Ahhhhhhh YES we made it out of NSW and hellooooo VICTORIA! The feelings going through us as we entered this part of the journey was lightness. We felt light all over like someone had lifted a huge weight off our backs. Could be a mixture of that, and the beauty of the South Coast lifting our souls up. We had to get out of the car to take a picture of the AUM Mobile next to the 'Welcome to Victoria' sign. We made it!!
We still can't believe that we spent 4 months in NSW! Where does all the time go to? Its nice to have the blog to look back over...to see where we have been and how much these experiences have changed us (for the better of course).
The good thing is we had a job waiting for us when we entered VIC, weeding weeds at a salad farm. Yes really, people are paid to weed.
Below is Dom on our first day on the job weeding Baby Spinach.
Below shows rows and rows of Baby Spinach.
Ooh hello there! Slimy little slug making his way through the Baby Spinach early in the morning.
So weeding in your own garden is pretty easy, right? O.K then try weeding 2km rows of salad beds? This is how it goes down: Its 6am and our alarm goes off, we're tired and when we get out of the AUM Mobile we are greeted by early Winter frost. We then have to make the mad dash to the toilets for a HOT shower.
We are then in the fields weeding at 6.50am, with our backs hunched over, and fingers nearly dropping off from the frost on the salad leaves that brush up against our hands as we pulled out the weeds. We entertained ourselves with talks about farming, what we would do, what we wouldn't do, etc. When we had enough of our chit chat (and each other :) we turned to our iPods for music to get us through the rest of the weeding.
It was tough work! We finished at 5pm every day. Working a total of 9.5 hours. Repeating this day in and day out = you have very sore bodies. Legs, bum and thighs got the workout of their lives though! And a good tone ;)
Below is the walk back to the salad fields after lunch. 2 weeders to a row, one on either side.
Another break, this time leading us into a wonderful sunset.
I got a visitor, a little lady bird...this ones for you Tanya!
The birds and the bees...oh and the lady birds.
The salad farm looked good from the outside, but when you get up close and personal you really get to see what chemicals do to the earth.
The soil should be 'alive', it should have its own working Eco-System, generating the nutrients that goes into the salad and into our bellies for our nourishment. The soil should be moist to touch and what you are seeing in the below pic is 'burnt' soil. This happens when the farmer uses too much fertiliser year after year, and cementing it with harmful chemical sprays. The soil is exhausted.
Again, you can see just how exhausted the soil is. And the little plants have no nourishment.
This is what happens if you let weeding get out of control! Dom can't believe how many weeds there are amongst 'Coral Lettuce'. You can see to the top left of the picture there is some 'Coral Lettuce' but it is being over dominated by weeds all around. What The???
A week's worth of weeding and Leonie says 'I quit'! What really devastated us was the tractor in the background of this pic (to the right) spraying chemicals on the salad. It brings new meaning when you see this up close and personal and in practice. Our professional salad weeding days were over at the end of that working day. Time to move onto greener pastures...
Where too next???
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