Harvest

Harvest

The Kumara (sweet potato) is one

the most nutritious vegetable you can eat has lots of health benefits. So it was our job to make sure they hit those supermarkets! Between 7-11 workers on each harvester, 1 drives the tractor, 1 is the bin man, 1 is a walker, and the others… they do the most important job, work on the conveyor belt. The tractor digs the harvester through a row of kumara which come up on to the belt. Your task? To fight through the soil and pick up as many Kumara as possible (whilst removing the soil and roots) and putting them on to the smaller belt above, this belt moves towards the crate (the bin) where the bin man works, he (or she) make sure there are no damaged or half eaten Kumara going in to the crate, when full, drops the crate and gets a new one, simple! But what happens to the Kumara we don’t pick up off the belt? It falls off the end and lands back on the ground! That’s when the walker comes into action. Sound Easy? It’s harder than it looks! If the belt is going too fast, the Kumara fall off the end and the walker has a hard job getting them all, especially in the hot sun… or rain…or mud! Some of us even pick Kumara in our dreams! But, we get to listen to the radio all day, which can sometimes be the debate, or the laugh of the day. Our choices? Hauraki FM – the rock! (a radio station that purely plays rock music!) or More FM – repetitive pop music.

Luckily most of us like Hauraki !!

Dargaville

Dargaville

So…its early morning….4.30am to be precise!  We awoke, packed up the van and drove over 300kms from Auckland to Dargaville.

We needed to be on time, ready and rearing to go at 8am to start work… and we did! It took us two and half hours and narrowly avoiding getting lost.

Our Job? Harvesting Kumara on a farm!

Cathedral Cove

Cathedral Cove

There are numerous ways of getting to the cove, the expensive way and the inexpensive way… walking. That evening we camped nearby, so we were able to wake up nice and early and head straight down there.

The sun was shining by 8am, and was already getting warm. It took us less than an hour, it wasn’t the safest downhill climb but we were more than capable of getting there. It was like we landed in paradise when our feet touched the soft golden sand. Well… it was paradise. We did see the odd few people, who were very friendly, an older couple told us about Lovers Cave, they said we could reach it at low tide, it sounded quite interesting so we went for the mission. We climbed onto the rocks, and around the small ledge. We had to time it right, so when the wave came, we could jump in and swim into the cave. I had the giggles as soon as I jumped in, i wasn’t meant to get my dreads wet, but they did, and another wave was coming so we quickly swam inside. It was a little secret cave, with its own secluded beach inside.…