In the dirt again

Way down south where bananas would never grow, just off Highway 1 (and about 30 kilometers from Gore), lies a beautiful farm in Clinton called Wairuna Organics. Shaun, a native New Zealander, and Pia, originally from Germany, are brilliant and dedicated enough to grow delicious vegetables all year round, come high winds or frost or snow. With three tunnell houses, they give themselves a growing season of 52 weeks each year (yup, that's every week) and bring their wares an hour and a half north to the Dunedin market every Saturday morning.
When I was there in mid-May (the temperature equivalent of November in Washington, DC), the main crop was greens: bok choy, mizuna, swiss chard, green and red lettuces. The day I arrived, they had just finished reconstruction of the third tunnell house, complete with steel frame and new plastic. The last one, made with a wood frame, had lasted for an amazing six years, but the recent 120km/hour winds were just too much for it.
It has been said that wwoof really stands for "willing weeders on organic farms." I think this is true. But really, if you are in love with dirt, weeding is usually a party. My first job was clearing the new tunnell house (about 10'x15') of all the weeds that took over in the absence of the old tunnell house. For Shaun or Pia, this job would have taken about 2-3 hours. For me and Kana (another wwoofer from Japan), it took approximately 8 hours. It was mostly clover, a shallow weed that doesn't really require any special tools. But then there was the dock weed, with a root that can grow 30meters into the ground, and the cootch grass, with runner roots that grow about 5cm under the ground and pretty much suffocate everything around it. Fortunately, Kana and I were responsible for only the first half a meter or so of the dock roots, which we dug out with a pitchfork, and the cootch grass, well, we did our best. ("It's a cootch grass PARTY over here," I told Pia after spending an hour claring only a corner of the tunnell house.) I'd like to think I am savvy on distinguishing between edible plant and nasty weed, but Shaun came in once and said, "Um, that big bunch that you just uprooted there is sorrell [edible plant]." (I did my best to give it a good home again.) The next day we set up the tunnell house for the bok choy seedlings: more thorough weeding, digging two walking paths, and raising and raking new beds.
Besides uprooting edible plants, my main activity was speaking English with Kana, who came to New Zealand for two months with about two years of grammar school English under her belt - she came to give herself a "new vision." Alex, another wwoofer from Germany, joined us for conversation practice and told me to correct any grammatical errors she made. "Vocabulary first, then grammar," she advised Kana. So the three of us sat together in the wwoofing quarters, drinking Milo (like hot chocolate) or tea to keep warm by the wood stove: Alex and Kana with their growing vocabulary lists, and me scratching my head trying to explain the difference between "probably" and "maybe."
One night, the three of us joined Pia in a slug hunt after dinner. In a tunnell house growing about five 30' rows of green leafy delicacies, Shaun told us that 200 slugs could decimate the entire crop. Armed with flashlights and a jam jar of water, we set off to save the lettuces. Slugs (not to be confused with grubs, who burrow under the ground and eat roots) hide under anything dark during the day and come out to eat leaves only at night. They are all different sizes, and two different colors - light and dark. Some you find on the leaves, but they are actually easier to spot if they are on the ground or on an irrigation pipe. The leaves are a bit shiny themselves, and shadowy in the light of a torch, so the shiny sliminess of the slug stands out better on the dirt or dull plastic. You just pick the buggers up and drop them in the jam jar. A quick death, said Pia, but I kept having to check the sides of the jar every now and then to push down the persistent ones. It is not a task for the faint of heart (lovely little mess of shiny slimy mass at the bottom of the jar, and it leaves a great flim on your fingers), or those who don't like a stiff back. Now, get this: we must have collected over 200 slugs over three nights. Pia collected them all and will COOK them into a nasty slug soup, and she and Shaun will spray it near the green leaves as a slug-deterrent. Wouldn't that deter you if you were a slug?
"I have so much respect for organic farmers!" Kana said later. I completely agree.