Julian kindly lends me a car and I return to the wine region at the north Eastern point of the South Island .
Peter Yealand gives me a hearty welcome and Peter Mann is on hand to give me the low down on sustainability within their company. He offers to TWEET me to keep me updated. I have included photos of the Yealands plant as we never got to see it on our CSC visit and it is immense!
I moved on to the Seresin estate, a biodynamic vineyard. Colin Ross exhausts me on a whistle stop tour as he suddenly has remembered that he had a prior engagement. I am left reeling at what I had just seen and was fortunate to bump into Sean Phillips who introduces me to his gang of “woofers”. Initially I thought that he was being rude, as they were all female, but he went on to explain about the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms or WOOFER Organic Farming service, akin to the Kibbutz scheme.
My initial thoughts were “cheap labour, that fits well with my study topic” though the longer I spent with them the more I realised at how well informed, enthusiastic and engaged they were with the estates work and the land. Surely this is what we all strive to instill throughout our staff but this clearly demonstrates that peoples needs extend beyond merely paying them to do a job.
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