Hi, many of you may have heard from me, my name’s Morganne, I’m a new team member here at WWOOF NZ.

My role in the office involves signing up new WWOOFers and hosts, answering all your questions, keeping track of what’s going on in the world of organics and generally maintaining order about the place! I grew up with WWOOFers in the family home, have traveled extensively through NZ and overseas and have WWOOFed a bit too. Besides WWOOF I also have a wee baby to keep me occupied and an ever increasing organic vege garden on my small rural home patch. Currently my partner and I are having a garlic growing competition between his no dig and my double-dig plot. I shall keep you posted on results. I enjoy working in the WWOOF office, being witness to all the exciting developments in sustainable hort/agriculture and helping people to learn more about each other, their planet and the many ways in which we can work together with our environment. .
I look forward to hearing from WWOOFers and hosts and hopefully my own experiences and learning will be help my understanding of your queries, problems, ideas and reflections.

“I think it is a great low impact way to travel and get in touch with the place you are traveling in. Thanks for creating this opportunity.”
Eliza Jensen USA

“To see the world through other eyes.”
Christiane Meyer- Germany

“Thanks very much for your help and hard work. I’m happily WWOOFing and hope my good experiences will Continue.”
Steph

“Interested in sustainable, ecologically sound farming. As a cook I feel its is important to not only use organic food from local farms but have first hand experience growing and caring for the product.”
Kevin USA

Derry Nairn is a WWOOFer from Ireland conducting academic research into the movement’s use of internet technologies. He has been a WWOOFer in New Zealand and Japan and would like to survey hosts and WWOOFers for research in to interactive webspaces.
If you are interested in taking part you can find the link on “WWOOF News” at www.wwoofinternational.org. This fits in with our aims of developing social networking amongst WWOOF members.

DIRT DOCTOR
www.dirtdoctor.co.nz
Half Hour Urban Eden
How to create a highly productive home garden that will feed a family of four….
…. in just half an hour a week.
Compost
How to create a high quality rich compost from readily available resources.

Hi, we loved New Zealand!!!! We had almost decided to settle in your country but finally we came back home but maybe one day, we will come back. We just loved the Kiwis, their way of life, their friendliness and their spontaneity. And also, that is where I discovered wwoofing. So, we spent 4 months in your country and have been wwoofing in 6 different places, staying from one week to a month. A word first about the booklet. We found it very informative, especially the proportion of organic food which allowed us to know how self-sufficient the family was.
We had a great first experience at a Swiss-Scottish family in Inglewood that have moved to Switzerland by now.
We loved our time at the place of a large family of German origin living in a remote valley near Murchison, called the Herwitch family. We had a wonderful time with this very harmonious and happy family living a self-sufficient life. We stayed only a week but this week seemed to us like a month for it was so rich of experiences, discussions and learning. They really were living the way they thought. (not just like French people pretending to be green but not wanting to change anything about their comfortable lives).
Also, we spent a whole month near Takaka, at the entry of Kahurangi National Park. We helped the owner, a woman of Quebec origin, take car of her trees, her
kitchen garden, try not to be overwhelmed by gorse in her huge land and did up a few things too and as a reward, we could spend time talking with her and making the most of the extraordinary views from the balcony of our “private wooden house”. This woman is really something!
So, we think woofing in New Zealand is greatly organized and offer plenty of different farms suiting all kinds of people and also the booklet is really well done, complete and informative and it allows us to select the farms according to what we are looking
for.
To finish, these wwoofing experiences have transformed and enriched us. We are now downshifting, I am working in a small place making organic jams in a very small proportion, have just started a little kitchen garden in a friend’s garden and are supporting community supported agriculture by having a basket of vegetables every week and think of having a farm of our own one day (maybe when the stockmarket will have collapsed)!
I hope that our little report will be read! (at your festival maybe!)

Cheers, Marie-Eve and Bertrand,

France

Farm Safety and Insurance

We often get asked about these topics. The first consideration is for the safety and well-being of everyone on the farm. Some pro-active steps to achieve this could include: 1. Ensure WWOOFers are not involved in typically dangerous activities e.g. machinery, tractors, ATV bikes. 2. Explain and demonstrate jobs thoroughly. Ask WWOOFers to explain their understanding of how to do different jobs (sometimes WWOOFers may say “Yes, I understand” to try and be helpful). WWOOFers may be willing but they often do not have the experience or expertise to use them safely. While ACC WILL cover travelers in the event of an accident (there is usually a $50 admin fee), OSH requires farmers to manage their farm in a safe manner. 3. All travelers should have some form of travel insurance to cover them in the case of lost belongings or if they come ill.

Website Secure Certficate:

Thanks to Plain Communications www.plain.co.nz, the WWOOF website has now been issued with a SSL Secure Certificate. This security has been added to protect the personal data hosts and WWOOFers provide while on the website. Data is encrypted and payments are secured. You may also notice that when you view hosts’ and WWOOFers’ profiles, that instead of showing the email address, a contact form is provided. This is so that your email address is kept private (until you choose to reply to someone who has written to you). The aim is to prevent unauthorised use of your email address. Remember you can update your listing or profile whenever you need to. You can add and delete photos, search for hosts and WWOOFers, find hosts on the national map, post a notice. Have a play around on the website and see what there is. If you have ideas or even have web design skills please let us know. We are always looking to improve, update etc. Thanks to those members who have helped so far!

Email Scams

Hosts have recently received emails that appeared to be from WWOOFers but they were actually from someone based in Africa asking for money …… Often there is a plausible story for a humanitarian cause. Please do not reply to these emails as you may find you receive even more scam emails. Other emails have asked hosts to sponsor the person to travel to New Zealand. If you do sponsor someone you legally become responsible for them which could put you at risk financially. It may also put WWOOF at odds with NZ Immigration laws which would be a shame. Unfortunately WWOOF can not help with special visa or sponsorship. We advise WWOOFers of this and while it is disappointing for all those involved it is the case.

Making Bookings with Hosts

One issue that puts a strain on the WWOOF exchange is missed bookings. When you are a WWOOFer and arrange a stay with a host then a number of things happen: 1. The host will tell other WWOOFers they can’t come because another WWOOFer is booked in. 2. The host will stock up with extra food and supplies. 3. The host will plan projects to do with you. So what happens when you don’t turn up? The first thing a host does is worry about your well-being! Have you had a car crash? Have you gone missing or got lost? If you do make a booking and then find you can’t make it that’s fine, just let the host know (a quick call or email is fine).

Take care,

the WWOOF team