J is for jumper.

This is the 25th letter in our WWOOFing alphabet.

S is for sunscreen.

This is the 24th letter in our WWOOFing alphabet.

plantfaster asked: How much money do you guys recommend saving for WWOOFing in New Zealand? Plane ticket, visa, domestic travel, weekend activities, etc? I remember when I was there for a short conservation project their dollar was weaker than ours, but the costs added up. Love your blog, thanks!

We recently figured our costs out to be 500 USD per month… each. Which at first look seems like a lot, but it includes all our big ticket items - plane tickets to and from NZ, travelers insurance, buying a car in NZ (including all the petrol and car upkeep), plane/hotel for our trip to Melbourne, and a kayaking trip in the Milford Sound. Plus, as you may have gathered, we like to eat out. The rest of the time we’re on a pretty strict budget. We don’t stay in hostels and instead camp or couchsurf when not WWOOFing. There are a lot of low cost or free things to do if you look for them and we don’t feel like we’ve missed out by sticking to a budget.

We saved up the majority of the money before leaving the US, but because we weren’t completely sure how much everything would cost, we also planned to work for a few months while we were here. Two months working in the vineyards of central Otago wasn’t the most fun, but it let us relax a little more about money. Hope this helps!

resources

While WWOOFing, I have become increasingly aware of my use of resources.

How much water am I using? How about electricity? Where is my food coming from? Am I using too much internet? These are questions that I find myself constantly pondering.

(Yes, in New Zealand you can use too much internet we quickly learned. Unlike what we were used to, you don’t pay for a speed, you pay for an amount of data, which means you have a monthly limit to how much information you can transfer.)

We’ve stayed with a lot of people that are working toward self sustainability, where it really matters how much it has rained in the past week, or whether the solar panels have collected enough sunshine. Food may be plentiful and fresh during the summer and autumn, while in the winter, all the work of canning and preserving really pays off.

It was never my intention to be ignorant of these things before WWOOFing, but staying with people and both using some of and adding to their resources has really brought awareness of this to my everyday thought. And it is certainly something I will take with me when I move back to city life where the connections between the resources I use and their sources are not so clear and obvious.

WWOOFing is even more fun when we get to do art stuff. In a cow shed re-purposed into a greenhouse, there was a crack running down the wall in the old concrete. While patching the crack, we added a decorative relief. (The old crack runs down the right side of the tree.) I’ve never made something out of concrete before, so I’m looking forward to seeing how it dries.

tattooedsass asked: What kind of visa did you get? Does WWOOFing qualify you for a working visa?

We have working holiday visas which allow us to travel and work in NZ for 12 months. You can check if your country of origin qualifies you here. It was simple to apply online and we heard back within a week.

G is for gumboots

This is the 22nd letter in our WWOOFing alphabet.

I is for iceblock.

This is the 21st letter in our WWOOFing alphabet.

O is for organic.

This is the 19th letter in our WWOOFing alphabet.

T is for tea drinking.

This is the 18th letter in our WWOOFing alphabet.