keeping us on our feet

what a day today has been!

This morning we got up, breakfasted, packed the van up and headed over for a cup of tea and a goodbye with Denise & Glyn. Davies and Scarlett had drawn pictures and written thank you notes for them – featuring Kim the dog and Billy the bull to take over. They trumped us with a photo of the farm & view, a very touching thank you card for all we had done and wishing us well on our adventures and making us promise to stay in touch and come back to visit – oh and £3 each ‘pocket money’ for the kids! Such lovely people 🙂 All that gardening is forgiven!

We finally left with hugs and well wishes and waving and were off. We wanted to stop at Trago Mills as it was on the way and we had a shopping list of things to get including shoes for Davies (his fell apart at Paddington Farm so he’s been using crocs or wellies but that doesn’t really cut it for being out in weather that isn’t extremes), jeans for both kids who have both had a growth spurt – Scarlett’s were all too tight round the waist, Davies’ all too short, and neither of them had a pair which didn’t have holes in the knees or ingrained mud. We originally came away with china and glass plates and bowls from home but they are heavy in the back of the van, a nusiance to move about and just too big and bulky so we are sending them home with my parents at the weekend and wanted to get melamine versions. We also needed some motoring bits – antifreeze, lead replacement treatment and automatic transmission fluid. Trago Mills is horrid, a big discount style store selling absolutely *everything* and full of people but it does have very easy parking and everything we needed and was along our route so we spent nearly 2 hours there crossing everything off our list and despite spending all of this weeks’ budget in one go we did only get what we had set out to buy :). We got lunch from the bakery and sat in the sunshine eating and watching the peacocks there.

The route should have been straightforward but satnav took us over a very steep single track hill and back down again and at the point when the temperature gauge had hit red we saw a sign for 16% incline steepness of hill. I’m not sure who was hotter – Ady or Willow! 😆 She was fine though and she definitely cooled down again quicker than he did ;).

We hit the small town the host is in but drove up and down the road three times failing to find the farm so I rang to ask directions and got an answerphone with a message to say it was full and no more calls could be taken. Gulp. This is the host who had forgotten she’d booked us when I rang to confirm the other week because my email bounced back, so I was starting to question whether she even existed, let alone had a farm we could WWOOF at! Eventually we pulled over and walked up and down, stopping to knock on a door and ask in the end. We were directed to it, drove in, I got snarled at by a neighbour and a builder told us she had ‘popped out for an hour’. We parked up and looked round – pigs, ducks, chickens, guinea pigs, rabbits etc. a caravan with hook up and a nice, if very tatty set up. Karen then arrived, huddled us off down the field with her to say she was having dreadful trouble with her neighbour (it sounds like all out war!), was going on holiday on Saturday and had decided it wasn’t fair to have us there without her to show us anything so she had arranged for us to go to her friends up the road instead – the ones who could teach us some butchery. She would however like us to come back each night and stay there so the neighbour doesn’t do anything to her pigs. She then jumped in her car and told us to follow her, barely waiting for us on all the sharp bends and twisty roads and hills and took us up to said friends. Introduced us, bitched a bit more about the neighbour and then left!

Once we had got over all that we introduced ourselves properly to Pete and Emma, the farmers here – Evergreen Farm and had easily the best host tour we’ve had. We met the chickens, ducks, turkeys, horses, pigs, calves, sheep, dogs. Were shown the fields, barns, sheds, brooders for chicks and ducklings, round the house – which is 3 old portakabins / ex classrooms hitched together to form a rather sprawling house, told where we could do washing, have baths, find everything in the kitchen, watch TV, play pool, help ourselves to everything. Shown where to park the van on a spot with hook up and water and checked we are definitely ok to sleep in the van and promised a bed in the house if we want it.

They sell meat and eggs, at farmers markets and to order, the unsold meat then comes back and is made into pies and pasties which are also sold at farmers markets. They do slaughter of poultry here and take other livestock to the abbatoir weekly, collecting the hung meat a week later to bring back and butcher here, pack up and sell.

We will be doing any or all of the following apparently: killing, butchering, making sausages, packing up, baking pies and pasties, driving to markets and helping to sell, feeding and looking after livestock, moving animals about the farm.

Ady and I went to sort the van out, the kids went to find some treehouses they’d been told about and went so far they had to be brought back on the back of the quad bike for dinner, we had a lovely chaotic meal with them, met their sons who both live there – one in the house and one in a static with his girlfriend. One is a carpenter and one a bricklayer. There is a daughter but she is away in Ireland at the moment. They also have a friend and her two daughters – aged 8 and 17 staying who live fairly close to us in Sussex but are planning to move down so are staying to see how they get on and are also helping out.

After dinner the kids went out to play on the quad bike with the two daughters while we helped clear up dinner and chat before all having baths (hurrah for baths!) and I even had a glass of wine with the friend. I suspect this will be hard work – we’re working Tuesday to Saturday and then having Sunday & Monday off this week, with some early starts and late evenings but they seem really nice people and this is just the sort of set up we hoped we’d find with all the relevant skills we want to learn and experiences we want to have in one place.

I’ve no idea quite what will happen with the actual host we are supposed to be with – she is more of a loose acquaintance with Emma & Pete who we are now with, than the ‘friend’ she made herself out to be. We are hoping to be left alone here and I guess we owe her nothing so are quite able to say sorry, but we’re staying here!