We all reek of it despite baths and hair washes :). And my gorgeous camping blanket smells like camping again, after a winter draped over the sofa losing all it’s scent.
Friday I’d intended to stay up late but like many people once the exit polls started to look pretty accurate and I got my head round Jeremy Vine not looking at all like my mental image of him (I’ve seen him on tv before but every time I am shocked anew!) I got bored and fell asleep over my laptop. I woke at 130, saw very little had changed and staggered to bed.
I woke again at 530am, got up for a drink and then laid there wondering what was happening with the election and the ducklings (which had pipped the morning before then done *nothing* for 24 hours). So eventually I got up to check on both. The ducklings had still done nothing but the election tv coverage was hotting up a bit so I ended up staying to watch. Everyone else drifted down and I explained the whole thing to the children, ending with the idea of a hung parliament. Davies’ suggestion of ‘rock, paper, scissors’ to find resolution to the whole things made me laugh and made sense. I do wonder if that is what is happening behind closed doors 😆
I’d intended going back to bed as 530am is very much the middle of the night for me but never quite made it, so got dressed and then debated with Scarlett what to do about the ducklings. We concluded that they were not getting where they needed to be by themselves and although I tend to have a policy of non-intervention I could hear their cheeping getting fainter and decided to have a bit of a go at helping. So with tweezers I made proper breakthrough holes in the eggs, cleared an inch or so and moistened the membranes which were very dry. Ducks are not built as well as chickens for breaking out of eggs, having cumbersome, flat bills rather than sharp little beaks and indeed the mother duck would leave the nest for a swim every so often and return with a wet breast and underside to sit on the eggs which would keep them softer than in an incubator so it’s not that uncommon for incubated eggs to need a bit of a hand. I went off to work having seen both beaks and knowing we had one yelllow and one black and yellow duckling from the peep we could get inside the egg and having prepared Scarlett for the knowledge that they would either now make it to hatch on their own or not get any further but I’d done all I could. It’s really important that they break out of the actual egg themselves as there is a final part of the hatch where they take the yolk into their body and it seals (somewhere round their bums, umbilical cord stylee) which gives them their first meal and completes them. If you forcibly remove them from the shell this doens’t happen and it all goes rather wrong.
I went off to work for the morning, leaving my Dad here with the children and having talked to him about the possibility of duck care over the weekend. I’d been hoping to leave him with established eating, drinking, ducklings in the brooder rather than unhatched eggs as he’s done chick-watch many times for us but never egg-watch or hatch-watch.
Work was fine, I was in that slightly manic, not enough sleep state and Sarah was equally election-excited so we talked politics most of the morning and kept checking the bbc website for updates. It was Rhyme Time and I was very keen to do an election themed session which Cara the childrens librarian who was with us for the morning was equally keen on but neither of us could think of any suitable songs. We debated rewriting some but felt maybe that would be a bit above the audience’s heads (small children and our very lovely, but not particularly politically aware mothers) so didn’t bother – lavenders blue dilly dilly might have worked but then again it might not 😆
I finished work at 145pm and was home just before 2pm. The eggs still hadn’t moved on much but were still alive and cheeping so I set the brooder up, assembled food and water dishes and told Dad to remove them from the incubator once they were fluffy and into the brooder if they hatched, to just turn the incubator off if they didn’t if they died and to ring me if he wasn’t okay with anything and I’d either help over the phone or come home if needs be, being only an hour away. He did say ‘but I’ve never bred ducks before!’ to which I had to reply ‘well no, neither have I!’ 😆
We chucked the last few bits in the car and set off. We did mention that we’d never have gotten out the house quite so fast if Ady had been with us ;). I called into Sainsburys for a few bits and Screwfix for a mallet – we’d decided to just have a mallet in each tent bag. That was an experience – I’ve never been in a Screwfix before and they operate a bit like Argos where you take your item code number to the till. So I had to look through the caterlogue, find the code, queue up and then the guy serving wanted my name and postcode. I was in there about 15 minutes in the end and he was moaning about the rubbish system. We decided he’d be better off borrowing my mallet to bash the computer in 😆
Arrived at the Sustainability Centre at about 4pm and after trailing round for a bit trying to find someone (always a problem there, trying to track someone down to check in with) I found a guy in the cafe who had a list of who was expected and where we were to pitch. We were in Hazel bay so I drove down and got the tent out. You can never park right next to your pitch so there is a bit of carting stuff across the field but I’d been in charge of packing my own car, which in fairness does have a lot more space than Ady’s so I’d already accounted for that and packed in reverse order of when I’d need stuff so the tent was at the front. I’d already warned Davies and Scarlett that a) I’d need a small amount of help holding poles in position and b) that I was likely to be bad tempered and easily riled while putting the tent up so not to ask silly questions or distract me while I was getting on with it. So the plan was to hang around to help briefly before buggering off out of my way into the woods. Unfortunately they forgot pretty much straight away and headed off leaving me to get the tent up alone. They then came back and started drawing my attention to things like half buried bent tent pegs. They got a lecture ;). Scarlett then told me I should see the silver lining of their actions which was that I’d managed to put the tent up all by myself even though I thought I couldn’t and that I should be proud of myself rather than cross with them. Don’t know where she gets that glass half full ness from ;). Then Ady arrived.
We put the porch up which had me swearing several times as we butched the tent and the porch together. Ady just can’t get his head round which bits rely on each other to stay up so was pulling on things in the wrong directions and it kept pinging off. He also insists on calling pegs guys and the other way round which irrationally makes me want to stab him with the peg and remind him that one hurts far more than the other and he’d do well to recall the names in future! 😆 But it all came good and although it looked rather random it was the perfect set up for the weekend – we only really used the tent to sleep in but spent lots of time sitting in the porch with the fire pulled close when it drizzled and all the kitchen area stayed dry with plenty of space to pull chairs etc into to keep dry without needing to be inside the main tent.
Camped opposite us (infact we’d done a straight swap of pitches from last year when we were in Olive and they were in Hazel) were Leah and Nicky – Nicky is Campcraft man and Lia his partner who we’d chatted to a little last year when Davies and Scarlett made friends with their twins on the Sunday and they’d identified us as Suspected Home Educators. The twins are now 6, identical girls called Marli and Nikita and they have a toddler called Cushla too who was very cheerily bimbling about in her waterproofs having been a babe in arms last year. This year Marli and Nikita came over as soon as they spotted us and teamed up with Scarlett for the whole weekend. The three of them had a ball together running wild and free, playing with the newly installed chickens and generally having the run of the place. Ady observed that Tarly only seems to make friends with children who look like her and indeed lots of the kids friends have the same colouring and general look about them as they do.
We called childrens’ bedtime around 930pm I think and they fell asleep really quickly. Having been up since 530am I was pretty tired and ready for bed not a lot later. That is clearly the secret recipe for a good first nights sleep camping because I was asleep really quickly and woke feeling great on Saturday.
Scarlett spent pretty much the whole day with M and N coming back when they were hungry and cooking things on sticks over the campfire 🙂
Davies felt slightly left out of the equation – nothing deliberate on the part of the girls, they simply weren’t playing games he wanted to join in with. So he spent lots of time with Ady, did several watercolour paintings and got the fire going with collected straw and birch bark and his fire steel. It was grey and a bit drizzly for most of the day but we sat in our porch and enjoyed that outdoors but undercover feeling. Ady said he felt a bit like a smug caravanner 😆 so we kept the campfire burning all day long.
I very much enjoyed being able to make a hot chocolate with brandy, marshmallows and whipped cream while remaining seated infront of the campfire as everything was within armchair reach :). I nipped down to the local shop for a couple of bits and had a phone call from my Dad to say the ducklings had both hatched and he’d moved them to the brooder :).
When I got back Lia nipped out to the shops leaving M and N with us then came back and sat round round our fire with us chatting. We didn’t do the ‘do you know?’ about local to them HEors (Devon) but I suspect we do know some of the same people. The girls got on so well we’ve exchanged contact details with Lia promising to call in on us next time she’s passing (her mum lives in Newhaven so they pass us quite often) and us to visit them if we’re down Devon way and a tentative meet up planned while we’re at Okehampton – she loved the idea of YH camps :).
There is a new camping warden, called Seb who came round to introduce himself and chat for a while. He said he’d already heard about us and it was lovely to be there and see all the various staff over the weekend look so pleased to see us and call ‘good to see you back’ – it’s so nice to be ‘regulars’ there :).
Suddenly four families arrived, all with at least two small children each, in great big tents with very little space to pitch them in. They were all very posh and incredibly irritating. At least one of the families had just hired the entire tent and contents including camping beds, sleeping bags and even chairs off the internet (I didn’t even know you could do that!) and although they were very irritating and if they’d been staying very long I would probably have had to leave (or stab them with tent pegs) what they brought in irritance value they more than made up for in entertainment value. They must have had at utterly miserable stay – they arrived about 2pm, set up with much arguing between couples in the rain – all the children (head to toe in expensive wellies and waterproofs) spent their time falling over guy ropes, touching nettles, getting muddy and mostly crying. Ady and I sat under our porch, next to our campfire, drinking cider and inwardly smirking (we’re so mean ;)). They spent ages putting wailing children to bed, all of them taking it in turns to go back into respective tents as the children continued to not sleep and make lots of fuss instead. Finally at about 10pm they donated the rest of their firewood to us and all went to bed 😆
It was a very rowdy night as there were about 10 pre / early teens staying for a birthday party with a couple of adults in the tipis who were up singing and being noisy til about midnight – which didn’t bother us as once Davies and Scarlett are asleep it takes a LOT of noise to wake them and we were snuggled up warm in our sleeping bags and quite happy to listen to it all going on, but seemed to disturb the smaller children a fair bit. And of course they were all awake pretty early on Sunday morning as little children tend to be. I laid in the tent listening to an ongoing saga about bacon for about 25 minutes (seriously!) as they were doing some sort of communal cooking and had rationed bacon at one rasher each which took all sorts of diplomatic discussions and talks. Then they all packed up and left! No staying for the Green Fair or anything. A trip of less than 24 hours with pretty much no actual enjoyment at all.
Nicky did wander over to Ady on Sunday morning and mutter something about hotels being a better option for some people 😆
So Sunday dawned dry and with sunny spells as the forecast had promised. Bright sunshine all day would have been even nicer like we’ve had for the past couple of years but this was just as acceptable. Scarlett carried on hanging out with M and N and they spent a large portion of their day at the chalk carving.
Davies did a lot of free ranging too and spent some time with Ady and I too, but in the main Ady and I got to wander round just the two of us which was a bit lovely :). We did lots of chatting to various stall holders including a woman selling goats cheese, the bat and beekeepers associations, various eco educational places and some carbon footprint reduction ideas. We went back to the tent for lunch and a beer and kept the fire burning for most of the day again. We made friends with a lovely couple who mill their own oats, grain and corn to make flour, cornmeal, rolled oats, oatmeal, spelt flour etc. They needed some hot water to make porridge for people to try so we supplied some and in exchange they spent ages with Davies and Scarlett teaching them all about the various crops and letting them do some hand grinding and tasting the results and gave us a significant discount on the few bits we bought from them. I spent ages talking to a woman who makes creams and lotions and potions and bought a couple of bits from her – still a very appealing thing to learn about for me, maybe I’ll do something about it this year.
I really enjoyed listening to a tree 
and went to several talks (which were a new feature this year) including one by Maddy Harland from Permaculture Magazine and one by Mary, the Sustainability Centre manager which were both really interesting.
It was much busier this year which is great as it brings in more revenue, spread the word of what the centre is all about and so on but there was also a rather trashed feel to the place by the end. We stayed with our tent later in the afternoon as loads of people were sitting nearby and letting their children and dogs wander around our tent and even through our porch! We had been really pleased to see the leftover house god we’d brought back from Butser last year and left in the compost loo there as a ‘toilet god’ still in situ when we arrived on Friday and were really sad to see it smashed on the floor by the end of Sunday :(.
The Green Fair started to get quieter and I walked up to the cars to get the bags for the tent, sleeping bags, mats, tables, chairs and kitchen and bumped into Olivia and her boys. They came back to our tent for a chat and went into the woods with Davies for a while. Ady and I started a leisurely packing up process. We were done fairly quickly and then brought my car down to load it up. The Sunday night is something of a party night for the staff and some of the regular exhibitors and the bands stay on to play. I remember last year feeling sad to leave and this year several of the staff expressed surprise we weren’t staying – next year we’ll definitely stay for Sunday night too and Ady can go straight to work from there on Monday morning while the kids and I pack up.
We said goodbye to everyone and Tarly and I went in my car, Ady and Davies in his. Thanks to a stop for petrol they caught us up and we arrived home together. Duckling worship – they really did seem to know Scarlett’s voice, she did spend a lot of time talking to the eggs 🙂 – and we moved them into her bedroom. The kids had a bath followed by bed, Ady and I unloaded the car and packed stuff away.
I concede the bath was a bit more relaxing than the now completed and operational strawbale solar powered showers and my bed was cosier than my sleeping bag but I swear arriving at the Sustainability Centre on Friday felt more like coming home than getting back here last night.
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