"Willing Workers on Organic Farms or World Wide Workers on Organic Farms but I say willing workers because if they ain't willing they ain't here."
Organic farmer John Earney has been hosting WWOOFers on his Taranaki farm since 2004. The travellers work a few hours a day for their board and keep.
John farms rare breeds and tries to live self-sufficiently and says he doubts if the farm would remain viable without the WWOOFer's input.
"They do everything but nothing I wouldn't do. It's all about them having a really good time and we get really good labour. The whole ethos of the farm is about sharing. "
On the farm, seeds are saved, gardens are sown, meat is bred, processed and cured. Offal is used, soap and laundry detergent is made and honey and cheese are produced.
John came to New Zealand from Dorset England when he was 16. In 1998 he moved onto this piece of land and found home.
"We sell at farmers' markets every week, we take all sorts of different rare breed meat. We sell Wiltshire lamb or Wessex pig.
"Without that following, we would not stay afloat."
John Earney with his damara lambs in Taranaki. Photo:
Sometimes there are up to ten WOOFERs staying at the farm, which is half an hour's drive from Stratford.
They help with gardening, collecting and stacking firewood, painting and tidying and even help kill sheep for the table if they can stomach it.
Twenty-year-old Gina from North Carolina was one of two WWOOFers staying when Country Life visited. She says she'd had nothing to do with farming until she arrived in New Zealand and has been surprised by 'absolutely everything'.
"The thing that's surprised me most is that nothing goes to waste and that's really been a shock and quite wonderful," Gina says.
She's been spending her days feeding newborn lambs, goats, donkeys, horses and cows.
"I'm loving it."
John says some WOOFERs who want to go organic on their farm overseas, stay with him to learn.
"Commercial farming actually pushed all of these old-fashioned rare breeds down to the bottom.
"But the animals we're dealing with evolved or breed on smaller blocks of land for taste and farmability, survivability in a more organic system."
Asked about the grocery bill, John says, "What grocery bill?"
"It's very small, toilet paper would be one of the biggest purchases because of the people.
"I drink a lot of coffee too so that we buy. I did make some out of dandelion roots which was good coffee but it didn't have any caffeine in it, it defeats the purpose really."
Things have changed at the Avonstour farm since Covid hit.
Just three months before the pandemic took hold, John had invested a lot of money in improving the fencing and the pond, in preparation for opening educational tourism on sustainability.
But since Covid hit, neither tourists nor volunteers could come. He's had to downsize stock numbers to reduce feed bills.
He hopes the future will be better after this winter.
