Wwoofer's at Art School Waihi

I signed on to be a Wwoofer host to get some help around the place and to be reminded of my ignorance of German and French and to brush up on my Spanish.
And what a wonderful idea Wwoofing is!  Wwoof stands for Willing workers on organic farms and is an international thing.
I am now a Wwoof host and my job is to feed and house the Wwoofers and in return they do 4 hours work a day for me.  I don't have an organic farm but I do have an organic Art School and an organic Etching Press Manufactury. Well. Organic if you don't count the acids and solvents and inks used in the print making and the solvents and epoxy resins used in the press construction...
My first Wwoofers were a lovely French couple; Baptiste and Clara from a Northern suburb of Paris and they got the lawns and bamboo and firewood in order for me while I made an etching press.

The second Wwoofer was Quentin, a young French builder and joiner who helped me finalize the design and construction of a new workshop above. We knocked this out in 4 mornings work and in the afternoons I took him to Waihi Beach so he could fish off the rocks for hours in the freezing cold like a real fisherman.
First time he caught two kawhai which he prepared as a Japanese raw fish dish.
He had no luck the next two times and then he flew out to New Caledonia.

The next Wwoofers are an Irish couple; Saoirse and Joshua from Galway.
What luck! Joshua is a cabinet maker and builder and he finished the floor of the new shed and then got stuck into building inside the house with efficiency, speed and ease.
Saoirse makes fabulous food, and totally reconditioned the pantry and kitchen garden.

When Joshua was about 
the framing in the laundry, hallway and third bedroom he insisted that the lovely old Rimu and glass door that I had stashed, nicely painted white, must be stripped to bare wood and oiled to show off it's beauty. That was three hours hard careful work for the both of us but hey! He is true craftsman with an appreciation of beautiful old hardwoods and the man in charge of this building site.
The pair of them are cruising around the Coromandel this weekend and back to the building tomorrow and tonight I make them my fabulous Chilli Con Carne and a fabulous French dish called French Fried Potatoes.
Living like Kings we are...