We’ve been spending the festive period on a boysenberry farm in Upper Moutere, in the north of the South Island.
‘What exactly are boysenberries?’ we hear you ask! They’re a hybrid berry, a cross between a raspberry, a blackberry, American dewberry and a loganberry. They look like large black raspberries and have a sweet, rich berry flavour.
We’re helping with the harvest on a 16 acre farm. This involves standing on harvesters as they move along the rows of berries and ‘grading’ the berries by picking out leaves and unripe fruit then filling trays with the fresh berries ready to send all over the world. The work is very physically demanding, starts at 4am each morning 😴 and we’ve been working 8-10 hour days, so it’s safe to say we’re both thoroughly exhausted. But happy to be earning money which should hopefully fund our travels for the next few months.
We’ve parked our van up in one of the fields and have access to a small kitchen and bathroom. There are two other couples staying with us - Miri and Vali from Germany and Chloe and Tanguy from France. We’ve been enjoying getting to know them, so as well as the farm owners Jeremy and Alena.
Luckily we had Christmas Day off, so managed to have a bit of a lie in before making pancakes and opening the stockings we’d got each other. We had a very relaxing day and made a Christmas curry with all the trimmings. Nothing like a usual Christmas, but enjoyable for a Christmas away from home.
It’s Nathan’s birthday tomorrow, so we’re planning a birthday BBQ and campfire to bring in the new year and have New Year’s Day off work!
We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and wishing you a Happy New Year!
Hope you are both having some fun and not working too hard
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