Chickens, Pigs, and Farewell Aotearoa

With our great South Island tour road trip over, we caught the ferry back up to Wellington. Here we spent a delightful three days indulging in the Wellington coffee scene and resting. And of course, a trip to Weta Workshop could not be missed!

Feeling well rested we headed further north to a house-sitting job we had arranged. We knew we were going to be taking care of chickens as well, but we forgot to ask how many….whoops. Turned out to be around 90 specialty breed chickens, so we pulled our boots on and became chicken farmers for a week. 

*making good use of the eggs with hollandaise

Leaving the chickens behind, we decided to squeeze in one last camping trip on the Coromandel peninsula. I wouldn't have expected it but sleeping in a tent again felt like coming home. We got to see some of New Zealand’s very special Kauri trees and take a hike out to one of the biggest Department of Conservation huts. The hut can sleep 80 people at a time! We opted to stay in the campsite by the hut rather than in the hut. When the hut ranger came down to introduce himself, he smiled and told us we had made the right decision. A large, noisy school group was staying in one half of the hut, and a few families with babies in the other half. We were guaranteed a good night's sleep in the quiet campsite!

*Stopped by some hot springs on our way to Coromandel

*Happy campers!

*Majestic Kauri tree

*Hike to the big hut and Pinnacles

Before we knew it, we were headed back towards Raglan, where we started our whole New Zealand adventure. For the next three weeks, we were going to be house sitting at a couple’s homestead, taking care of their 3 pigs, 3 chickens, and free-range goat.  

Boy were we in for a surprise! 

3 pigs turned out to be 23 pigs--they all had piglets…who were more pig than piglet at this point.  Oh, and the goat…she hated us. She would chase us and try to ram us with her horns. In defense, we were given a water gun to carry around with us. A few sprays of water and she would skulk off for a bit.

We pulled our boots up again and became pig farmers for the next month.

*Here piggy piggy piggy piggy piggy!

*the goat

*Elijah tried to teach me stick-shift while pig farming

During this time, we also did a bit more volunteer work with the Kairoi project. Elijah and I ran a few longer traplines, getting deep into the New Zealand bush. On one particular trapline, I was resetting the possum traps while Elijah worked on the rat traps. Following the GPS up to the next trap, I screamed. Hanging out of the possum trap was an actual Australian possum! In all the trapping we had done we had never actually had a possum in any of the possum traps (hence why I had chosen to reset the possum traps, while Elijah scraped gooey rat carcasses up). Mustering up all my courage, I put my gloves on and grabbed the 10 lb. body and tossed it into the bush to let nature do the rest of the job. I hurried on to the next trap, hoping to leave the crawling feeling I had behind. Unfortunately, that was not the last possum of the day….

*Out trapping (sparing you images of the dead possums)

And just like that, our five months in New Zealand came to an end. We took one last trip to Ngarunui Beach with our boogie boards and played in the waves. It was a stunningly beautiful day, and the surf was perfect…a sweet farewell gift that left us hoping to return one day.