One word? When seven would do…

We had a cooked breakfast this morning before wandering into town to see what Market Day was all about. It turned out to be not about very much really with a stall selling cheese, another selling imported clothing from Nepal, one selling cakes and a second hand bookstall that had loads of ladybird books marked as ‘rare’ on sale for between £5 and £7!

We went to the post office, partially as we’d not been in there before, partially to get some cash out as we had none and partially to shelter from the rain that had just started and was coming down fairly heavily! It’s been very ‘April’ today with lots of bursts of sunshine and showers, fairly cold and quite windy. Then we walked along to see where the recycling point was the next door neighbour had told me about and walked on across some fields to a lake with some sygnets, goslings and coot chicks. We got quite extensively rained on there too and took cover under a tree until it was safe to walk on.

We finished the circuitous route the neighbour had told me about just in time before another shower and as it was cold and nasty outside we decided a movie and popcorn was in order :). Ady spent some time fiddling with his tablet and the kids and I watched a couple of episodes of Sorry I’ve got no head on iplayer. I think Ady felt guilty afterwards as Davies had been asking for some time with him today and he realised he’d run out of time which was a shame. Computers definitely eat into your day and the kids have seen far too much of me from behind a screen but I think I am better / more practised at remaining at least semi engaged and putting it down often enough to spend time on other stuff.

Davies said to me earlier today ‘I’m glad I’m me’ and expanded on that to say he was really happy being who he is and that he really loves his life. Even if that was only a fleeting feeling (and I really hope it wasn’t) it was still lovely to hear. So fab that he is happy with himself and who he is rather than wishing to be someone else and so great that he is loving his life; both in realising how happy he is to be doing what we’re doing and that we have got the gamble right so far in setting off on our adventure.

Later this afternoon we did some tidying up and packing stuff into the van ready to leave tomorrow so there is slightly less to do in the morning – not for us the luxury of stuffing things in the car to unpack and sort out the other end ;). Then in a gap in the rain we walked down to the recycling point with some glass, cardboard and tin recycling that had failed to be collected today (not sure why) and a couple of pairs of jeans that Tarly had outgrown and wanted to put in the clothesbank (think the only smaller girls we’ll be seeing this weekend are not jeans wearing types) and then got fish and chips on the way back to eat out of the paper.

Scarlett said that fish and chips seems to be our standard ‘last night meal’ and we remembered that we’d had fish and chips on our last night in the house and our last night staying with Mum & Dad before we left. We agreed that felt like such a long, long time ago now.

After dinner we rang my Dad and the kids and I all had long chats with him. He said he and my Mum had been saying they didn’t think we’d ever come back to live in our house and I agreed we probably wouldn’t. We talked for a bit about what our longer term plans might be and tossed some ideas about. They are hoping to come up and see us while we’re in Wales so hopefully we can talk at greater length about stuff then. I think it will be much easier face to face rather than on the phone. Jill rang while we were chatting but she didn’t leave a message. I was all talked out so didn’t ring her back, I presume she just rang for a chat rather than anything more interesting.

Our hosts for next week have not yet confirmed with us which I am slightly twitchy about as we are meant to be arriving there on Tuesday. I have emailed and rung and left a message so have fingers firmly crossed they contact me tomorrow one way or another. I have confirmation from the next hosts so am at least not stressing about that.

Spent a lot of today thinking how much Marcus, Michelle and Chloe would enjoy this place; a holiday cottage for three in a village which is a living museum, right up their (historytastic) street 🙂

Another lie in this morning – I could get used to this sleeping in a bed business – albeit still in my sleeping bag so I don’t have to wash, dry and iron bed linen before we go. We were trapped in today until Ady’s tablet came back by courier so had nominated it gardening day.

After Popmaster obviously 😉

We’d bought a W&G bread roll making kit at the supermarket so the kids did that with some creative (and delicious) results while Ady and I did weeding.

” alt=”” />

We clipped hedges and weeded beds and aside from a small amount still to be bagged up we have finished. I’m sure Lesley will be pleased, it looks markedly different to when we arrived on Monday :).

Back in for lunch of said bread rolls, some local cheese and some nice apples and carrots bought at the local supermarket.
” alt=”” />
” alt=”” />

We sat around for an hour of so after lunch, enjoying the novelty of a sofa and a TV 😉 then the parcel arrived so we were able to go out for a walk. The little museum in town was open this afternoon so we headed there first. It’s tiny, in a house leading from room to room with all local relics and exhibits and information. Some really interesting stuff; my favourite being a school log book from a newly opened school in 1865; beautiful handwriting, typical teacher 😉 Lots of bemoaning the attendance dropping at haymaking time and the excellent one liner from 23rd February ‘thrashed the stupidity out of J Evans’
” alt=”” />
😆 😆

My Dad would love it here, it is as close as I have probably ever been to a glimpse into his childhood (and no, he was not around in 1865 but I get the feeling not a lot changed here in North Wales for many years).

We then took the walk up to the castle ruins; very steep indeed. We had to pause at a bench mid-hike
” alt=”” />

The views were stunning though and we pretty much had the place to ourselves. We found ourselves watching a smallholding down below us with sheep, chickens, a sheep dog and various outbuildings for about half an hour, deciding what was going on between the animals and the people we could see moving around down there, people watching from above with a slant towards the life we’d love to have 🙂

We had time for some hill rolling / sliding and silliness with the camera before walking back down the hill again.

” alt=”” />

Back to the cottage where Ady did the kids tea and I finished off in the garden, chatting to the neighbours.

Bed for the kids, Apprentice and dinner for us. Tomorrow is market day here in Montgomery and I need to do some work on our zone two planning; we have at least 3 friends / family who are planning on finding us during the next couple of months so we need to be able to tell them where we are.

First of all a lie in, what bliss 🙂 when compiling a list of small things I won’t miss when our year is up one will be having to fit in around Ady and my incompatible sleeping habits. He hates having to stay up til I am ready for bed / I hate having to go to bed early because he is tired and the reverse happens in the morning. Last night he got to go to bed when he wanted and I got to stay up, this morning we got to do it in reverse, just lovely 🙂

We spent the first couple of hours doing stuff like drinking lots of tea / coffee, chatting about how the first three months has gone, doing a blog post on WW about the last host and starting to compile lists of what we still want to learn more about, what we’d like on our own land and an in depth discussion about breeds of dog and what purpose various breeds have and how you can determine that from their physical features.

Davies asked me to show him how to draw 3d shapes so we did that for a while which led to talking about symmetry and parallel lines, naming some shapes and then on to looking at angles. We are in the perfect place to do angle and parallel line spotting so we did some of that for a while.
” alt=”” />
It made me realise I was a bit rusty on some of the stuff so I must remember to remedy that with a bit of brushing up on such skills ready for next time a question is asked of me 😉

We went for a wander into the town which is quite an amazing little place – there is a trail around the town of wall plaques giving all sorts of information about the history of the place and the individual buildings (good info on this BBC site about the place) so we read those and went into Bunners, an old fashioned hardware store that pretty much sells *everything*. The museum is open tomorrow and Thursday afternoons so we will make it along for a look at that too to learn some more about the town.

We popped into the deli and bought some cheese, a slice of cake (which was big enough for the four of us to share) and a couple of sugar mice to bring home for lunch. We called into the garage to see if they had the stop leak fluid for Willow we needed too. They didn’t but recommended somewhere in Welshpool that did.

Home for lunch which we ate in the garden and then sat chatting out there in the sunshine. Ady made some phonecalls to try and sort Willow out. We found a place in Huddersfield that specialises in automatic transmissions but after a long debate between the four of us we decided we’ll just keep topping her up and hoping for the best rather than spend a load of money. This is subject to review and depends very heavily on how she does getting to Jan and Jonathan’s on Friday. We then looked on ebay and amazon and rang the garage in Welshpool which not only had the stuff about a fiver cheaper when we explained our predicament offered to drop it off later this evening on the mechanic’s way home. Hard to think how you can better service like that really! 🙂

I sat and did some weeding as the tiny front garden is almost completely overgrown with ground elder and we said to Lesley we’d do some gardening while we’re here. I did one of the beds and we’re planning to get the rest done tomorrow, trim the hedges and generally tidy the garden up, then have Thursday off as it’s market day here which we want to go along to.

Ady, Davies and Scarlett played some card games and then Scarlett came inside with me and we did a jigsaw – I love puzzles, almost worth having a table for ;).

Ady cooked lasagne and I rang Julie for a catch up chat; she and the children have been away to Germany for 10 days or so so we both had plenty to talk about. Scarlett got a chat with Maisie too (Jack was already asleep) which she was really chuffed about; she’s missing Maisie and even bought her a present the other day to post to her.

Davies and Scarlett took ages to get to sleep again, you’d think they’d be bored of each other by now but the lure of sleeping next to each other *without* us in same room (van) seems to have elevated it to novelty sleepover status again so they were still chatting at 11pm nearly 2 hours after they went to bed.

I guess we’re on holiday 🙂

We left Jane & Rob’s this morning, pretty much dead on our intended time of 10am. Ady had done a quick google on his phone for directions and we’d been thinking it was about 100miles so it was a bit of a shock to put it in the satnav and have 197 miles pop up!

The first 100 miles were really straightforward though and we stopped for lunch at Tewkesbury services having made good time. After lunch however Willlow got very slippy of clutch and in the end we had to pull over and put more auto transmission fluid in which solves the problem but as we’re getting through a bottle every 150 miles something rather more pressing needs attending to. We have a plan though and in the meantime Ady is going to lie awake worrying about it and I am going to airily pretend it’s nothing to worry about and one of us will be right at least ;).

Scarlett is fine and happy again today, wants to carry on and last night was clearly just a blip. The answer to most of her woes is ‘more sleep’ but sometimes that is a hard medicine to administer.

We stopped at Harry Tuffins, a very small chain of independant supermarkets, just five miles away from where we’re staying. Super cheap, voucher for money off the petrol we needed anyway and we got everything we need for this week.

Then we found the cottage, it’s a lovely little two bedroomed cottage with loads of quaint features and lots of history. We’re here because we used to work with Lesley, the owner, when we were in Manchester and have sporadically stayed in touch with her over the years. I once gave her a very good reference for a job which was utterly deserved but I suspect has always left her feeling like she owes me a favour. When she heard about our plans for the year she offered this cottage if we were ever in the area and needed some down time from the van and it is the perfect springboard location to get to Jan and Jonathan’s for the weekend. Lesley happened to be between bookings and away on holiday herself so we are acting as her really, spending some time here to ensure the previous guests have left it tidy, doing a tiny bit of weeding and tidying in the little front garden (which is about as big as Willow!) and making sure it is left nice for the next guests.

It is a little snug and only really meant for 2-3 people but as we live in a van and are used to very little room this is feeling positively spacious! Davies has a bed, Scarlett has an air bed and Ady and I get a four poster – rather downmarket-ly we’re sleeping in our sleeping bags though so we don’t have to get the bedding washed, dried and ironed before we leave on Friday ready for the next guests 🙂

It was so nice to arrive somewhere and not have to introduce ourselves, worry about being fed lentils and have NOTHING we have to do for the next four days. It feels totally different to being at Jill’s as we have all the same luxuries but none of the obligation to do anything; either work or socially :).

So we’ve eaten pizza, watched films, had showers, eveyrone else is in bed and I don’t have to be, tomorrow everyone else can get up and I don’t have to 🙂 Bliss.

Our plans for the week include exploring the town we’re in, going to the market on Thursday, doing the little bit of gardening and some wood splitting for Lesley and very little else :).

Our last day here.

First thing we carried on in the orchard where we were working yesterday and did some more nettle clearing then Jane called us to come and watch Rob finish off shearing one of the sheep. They have four ewes and four lambs here, two of the ewes and two lambs are going to a friend’s orchard for some grazing so they were shearing the ewes today before they went. Jane gave a running commentary while Rob sheared, they do it by hand and it takes them about 40 minutes per sheep, once sheared they also clip their feet. Once done we took off any grubby or poo encrused bits and then rolled the fleece up. It was really interesting and Jane was able to tell us loads of stuff she had learnt at various smallholders association courses on shearing.

Over coffee we got chatting about goats and sheep and pros and cons of both and I learnt that milking sheep is a pretty viable option and had a quick look at a really interesting book about dairy sheep. Rather frustratingly I realise as we finish our week here how very useful prolonged time spent with this host would be as they have so very much experience in things we are interested in 🙁 An invitation to return again has been forthcoming though so we may end up taking them up on that and returning to learn more at some point.

We carried on with the orchard until lunchtime (more lentil soup, I so won’t miss that!!) and then after lunch we spent some time clearing the nettles out of the chicken run and helped move across a small chicken house for a hen who has gone broody and they are hoping might hatch some eggs for them.

Then we got a go at shearing! Ady and I were both pretty hopeless actually, Ady because he was so paranoid about catching the sheep’s skin, me because I was so paranoid about clipping my own fingers! Would love to spend more time and have another go though 🙂

” alt=”” />
” alt=”” />

After that we helped put in some fence posts for a future project of screening off the polytunnel from the house when they get the panels to actually do it with. The posts were already here though and the kids had painted them yesterday so they were ready to go and we were willing to do the necessary hole making and post banging so we did. Which pretty much brought us to finishing time.

Dinner was delayed by all the sheep action so we came back to the van for a while and then went in for dinner. It being our last night Anne and Roy, Jane’s parents were joining us so we were 10 for dinner – Jane had done the veg and pudding, Anne had cooked some pheasants, all of which was delicious. It felt a bit like Christmas 🙂 We all had cider or wine too which felt rather festive and sat and chatted.

By about 930ish it was starting to get dark so we came back to the van and I read the rest of the story to the kids. Unfortunately that took us to nearly 11pm and it being a Morpurgo Scarlett was touched by the story to the point of tears at which point she started to think of other sad things and ended up pretty upset about missing our chickens. This is something she does every couple of weeks; always at bedtime, always when she is very tired or sad about something else. I try to handle it with a combination of love and patience and not pandering to what is obviously not really a big deal for her as it would have her sad all day every day rather than just when she has time to dwell. I don’t want her to remember this year as the one she missed the chickens but in rational daylight moments she is utterly fine and even when upset insists she doesn’t want to stop WWOOFing, she’d just like to be able to visit the chickens.

Ady is super worried about Willow and fretting she won’t make the journey to Shrewsbury tomorrow so fingers crossed he is wrong and my airy ‘it’ll all be fine’ attitude is the correct one!

This morning we had various tasks to do; the kids did some painting fence posts with bitumen paint so they don’t rot when they are sunk into the ground, Ady and I did some collecting wood and grading it into piles, stacking some and putting some in another pile for further cutting, barrowed some bags of wood chippings ready to go into the polytunnel at a future date and did plenty of chatting to Rob who we were working with today.

Jane was working this afternoon and Rob was going along to a jumble sale. Ady had decided he was going to get us invited along so did a whole number on how we’d never been to a jumble sale before, asking questions about it until Rob had a lightbulb moment and said ‘I know, why don’t you come with me?’ it was hilarious. We spent the rest of the morning coming up with alternative names for a jumble sale, the kids prefered one was jumbo sale – will there be real elephants to buy? 😆 😆

After lunch (more lentils, I abstained) we went to the humble bale and went crazy for under a fiver. Davies got a little wooden ship which he’s turned into the Black Pearl with various lego accessories for 20p, a set of wildlife coasters for the van and a couple of other bits, Scarlett (rather predictably) bought about 3 soft toys and a couple of animal books, a t shirt and a couple of pairs of trousers, I got 2 t shirts and a jumper and a couple of books, Ady got two towels to replace the two we’d left at Evergreen Farm by mistake, army surplus jumpers for all four of us and several more books. Nothing was over 20pence per item 🙂 Hurrah for jungle sails!

This afternoon Davies and Scarlett went off to play while Ady and I hung out in the orchard pulling up nettles. I have nettle stings on both arms which are still tingly now but it was a lovely way to spend a sunny Saturday afternoon nonetheless, chatting and laughing and talking about things that have happened over the last three months that have already become part of our story of this year. There are so very many highlights to this year but I know that an overiding memory for me will be all the times Ady and I have been helpless with laughter at some shared silliness or very private joke (usually at the expense of our hosts, rather cruelly I suppose!) which just reminds me of our very early days together before we were anyone’s Mummy and Daddy and had to pretend to be grown ups. Even lovelier is that the kids are often around to share it and we have so many of these moments all four of us have shared now. It all feels a bit like one of those coming of age road trip teen movies where everyone discovers who they are or something 😆

We went in for dinner and then Davies and I watched Doctor Who with Jane, Rob and their son Brendon while Ady and Scarlett (who still claims to be scared of Doctor Who) went off for a wildlife spotting walk and a shower, Davies and I then had showers and we all retired to the van to ring my parents who we’ve not spoken to in over a week.

We read a fair chunk of Born to Run (Morpurgo) at bedtime and then Ady and I played with Skype for a bit and watched some youtube clips and listened to some music. Last day here tomorrow and then we’re off to house sit for a friend which will be all but a holiday (we’re doing a tiny bit of gardening in exchange for 4 nights in the cottage but hardly arduous) which we’re all looking forward to :).

Which is a phrase rather wasted on my blog readers as it’s an in-joke with a couple of workmates from the library, none of whom read this, but it came to me this evening while watching Davies and Scarlett and made me smile recalling an evening out with those work mates so I decided any two word phrase which recalls a happy memory and makes me smile is worthy of being a blog title. Oh how self indulgent I am 🙂

Today we were with Peter, due to pick us up at 930am. I think all of us, Peter included didn’t really expect that to happen and sure enough it was long after 10am when he actually arrived. I woke to Ady putting the radio on and the confusion of the Candyman and ‘Happy Friday’ stuff when I’d have sworn it was only about Tuesday today. So we breakfasted, got dressed and Scarlett and I were sitting in the sun chatting and looking at a rather gorgeous book I picked up at the charity shop yesterday for 75p

Peter came and had a look at our van, chatted solar panels and alternative energy with us for a while and then we got in his car and drove down to his field. He’d brought his dogs with him this time so we did a big circuit of the field to walk the dogs and check on the trees we planted earlier in the week. Then Ady and Davies cut the comfrey ready to be dried out while Peter, Scarlett and I laid a load of black matting, old carpet and black plastic in various areas in preparation for various things; a wildlife pond site to be dug out in the autumn, a pathway between two beds and a bed to be dug over and sowed in the autumn too.

We stopped regularly; for lunch, for tea breaks, to look at a nest of baby voles and baby shrews in one of the old carpets (two seperate litters in two different areas, so cute, all curled up, blind and bald), Peter gave Davies some knot tying lessons, Peter and I dashed out to the nearby shop for a bottle of coke for us all to drink so we could cut it up to make little guards to go round the trunks of some young fruit trees and we had lots and lots of conversations about parenting, education, musical instruments, times tables, Tescos and various other interesting stuff.

Back to their house for dinner where we had more interesting conversations with his wife and son too. Davies and Scarlett spent some time in the garden and made up a play / puppet show using some of Deb (Peter’s wife)’s forest school resources and stuffed woodland creatures. Peter, Ady and I went out to watch and it turned into an audience participation, improvised event which was both very clever and very funny. Peter wants photos and / or a video clip of it he enjoyed it so much 🙂 It’s always as well when you’ve been gobby and ranty about your style of parenting / educating if your kids manage to come across as a perfect example of why you are right ;).

Peter dropped us back, shook Ady’s hand, gave me a hug, wished us well on the rest of our adventure and invited us back anytime :). Tomorrow and Sunday we’re working with Jane & Rob here where we are actually parked. Not starting til 930am though and hopefully not working too hard ;).

Had a bit of a lie in this morning although living in a van the size of a boxroom with three other people means no one gets to lie in much. Ady did some van tidying, the kids sat in the sunshine watching the sheep and I had some laptop time then we packed up and drove to Street, a nearby town that has an outlet shopping village place too. After a couple of false starts on boots I decided I really needed some decent workboots and there happens to be a Dickies outlet at this place so we headed there.

We parked up and had a wander round the high street first, sent Ady’s tablet back (it rather terminally crashed the other evening and so after a phonecall to the seller yesterday it’s gone back to be replaced) at the post office, did a circuit of the charity shops, got lunch at the bakers and then got me some boots from Dickies – I got these ones reduced to £50 which I thought was pretty good. Hopefully there will end my boot saga for the year.

Willow was playing up again with the clutch slipping so we looked online and found a Halfords nearby and limped there for supplies of fluid and self sealing liquid for it. She seems okay now so fingers crossed for the next big leg of the journey next week. While we were in Wells we wandered round the charity shops there too and also popped into a little games shop where Davies found a psp Wall:E game he’d been after and I spotted Plants Vs Zombies now out for DS so the kids went half each on that to share.

We left there and headed to Jill’s as we’d arranged to see her for a proper goodbye. We had a really nice few hours with her (her and I sunk a couple of bottles of wine) chatting and eating dinner before leaving before it was too dark to get Willow resettled back at the hosts.

Davies and Scarlett went up to bed, Ady and I watched Apprentice on iplayer and then some clips from Sorry I’ve got no Head – we are all loving the ‘thousand pounds’ ladies clips from that and watching them on youtube, it’s our new family catchphrase :).

Yesterday evening my face was starting to feel a bit rough and today I woke with it puffy and red. It’s not particularly itchy which I imagine is thanks to the daily antihistimines I am taking, still a bit of a nightmare though and fingers firmly crossed it does not escalate further.

Yesterday I blogged over on WW as my photoblog. I don’t think I have much to add to that really. Peter is nice, reminds me a lot of Ady’s brother Chris. I liked him and particularly liked his style of WWOOF hosting which involved drinking lots of tea, sitting around chatting lots, listening to us and particularly the kids like he was really interested in us and seeming to view his host status as quite a responsibility and ensure he really was teaching us something and that it was interesting and relevant to us. We’re with him again on Friday when he is planning on letting Davies do some tractor driving and teaching us more about comfrey as that is something we are particularly interested in and he knows rather a lot about.

We were invited to a folk evening but it would have been a late night and the kids were already yawning at lunchtime so we decided to give it a miss.

Today we didn’t need to start until 930am and were first given a very comprehensive tour of the land here, including an orchard, little wild garden that used to be kept for beekeeping and large area of trees that I hadn’t even realised was here. We had a tea break after that so it was well after 1130am before we were actually doing any ‘work’. We did just over an hour before lunch of clearing a load of dead wood, cut brambles and nettles and other garden rubbish from a hedge that has been part laid but allowed to grow over in preparation for some planting of hedgerow stuff like hawthorn. Not terribly exciting or educational, a bit scratchy (we were given gloves to wear though) but quite nice all the same as it was outdoors, active enough to feel you’d done something, but hardly hard labour and we were all four together but left to our own devices. The kids mostly helped in the morning trundling up and down the hill with wheelbarrows.

Lunch was lentil soup (eww!! I seriously never will like them, they are horrid! I do manage not to gag or even screw my face up too much but I certainly wasn’t going back for a second bowl) but there was bread and cheese to fill up on fortunately.

After lunch we returned to the hedge clearing but let the kids play. They spent hours clearing leaves under a load of beech trees and using sticks, leaves and other stuff to create a whole little world all powered by alternative energy. It was ace 🙂

We worked til about 5pm, then spent some time clearing up and chatting to Jane’s mum, Anne who came over to tell us how grateful they are for our help and what a great job we’re doing, chat to D & S a bit and talk to me about beekeeping. Then we walked to the local shop, about 10 minutes away for a few supplies – a bottle of wine, some sweets for the kids, a loaf of bread, some milk etc. They are more than happy to supply us with everything here but I am aware the kids (and even I) are not eating all that is on offer and would rather have the option of a sneaky sandwich back at the van to fill us up if needs be.

We’re really glad we have our time here interspersed with time with Peter too; we’re off tomorrow, then with Peter on Friday which only leaves Saturday and Sunday here. I suspect we will be doing more hedge clearing and then they are planning to shear their sheep, which they do with hand shears / clippers on Sunday so we should get involved in that which will be interesting.

Moving on day again 🙂

But first I was covering the office as Jill was off buying furniture and Shirley was off volunteering at the TIC. I was tasked with ‘making new friends on twitter and facebook’ and given usernames and passwords for both accounts, so I spent a happy couple of hours following and friending and liking in hopes of reciprocal following and friending and liking to bolster Jill’s numbers. Not entirely sure it will actually translate as remotely profitable but if it raises her profile and gives her more online presence in such places I guess it brings her in line with other such businesses.

I also sat in on the VAT inspection that was going on, just by virtue of being in the room but I actually was able to answer some of the queries about the business 🙂 I’ll be being listed as an asset! 😉

Meanwhile Ady and the kids packed the van up and did a few last jobs such as watering plants and then it was time for us to head off. We’re only 7 miles away from Glastonbury at what I guess you’d class as a smallholding – 3-4 acres of land on an old quarry site, with 3 generations living in two adjoining houses – Jane and Rob, Jane’s parents and Jane & Rob’s two teenage children (a third is away at uni) who have been here for about 25 years. They currently have 4 sheep and 4 lambs, about 10 chickens and 3 cats. They sometimes have pigs reared from weaners to slaughter-ready and have at times had a bigger flock of sheep. They grow fruit and veg in a polytunnel, various raised beds and fruit cages and have lots of soft fruit and orchard type trees, woodland they coppice and pollard for wood burning and land used for grazing. There is a very small CL site for about 5 tents / caravans with basic facilities of water and chemical loo disposal (although we are able to run our hook up into the shed for power too). I’m not sure what Rob does although I assume he also works but Jane does some teaching on growing and cooking and preserving your own food locally. They have been WWOOFers themselves in the past and seem nice people. The two kids at home, aged 13 and 17 are lovely, really chatty, friendly, articulate teens.

We arrived at about 2pm, parked the van and then had a tour around the house and land before being put to work for a couple of hours moving some firewood around. There was a large pile in the back garden and several large heaps in what they refer to as ‘the top acre’ – up the hill and through several gates, all of which needed wheelbarrowing to the house, sorting into size and putting for further chopping if too large, bonfire burning if too skinny to bother with, wood burner pile for Jane and Rob if medium sized or Jane’s parents if very small. Davies and I proved better and building woodpiles than Scarlett and Ady who were hampered by Scarlett’s enthusiasm over technique and Ady’s lack of grasping the jenga style building of the woodpiles 😆

At about 530pm their daugthter, Catherine arrived home and took Davies and Scarlett off to introduce them to the chickens and play on the swing while Ady and I did the last couple of barrowloads of wood, then it was teatime. We met Brendon, their son over dinner – beetroot soup, home made bread, salads of peppers and feta cheese, tuna and sweetcorn and green leaves from the garden. It was all pretty nice despite the lack of meat although D&S mostly just ate the bread.

We chatted over dinner and they appear to be nice, normal people. We are working with the co-host tomorrow, which should be interesting as he is the actual person I corresponded with initially – through him we ended up at Paddington Farm and of course indirectly Jill at Middlewick so he has unwittingly shaped a lot of our experiences so far, so it will be good to finally meet him. We have been given bread, butter, milk and cereal to breakfast in the van all week as it is rather chaotic in the house trying to get the kids off to school so we are better off in here having a more leisurely start (which suits us just fine) and then we will be fed lunch and dinner by whichever host we are working with. Tomorrow there is the offer of an evening out in Glastonbury at a folk music evening which we may or may not take them up on depending on what the work is like and our mood at the end of the day.

otherwise my advancing years may mean I struggled to recall a three day catch up 😉

Friday Ady’s birthday 🙂 Everyone was up early – some more reluctantly than others given it was our only day off this week – for present opening. We’d got gimmicky gifts such as a screwdriver with multiple heads (one of the most frustrating parts of WWOOFing so far is the lack of tools hosts seem to have. We have lost count of the amount of times we have headed back to our van to grab work gloves / screwdrivers / wrench from our very limited little toolkit), a box of chocolates, a bag of posh coffee, some home made cards from the kids and the two main gifts; a new Pompey top and a tablet with keyboard case.

Unfortunately for all my trying I had failed in some areas; I’d managed to buy posh coffee beans rather than ground coffee, the Pompey top had a small hole in the back (looks like it has had a security tag badly removed or been caught with a sharp knife while opening boxes or something) and the tablet didn’t have the UK adaptor included as promised. Grr. The top we debated best options on and decided as we have no official address or ability to send it back easily we would keep it and I’d stick a stitch or two in it to prevent further damage, the coffee beans we will hang on to until we reach a host with a grinder or Ady gets desperate enough for coffee to take to them with a steel toecapped boot and as we are currently staying at holiday cottages in one of the UKs biggest tourist destinations for international visitors they have a box full of travel adaptors so we were able to nick one from there.

We then spent an hour or so moving all our stuff across from Springfield to Tor View as the cottages are all fully booked this weekend and we were back in the little cottage for our last three nights. It was having a new kitchen and appliances installed though so we shoved our stuff in the bedroom and our food in the Function Room kitchen and headed off out. Jill caught us and bunged us another wad of cash for food for the rest of the week insisting we go out for lunch :). We walked up the Tor via the old oak trees Gog and Magog, following a different route than we’ve ever walked before which was quicker but much steeper. We did comment that we managed it far better than we would have done 3 months ago and were all still capable of speech during the climb. We also climbed the Tor fairly speedily with no need for a mid point break which I had certainly needed the last time we came up it.

We paused at the top to admire the view before trundling down the other side, a route we’ve never taken before, bringing us out in Glastonbury town centre next to the Chalice Well. This was one of the places we had failed to visit last time we were here and thought we really should have managed so we had decided to do it this time. We bought a plastic bottle each for the kids and walked round all the areas including the lions head where you can drink the healing water, the bathing pool you can walk in, the angel seat in the peace garden to sit in, the well to look down, the candle shrine area to think of people who have passed over etc.

So we all had a paddle, froze our feet, walked around the very gorgeous gardens, talked about how this would be something we’d all remember forever and then walked into town for lunch. After some debate we went to the fish & chip shop recommended by Heather and with all sorts of brown signage as Award Winning. We’d been before and it had been closed so we had meant to go back this time, some people sitting in the window waved at us as we peered in and then chatted to us and said they were about to leave if we wanted their seats so we decided that was enough of a sign and went in to sit down and eat.

Lunch was very expensive (the pint of beer and mini bottle of wine may have contributed to that 😉 ) but nice and birthday-ish, then we wandered round a bit more before heading back to Middlewick. The kitchen was all but installed but as it was a brand new oven it needed to be lit and running for 45 minutes before first use according to the instructions so we ended up cooking in the great big, seats 50 people function room instead. Jill came to eat with us and helped prepare and cook, then Shirley came over after dinner to watch a film with us – Inception on the bigger screen in there. We had birthday cake with candles and singing for Ady and then Scarlett fell asleep on my lap. I decided the film was not worth any more minutes of my life so I took both kids back to the cottage to bed about 1130pm, Ady went back and he and Shirley watched the film all the way through (Jill gave up soon after I did) but they both agreed the next day it had not been worth it! 🙂

Saturday first thing Ady and I went to clean up in the function room, sweep up and hoover the floor, run the dishwasher with all the crockery and cutlery and generally get it ready for the guests using it that evening – a block booking taking most of the cottages for a hen night.

We had a fairly bitty rest of the day doing various finishing off type jobs. To be honest this week we have been rather under employed which has been sort of nice in terms of recovering from a very different last week but slightly frustrating in terms of knowing we could probably be being more useful if properly directed. Later in the afternoon we drove to a nearby Sainsburys so Ady could get a memory card for his tablet so he can use the camera, then we came back and while Davies and I watched Doctor Who, Scarlett and Ady went for a swim.

Jill had declined our offer of dinner as she said she can’t keep up with our drinking – wuss! so we veered between watching Britains Got Talent and Eurovision and christened the new oven.

Sunday was finishing up the last few tasks we’d been given. The first was weeding and watering two large flowerbeds on either side of the driveway which was actually a very nice job to be doing on a sunny Sunday morning, particularly when I spent over an hour on the phone chatting to a friend while I worked 🙂

Davies and Scarlett came down and hung out with us too and it was all very lovely with some interesting chats about life, the universe and everthing. Ady said that he knew I was feeling I had less time with the kids but actually he now does have more time as he gets these little half hour snippets of time with them even during days we are not with them, plus he always gets to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner with them every day which never happened before.

We moved some pallets ready to have wood stacked on them and then retired to the cottage for tea and biscuits. Jill appeared and we had a chat and arranged to nip out to a local hardware store for some motoring bits for Willow so Jill gave us a shopping list for the cottages too and we headed off to get all that before coming back for lunch.

Our afternoon was very laid back as we moved a trailer and put some stuff in the skip then headed over to Paddington Farm to try and find Michael and Tanya (our hosts from ages ago) but they were not there. We did chat to a couple of people staying there at the moment living in vans, one of which was a very very cool mobile library conversion with wood burner and everything :).

On the way back we were waylayed by Cassie and Sam who live in the cottage between Paddington and Middlewick and invited in for coffee. We have chatted to them lots before and bumped into Sam in Morrisons on our first day back here but never really managed a proper getting to know each other conversation so it was great to spend an hour with them and really dig a bit deeper. Their house is amazing, a real old fashioned farm cottage that was falling down and they have simply rejuvenated with ‘freegan’ stuff reclaimed from various places. Their kitchen is a random selection of free standing furniture, the living space an eclectic mix of sofas, upstairs an art studio of Sam’s paintings, their bedroom and a study and bathroom, The kids were entranced by it, all crazy fairy lights and funky furniture. We had a really interesting chat about us and where we go next and some of their ideas about communities and communal living, which seem to lie very close to our current ways of thinking. Interesting stuff… we exchanged contact details so will hopefully stay in touch with each other.

Back at the cottages Scarlett and I went swimming while Ady and Davies had some time together and got the dinner on then Jill arrived to join us for dinner and chats, followed by Shirley for after dinner coffee / hot chocolate.

It’s been good to be back here, we have enjoyed being with Jill and Shirley again and it’s great to forge links further with them and other locals here. We have learnt yet more and I suspect we will end up again here at some future point. Life throws some funny old twists and turns and people in our path.

I do have further observations and stuff to say about here but I’m really tired and tomorrow is changeover day where we get to say goodbye to here and hello to brand new hosts again so I need to go to bed and get sleep to prepare for such adventures!

This morning I was manning the office again, Shirley was on day off, Jill was volunteering at the local Tourist Info Office and Amanda the office manager was at her son’s school for a leaving ceremony.

I was tasked with ‘doing stuff on ‘Twitter and Facebook’ so I uploaded some pictures onto the facebook site for Middlewick but in trying to then comment on it as me I managed to log out and couldn’t log back in again. I did some twittering and then got distracted by a fellow WWOOFers blog. I ran out of steam then as a social network marketeer so I settled instead for writing lots of positive reviews about the four cottages we have stayed in here on various review sites – all honest, I do think they are lovely cottages in beautiful surroundings with friendly and helpful staff 🙂

Ady joined me for coffee mid morning, he was doing gardening. The kids came and sat with me in the office for an hour or so too and we chatted. I’ve really enjoyed their company again this week; we’ve been a bit ‘back to normal’ with them asking interesting questions (such as ‘does water float’ and ‘how do you get grass seed, I’ve never seen grass flowers on a lawn?’). Interestingly we realised today that despite being ten weeks into our WWOOFing adventure only two of the places we have stayed at so far have been actual WWOOFing hosts, the rest have been accidental or friends of WWOOF hosts, even next weeks host isn’t actually in the WWOOFing book, I guess that is likely to remain the case this year though, the week after next we are turning a friends holiday cottage around for her between proper guests as she is away in France and it happened to fit in well with our travel arrangements.

Amanda arrived and Jill came back soon after with donuts for everyone so we caught up with her, confirmed we can have tomorrow off and discussed what she wanted us to do this afternoon. Then we had lunch and spent an hour or so cleaning the cottage we’re in, making up the spare beds and getting clean towels and bedding ready to change over in the morning as we’re moving out of this cottage and back into a smaller one for our last few nights as it is fully booked here again with a hen weekend arriving tomorrow afternoon.

Ady went back to finish his gardening, he’s mowed the lawn and clipped some hedges, cleared all the areas around the public footpaths that run through the land and generally tidied up. It’s been another week of quite hard work for him this week, he says he feels his age (which gets another year bigger tomorrow!). The kids and I meanwhile headed to the swimming pool – they had been tasked with scrubbing the steps into the pool while I was cleaning windows. I did my bit but they were struggling as the dirt seems to be unmoveable. I helped but I’m still not sure we made much difference. We did enjoy about 2 hours in the pool though, all to ourselves which was nice :).

Back at the cottage Ady cooked the kids tea while I had a go at cutting my hair – it had gotten to the long and scruffy looking stage which is hard enough to deal with at home let alone in a campervan when I can’t guarantee I can wash it daily so I was just tying it up all the time which is always my cue to chop it 🙂 We were planning to read a Roald Dahl book we’d found in the library but all got distracted by an animal programme instead which had quite a bit on the dolphins in the Moray Firth and Chanonry Point. The kids made cards for Ady, Davies wanted to write a poem but had left it rather late, he did manage ‘you are my Daddy, I know you’re not a baddy’ though 🙂 which I’m sure Ady will be most touched by 😉

The kids went to bed, I cooked our dinner and now I need to stick the dishwasher and washing machine on as we don’t have either in the little cottage, lay out Ady’s presents and head to bed myself.

I had a really bad nights sleep, awake twice with a bad tummy, at least twice with nightmares and at least once finding myself squashed halfway down the bed wondering why my feet were hanging so far off the end. Clearly I’m out of practise at being in an actual bed 😉

This morning Ady carried on with some bramble and overgrown-ness clearing while I went to find Jill to be given tasks. I got caught with Jude- the previous owner, who is living here for another few weeks as her horses are in quarentine until they all fly home to Canada together. She is interesting but quite challenging and is quite taken with Davies and Scarlett while asking countless questions about them and Home Ed. She was fascinated last time we were here by us and continues to seem drawn to us and quite how it all works out, clearly puzzled by us not caring about things she seems hung up on, like Scarlett’s unbrushed hair for example ;).

I found Jill and was tasked with checking all the salt and pepper pots in the unoccupied cottages, cleaning them, filling them and replacing them if they were crappy. I had to return moved furniture to it’s proper locations in a couple of cottages after they had the carpets cleaned and then sort out the huge quantity of cutlery in the function room. All of which I did, sneezing as I went thanks to the pepper. Ady and I met for coffee and popmaster at 1030am and Ady rang the letting agents to chase them over the rent we still had not had. He got mildly stroppy and by lunchtime the rent had appeared, coincidence?! 😉

We took quite a long lunchbreak as we didn’t have a great deal to be getting on with and knew we’d be helping lots with Pizza Night this evening. I did an hour or so weeding in some flower beds while Ady finished off what he was doing. The kids have helped lots today; done some weeding of carrot seedlings, some planting on of various things and put some bulbs in, watered plants, spent time with the chickens and also played in the cottage and watched a film.

I lit the pizza oven which was going really well until I left it to wander off and chat to Ady and it went from a very well burning fire to a heap of smouldering logs, unfortunately just as Shirley came over to check on it’s progress, so I got to feel like a silly little schoolgirl while she took over and re-lit it – grr. We called wine o’clock at that point though so my grring didn’t last long. We made pizzas including a fab heart shaped one for me from Scarlett 🙂 and then dealt with some arriving guests and a panic over whether there are enough Z beds here to cope with the bookings. Jill was just about to click BUY on an online bed when I, certain I had seen one in a cupboard in a cottage went to check and came back victorious that I was right – Ha! That trumped keeping the fire burning in the pizza oven when I was right over the owner and the general manager about how many beds and where they are 😆

We had late arrivals to pizza night in the shape of a group of six from Slovakia, with varying degrees of English, which made for a rowdy and enjoyable evening. We tidied up and came in to watch You’re Fired, having missed the main Apprentice show – and probably the whole of the rest of the series given we won’t be near a TV again for a while.

It’s a funny old life this; back when I used to sit in the house, spend my days chatting with friends or hanging out online I had utter confidence in the kids gaining an education. Now I am travelling the country, exposing them to a different lifestyle every couple of weeks with a huge array of new experiences on hand every single day I am questionning if they are learning! I guess the issue is that when we were together all the time I knew they were curious about the world by the questions they asked, the answers I gave, the programmes on TV I had half an eye on alongside them as they watched, the days out I planned and new ideas I introduced them to. I am so used to our autonomous approach I am able to defend it without even really thinking; pulling examples from the last 24 hours of learning in action like rabbits from a hat without any need to dig deep. Somehow this feels slightly more contrived – I could certainly lay out an impressive list of ‘new experiences’ the kids have had, places they have seen, people they have met but I’d struggle to pinpoint what is child led about it, what is a natural consequence of simply living. I suppose in order to demostrate this as an education I’d almost need to consider it structured, planned, formal – which certainly in terms of the four of us as a family it is – I spent as long planning this as we’ll be doing it, there were indeed spreadsheets, maps, long, long, long lists and plenty of forethought, unlike my approach to Home Ed. That’s not to say it doesn’t have room for being flexible and seeing what crops up along the way which is much more our Home Ed style but for all the crazy living in a campervan-ness of it there is also the sniff of a workbook somwwhere ;).

It may be guilty conscience, it may be a need to salve my own fretting or (as I’d like to imagine) it may be my deep and intuative connection with my offspring that has led me towards spending some time with them, having some deeper chats and opening my eyes to observe a bit more. I started today planning to do the photoblog but realised this is totally the wrong place to do so; it’s not WWOOFing, it’s not even what we are predominantly doing this year – it’s working, both of us all but full time and mostly away from the kids. I did task them with taking pictures to illustrate what they are learning and they did take some which showed Davies’ current project which is writing and drawing a pirate story, Scarlett feeding and communing with Jill’s chickens, both of them sitting on the quad bike but I would struggle to put words alongside them, so I won’t try and next week when we’re back to WWOOFing proper I will have another go.

I am concluding that this year is one of those best viewed in retrospect learning opportunities, that it will be the experience as a whole, the journey AND the destination, the having done it and completed and achieved it that will be what impresses on their CV rather than the being in the middle of it, that it is only at the end we will be able to conclude what was gained. I guess it’s a bit like Home Ed itself – I know in choosing not to send Davies and Scarlett to school I will have made them different, changed the course of their lives, altered things that can never be changed back, it’s just that we may never know quite what they are because we never did live the alternative, the parallel path.

It feels a bit like being in Big Brother sometimes, all my predictions about how each of us might cope, might change, might falter, seeing if they come true, working out which were simply personality quirks that will remain regardless of the circumstances and which were a result of one lifestyle and are simply not there in another. A diary room would be an interesting addition to Willow ;).

Anyway today the kids and I all slept in which was blissful and clearly much needed. I had a small number of tasks I wanted to complete and so did Ady and we both managed them all. I finished the library off, took some toothbrush holders down off the wall in our cottage and finally remembered to take a dishwasher tablet over to the function room to wash all the crockery and cutlery from breakfast on Sunday. The kids got themselves breakfast, tidied their room and took some photos. Ady finished off the job he was doing of clearing some overgrown stuff around a greenhouse.

We then all took some stuff out of Willow so we could go and collect Jill and Maggie from the station. We allowed way more time than needed and arrived with a good ten minutes to spare so sat in the car park to wait. On the way we drove past Worthy Farm, venue for the festival so I pointed that out to Ady and the kids, hard to picture just what it will be like here in a matter of weeks now.

Jill and Maggie collected we drove into Shepton Mallet which has indeed been killed by the big retail park, despite best efforts and the TV show the town centre remains a ghost town while Tescos, New Look, Boots etc just out of town is thriving. Jill bought us lunch and then we headed to Happy Landings, an animal sanctuary where she was hoping to get some more chickens but they were all reserved. They are looking for staff there, a couple of live-in positions which Jill had noticed and rung me about after we left here last time so I chatted to them about that but they are not right for us.

Back at the cottages the kids settled down to watch a film while Ady and I dug out several boxes of games from the garage. I then spent time cleaning them all down and checking that all the pieces were there. We played a couple just to road test them and then took them to the library which is now stocking games and looking really good. 🙂

Ady and I headed to Morrisons for food supplies for the rest of the week and left the kids at the cottage watching a film. Back at the cottages Ady and the kids went for a swim while I got dinner sorted – lasagne all round. The kids ate first then headed off to bed while we ate and watched The Apprentice.

This morning Ady was up first to open the pool, the rest of us at a more leisurely pace. I am definitely enjoying not *having* to go to bed at a certain time because Ady needs to and he is enjoying not *having* to stay up because I want to ;). My main task for today was covering the office from 930-230 because Jill gives two half days a week of her time to volunteer in the local tourist information office which was threatened with closure due to lack of council funding but thanks to the local businesses realising the value of having the resource has been saved by a rota of people prepared to man it. Of course Jill is not here, having gone back to London for a couple of nights (she is back tomorrow, we collect her from the station at lunchtime) so Shirley was covering her instead, which meant I needed to cover Shirley. We gave Davies and Scarlett the option of going with one or other parent each and they both chose Ady. I’m choosing to believe that is because he had a quad bike on offer 😉

So while I sat at the desk, printed off some signs, wrote some copy for the website, reworded some sections of the welcome pack information folders that go in each cottage and printed some new ones off, worked out a pets policy for the dog friendly cottages, took various phonecalls including a couple of potential bookings, arranged for someone from The Rough Guide to Britain book to come and look round tomorrow, dealt with the photograher, signed for a parcel, spoke to Jill on the phone three times and found train times for her, researched just what a ‘quart’ is in liquid measurement so Shirley could dilute some drain cleaner properly and did a spot of blogging too ” alt=”” />
(genuine expression, not posed, he caught me unawares. And those muffins, not mine!)
Ady and the kids moved a whole heap of cleared brambles, branches and garden waste from one area to another ready to burn when it’s not quite so dry and forest-fires are not on the news every day, using the quad bike and trailer. They graduated from this:
” alt=”” />
to this:” alt=”” />
with Davies doing almost all of the driving, he took me for a ride and he really has it mastered, steering, braking, changing gear, ensuring he leaves enough room to turn with the trailer on the back and everything. Very impressed 🙂

Ady brought me a cup of tea and the radio into the office so we could listen to Popmaster :). They all had lunch and I succumbed to one of those muffins as I was stuck in the office.

Shirley came back and by the time I had been driven on the quad bike and had a go myself it was nearly 4pm and I’d not had lunch yet so I decided to walk down into Glastonbury and get bits like birthday cake candles for Ady. I also thought it would do Davies and Scarlett good to either come with me or be split up – I offered both the chance and Davies chose the lure of some one to one time with me, while Scarlett was still starry eyed about quad bike rides so that worked perfectly :).

Davies and I had a lovely time together, walking into town, wandering round the charity shops and the CoOp for the few bits I wanted then walking back again. We had some interesting chats, caught up with each other a bit and I got treated to some of the Davies-wisdom that so cheers me up. I love his thought processes and ability to frame things so positively :). Despite a fairly rough week or so he is very up about the whole adventure and considers himself so very fortunate to have this opportunity and chance to do something so adventurous and different. I adore how happy he is in himself and how secure he is in being different, hope he continues to feel that way :).

Back at Middlewick Ady and Scarlett were on their last quad bike run so Davies joined them for that and then they all put the quad away, locked up sheds and generally closed down and put away all the tools etc. Ady wasn’t up for a swim so he stayed behind for a peaceful bath and getting the kids dinner on while Davies, Scarlett and I had half an hour in the pool.

The kids had tea while I had a bath and then I came down with the intention of chasing them off to bed for an early night but Davies was engrossed in something on the TV and Tarly was looking at an animal book and drawing so they ended up staying up til 10pm anyway. Which meant that with putting the chickens to bed and stopping to have a drink and chat with Shirley when she dropped the pool key in to us that we didn’t actually have our dinner until pretty late – old habits die hard eh?!

Saturday morning started with breakfast serving. 12 Italians who barely speak English (although we did manage quite well in French with one of them, Jill and I were really impressed with ourselves dredging up schoolgirl French) and drink a lot of coffee. We had four kettles constantly on the boil. Then I showed a local guy around who had come to teach the Italians how to make incence and is interested in hiring part of the venue here for courses in making your own cosmetics and potions. He was an interesting guy, hopefully he’s coming back for pizza night on Wednesday and I can chat some more to him. I’d still love to learn more about making stuff like that and I know Tarly would too, he has a small workshop in the town so I might talk to him about us visiting for a morning or afternoon and learning some stuff from him. Grab every opportunity and all that ;).

Ady and I then fixed a chicken coop that has seen better days, taking a few rotten bits of wood out and replacing them with new bits. The shepherds hut that I repainted when we were here before has been revamped and had the old slats for a single bed removed and a double bed base built instead so there is plenty of scrap wood here at the moment.

I mentioned to Jill that Scarlett had not slept well on the sofabed in the cottage the night before so as another cottage was now empty we moved again – this time into Springfield, one of the biggest and most expensive ones. I think it’s my favourite actually; two bedrooms and a bathroom with bath and shower upstairs, a third bedroom and large lounge / diner with large kitchen downstairs. We have dishwasher and washing machine too :).

One of my jobs this week is to look at the library again and put some games in to make a game and book library for guests and to move all the tourist information and leaflets out and into an old red phonebox in the carpark which has been stood redundant and empty until Jill had the brainwave of creating the smallest tourist information office in the world out of it :). It needed some shelving or racking so I turned all ‘chippie’ and used more of that scrap wood to build a three shelf unit, using hammer and saw and nails and everything :).

Davies and Scarlett were doing chicken feeding, visiting Paddington Farm next door, taking Maggie for walks, watering plants, planting out some plug and seedlings. Ady was starting to clear overgrown-ness around a compost heap and learning how to start and use the quad bike and the ride on mower.

Jill hatched the idea that she would return with Jon to London today for a couple of nights, leaving Shirley and us in charge so we split responsibilities between us and are unlocking the pool in the mornings, dealing with feeding, letting out and putting away of the chickens and various other things.

We had a quick swim, then back for Doctor Who before Jill & Jon came over for dinner – Ady did a curry. It was a really nice evening, far too much wine drunk and rowdy laughing and chatting but all very theraputic and just good to feel at home and even be able to entertain (albeit in one of *their* cottages feeding them food that they had paid for anyway!).Shirley called in at 10ish with the pool key and joined us for a hot chocolate laced with Baileys and as we had no cream to go with our strawberries for dessert we used Baileys to dip them in too.

Sunday Ady got up early to unlock the pool and let the chickens out. I got up slightly later but still early for me and we headed over to set up breakfast. Perks of that being loads of leftover fruit and pastries for our own breakfast 🙂 so we brought some of that back for the kids who had just about got up having cleared up and sat chatting and plotting the rest of our year and beyond over breakfast.

Ady did more clearing and chopping down while I moved over all the leaflets that are likely to be of interest to people visiting here – weeding out attractions in Dorset, Devon and other too far away for people to travel if they have paid the premium rate to stay in Glastonbury. I cut down an old leaflet stand and found a hook and created a tailor made leaflet rack 🙂
” alt=”” />

After lunch I spent some time with Shirley getting a handover of the office for tomorrow morning. I also spent lots of time today snuggled on the sofa with Davies and Scarlett watching TV or chatting, stuff I’ve missed terribly the last couple of weeks.

We had a swim and used the steam room, first time the kids have ever been in one. Then we came back, Ady got a roast dinner cooking and we all watched Countryfile and ate together, just like a Sunday back at home. We did some good, bad, learnt for Evergreen for the WW blog but I’ve not finished that post so the rest of it will have to wait for me to fill in the gaps.

Coming back here did feel a bit wussy in many ways but we are still learning new skills; Jill now has chickens and is getting goats later this week and she is such a valuable contact – business and eco-wise as well as being a good friend now. Plus sleeping in the van for for solid weeks was fine but I can’t deny it’s good to sleep in an actual bed and have the luxury of cooking our own food at our own times, whilst now actually having to pay for the cottage or the food :).

After dinner Tarly and I put the chickens away then we rang my parents and caught up with them, I’ve ordered Ady’s birthday presents and all is well with the world 🙂

A quick post because it is late o’clock AND I have a real bed to sleep in tonight so I really should be making the most of it not hanging out on the internet!

We left Evergreen this morning, with the usual round of well wishes, offers to come back any time, huge thanks for all our help and genuine good luck for the future. Pete said to stay in touch and if he could ever help us out or we wanted any advice to contact him. Emma had already left for market but I sent her a text to say thanks for everything.

We were away just after 9am and it was the smoothest 100 miles we’ve ever done, in about 2.5 hours we were pulling into Glastonbury :). We decided that as we will be fo-going our days off this weekend (we are here for 10 days, at most we will get 2 days off, probably only 1, another of those not really a WWOOF host things but worth it for the rest of the deal) we would have a couple of hours to ourselves before heading to Jill’s. The kids voted for KFC for lunch so we went in there but they both left most of their food, Ady and I enjoyed it though. Then we went for a wander round the charity shops of Glastonbury and for once it was quite bargaintastic with Davies getting a cool T shirt and a pair of jeans for £1 each, Ady getting a pair of Levis for a £1 (he has lost a trouser size so was needing some more jeans), and nice fleeces each for Ady and I. Oh and five books for a £1 too, so that was bargaintastic 🙂

We then arrived at Jill’s to hugs and kisses all round from Jill and Shirley, were shown round at all that has been done since we left a month ago, given some jobs to do over the next week and then sent off with £100 to get food shopping “and make sure you buy Baileys!” 🙂

We’re staying in Tor View this weekend, a small cottage with just the one bedroom so the kids are on a sofa bed in the lounge but they are happy, we do have a bath though :). Shopping away and some stuff brought in from the van I stuck a wash on and then the kids and I had half an hour in the swimming pool before we all went over to Jill & Jon’s for a barbecue. There was a terrific thunderstorm so we actually ate inside and caught up on all each others news over burgers and cider while Davies and Scarlett caught up on some Maggie-worship (their dog).

Back at the cottage we had baths and hot chocolate with aforementioned Baileys and now it’s bedtime. Tomorrow morning we are helping serve breakfast to the 12 Italian guests they have staying here. It’s a varied life 😉

Today we were to Pete’s parents as they had some ‘jobs’ for us to do. They are really nice folk, slightly bewildered at what has happened to their farm after they split it three ways between the three sons and ‘retired’ from it and slightly saddened that none of the family closeness they grew up with has continued into this next generation. Oh and very worried about how hard Pete and Emma work for so little financial gain and the rather dodgy welfare of the animals here because they just don’t have enough time or money to look after them properly 🙁

First thing we fed the animals, tried to coax a poorly veal calf to it’s feet and failed, caught all the ducks and took them into the pen in the field Ady and Scarlett built yesterday then we headed over there. Davies has not been feeling well since yesterday and he’s been a bit quiet and pale today 🙁 . We had a cup of tea with Pete’s parents and then headed off with his Dad into the field with shovels. They have set up a drainage system in the field to capture all the water to go into the ditches around the edges and fill concrete troughs for the animals as there is no plumbing there to save them having to bring water in. The system was put in about 35 years ago by Pete’s grandad when he was still the farmer and back then would have been dug out twice a year to keep it running. As Pete’s Dad – Roy – was telling us today back then a farmer would have been out every day mending a fence or clearing a ditch or fixing a gate somewhere on his land, in addition to looking after his animals, thus keeping on top of it. This hasn’t been done for about 6 years and so it totally blocked up and flooded.

The job was clearing the clay, soil and silt-y water away from the two areas of drain and digging the ditches deeper, while standing in knee high mud in the rain. Not terribly fun 🙁 We managed to do two, which included climbing over a barbed wire fence, getting covered to waist height in mud, soaked with rain and splashed with more mud, Roy lost his welly and we had to dig it out then practically haul him back over the fence as he has a replacement hip and is 67. I was close to useless really as not able to do much in the way of digging but getting just as wet and muddy as the men.

We went back for lunch where Ady had to strip off in the utility room and was given a shirt (was Roy’s but wrong size bought so 15 inch collar (Ady is 16.5) that barely buttoned up and a pair of their youngest (fattest) son Timothy’s trousers that don’t fit him anymore which Scarlett could have climbed into with Ady they were so big. Coupled with the fetching mud splatters on his face and head he has probably never been more gorgeous 😆 😆 The kids had spent the morning doing some painting, watching some TV and eating lots of junk food that Pete’s Mum – Brenda had kept bringing them out; crisps, sweets, chocolates :rolls:

After lunch the kids had to come with us as Brenda was going out and Roy just showed us where 3 more blocked drains were and then had to go back to work – he drives a school bus. As the kids looked utterly miserable in the back seat of the car with a 3 hour afternoon just sitting there watching us ahead of them, Ady and I were slipping about in the mud, still wet and cold from the morning and with the prospect of at least one more day of the same, possibly two (technically we’d work Friday and Saturday) and the only other potenial job mentioned was Roy driving Ady around in the bucket of the tractor up high so he could chainsaw off overhanging tree branches, the rain started again.

I decided enough was enough, had a complete tantrum about it all, sat in the car crying and then put to everyone my suggestion that we call it a day and move on early to Jill’s. The kids were instantly in agreement – in fairness they asked to only do two weeks here and agreed to stay longer when we came up with plans to split up and work in pairs but we only managed that on the first day this week. Ady took longer to persuade; he is really keen to finish what he starts and has something of a personal endurance test type mentality to the more challenging hosts, getting a kick out of saying he saw it through. I explained my reasoning that we didn’t leave our lives behind back home to sacrifice all sorts of things to dig ditches in the rain, I was very concerned about the safety aspect of the chainsawing plan and the kids were gaining nothing from sitting in a house watching TV or sitting in the back of the car watching us work like idiots. I have always known we would encounter difficult tasks and testing hosts but if the work is relevant to what we want to do ourselves and we are learning something then I am prepared to do it; like at Steward Wood when I did indeed carry loads of wood up and down hills because I could see a point to it. He was persuaded 🙂

So we went back to the farm and explained we’d been rained off, made them laugh with tales from the morning and the crazy lunchtime attire for Ady, then Ady went to clean the car out from our muddy clothing and I finished a paperwork job I had started yesterday for them. We’d debated what reason to give for leaving early. I felt we either came clean which could offend, or have them try to find us something else to do, neither of which appealed or we could come up with an excuse. As Pete and Emma are not actually WWOOFing hosts and we have been their first taste of WWOOFers it would possibly have been better to be honest and explain that we didn’t feel work like that was a fair exchange for a space to park Willow in their field and some reheated pasties they didn’t sell at market today for dinner and if we were leaving *really* early I may well have done so but we have already been upfront about the fact that most WWOOFer wouldn’t work the sort of 11 or 12 hour days we are doing but that we are prepared to because a) we are learning so much and b) they are working them alongside us so it’s a genuine reflection of their job rather than us being used as slave labour. But we already know we don’t want to be farmers as such, we have given up a lot to realise a dream this year and the kids being bored while we slog our guts out is not part of that dream and I am very conscious of our physical fitness not being up to that sort of task as nearly 40 and nearly 50 and I don’t want to put our health or safety at risk – either long term or to put us out of action for subsequent hosts. An injury picked up today digging a ditch or chainsawing tomorrow could seriously jeopardise the next month or two’s worth of planned hosts and I’m not prepared to take those sorts of risks. An 18 year old wanting to be a farmer or finding a cheap way of travelling the UK may well be totally up for such jobs though.

I hope all the hosts I have been arranging with have understood that Davies & Scarlett are part of our plan, that we are not spring chickens happy to graft for 8 hours a day in exchange for a bed and grub but are genuinely expecting something more in return for our manpower. It would be too easy to feel obliged to do the jobs and we left our lives behind because we wanted to be freer, not *more* incarcarated!

So I took an imaginary phone call from my Dad regarding the tenants, who incidentally have not paid on time AGAIN! (Due on 1st May, they paid in the office today – fuckers! which likely scuppers my birthday present plans for Ady unless the agent gets the money turned around very quickly and in our account) and said that we were going to leave tomorrow to go to our next host via home to visit the house and speak to the tenants about the rent getting paid on time in future. I said we wouldn’t have gone if we were letting them down with a market or something but as we were just doing odd jobs now I hoped they understood. They were fine and I am sure we will be waved off tomorrow with well wishes and open invitations to return as in exhange for a huge amount of experience and knowledge sharing and teaching we have put in some very long hours, been willing and hardworking and really sold them on the idea of WWOOFers. I really do wish them well and think they are lovely people, if rather misguided and chasing their tails constantly.

After dinner we went back to the van and I rang Jill who is delighted at the prospect of us arriving tomorrow as Johnny (her husband) is home for the weekend and was sad about missing us arriving on Monday after he’s gone again so will be really pleased to have us there. We’re taking a smaller cottage with a double bed and sofa bed (but it does have a bath!!!) for the weekend as they are full, then moving to a bigger cottage on Monday.

When we were first planning this our initial idea was to work for 6 weeks then have 1 off at a campsite. Financially I suspect that won’t make sense although we do have a couple of empty weeks pencilled in to the diary, but staying at Jill’s again four weeks on will be a good compromise and restorer for us.

First thing this morning we were lamb catching. Three of the lambs we had brought over last night were not with the right ewes so we rounded them up, put them in the boot and drove them back to the field to be reunited with their mothers.
” alt=”” />

There were three ewes waiting though – two went on one ewe, the third on another and the last ewe carried on looking lost so we knew we had another lamb here mistakenly. Pete later identified it, we caught it and that one went back to the field too.

The ewe we had thought was the mother of the twin lambs turned out to not have any milk (or any teeth) so will be mutton this time next week but needed some attention, as did another ewe in the barn as both had the start of foot rot, so we caught them, trimmed their hooves, sprayed them with iodine and gave them a shot of ABs.

” alt=”” />

Our next task was catching the three hens which we bought at market yesterday and putting them in a crate, then mucking out the container they had been stashed in as a chicken shed. It had what appeared to be years (but would have at least been months) worth of old bedding and waste, nearly a foot tall. It was very stinky! Ady mostly shovelled while I mostly barrowed it to the muck heap but every so often he came out to breathe and I had a go. Scarlett quite enjoyed emptying the barrow so she came along and helped for a bit declaring it ‘fun!’, where can she get that attitude from I wonder?! ;), then both kids helped with the chucking buckets of water in to sluice it out.

Ady and Pete moved it into the field with the tractor and then Ady and Scarlett built a run around it and made a start on moving chickens and ducks over into it.

” alt=”” />

Davies and I donned our white coats and headed into the cutting room to pack meat, except Davies wasn’t feeling too well, he’d been floppy all morning so in the end he retired to the van for a lie down. He did actually manage an earlyish night tonight so hopefully it was early mornings and late nights finally catching up with him and knocking him out rather than anything more sinister.

” alt=”” />

I packed and priced various bits of pig, went through the existing meat and repacked and redated some that was in messy bags from going out to market several times. Then I managed to catch Pete up with his sausage making and packed and labelled up all of those. Somewhere in there we had lunch too but I’ve lost track of at which point!

After dinner Pete rang his neighbour who was cutting silage to see if we could go along and watch as it is a real feat of manpower and machinery and a big part of farming. Silage is the cut grass with moisture still in covered and left to dry then used to feed animals. It was indeed a very slick operation with a tractor and attachment cutting the grass, another tractor with massive attachment raking all the cut grass into rows;
” alt=”” />
Then along comes a machine which picks up all the cut grass and shoots it out of an arm into a tractor with trailer attached which runs alongside;
” alt=”” />
There were four tractors and trailers operating for this purpose, one alongside the tractor, one arriving to take over as that one became full and the other two coming to and going from the farm loading and unloading.

We watched for ages to get our heads round the different parts of the process then followed a trailer load to the farm to see what happens next.

Each load is tipped onto a massive heap which is then constantly worked with a couple of tractors / diggers to roll it out and get all the air out of it, flatten it down and compact it before it is covered to ferment.
” alt=”” />

This is the first cut of the year, they will get three or possibly even four in and each cut will be spread in a layer on top of the one before with the plastic covering replaced each time so that there is a multi-layered year supply for next years feed.

We also learnt about slurry (waste poo and wee) which is kept in pits on big farms and used to spread as fertlizer to get the grass growing again asap for the next crop of sileage in a couple of months time. The liquid is pumped out of the pit and sprayed, the solid muck goes in yet another tractor attachment and is spread. Very efficient the way the animal waste goes to help grow the animal feed.

Back at the farm we had showers to wash meat, animal poo and various other assorted stuff off ourselves before retiring to the van.

This week we have decided to split Davies and Scarlett up to spend time with one or other of us. Partially because we feel they have not got the most out of this hosting (not their faults) so want them to learn as much as they can in the final week and think the best way of making that happen is to have one to one time with one or other of us, partially because I miss the kids as I know I’m not having as much quality time chatting with them as I usually get and Ady has identified that as one of his key objectives for the year was more time with the kids yet he doesn’t feel he’s managing it and partially because they have been spending literally every waking moment with each other and although they are doing just fine with that I thought the opportunity to actually miss each other for a few hours would be a nice change.

So today Scarlett was with me and Davies was with Ady, tomorrow we swap over, Thursday we swap back and Friday we swap over again. We talked to Pete and Emma about it and explained what we were doing and why and they are quite happy with the idea. So today Scarlett and I went off to market with Pete, while Davies stayed here at the farm with Ady. Their day consisted of tidying the yard, more turd polishing 😉 but they both enjoyed each others company and Davies was very enthusiastic about the conversations they’d had, apparently they’d talked about things like how Ady was feeling when he and I got married, things that embarrass him, things that have made him scared and so on. The sorts of conversations that have cropped up naturally between the kids and I over the years – a lot of my parenting is giving them examples of how I felt / dealt with / messed up / got right a certain situation so they have heard many of my failings and triumphs 🙂 but that haven’t necessarily come up with Ady and the kids, and the sort of conversation that Davies really enjoys.

Scarlett and I had to be up at 630am, which hurt both of us lots. I had to really struggle to get her out of bed and Ady would definitely have given up at her plaintive pleading not to make her get up, pleeeeeeeease Mumma, I caaaaan’t, don’t maaaaaake me. I was firm, insisted, gave her biscuits for breakfast and explained that getting up early for market is currently quite a big part of our eventual plans, as would be getting up to feed animals, deal with lambing, calving, milking, whatever and that if it is too hard for her then that is fine, we need to scrub it off our list but she had to try it at least once and then decide at the end of today whether it had been worth the sacrifice of an early start. I said if she could say this evening that she regretted having gotten up and it was something she never wanted to do again then she never would have to, but if at the end of today she could say it had been tough to get up but worth it then she would know that and be reminded of it next time she struggled to get up early for something. This evening I asked her and she said it had been worth it 🙂

The market today was in Hatherleigh, a small market town (there seem to be little else in Devon ;)) a fairly short drive away. We parked up, set up the stall (two marquees, a table, a chiller, all the meat and sausages, pies and pasties), donned our pinnies, wrote our whiteboards and smiled 🙂

” alt=”” />

Scarlett totally perked up and was a joy to have around, chatting to me, helping to work out change for customers, asking questions and being the perfect poster for child for Home Ed the twice I answered the ‘no school today then?’ question with more than a cursory shake of the head. She went off round the market several times on her own, finding her way back and even locating the toilets, stopping to watch which one a woman came out of because she can’t read the signs to say Ladies or Gents and spent ages and ages in the poultry auction rooms where they were selling various chickens and bantams, ducks, geese, pigeons, peacocks and other birds. At one point she came back and very seriously told me she’d bid on and won a lot of ducklings – she really had me believing her! 😆

Pete and I didn’t spent much time together on the stall as he was watching the chicken auction (and bought three hens for a quid each, laying one year olds that will pay for themselves in a weeks worth of eggs!) and the house clearance auction (and bought a double drainer sink for the campsite shower and toilet for four quid) and doing some networking with other stall holders and market traders and I was off with Scarlett around the market a couple of times too.

We were done by 2pm so packed up – I was pleased to as although it had been nice to spend the time with Tarly, Pete and I had some interesting chats and it was good to have another visit to a market, it was bloody freezing this morning and very, very windy. I was definitely not wearing enough clothes to stand around despite having three layers and an apron!

We had fun catching the three chickens which had escaped from their cardboard box and were sitting in the van cab having pooed all over the seats so I had to keep them contained on the drive home. We caught up with Ady and Davies and then went in for a late lunch.

This afternoons task was heading to the field of sheep nearby to collect ten doubles and five singles (a double is a ewe with two lambs, a single a lamb with just one) which is way less straightforward than it sounds with two children, sheep and lambs who were not sprayed to id them as they lambed out in the field and of course the fact we are dealing with sheep!

We rounded them up and into the lane, then spent about 90 minutes trying to watch them to see which lambs went to which ewes, then catch them as pairs or trios and get them in the trailer. Oh and the ewes had to be a certain age (four teeth). Cue much hilarity with Ady doing two full body slam dives to catch lambs, one of which was pointless as when Pete checked the ewe’s teeth she was too old anyway, the other was a true comedy gold moment as I then tripped over Ady, landed on top of him and neither of us could get up! So, all covered in sheep poo but still quite gooey eyed over how cute lambs are we finally had our full quota in the trailer and were able to herd the rest back into the field and return to the farm. A local farmer came to look at them this evening and has bought them all for very good prices so it was worth the chaos!

By then it was pretty much dinner time so we went in, ate with Pete and Emma and their younger son Luke, watched some crap TV, had baths and returned to Willow for stories and an earlyish night.