Today we spent the morning with Chris & Owen moving brash heaps. There are five of us WWOOFing at the moment – us, Ray the guy from Taiwan and a localish couple called Amy & Paul who are here to see if WWOOFing is for them. Amy keeps disappearing to cry and Paul is so wet and feeble Scarlett could probably out work him so I suspect it might not be ;). That is a bit harsh I’m sure but they have annoyed me today by being rubbish and having too closely held id.eas about what to expect rather than going with what happens and Amy irritated me by harping on about animal cruelty, how cows milk is a large amount pus and killing and eating animals is as bad as child abuse. If I can be open minded and try new ways of living I think other people should do the same and the child abuse comment felt like it was aimed at me which given she has no children and has paid no attention at all to any of the many very cool kids living here (hasn’t interacted with one single child on any occassion as far as I’ve seen) makes me feel she is likening kids to animals rather than the other way round… Oh and she left a load of mess in the bath after her shower which pissed me off too. Hills, crazy work loads and vegetarian food I can handle, idiots I struggle with rather…
There is a friend of some of the people here too staying who helped with the work this morning so with such a crowd we got loads done. Lunch was a bit rubbish today, very watery soup which looked like it wouldn’t even have any bread to go with it but some arrived just at the last minute. Then a crowd came up the hill of visiting mums and HE kids including Lia and her three girls who we know from various Green Fairs at the Sustainability Centre. I’d texted her to say we were around and would like to meet up so it was great to see them and the kids were really happy to see her twin girls, Nikita and Marley :).
This afternoon was more wood working, moving some large logs down a hill and splitting them then chopping into logs to be stacked on a pallet. Ady has done loads of splitting before so he was doing that, Ray was chopping, while Amy, Paul and I were on getting them down the hill duty. Paul using a sack trolley, Amy a barrow and me carrying or controlled rolling. I did 3 loads and was struggling so I got put on stacking duty and then Seth came to nick a WWOOFer to help with dinner so I very happily volunteered for that.
Seth and I had a great laugh and chat in the kitchen – we’re coming back for his birthday party in a few weeks time and we’ve been invited up to their house for dinner on Friday with Davies invited for a sleepover with their eldest son, Ash, who he has really clicked with. I think knowing we’ve got a set date planned to return will make leaing at the weekend a lot easier to cope with. Dinner was fab, sausages made with nuts and spices, roast spuds and squash and gravy. 🙂 Missing meat lots but tasty food is a half decent substitute.
The bath house lighting was rather rubbish tonight as Ray did it and he has not quite grasped the fire lighting technique of needing smaller sticks to make kindling, but he’s learning :). It feels funny to be so at home here after such a short time and know the ropes. The work is super hard but in terms of the people and feeling at home the bar has been set incredibly high for the rest of the year.
We did get our bath and persuaded the kids in tonight as they’d not bathed for a couple of days. Davies and Scarlett have been invited to the Exeter Home Ed group with the other HE kids tomorrow but we’re working with Ollie for the day tomorrow helping him prepare a camping area for a course he’s doing on nature awareness and he’s promised to give us a condensed version of the course so the kids are keen to be around for that and I think they’ll stay here instead.
I really need to blog over on WW but I think it will have to be a round up post of the whole place rather than the daily accounts I’m managing here.
Nadine wondered if it was Ash the kids had particularly clicked with 🙂 Really glad you are enjoying it so much, what a fabulous start to the year.
Comment by em — 15 March 2011 @ 11:54 pm