It's raining today. It's been a long time since the last rain in Motueka. We were used to waking up at 7am so we decided to go to Nelson to start the morning. I tagged along with two of my friends to the city where I spent my night on the street almost four months ago. It was cloudy the whole day. We split up as soon as we arrived in Nelson, each of us has our own business to deal with. Ray went to do some shopping, Yee went to the post office. Me? Of course I went back to the church, to relive those memories of the night when I set up a tent here with Jeffrey.
I used the old photo to find the flat ground where we set up the tent. It took me quite some time but eventually I found it. The cloudy weather made me moody all the time I was there. Time flies, really. It's been 4 months already. It felt like it's not even two months. I've been working almost continuously for the past three months, I think that's why I felt like time flies. I also took some time to walk around the church as I never see it under daylight, and also spent some time walking on the street in front of the church, where I spent almost 3 hours on the bench of a restaurant talking with my friend on the phone, took me quite some time to find the bench though haha. Everything look different under daylight and when it's busy.
I'm glad I finally came to these places, I've been to Nelson for a few times already but I never had the chance to do so. Captured some photos of those places I visited, nostalgic haha.
We went home before 12pm as Yee had to start work in a general store. We then spent our afternoon driving around. We first went to Riwaka for beer tasting in Hop Federation. Tried some samples and in the end we bought a pack of 6 Hop Federation Session IPA beer. Not a very good beer. Well, it's $10 for the pack of 6 anyway. So I had no complaints.
After that we went to buy some raw milk, with A2 proteins, as advertised. The name of the automated milk machine is Riverside Milk. It is better than the milk in the supermarkets, at least for me I feel that it's better. For $2 per litre, it's not expensive though, for the quality of the milk.
The bench where me and Jeffrey chat for around 20 minutes.
I accidentally found this tree beside the church, I never knew it was in Nelson. I had seen some of my friends posted a photo of this tree but not particularly interested so I never asked them where is it.
The bench where I sat for hours talking with my friend on phone, in the middle of the night with my shirt and jeans soaked by the rain.
The flat ground where we set up our tent in the middle of the night for a nap for 2 hours. Woke up with our bodies wet as it was raining outside and we didn't realise that, the water flowed into the base of the tent.
Guess what we found on our way back to Motueka. Proton Saga! I never knew there are Proton cars in New Zealand. And this model is pretty old no doubt. We were so surprised that we all took out our cameras or phones to capture this picture. Amazed.
Interior of Hop Federation in Riwaka, where you can taste up to two types of beers free of charge.
2016-07-14
Again, it's raining. Again. While we wait for confirmation whether are we working or not for the afternoon, we made banana cake and apple pie in the morning because we were too bored. It's my first time making dessert Lol, seriously haha. But at last, 3 of my pruner housemates went to work after 12pm, I'm the only pruner left in the house because my orchard is too wet to work in.
Zeno and me decided to go Mapua for a short track and we arrived there at 2pm, for Dicker Ridge Track. The track was not bad, the track offers a walk through a lot of farms, where the goats stare at you whenever you walk by. And from the track we can also see the Mount Arthur Range, where most of the high mountain peaks were covered by snow.
We paid a visit to Jester House at the one end of the track, a famous cafe there, named cafe of the year 2012/13. The environment is super creative well-themed and well-decorated. It's a place where you can easily spend your whole day in. We took more time than we estimated but still we enjoyed the track, it's better than sitting in the house doing nothing anyway.
Above are the views from Dicker Ridge Track.
Entrance of Jester House.
Banana cake before going into the oven.
Successful Apple Pie.
Not that successful banana cake. Lol. The inside weren't cooked enough.
2016-07-15
It's my last day pruning apple trees today. The company finally rose the contract pay but it was too late, I'm leaving. With that rate I can easily made more than minimum wage. And I mean real easily. But whatever. I bid farewell to some of my friends or my colleagues there, but not all of them. I started work today at 12.30pm as it was raining in the morning. Finished work at 5pm, pruned 114 trees, for $1 per tree. Gonna take my time tomorrow to make the last preparation for my road trip. And guess what we made Mexican Tortilla wrap for the dinner!
This is how apple trees look like after pruning.
This is my pouch for my pruning work. White bottle is the sanitizer and the blue bottle is the paint, to paint the cuts. Yes I know it is very dirty.
Pruning apple trees with only the big lopper ain't easy thing! Hahaha. We were not provided with small lopper or saw but once you get used to the big lopper, you can just go as fast, especially when you are pruning smaller trees where you do not need to cut a thick branch out of the main stem. I was pruning Envy apple trees, it was easier to prune compared to Jazz apple trees, where they sometimes don't even look like an apple tree, it look like a freaking giant tree. And yes, I only had the chance to prune both of those two species. There are more species of apple trees but I think they will prune them in the future, probably in few more days or weeks.
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