Days 464-470! Woah, another week has flown by! We’re almost exactly one month away from my flight back to the US… which is just wild! This week I spent it working, dancing in beteeen raindrops, hanging out with friends, and more music making! I’m making a lot of progress with my EP and I can’t wait to share it 🙂

Time for a new week! Thursday, April 10th starts us off with, what appeared to be, a beautiful day of work (a bit of foreshadowing).

I started my day with some nut gathering and one of the first things I needed to do, was to move the tractor!

Who woulda thunk the engineer living in a city would wind his way up on a farm in Australia driving a tractor! Pretty cool that I was able to learn how to use it and then safely operate it on my own without any problems!

I was working by myself this morning, as Glen and Aly were off at an event for their kids. So I FaceTimed my parents while I worked.

It had been far too long since we FaceTimed last, so we had lots to catch up on! They’re doing well and we gave each other the updates from our worlds. I’m sooooo excited to see them in person again soon! The countdown has officially begun to my flight home! Which is crazy!?

Just before lunch, the beautiful day took a turn. I was riding the mower around chopping the grass of the row I just collected nuts from. I was just about to finish my mowing when a torrential downpour came out of nowhere!

It was fair to say that I wasn’t too thrilled to be soaked.

Thankfully, Glen was back by then and came to my aid and lent me a dry work shirt to wear!

After I wrapped up my work day, I threw a load of laundry in and then met up with my friend Izzie at the park near Pippi Beach. I met Izzie a few weeks ago while surfing and she just officially moved to Yamba! So a new friend! She lives in her van and was hanging out at the park. Unfortunately the waves weren’t good for surfing (which was going to be an unfortunate trend this week) and we just sat and chatted for an hour or so.

It was nice to get to hang out with a new friend, but eventually the mosquitos came out and we were getting eaten alive! So I headed home to flip my laundry and to relax the rest of the night.

Friday, April 11th brought another beautiful day out on the farm! Because of all the rain, I was back to screwing in trees to the support wire, which I ended up doing all day.

But, Glen, Aly, and their family were Airbnb-ing out their house for a bit. So none of us were allowed to go in the house today or the days following!

Because they were leaving, Glen put the tractor away and started creating a way for the Kubota to pull around our hopper full of nuts. I’m glad I got a bit of tractor driving in before it got put away!

Before we could test out Glen’s new invention, it was time to dump our first big load of nuts into the bed of their large truck (I’m not sure what to call it because it’s smaller than a semi truck but much bigger than a regular truck). Glen lifted the hopper above the bed of the truck and all of us, kids included, climbed into the bed for the first nut dump, which I was given the honors of doing since I’ve collected almost all of them so far.

I gave a big countdown and then pulled out the bottom of the hopper! I was expecting a big woosh of nuts falling, but it was more of a solid stream rather than an impressive dump.

After the excitement, I got back to work.

I wrapped up more screwing trees (this just doesn’t sound PG) and hopped in my Ute with a pep to my step! I wasn’t driving home, instead I was heading to Maclean to work with producer Jack on more music!

We worked on finishing up one of the songs and then quickly dove into starting the next!

We made some great progress in the 4 hour session and I’m still having such a blast working with Jack! It’s so freaking cool watching these tracks come to life and turn into things I hadn’t even thought they could’ve! And I cannot wait to share them with you all! Very very soon, I promise!

I was so tired at the end of the session, but my buckets were filled for the day!

Saturday, April 12th was another rainy day which meant no work… but that meant it was time to keep on making music! I rolled out of bed early and made my way to the studio by 9am.

We continued working on the song we started from the day before and made some MAJOR headway on it! This song is all about my time on Koh Tao, in a surf-folk style song. I had the idea to bring a banjo on it and Jack actually knew a local musician that played the banjo! So he reached out to see if they’d be interested in hopping on the song!! I think that’d be so cool!

There was a sugar cane festival going on in Maclean, but I skipped out on that and made my way back to Yamba to watch my friend (and former bartending coworker), Bryce, play on the local soccer team!

The rain thankfully held off and I got to watch a really fun game! The soccer leagues here are different to the recreational sporting leagues I played in Kansas City. These leagues are actually traveling teams and they compete in different leagues! This Yamba team plays in the Coffs Harbor league, which is comprised of many different towns in NSW.

Outside of the referee being a bit one sided and a little too yellow card happy… Yamba was able to pull off the win 1-0! The one goal that was scored was super cool! My friend Zach received a crossed kick into the box and he headed the ball into the goal. It was quite impressive!

It took me back to when I used to play soccer as a kid. I would love to catch another one of Bryce’s games before I leave town! It was a blast!

I was back on the farm Sunday, April 13th! And I was even welcomed with a small rainbow.

I spent Sunday doing more tree support duty. It was supposed to be a non-rainy day… but again, a wild storm came rolling in on me while I worked! Thankfully I saw it in time and made it back to the shed in time before getting too drenched… but the forecasts of late have been misleading!

That was the only storm of the day and I was able to work the rest of the day dry and undisturbed by the weather. I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening relaxing at home because yet again, the ocean waves weren’t up for surfing and it was a gloomy afternoon.

I showed up to the farm on Monday, April 14th before Glen and took the Kubota out into the farm. When I got to just about where I needed to be, the Kubota started YELLING at me!

Out of nowhere, it was overheating! And the alert for that was insanely loud and annoying. But I knew there was an issue. I called Glen and it turned out this happened to him the night before but he didn’t think it’d happen again… I was a test dummy I guess!

When I brought it back after it cooled down, it started back up again. By this time, the Airbnb guests were up and sitting outside enjoying an early morning and I felt terrible that a loud droning alert noise was ruining their morning.

Thankfully, it was a beautiufl day and I had no other issues after that because I drove the Ute around the farm.

When I wrapped up work, I drove to where Glen was working and gave him a big handshake and hug! Because of their families vacation and him going back to his other job for two weeks, this was the last time I’d probably see him before I left Yamba! I’m just about a couple weeks out from finishing my 88 days of farm work and I have nothing but good things to say about Glen and all he’s done to help me complete these days!

It’s too bad I won’t see him again before I wrap up, but I’m sure I’ll pop by Yamba on my next visa and say hello!

Unfortunately, after work it was another day of no surfing 😦 it’s sad that I’m not getting any surfing in, but I’m hoping I will be able to soon!

I thought the rainbow on Sunday was good… well when I showed up to work on Tuesday, April 15th… I was met with an AMAZING rainbow.

Today was another day of misguided weather reports and it rained on and off the entire work day! But the rainbow made it worth it.

I kept on trying to work in between downpours but after lunch I was about to give up and go home. Before I set off, I gave Glen a ring because the farm was flooded again… just a day after he drained it.

Glen talked me through turning on a smaller pump that should help slowly drain the water so the farm didn’t get fully submerged while they were gone. This process involved walking through multiple flooded horse paddocks (gross), one of which was very very flooded…

I used to work on pump and pipe sizing, so I guess it was pretty cool to work on one in person! There was a lot of steps to make sure the pump suction was good, and some safety steps to make sure we didn’t damage the pump, so this took a bit. Thankfully the rain held off long enough for me to finish and head home before it started downpouring again!

Somehow, when I got to the farm on Wednesday, April 16th… the water had risen a bit. Oh well!

The day started off on the cooler side, but as the morning went on it became what all the other fake sunny days were supposed to! It was a GORGEOUS crisp and warm fall day!

While I worked, I was able to video call my friend Jason! He’s currently in Guatemala at a work away, where he works 4 hours a day for a free place to stay and food! Before that he was teaching in Honduras! It was really nice to catch up, it had been way too long.

I got a call from Glen in the afternoon telling me he had heard from one of the horse workers that the water troughs weren’t filling properly. Which meant I was back on pump duty!

I unfortunately misheard Glen’s instructions and had to go in and out of multiple horse paddocks more times than I needed to… which was annoying. But I was able to get the situation all sorted! I only got a few weird and confused stares from the horses in the process.

After work, hopefully I wasn’t smelling too bad from all the horses, I made my way to Maclean again for another studio session!

Today we tweaked some things in the two songs that I already had pretty much done and then started the next song! The start of creating the 3rd song wasn’t as productive as the first two. But that’s because I’m not as concrete with the song yet, there’s still a lot to be worked out. But we got a good base for it down which was a good start nonetheless!

I was EXHAUSTED by the time I got home and ready for a good nights sleep.

It was a nice week! It had its ups and downs (the downs mainly due to weather) but it was full of time outside, time with friends, and time creating music!! It’s pretty crazy that I only have 11 days left of farm work, but I’m excited to close this chapter and hopefully have a chance to see more of this beautiful country! I’m also hoping to finish up this EP before I leave… the time’s ticking!

See you next week!

– Elie