Before I get talking about my adventure to the market today, I’ll play show and tell about my work during my stay here. While I did various odd jobs such as fruit picking (including climbing an avocado tree – something it turns out I’m not overly good at), fire wood collecting/carting, fruit cleaning, cookie baking and other odds and ends, the majority of my time was spent in here – the raspberry enclosure. This is how it looked before I started:

And after about 3 days of work, the weeds were removed, the ground was cleaned and the raspberry bushes were pruned.

All clean and ready for raspberry season!

Anyways, on to today. Sunday is farmer’s market day in many places around New Zealand, and since my host has many exotic fruits on their property, they take about a wheelbarrow full of fruit to the market, along with jams and marmalades made from various fruits. The market was in the north end of Auckland, about an hour’s drive from Helensville. The one thing was – we had to leave at 5am to get there in time to set up. It was still dark when we arrived.

The nice thing about getting up so early – seeing the sun rise over Brown’s Bay.

I’ve seen many sunsets in my life, but watching the sun rise over the water is a much more unique experience. After sitting on the beach for 15 minutes enjoying the view, I returned to the farmer’s market and got ready to sell some fruit!

You can see the Avocados front and center, some baked desserts off to the left…and the bizzare Buddah’s Hand fruit to the right. From about 8am-noon, the market was a continuous stream of people (and lots of dogs too!).

The majority of the fruits sold out or close to it, with the avocados being the best seller – the buddah’s hands all sold but were far and away the most looked at and asked about items. It was a successful day! During which, I got hungry so I found a bacon and avocado bagel.

This thing was so utterly delicious it was ridiculous. I wanted another, the only thing that stopped me was that it cost $5. Still, AWESOME. And that was my last day here in Helensville. I say goodbye to another fantastic host tomorrow and head back to Auckland for a day. I’ve spent back to back weeks with absolutely wonderful families, I can only hope my string of enjoyable stays continue throughout the rest of my time in New Zealand. After my day in Auckland, I’ll be leaving the big city behind for good this time and heading south and east – the Coromandel Peninsula is next! I’ll be playing tourist once again for just under a week, this time involving trains, gorges and a hot water beach. 🙂