at 10:30.


4-wheelin time. Here's a shot of Keith taking us up the hill behind his place which is all his property.


The view from the top.




We headed down and took a picture with the Keith and Kaye before shuttling out.


The shuttle took us to a few places instead of directly to the bus. The first stop was the Elephant Rocks.


Then we went to a place where there's a huge whale fossil which was awesome. Also a part of Narnia was filmed there.

Last we headed down to the Moeraki Boulders.



Hatching from a boulder.


The Country Life Weekend was lots of fun. this may sound weird but I had a great time interfacing with older people... I just like it. There's something about farm life that I really enjoy. I loved getting to do some work at the vineyard and ask questions of the owners... I'd love to work some vines at some point in my life.