Marama Organics

The past week and a half we were wwoofing at Marama Organics. The property is 30 minutes away from Gore, NZ off of highway 1 on the South Island. Marama houses 6,000-10,000 sheep and cows across a fully organic 3,000 acres. We were there during shearing time so we got to help out with that. If the weather was nice, the shearers came and we would move sheep from the outdoor holding paddock into the shearing barn. Because the dogs were not as helpful as they should have been, we acted as the dogs. As you can imagine, this was quite an experience! There were 3 main sections of the holding paddock, which led to a corral which then led into the shearing shed through a long and skinny run. We eventually got the hang of pushing them into the different sections and also used a wide variety of names and exclamations at the sheep! Hee hee. When the shearers didn’t come because of wet sheep, we moved the sheep from paddock to paddock, which often included more exclamations. Cruising along on the ATV and running behind the sheep, we were as good as dogs. We managed to move lots of sheep. This is what the work was like at Marama Organics. It was tough and made us sore but was worth the experience and good times with fellow wwoofers. The only unfortunate part was that it was mostly cloudy and you couldn’t see the beautiful landscape.

Carsen 3/3/09