By Lucy

The rest of the week continued in roughly that pattern. I rise around 7, had breakfast, and around 8:30 go out to feed the chickens. Simonetta is not a morning person, and I don’t want to intrude on her space too early, so I make myself wait for 8:30. I sleep well, usually only waking once in the night to restock the dying fire. By morning the fire is usually well and truly out, but the morning sun warms the cabin enough.

Chickens are both dumb and hungry. They have some notion I’m the food person, crowding around the fence when they see me, but no intelligence to understand that I can’t feed them if I can’t get to the food! They have no personal space for each other, either. I watched one chicken get shoved into the water dish, and then it sat there while its fellow literally stood on it to reach for a drink of water. Any rowdy chicken is easily moved aside with a gentle nudge of the foot (no, I do not punt chickens like footballs!). Any escapees are easily baited back with food, but I am getting pretty good at just chasing them down and tossing them over the fence.

I’m not afraid of chickens, but the part that continues to make me pause is when there is a hen in the egg boxes. My fingers are the most exposed, fragile part of me, offered up scant centimeters from their sharp beaks. Kevin says they don’t have much of an egg protecting instinct left, but they still peck at everything out of habit, and I’d hate for them to decide my fingers look tasty.

I take the eggs inside the kitchen to wash and put into cartons. My tasks are light and uncomplicated; weeding and watering gardens, putting the laundry out on the line and folding it, cleaning the rooms after guests leave and putting fresh sheets on the bed.

It’s not carpentry, but that’s a choice I’m willing to live with. I couldn’t do it forever, but two months of this is a nice brain break. No grocery shopping, cooking, remembering to pay rent, gassing up the car, trying to keep track of carpentry hours… No boys, either. I was slightly concerned that Ethan might latch on to the only female his age in the near vicinity, but he couldn’t be less interested in me. He sticks around long enough to shove dinner in his face and then he runs back upstairs, like a moody teenager.

We form an ersatz family, Simonetta and Gary as the bickering but well-meaning parents, me and Ethan as the teenagers, exchanging sideways glances over the table and rolling our eyes together.

I’m getting pretty good at using the woodstove. The problem with a woodstove as your only source of heat is that it doesn’t happen on command. It takes half an hour to an hour to get a good fire going, so you need to start it before you want heat. I’m happy any day that I wake up in the morning and still have hot coals.

The weather is odd, and the perfect example of why you can’t just look stuff up on the internet. The farm exists in this atmospheric anomaly that is at least 5 degrees colder than 10 clicks in any direction, mostly due to the wind. Around 3PM the sun descends behind the trees and it cools off quickly. Around 6PM the sun is behind the mountains, so 6PM is the time I aim to be back at the house. I still don’t want to drive the bike in the dark even if there are no moose to hit.

There is also a strange quirk where a stiff breeze will grab some ocean water 100 clicks west of us, and fling it over the mountains without making a proper rain cloud. So you’ll be doing whatever, and suddenly drenched in a spot of rain while there isn’t a cloud in the sky!

Simonetta is caring, if curt. She surprised me Monday morning by giving me a light grey sheet to act as a cover for my motorcycle. It isn’t perfect, but it’s better than nothing and definitely the thought counts here.

Monday is a light day to start. Gary and Ethan are gone for a couple of days, to supervise the foundation being poured. Simonetta will be out until 1PM, and then she had to get organized. Some guests had paid extra for a full dinner service, with a breakfast service in the morning. I have to feed the chickens (and grab the eggs), water everything in the greenhouse, then weed the potato patch and plant the potatoes.

None of those tasks are particularly difficult and I’m done by 11. I restock my firewood and make a sandwich for lunch.

I had a few tasks I wanted to do. First and foremost was fill up the bike. It took half a tank of gas to get here – motorcycles have great gas mileage, but also small tanks. Any trip to Christchurch would require a full tank before I headed out, and a full tank on the way back, for safety’s sake. I also wanted to hit a grocery store. I didn’t want to return the milk saying it tasted funny, and I prefer cream anyway, so buying myself a small jug of cream should skirt the issue nicely. I also wanted to get myself my usual chamomile tea and honey. My helmet bag was also a good grocery shop bag with the bike, cuz I can sling it across my shoulder.

There was a tourist spot nearby called Rakaia Gorge, which seemed like it had a few different hikes and should be scenic and stuff.

I headed out around noon… or rather, I tried to. Over the last two days, a lot of heavy trucks had used the road, and they had piled the gravel into ridge in front of the driveway. I dunno if I was cocky or just inexperienced, but as I pulled out of the driveway my tires spun out on the gravel and down I went.

It wasn’t much of a spill. The bike landed on my leg, but it didn’t hurt me – I barely had a scrape, no blood or bruises. I had somehow managed to kick the bike into second gear as I went down, or maybe I had been switching to second as I fell. It was a blur already. I put it back into neutral and turned it off before I went to lift it.

The one guest we have pulled up to the end of the driveway, parked her car and ran over. “Oh my god, are you ok!”

“Yeah, i just fell.” I said, wincing with embarrassment.

“Are you sure? You didn’t hit your head?”

I pointed to my full-face helmet. “I wasn’t going that fast.”

She offered to help lift the bike and I grudgingly accepted. I should be able to lift the bike on my own, but no point in being bull-headed. I rolled the bike into the grass and continued to assure her I was fine before she finally left.

I went to turn the bike on, but it wouldn’t turn over.

Me and Paul tried to trouble-shoot. My bike doesn’t have a tip-over switch, or a kill switch. Best we could tell, I flooded the carburetor when I fell. Wait for it to dry out and try again.

As I waited, Simonetta came home. She pulled over to the side and rolled down the window. “Going exploring?” She called.

“Yes, going to Rakaia.”

“Ah, excellent, I’m so glad to hear that!” She exclaimed, in a voice overflowing with enthusiasm. It occurred to me then that she really does enjoy giving people the opportunity to travel, and she was at least slightly concerned that I would just hang out around the farm. “I’m planning for dinner to be around 7, be back by 6 so I can instruct you on what to do.”

I nodded and away she went. No concern that I was parked by the side of the road? Maybe she figured I fell but I was obviously ok.

After half an hour, I tried the bike again. It sounded better, but still wouldn’t start. I tried giving it a little gas, a trick we used at the motorcycle class. Now it turned over. I rode down the hill on the grass, figuring it offered better traction than the gravel.

I had to follow the gravel road for a bit before I found the paved road. I just putted along in the clearest part of the road. It’s a backcountry road so no one would care that I wasn’t in my lane – at worst, I’d be stuck behind a tractor.

I went along the paved road for about ten minutes before the ground fell away in front of me. I panicked. Before me was the steepest, windiest road I had ever seen in my life, the kind of cliff-edge road you see in movies for a tense action scene. If I hit the guardrail, I’d pickle-flip off the bike and over the edge! The sign for the road advised 60 kmh, so I kicked it down to third and coasted with the clutch disengaged.

After several tense minutes, I was at the bottom, and pulled in to the gravel parking lot (good thing my motorcycle is a glorified dirt bike).

There’s two hikes, one that says 4 hours, the other says half an hour. I won’t have time for the four hour one, that will be a day off quest. I walk up the steep gravel path to the bridge and gasp.

The river! It’s such an unreal, gorgeous turquoise that my pictures cannot do it justice. It looks like it’s been edited with a filter, except it’s right before my eyes! Places like this exist?

The path itself winds up next to the road until it is high above the gorge. It is barely more that a dirt track, marked by little plastic orange triangles nailed to the trees. It’s a lot more uphill than I expected – getting my cardio in.

At the lookout, a plaque informs me that the colour of the river is caused by it being fed from the alpine snow thaw-water. Specifically, it’s supersaturated with certain minerals, which is also a reason you shouldn’t drink the water. You could shut down your kidneys.

Mount Hutt itself, where the river starts, is mostly sandstone, as is the area surrounding it. The roads constantly look like they are one good rain away from washing out, although the strata visible in the cliffside is interesting. I’m sure Hanuman will love the pictures. Actually, I bet Hanuman would love the sh*t out of this place. Feeding the chickens, swimming in the alpine river, collecting giant Douglas fir pinecones for the woodstove.

The lookout also features a plaque about the Maori name for the river, Rakaia. The story is about the spirit (taniwha) of the river fighting the spirit of the Nor’West wind.

I also noticed there seems to be a common ditch plant, in the form of these bushes with yellow flowers and vicious spikes!

It took me about an hour and a bit to do the round trip, stopping to take pictures and really drink in my surroundings.

Then it was time to go shopping.

It took me not even 20 minutes to drive into Methven, but it felt longer. Part of that is how it always feels longer to go somewhere you aren’t familiar with. Part of it is the fact I am hyper-aware of how slow I am on the bike. If I had my car, I’d love all these flat country roads and be flying along at ten above the speed limit. There is no real speed limit out here – New Zealand had a road sign that is simply a white field with a black slash across it, which means 100 or as conditions allow. But I’m unsure on the bike and it’s absolutely freezing with the wind, so I putt along at 80. People pass me easily on the long stretches on nothing, so I try not to let it bother me.

The gas bar made me pre-approve my gas amount, I just punched in 5 bucks. In Christchurch, that was half a tank. Here, it’s a quarter. Oops. Well, I can always gas up in Darfield!

At the grocery store, I grab my little bottle of cream, a box of chamomile tea, and stop in the spread aisle. Right, I forgot New Zealand is the home of Manuka honey! I always rolled my eyes at it (panacea, again) but here it is the most common option, so why not enjoy the bounty? While I was there, I noticed they have jars of St Dalfour jam. Aah, that was the good stuff! That was the stuff you’d have to eat when dad wasn’t home to catch you. Sure, why not buy a jar of it? Then I can refill it from Simonetta’s stocks.

Kiwi’s are somewhere between Brits and Canucks in demeanor. The British hated my bubbly, upbeat personality and always seemed on the edge of throwing me out of stores for being too cheerful. Kiwis opt for tolerant bemusement, like when your friend is a little drunk.

I aimed to be back around 5. As I drove down the lane, I heard cheerful barking.

Crap, I forgot about the dogs. There are two dogs; Earl, who is female, oddly, and something of a shepherd, as there’s been comments about her getting exercise from the cows. She’s fairly calm. Luigi is brown, male, half-blind, and excitable. He bounded in front of the bike and, given the options between running over my boss’s dog or falling over, I chose to fall.

“Christ, Luigi.” In the future, I should stop further up the lane and check if the dogs are out. I got up – my leg hurt this time – lifted the bike by myself, turned it off and walked it to my parking space.

I didn’t even bother starting the fire, since I’d be helping with the dinner service. I hopped in the shower, dried my hair, and chose all black clothes for serving in. My left knee was heavily bruised, but no serious damage done. At 6 I went into the staff kitchen.

“Change of plans. I moved up dinner to 6, so I don’t have time to teach you. Just do the dishes and help me out here.”

She didn’t even really need me to do the dishes, because they were being loaded into the dishwasher. I was doing other odd things as well, like throwing plates in the microwave to warm them before the food was plated. It was a crash course in 5 star dining, and Simonetta didn’t really seem to need my help. It was more like she just wanted someone to talk to… but then, I seem to fall into that role a lot.

Our dinner was after the guests had settled down, and was freshly made macaroni and cheese. Now that I know she was born in Italy, the pasta thing makes sense. Around here, pasta is an exotic, foreign food. She can’t get Gary to try it because it’s outside of his comfort zone.

Tuesday was a slow day. The guest who helped me up checked out, so I turned over her cabin.

Simonetta has a hunger for stories. She called me over to her office, pulled up Thunder Bay on Google maps, and asked me a hundred questions about it. That’s the real price I’m paying for staying here, being interesting. She offered me Saturday and Sunday off, since there would be one group of guests entirely occupying the place until Monday, so no rooms would need to be turned over. I decided to book the scenic train out to Greymouth for the night, and back again the next day.

In the afternoon, I hiked out to the road for cell service and started trying to apply for places to go after this. I was teetering dangerously on the edge of complacency. It would be so easy to spend the entire 6 months here. I wouldn’t be gaining any money, but I wouldn’t lose any either. I have around 3K, but that money disappears quick when you’re living in hotels and eating out, and I still needed money to buy a plane ticket home at the end of this.

My first mistake was starting at the middle of the country – I had to decide which direction to go to loop around.

Wednesday was a bit of a mess. Simonetta had to go to Christchurch for the whole day. She left me a list of things that needed to be sanded and painted, the paints to use, and also to weed the vegetable patch (Kiwis spell it “vege”) if there was any time leftover. Technically I agreed to work 5 hours a day, but there’s some flexibility if I can get tasks done quickly, or if I feel like taking it easy.

The problem was, I could not find the sander! I looked where she said it was, then I searched every spot on the property I could think of, and there was no sander to be found. I ended up weeding for three hours and feeling like an abject failure. It later turned out that she absent-mindedly brought the sander inside and put it in the laundry room! I was still shaking in my boots at the idea that I might be turfed out just because I couldn’t complete the tasks set for me one day.

When she got in in the evening, she called me to the office. I was absolutely quaking in my boots. I explained to her about the sander and she was pretty chill about it. When I told her the train was fully booked Saturday, she offered me Saturday, Sunday and Monday off, since I’d have worked 6 days in a row at that point.

It didn’t make me feel better. I almost burst into tears because I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, for some mean streak to come out and punish me.

I wasn’t feeling great in general, actually. I was feeling terribly isolated – I end up working when everyone in Thunder Bay is off, and by the time I’m done they’re all in bed. And that’s when I can get the internet to work! I wouldn’t even mind it if I just had to rely on cell service, Esims are not that expensive, but cell service isn’t reliable out here either. I still need to apply for jobs as well. I’m not thrilled with the woodstove. The pile of leaves turned out to be caused by the mice living in the ceiling because the roof isn’t finished, but it’s not high on the list of priorities so I have to live with mouse poop.

And to be honest, I’m scared of going riding on the bike. The gravel road makes every trip out a trek and a half.

Thursday was supposed to start raining around 1, so it was a light day. Simonetta has a little 6 ounce hammer and a bag of odd nails, so I went around hammering various things back into place, like the fence for the chicken pen. Then I had lunch and retired back to my shack to wait for the rain.

Rich was online. “Where are you going next year?” He asked.

“I dunno, maybe back here.” I had half a mind, before I got here, to apply for the balance of the 24 months you’re allowed to be here and come back. Although I didn’t quite regret coming here, it wasn’t really growing on me either.

“Why don’t you go somewhere else?”

“I did find out there is a working holiday visa for Italy…” I said in a small voice.

“Hah, f*ck it I’ll go anyway is catching!” He exclaimed. “I was still thinking of doing the road trip to Venice we had planned, with or without you.”

I almost forgot about that. Back when it was a vague dream, I had some sort of idea of doing only 4 months here, and meeting the Vagabond in Venice on the way back. But then Rich pointed out that he’s only a hop and a skip from Italy, so we made this slightly mad plan for me to fly to England, rent a car with him and road-trip across Europe, ending in Italy, and then Rich would just fly back to England.

That plan had died an early death when the Vagabond revealed he fell out with his family and had no plans to go back to Italy this winter. And if I was going to do the Working Holiday in Italy, I was gonna do the whole year in Italy, not just six months, so the road trip with me probably wasn’t happening. But I was glad Rich was going without me, much as I wanted to be there.

The rain didn’t show up ’til 6, which made me feel like we had wasted a day.

Over dinner that night, Simonetta asked, “Oh, yes, Lucy, what about your family?”

I winced. “I have a mom, a dad, and a brother, but they don’t really talk to me…”

“I was about to say, what’s wrong with you?” She laughed, before changing the subject.

What’s wrong with me? Jury’s still out. What’s wrong with Ethan, eh? When I asked him how long he was going to be here, he said until they kick him out or his visa expires. When I asked him where he’ll go next, he shrugged and said “Australia?”. Why? Nebulous as it is, at least I had some goals and plans for the trip. Why is he here? What about his family and friends back home? What about the career and references you aren’t building in your country, the roots you aren’t putting down? What an odd fellow. He also keeps trying to convince Gary to buy a sailboat, despite having no experience with sailing, and since I turned up on my motorcycle he’s been looking at buying one of those too.

On Friday, since the whole place had been booked out by an entire family, we had to buckle down and turn over all the rooms, deep clean them. The family who stayed in the Stablehand cooked some smelly food, so we had all the windows open to air it out.

This family coming in had 2 small children, so we grabbed the cradles from upstairs. I noted Simonetta has a lot of wall hangings with Italian on them, which makes me wonder how many languages she is fluent in. She supposedly speaks French, and there were some comments about her knowing Spanish that I’m not sure were sarcastic, although if you already know standard Italian Spanish is not a stretch.

The boys came in at lunch, made themselves sandwiches, then stomped back out to the yard, leaving open loaves of bread, margarine, dirty plates and crumbs scattered across the table. I smiled to myself as I cleaned it up. I had taken it upon myself to help Simonetta whenever I noticed something needs doing, even if it’s outside my five hours of work. Like if there’s still laundry on the line at 6PM, loading dishes into the dishwasher, and grabbing supplies from the cold cellar to restock the kitchen.

She’s always doing a million things. She runs the lodge, has the chickens, maintains an orchard for her preserves, sells the preserves and the eggs, moonlights as some sort of teacher online….

Dinner was a nacho salad. Sacre bleu, some ethnic food! Me and Ethan teased Gary for his unwillingness to try something most kids in America would be clamouring for!

And then my work week was over and I had a three day weekend all to myself!