Major Newsflash

Mega-good news this morning -- Mandi kicked me off the farm. She wants me to travel for a month and see the country so that I can come back for the holidays and stay at the blueberry farm through the summer (peak season is January-April). I will be driving a giant white Nissan truck from the 80s (time to learn stick shift!) and administering blueberry pancakes and blueberry ice cream to the masses at the Wellington farmers market (and perhaps another market as well -- this is the b'farm's first foray into FMs).

Let us take a paragraph break to process. Most of you know the love I have for farmers markets/alternative food distro systems. My happiest memories of Seattle are from the Ballard Sunday market, especially when I ran the kombucha booth for Chris. So, I now find myself living a dream within a dream within a dream (ad infinitum) -- I'm in New Zealand, it's summer, and I'm able to travel for a month without fear over money, because I have a landing pad on a beautiful farm, where I get to operate waterblasters and weedwhackers and stick-shift trucks, and sell ice cream and pancakes to happy children (and hopefully hot kiwis who are impressed by my truck). I'll also be working with Leah, a New Yorker who's coming out for the summer (another yoga/hippie-city type, I feel we will be BFFs), to run the cafe on the farm and work with the children's education programs (think talking organic farming while digging up cool spiders in the fields, followed by hay bale/wheelbarrow ride frenzies).

AND, Mandi asked me to bring forward ideas about how to plug my passions into the programming, so I'm gonna marinate on how to weave in a feminist bent (think Our Bodies, Ourselves for the youngins). Mandi also works as a lactation consultant at a local hospital, strangely reminiscent of my hospital job in Boston with women's health programs --- so we are on the same page (farming/health/women's empowerment/etc. is all one, like Dr. Bronner's).

Holy motherloving SHIZE, this is, like, pretty f'n cool.

So. Now. I'm free again. With the comfort of plans for an amazing summer, I'm going to spend the rest of the week tidying up the charity paperwork (they don't say "nonprofit" here) and then it's PARTYTIME. A weekend dancing in Wellington (didn't get around to that last time - turns out there's nothing doing at 11pm on a Tuesday night) and then.... well it's an idea that just hatched 15 minutes ago, but I don't see why I can't find myself a bike and take off with my backpack for a while. Anyone out there have biking experience in NZ (Toby, Sarah, Scott, anybody)? I hear the north island is flatter but the south island is cooler. The Germans tell me it's totally cool to just go door-knocking and ask to pitch a tent in someone's yard, which usually yields a dinner and couch-crash invite. I wonder if things are different for a single lass traveling (another reminder that I really need a black belt), but I bet there's a network I can tap into... the idea hotline is open, please comment away -- your love keeps me smilin.