We’ve had a great day today, loads more green building :). We started with chicken feeding and breadmaking (Ady chicken feeding, me breadmaking). The kids came into the house where I was breadmaking and while Davies played with the boys Scarlett came and did some breadmaking with me. The kids then disappeared off for the entire day, finally coming back at 515pm asking if it was nearly lunchtime! 😆

We worked with Wilf and Beth, listening to music and chatting about all sorts of things while mixing up clay render, stapling chicken wire over straw bales and then applying the first ‘slip layer’ of render to the wall of the house. We’re really getting an understanding of how these houses are constructed and although we’d still need loads of guidance and help to do it ourselves it is fab to grasp how they go up and what is underneath – they are built in the same was as Ben Law’s house which most people have seen on Grand Designs.

Beth is a celebrant, which is something I have thought I might like to do one day so I spent some time chatting to her about that and she has lent me a load of her paperwork and work on that to read through and is very encouraging about that :).

We had lunch and then did another couple of hours on the rendering before finishing for the day. Ady and I picked some salad and greens for dinner, which was communal today as happens here once a week. It was the massive courgette that Scarlett found last week and we cooked as a stuffed marrow. Our contribution was new potatoes cooked by Ady and a cake cooked by me. Last week for communal dinner Frankie made a cake which utterly failed to rise and was only really saved by it’s butter icing so the bar had been set pretty low although I did joke I could still attempt to limbo under it! I went for an equal weight of butter, sugar, flour and eggs batter and thanks to it being barley flour it was slightly on the heavy side but as we were having it with custard it being more pudding-y than cake-y went down and storm and *everyone* had seconds and raved about it 🙂

Dinner was really nice, lots of chatter with everyone there and we got talking further about unschooling, parenting generally and autonomy and other such stuff. I recommended some of my favourite books on the subjects and we talked about things like pocket money, chores, reward and punishment and so on. Davies and Scarlett have proved very popular here with the children and the adults so are thankfully being glowing examples of what I believe in. They said thank you for dinner as they left the table tonight and Jo went after them to thank them for doing so. Davies explained that he has helped prepare dinner before and knows how much effort goes into it and also that it made him feel good when everyone thanked him afterwards so he likes to extend the same back when someone makes a meal for him which was the perfect answer really 🙂 It’s been lovely having them all say how much they’d like to stay in touch with us all :). This has been somewhere where we have really felt like we have brought something in return for what we will take away over and above the WWOOFing relationship – the spending time with the people here has enriched our lives and taught us new skills in just the same way as we have given them new ideas and things to think about. It is a very open and supportive environment where ideas are constantly tossed about, everyone is open to suggestions and input from each other and all viewpoints and opinions are valued and appreciated. I like it here a lot :). The other three have been slower to feel that way but I think all four of us will leave a little bit of ourselves here, just as we have at a few other favourite hosts.