A Nutty Week at Ohiwa Macademias

After our roadtrip, we spent a few more days back at Fruit Vans, a familiar and friendly place.  We returned the vans, painted some signs, sold some fruit, had some laughs. Best of all, we pitched in with 3 other Canuks in the kitchen, ensuring the rest of the house could experience Canadian Thanksgiving, complete with a McDonald pumpkin pie and some Ammon stuffing. YUM! Sadly from there, the paths of 'team knapsack' have gone seperate ways, albeit for what we hope to be a short amount of time.  And so here is an entry from Amanda, and what happened at wwoofing destination #2:  Rewinding again, back to October 12th. 


Arrived by bus in Opotiki, east of Auckland in the lovely Bay of Plenty, to be welcomed into the home of Anne and Paul, founders of Ohiwa Macedemias. Nestled in a quiet spot up in the hills with ocean views, Paul and Anne have over the past 18 yrs built up an impressive orchard of macademia nut trees and replanted native bush, from land that was once overgrazed pastureland. What a beautiful place! Besides the orchard of nuts, there were also chickens, 3 cows, and a herd of sheep that lived in amongst the trees. Of course we can't forget about Smudy, the little old Jack Russel blind in 1 eye, and Lennie, the big golden lab that chases opossums up trees in the middle of the night, barking until Paul comes out to shoot them! (Australian opossums are a destructive invasive species, destroying habitat and killing many native birds, so Lennie is doing her part ;). 

As for the nuts- they made for a great week :) Everyday was a little bit different, and I basically got to help out in the process from start to finish. There was a great deal of nut-picking, along with fellow wwoofers, Tanya and Hennie from Germany, and Renelle from NWT. We laid tarps around the trees, and climbed right up into the branches with long snippers to drop the heavy bunches of green nuts from the treetops. We helped out in the husking room, where the nuts are emptied into a bin that removes the green skins to reveal the small and sticky nuts. They're then weighed, and moved to a drying room, where they'll spend around 3 weeks before being cracked open, and made into a delicious array of treats by Anne. This is by far the best part- helping in the kitchen, sampling the spreads, crumbles, and yummy chocolate-coated, honey-roasted, or salted nuts, all to be sold at the market. Talk about fantastic! There's so much more to macademias than cookies, we don't know what we're missing ;)
Other odd jobs around the orchard included shifting the cows into different paddocks, removing a fallen tree from the driveway, driving the tractor, spreading compost, and getting accidentally shocked by an electric fence in the process... owww! We also enjoyed many long hours cooking together in the kitchen, and were lucky enough to try some fantastic German dishes, healthy breakfasts from Paul, and tasty sushi by Anne.  Renelle and I found time on a clear Sunday afternoon to head out to the coast for a 4 hour hike along Otarawairere Bay to Ohope Beach. Passing up over spectacular cliffs, she was good enough to humour me in posing for frequent photos, shared lots of great stories about life in the Territories, and her love of moose ;)

I really loved it at Ohiwa, it was such a treat to feel so 'at home' so far from home, with such warm and caring people.  So if any of you ever need some quality nutcrackers, macademias, or a great place to wwoof, Paul and Anne's is the place to be.