Caught your own dinner before?

Like many city girls in the world, I have never caught my own dinner before. In fact, I hardly ever have to worry about food since my mom always cook at home. As you can imagine, I'm pretty helpless in kitchen as well.

To me, food is purchased from the market or restaurants or whatever. Cooked or in raw form. Never in my life have I ever tried to harvest my own dinner. I have never grow any vegetables before in my life that's for sure!

Neither have I fish before!

Imagine my joy at catching my very own first fish in my entire life!

Whilst we were at Nelson working, on our free time, we followed a friend to go fishing. He's a fishing enthusiast and he offered to teach us the ropes. Definitely a wonderful experience.

I used to think that fishing is boring and it's for old people. But really it wasn't that bad. Frankly speaking, I actually quite enjoyed it. It almost feels like fishing can be my new found hobby. It wasn't that hard to learn anyway.

When I cast my own line at the beach and waiting for fishes to catch my bait, I was gleefully anticipating to catch my own fish. The moment you feel that the rod is slightly jerky as though being pecked, that's the indicating that a fish is hooked. This is when you reel your line back and hoping you had caught a fish and not false alarm.

As I felt the faint jerking, I reeled back the line and voila!

A fish!!!!!

I had successfully caught my very own fish!!! OMG!!!!!!

That was really a grand feeling I'm telling you. Although it's just a small species of fish (mullet) but I am extremely proud of myself. Now I can finally say I have caught my own dinner. Hurray^^

But I don't know how to gut a fish though hahaha so our dear friend here does the honour for me;p Later on we all had a delicious meal of oven-baked mullets for dinner^^V

For the record, all of us caught something as well, Dinosaur caught the biggest mullet while mine, Godzilla and our friend's were mediocre size. Twister was the winner that night. She caught a crab instead of regular fishes.

This I believe is what people call, being different^^

Agapanthus: Love or Hate?

Martin is like our savior! We met him on our last night in The Bug. We just had our dinner and he just walked in to stay for the night. We had a small chat and one thing leads to another, we mentioned that we were looking for jobs but haven't got much luck.

This is when he mentioned that he needs some people to help out in his farm. He promised to pay us hourly rate and said we can work as long as we like. We were so thrilled to hear that! Absolutely the happiest news we had heard for some time.

The next day, we drive up to his "farm" and it was actually not a farm. It's his house with a huge backyard! Almost a forest I daresay! He's based in Japan therefore he lease his house with a sleep-out to others. He just came back from time to time to NZ both to work on his property and also for holiday. So happened we met him at the right time, right place.

Our life as a gardener begins! Our main job is dealing with Agapanthus. It is a form of parasite plants that grows very fast and eventually will take all the soil nutrients and killed other plants in that area. The roots are full of tubers - potato-like. Too bad it is NOT a real potatoes or we will be pleased. Free potatoes hahaha^^

Anyway, our job is to kill/remove all agapanthus plants in his property. To avoid the plants from growing again, we need to remove as much roots as possible. The tuber removed will be smashed to smaller pieces to kill it and avoid it from giving energy for new plants to grow. The potatoes are where all the nutrients are. It gives energy to plants.

We had a love/hate relationship with agapanthus. We loved it for the money it brings us but we hate it for the work. It is quite a hard work. It is a rather strong plant therefore not easy to remove it. Also, the juices from the tuber as we smash it, splattered all over our body...gross!

I think I'm slightly allergic to it as over the time, my body starts to develop some mild rashes. A little itchy. Twister diagnosed that I might be allergic to plants. First kiwi fruits, now agapanthus. Anyway as I said it's a mild one so it heals pretty quickly this time around.

If skin rashes isn't bad enough, think of sandflies! I super duper hates SANDFLIES!!!!!! That damn small bug keep biting me that makes me so damn itchy. Not only that, it leaves marks on my body!!!! Until today, the marks are still there, not completely healed yet!!!!

For nearly a month that we worked for Martin (on and off), we were introduced to Banana-Passionfruit vines, Gores that prickles and also Deadly Night Shade that produces poisonous berries. We need to removes all these plants too, apart from Agapanthus.

Martin would like to practice "permaculture" where everyone grow their own foods and reduce from buying from the market. A self sustain theory. It's a good idea really, to grow your own fruit trees and vegetables which you can harvest when the time is right. Grow your own chickens for the eggs and meat. You can also breed cows and sheeps too! Pretty interesting. Defintely save a lot of money!

Apparently, this concept is widely accepted in NZ. You don't need a huge space for that, you just need to know how to maximize the space you have. Really economical once you know how.

For nearly a month here in Nelson we learnt a lot just from working as a gardener for Martin. We learned more about the nature, trees and stuff. Not bad, ay? You learn while you get paid?

Without knowing it, we spent a month here in Nelson already. Work is on and off, depending on weather and also depending on our boss. I would still say, it's really a blessing as we don't have to work in vineyard after all LOL~~

Job hunting in Nelson

I know I haven't update my blog as often as I should. This is totally due to the laziness in me. I just can't bring myself to type on my lappie. Finally I muster my self to write some update here. Probably will be just a short one. Well, you'll know why. Nuff said!

Right from the start, we planned to go to Nelson for job hunting. We understand that there's a big factory there *cough* Sealord *cough* We went there only to be told that the recruitment is handled by an agency. No choice, we knocked on every angecy doors in Nelson. As usual, we were just asked to leave our name and contact numbers. If there's anything come up they'll contact us.

Yup, not much work at the moment/season of the year. Bummer! We even tried our luck at the local supermarket stores and stuff. Still no luck. It almost feels like our trip here is a waste. Our only consolation was the backpackers we stayed in.

THE BUG.

It was absolutely the best ever backpackers we have stayed in by far. Absolutely amazing. We felt right at home immediately. The place was great, beautiful and looked new. The kitchen was well equipped with good quality pots and pans. The other patrons there were uber nice people, the host, Anthony was simply wonderful!

We were given one whole apartment unit to ourselves with 2 bedrooms and 1 private bathroom! How cool is that?! There's also free internet wifi. Upon checking in, there's free welcoming chocolate waiting for us on the bed!!!! Free coffee and tea and also free fresh homemade breads every morning! Talk about heaven!

No, the price did not kill us at all! In fact, it is consider the cheapest one we can get in Nelson. Definitely worth every penny spent I swear!

Since we haven't got much luck in Nelson, we even went to Motueka to search for job opportunity. Alas, no luck there as well. Seriously, that time really feels like doomsday. I started to think that, what if we can't land ourselves a job soon? What would happened then? Our fund has started to dried up and we desperately needs a source of income to keep us floating.

Fear finally creeps into my heart. I understand that job doesn't falls down from sky just like that. However, as it is winter season and there really wasn't much job available, I dread the idea that we might possibly just have to do vineyard pruning.

Gosh I had heard of so much horror tales of vineyard pruning. All of it drives down to one main point: - It is hard, intensive labour work that it is the worst possible nightmare to anyone who's been there and done that. Grrrrr~~~

Finally the day that I dreaded most has arrived. Dinosaur finally said the unevitable. He said, since we can't find any work at the moment, we had no choice but to heads back to Blenheim and look for vineyard job. I shuddered at the thought of that. However, as much as I hated the idea, I am rational enough to know that we really had no choice.

Just as when we were all but given up our hopes in Nelson, miracle happens! On our final night in Nelson - The Bug, it is as though Lady Luck is smiling upon us.

This is when we met Martin.