Shabbat at Linda's

As I was preparing for this trip, I was asking everyone about things to do in New Zealand and if they had any contacts for people there. I received the contact for Linda from Abby at Isabella Friedman. Linda used to work for Elat Chayyim. We met Linda at the ferry in Rawene and took the car ferry over to Kohukohu where Linda lives. The view from the ferry was beautiful (I'm sure that I'll be writing about the amazingly beautiful scenery ALOT...it's pretty incredible). We soon arrived at her house. It was up on a little hill and overlooked the water. She has a great garden, orchard, and chickens that she gave us a tour of and she gets all her water from rain water. Sara and I picked grapes for her. There was something so satisfying about lying on my back and picking grapes off the vine. I was excited to hear from Sara and it's a Jewish law to allow your workers to eat some of what they harvest. We didn't eat too much though. It was sooooo great spending Shabbat with Linda. It gave us a great perspective about life in New Zealand. She made the most amazing food! Most everything was either grown in her garden or grown local. Even the fish that we had for Friday night dinner was caught the day before off of the waters in front of her house. Saturday was a lazy day. We relaxed and walked around Kohukohu. We were very sad to leave Linda. Her hospitality was amazing. She was great and we had such a lovely time!

If you're ever in New Zealand, Linda takes volunteers to help her in her garden and orchard. I highly recommend it!

'Til the next advenutre...Farewell for now....