One word? When seven would do…

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 🙂
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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.
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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.

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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.

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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.

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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;
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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;
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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.
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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 🙂

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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.

Another lie in this morning, until the sun shining in between the tiny gap of the bottom of the curtain and the start of the window finally did the job of rousing me that Ady being up boiling kettles and two children sitting on me had started but been unable to finish :).

We did some washing line maintenance as it has been really windy here and the line needed more props, but all yesterdays washing is now dry and put away :). Pete came over as the campers were packing up so he collected money from them and Ady asked if we could borrow a car for a couple of hours. All of the various vehicles on the farm are covered by a sort of fleet insurance for any driver and they had said we were welcome to borrow any of the cars any time.

We listened to Popmaster on the radio and had a long chat about what we are thinking about doing once this year is over, but that’s a subject for another post once we’ve honed it a bit more. Then we took a car and drove to nearby Launceston, nearby but in Cornwall across the border. We went to Tescos for various supplies to top the van up; things like bread and milk, stuff like cereal and biscuits that we keep for the kids when they get hungry if we are given food they are less keen on and some really nice food for a picnic; fruit, fancy crisps, olives, pie and so on. We also treated the kids to the latest HP dvd just out, which had them both ecstatic, particularly just 2 days after getting Pirates of the Caribbean on dvd too.

We had a quick drive round the town but everything seemed closed, it being a bank holiday, so we headed for a nearby lake which I’d driven past and been told was a nice walk. But when we pulled in we realised we had no cash and it was a pay and display carpark so we gave up and came back to the farm to walk in the woods, which was the kids first vote anyway.

We put the shopping away, packed a bag with the picnic food and headed into the woods. We got side tracked by a path which looked like it might lead somewhere interesting we’d not been yet but ended up being a long and windy path to the path we always walk down. By this point we were all really hungry and it was about 3pm so as soon as we found a patch of grass in the sunshine we stopped and ate.

We then had a lovely wander around, chatting to the various people we came across also walking, pausing for quite a while by a bridge so the kids could play in the stream.

Then we headed back. The kids went in to ask if they could watch their dvd on the TV in the house, followed not long afterwards by Ady who was bored of my being on my laptop catching up on blogging and giving monosyllabic replies to him ;), so I had a lovely hour all to myself :). I wandered over just before dinner was ready and we had a nice couple of hours with Pete & Emma eating veal casserole, home made apple and rhubarb pie and chatting while watching the kids dvds. They were asking us what we think we will do at the end of our year and we were chatting about their future plans. It’s much more relaxed with just us here and I think we will have a nice last week and actually get to know them a bit better without everyone else here.

We have planned to split Davies and Scarlett between Ady and I for the week so tomorrow Scarlett and I are off to market with Pete while Ady and Davies do stuff around the farm. I want to make sure they get the most out of being here before we move on.

This morning we all slept in til 9am – lovely 🙂 and very tricky when you live in a van as once one person is awake you pretty much all are. Ady had been sick last night (can’t decide if there is an issue with food here or just bad luck as I’d had an upset tummy the day before and of course my sickness last weekend too) so was feeling a bit delicate this morning.

We ate breakfast in the van and the kids did some writing and drawing letters to Wildlife Explorers – we decided yesterday that we would write to Wildlife Explorers who had asked us to stay in touch, and tell them what wildlife we had seen. We’re also planning to email Badgers with some photos and an update and send a newsletter to the neighbours in our street as we know they’d all love to hear from us and can pass it around. Scarlett started well but made a huge fuss about the writing but Ady helped her and she did really well in the end. Davies did an excellent job of writing and illustrating his note including getting out the bird book, looking up various birds and animals in the index and using the pictures to help him.

We’d just finished that when everyone from the house came over – Amanda, Gemma and Zoe to say goodbye as they were leaving, so hugs all round and lots of best wishes for the future, and Emma and Pete to say they were off out for a few hours so if we wanted to make use of the house, bath, washing machine, TV to feel free to do so.

So we did 🙂

We all had baths – I had a lovely long bath with bubbles and the kindle – bliss :), I put two washes on (now drying on our washing line), we watched the repeat of Britains Got Talent as the kids hadn’t seen it last night and I’d been telling them about a couple of the acts and the kids watched the Pirates of the Carribean bonus features disc. Then Pete & Emma came home so we sat and watched Evan Almighty with Pete while Emma went out for a run with a friend. A top Sunday afternoon film :).

When that ended we went out for our promised to Scarlett walk in the woods for a couple of hours. We didn’t see any wildlife but did have a lovely wander about, spotted some mushrooms and tried to identify them with our spotter book, chatted and talked about the week ahead,
what the next month has planned and how we’re looking forward to seeing friends.

Back at the house Emma & Pete said to help ourselves to food and cook for ourselves as they had eaten at lunchtime. We did sausage, bacon, eggs, potatoes and beans which was really nice. I am craving a good curry though – will definitely be on my list of dinner when we’re at Jill’ and cooking for ourselves. We came back to the van for stories (The Twits) and bed. Tomorrow we’re hoping to borrow a car and head into the nearest town for a look round. I need a charity shop trip too – all my jeans are falling down, I see why Barbara Good wore dungarees!

One of the other market traders that Emma and Pete regularly have a pitch next to at several of their markets is Dan the Fishman a rather colourful personality, well known at such events. He has gotten so busy and to coin a rather crazy phrase become a victim of his own success and is losing trade by being so busy serving one customer that the three waiting behind them get bored and wander off so Pete offered the services of Gemma, Amanda’s teenage daughter to help him out at Bideford Market in exchange for £6 per hour plus fish. Gemma however had other ideas once she’d met Dan the Fish man and flatly refused to do it, so Ady was asked if he’d step in. The £40 he earnt was handy as it can cancelled out the cost of having the mechanic out to look at Willow last week (£32), the fish fed us all (9 of us!) tonight for dinner and made a lovely change from sausages and Ady got to add yet another thing to his very long list of new experiences and things he has tried and done.
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So this morning we were all up and ready to go before 7am (urgh!), drove to Bideford, helped set up Dan the Fishman’s stall and Pete & Emma’s stall and then Davies, Scarlett and I left them all to it and had a couple of hours wandering around the town. We had a short list of things we wanted to get (clothes pegs, toaster bags, two camping chairs which having decided against bringing we have now decided we do want after all for sitting outside Willow when the sun shines) so we ticked everything off that, got some paper as the kids want to do some letters to various people and I treated the kids to a small present each – Davies found a Pirates of the Carribean dvd he’d been after for ages and Scarlett chose an activity book about animals – adventure for a year or not, they don’t change much :).

We went back to the quayside where the market was and I offered to help on Pete & Emma’s stall which was pretty busy, so Davies and Scarlett sat on the wall facing us and looked at the animal book while I sold pasties and sausages and Ady sold fish. We all had a good day sales-wise and really enjoyed the banter with customers and between the stalls :).

Back at the farm we tested out the chairs by sitting in the sunshine listening to the thunder rolling around while the kids sat in the van watching the DVD and drawing. We’ve had a nice evening in the house eating fish, drinking wine and watching TV with everyone. Amanda and Zoe go home tomorrow which will no doubt change the dynamic here for our final few days but there are less markets next week and of course no bank holidays so I think we’ll be more involved in animal stuff and D&S won’t need to put up with Zoe.

We now have two days off though – very precious as although we had time off last weekend it was with my parents and so slightly stressy. We’re planning lots of walking and sitting in the woods opposite the farm and some writing letters to various places – promised to Badgers, Wildlife Explorers, the neighbours in our street etc. and not waking up very early :).

We have filled our next two weeks after that too – one with a farm we were supposed to go to but cancelled on us before and after thinking we had a week with a community they have emailed to say one of the members is terminally ill and so they need privacy and time and can’t host any WWOOFers so we have arranged to go back to Jill’s for a week as she is only 10 miles away from the place we go to after that. It means Ady gets to spend his birthday at Jill’s in some luxury and we don’t need to try and find an emergency one week somewhere. Pete & Emma would more than happily have us for an extra week (or 100 extra weeks!) but we feel ready to move on again and we’ll get to spend some time at Paddington Farm that way too, so ticking lots of boxes for us all.

I didn’t blog yesterday because I had a bad day 🙁 Nothing major or serious, just one of those walls all four of us hit every so often, coupled with some PMT and a day of crappy jobs.

Ady was off to market, where he had a good day selling meat and pasties. When the kids and I got up and went in for breakfast there was a note on the side to say ‘gone to collect the car, carry on with the shed if we’re not back’ from Emma. ‘The Shed’ is one of those polishing a turd type jobs, which I bloody loathe. It’s the huge barn which houses four stables, two of which have piglets in, the cutting room, various little side rooms and a huge area of tools, workbenches and various garage-type stuff. Ady and I had already done a fair bit of work on clearing areas and to be honest I’d hoped we’d finished with it really.

Emma and Pete arrived back and I thought I was just doing some time filling until Pete had fed the animals and was ready for my help in the cutting room but I ended up shed tidying until about 3pm. Davies and Scarlett spent some time watching TV – the telly is on *constantly* here, even if no one is watching it, which does my head in. Then they came to play outside for a bit, but I felt for them as I wasn’t doing anything they could really help with, although Davies did sweep up for me.

I went in for a cup of tea and then came back out and decided I’d had enough. I am prepared to do the crappy work that is relevant to farming or the type of host we are staying with – I’ll muck out animals quite happily for example and I am also happy to do our share of cooking or other housekeeping related stuff but this was one of those tasks I was learning nothing from, getting filthy dirty and pissed off with the promise of no more than a cheese sandwich for lunch while Davies & Scarlett bumbled around looking for something to entertain themselves. So I went in and spoke to Emma and said I was prepared to blitz it all into one place and sweep up but sorting through tools I have no ideas of the purpose for or trying to clear up stuff that may or may not be destined for the tip was beyond me (or beneath me ;)). I got free rein to do what I wanted with it all, a corner pointed out that I could shove everything into and then spent about 2 hours doing that with a vengence and had the whole thing cleared.

I sat in the sunshine with the kids for a while chatting which was nice before going to find out what they wanted me to do next and was asked to muck out the piglets! Which is where Ady found me, ankle deep in piglets and pig poo in a really bad mood!

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I ranted at him for a while and he came and helped me finish up, we packed up some bacon ready for markets and then were done for the day so we walked across the road into the woods with the kids. Emma and Pete are really desperate for us to stay and I know we are helping them enormously, we are learning huge amounts and from a helping us decide what we want to do next, getting a really good grounding in all sorts of skills and really feeding our imagination with ideas this is a fantastic place to spend time. But, it is incredibly frustrating as they are so very disorganised, totally broke (they have 4 cars and only ever fill them up with petrol cans because they have run out, they live from week to week off the market proceeds and are constantly running out of animal feed, people food (hence cheese sandwiches) )and work crazy 14 hour days. The kids are not getting enough from this host and are losing Ady and I for too much of each day as we are busy learning or helping so although we are pleased to still have another week here we are also pleased to have got to two thirds of the way through. Amanda and Zoe leave on Monday which the kids are really pleased about as they are not at all keen on Zoe (neither am I) and she spends a lot of her time giving them grief about Home Ed and other such nonsense.

Anyway, we talked it all through, I got all my moaning off my chest and everyone felt much better – hard not to in such a gorgeous location. We came back for dinner, which was home made lasagne and everyone was so nice to us about all we have done that they were either aware I was pissed off or had realised how rubbish the shed tidying job had been so all was well again. At bedtime I managed to kneel on a corner or the bed and broke a hinge so in one of those so bloody mad it’s funny moments Ady and I were crammed into one corner of Willow with the tiny screwdriver from our toolset and a torch trying to screw it back together having a whispered hissing rant at each other so as not to wake the kids at about 1am.

What larks!

Today has been much better all round – Ady has been with Pete, doing various bits around the farm and campsite – we have camping neighbours again this weekend, the kids have had a Zoe-free day as she has been with me and Amanda while we were at a local Royal Wedding Day event selling burgers, sausages, bacon rolls, meat, pasties and sausage rolls.

We had a good day and took nearly £300 which is a lot of burgers and sausages! At one point Amanda had to run to the nearest supermarket for more rolls and we split open some sausages to hand shape some burgers when we ran out of those too.

Back at the farm we had an hour in the van chatting and catching up on each others days before dinner, followed by a story at bedtime and an early night all round as we’re off to another market tomorrow bright and early.

This morning we went to Holdsworthy Cattle market to sell some ewes and lambs. This meant getting them in the trailer, tagging the lambs ears – theoretically they should be tagged, one in each ear, shortly after birth but as sheep are notoriously bad for losing their ear tags most farmers only actually tag them if they are moving them off their land, and filling out the paperwork to move them. Since foot and mouth paperwork on transporting animals has been tightened up hugely, apparently the watch word is ‘bio security’ which means you should be able to trace meat back to birth and every step in between.

I’ve never been to a livestock auction so that was really interesting. We unloaded our sheep into two pens – one ewe and two lambs, two ewes and two lambs and then walked round to see what else was for sale. In the sheep area there were various lots; ewes and lambs sold for stock, ‘fat lambs’ which are sold for ‘spring lamb’ meat, born back in August time last year, fattened up to make early lamb which goes for a premium price but costs more to rear so is all relative and ‘killing ewes’ which are still sold as lamb up to about 2 years old although technically they are hoggit and then mutton.

We had a look at the cattle up for auction too; a variety from week old calves (you can’t sell them any earlier than that), which would have just come off their mother this morning and will need formula feeding for a few weeks to come to 18 month old cattle. I learnt from Pete about meat and dairy breeds, which he prefers for veal and how he decides which to go for in terms of cost to rear versus cost of eventual sale.

We then nipped between the cattle and sheep auctions keeping an eye on both; the cattle were selling for very high prices so Pete didn’t bid on anything and actually his sheep reached a few quid more than he was expecting too, so it was a good auction. The auctioneers talk so fast, all with their own little catch phrases and sing song styles of talking – a really exciting atmosphere. Most of the animals went to dealers or slaughterhouses. The big slaughterhouses will buy animals to kill and butcher then sell the meat on, the dealers will travel all around the country buying and selling to make even just a few pounds per head on animals, moving them around the place depending on where supply and demand are.

Davies and Scarlett were not quite so interested in the finer points of the whole auction process so after about 90 minutes I walked across the road with them to the supermarket to get a cake each and give them a pep talk about letting Ady and I listen to Pete when he was talking to us about stuff even if it was not something they were interested in listening to as they both have a habit of deciding to talk to either Ady or I which is frustrating if we are both trying to listen. We are getting a great amount of knowledge and training here but some of it does go over their heads or is just discussed at a level they can’t quite grasp all of and we are not able to explain it to them there and then. A restorative gingerbread man each and a bit of a chat had everything rebalanced nicely though :).

Back at the market it was time to move on back to the farm via Pete’s parents and then lunchtime.

This afternoon I was in the cutting room, initially by myself, then with Pete and then with Ady and Pete, packing cuts of meat, labelling and mixing up sausage and burger mix. We made a huge stack of sausages and burgers from the veal the butcher had come and cut up yesterday including some experimental veal and stilton sausages which were very nice but need extra stilton in next time, as we cooked some up straight away for a taste test. I learnt about escalopes, ossa bucco (veal shin) and some other cuts and how they make their burgers here. I am itching to have a go with the sausage machine and hoping I might get a chance before the time here is up.

It is Pete & Emma’s wedding anniversary today so they were off out for a meal tonight and we offered to feed the animals this evening, which after cleaning down the cutting room and getting sorted meant it was a late night of nearly 8pm before we had finished, but it had been a pretty easy morning. Dinner for us was turkey curry and jacket potatoes which was in the oven ready for us and we got to eat and relax in the house with no one around for an hour or so before bed.

Tomorrow Ady is selling at market and I am in the cutting room packing and labelling. Depending on what cars are going where there might be room for a child to go to market with Ady so Davies will go as he is missing friends and I think could do with some one to one time with Ady.

This morning first thing we were herding sheep. Off to the field we took them to last week to drive them down the lane, select 3 to take to slaughter and then drive them back up the lane into the field again. I did running 🙂

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Back to the farm we had to shear their bellys and bums ready for slaughter, tag their ears and do the paperwork. We put a divider in the trailer and put a couple of pigs in the back to the go to the abbatoir too.

The rest of today wasn’t quite so interesting – the shed which has stables, the cutting room and various other areas in it is a complete tip and makes it hard for stuff to be stored between markets so the plan is to clear out and rearrange stuff to make the cutting room bigger, create a storage space with fridges and freezers for meat, shelves for all the market stuff and build a large commercial kitchen for the pie and pasty baking long term. Ady and I were tasked with clearing out what had been a tack room and a general crap room and now has chicks of various ages in brooders along with all sorts of other stuff, making as many good marquees out of various old and busted marquees and cleaning them down, clearing out a stable to create a storage space and generally moving things about.

One of those ‘I understand why it needs to be done but it’s frustrating because we’re not learning anything and it is hard work in exchange for just food’ type days. We seem to have at least one or two at every host and it is an understandable use of WWOOFers, but the sort of day that has you muttering under your breath 😆

So we shovelled poo from the stable, moved things around in wheelbarrows, battled with the marquees and power washer and probably achieved a far bit even if it felt rather like we’d just moved stuff around like a giant chessboard.

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In the evening I had a bath which was lovely – daily showers just aren’t the same to a bath addict 😉 and tomorrow we’re back doing more interesting stuff including a trip to a cattle market, more cutting room stuff and possibly some baking too.

The kids have mostly played today. They are a bit twitchy here really as they don’t feel they have much left to learn and I can see their point but having talked it all over they are happy to see the 3 weeks out here. Our next host was due to be a community which sounded interesting from the WWOOF listing but has contacted me to say we are welcome to go but they were worried that as they don’t have livestock, are not self sufficient and don’t use alternative energy they may not have much to teach us. As it was a two week hosting and they were basically offering gardening and weeding work we decided to rearrange so I have contacted two other hosts to ask for a week each instead. The second week has already come back with a yes – the host we were supposed to be at in Glastonbury but she was ill, so at least if that falls through we can go to Paddington Farm or Middlewick. The first week is a community which has not replied yet but again we could go straight to Glastonbury and do Paddington or Middlewick, or we are close enough here to Steward Wood to do a week there if needs be. The week after that we are doing the turn round between bookings at a friend’s holiday cottage in Wales before heading up to Jan & Jonathan’s, where all four of us are ridiculously excited at the prospect of seeing friends – we are all really craving hanging out with people we know well.

Friday Market Day for me 🙂

Up super early and then a fair bit of hanging around waiting for Amanda to be ready. I hate that. I loathe hanging around waiting for people, particularly if I have gotten up earlier than I want to or have rushed myself. We brought her younger daughter Z with us too (I’m not super keen on her), drove to Tavistock and unloaded the car. I set the stall up while Amanda and Zoe moved the car as you have to park away from the market as the roads are pedestrian only after 9am. I enjoyed that bit of it, I like playing shop :).

The other stall holders were quite friendly, introducing themselves and chatting. The market is quite a small one, a pannier market with a variety of stalls. We had two tables and so set one out with meat joints, sausages and burgers and the other with pies and pasties.

Unfortunately it was a very slow day indeed with us only taking £100, which once stall fees, travel and the fact two of us had sat there from 8am til 4pm made it really not worth doing. We took it in turns to go and wander round the market, pop into the town for a walk round etc. and chatted but it still went very slowly indeed.

I offered to drive home as I’ve not driven since we left home so I enjoyed driving the 4×4 along the country roads – quite a nice drive :).

When we got back to the farm Mum & Dad had arrived so we all went in the house for a cup of tea and to introduce Mum & Dad to everyone. Pete & Emma recommended a local-ish pub for a meal so we went to Mum & Dad’s B&B to check in and then back to the pub for a meal. It was very lovely food and a really nice atmosphere plus fab to catch up with Mum & Dad and bring each other up to date on everything.

Even better was that when we came back to the van there was a note from Pete & Emma taped to the door to say they had decided to only do one market rather than two the following day and therefore as we’d worked so many hours already that week we could take Saturday, Sunday and Monday off 🙂 🙂

Saturday We decided to head for Bideford where Pete and Emma would be doing the market so we could go and see the set up and have a look round. There had been a rumour that a TV chef would be there on Saturday doing something for TV cameras and it sounded like it might be the bloke off One Man & His Campervan who we’d have been really pleased to meet and talk to so that was also a bit of a draw.

Mum & Dad got lost trying to get back from the B&B to us at the farm though so it was long past 11am when they arrived, by the time we’d had a cup of tea with them and walked around the farm a bit to show them round it was late and we didn’t get to Bideford until gone 2pm. We didn’t find the markets or the TV chef but we had a nice wander round, bought ourselves a length of washing line so we can set up a washing line now and some food in Morrisons for dinner.

We came back to the van and had a nice evening hanging out here sitting in the sunshine outside the van and having a picnic style dinner before Mum & Dad headed off to the B&B again.

Sunday We’d hidden mini eggs around the van before we went to sleep so the kids spent a riotous few minutes finding them – not many places to hide them really 😆 Mum & Dad arrived and we headed off to Okehampton for a few hours. We parked in the town and walked round, everything closed of course being Easter Sunday. We walked up the hill to the youth hostel and looked at the station and shop which was all open before walking back down the hill to try and find somewhere to get a sandwich. The two pubs were only selling roast dinners but we did find a little tearoom cafe which had sandwiches so we had lunch in there.

Back to farm for a couple more hours sitting in the sunshine and chatting before driving to the Village Inn again for dinner. Another nice evening and delicious food there, then Mum & Dad dropped us back, had a coffee with us and then said goodbye having decided to head straight for home on Monday morning rather than coming to see us as they were worried the journey would be long and trafficky.

It was really good to see them but hard to be hospitable when we live in a van. I was really aware it was a very expensive weekend for them, paying for their B&B and then taking us out for all those meals but we did offer to put the tent up and let them sleep in the van and to cook basic food in the van (although we don’t really have enough crockery and cutlery let alone oven space) – I think next time they visit we will have to plan better for mealtimes and of course they will have a better idea of what to expect.

I suddenly felt not very well but attributed it to having eaten far too much when I have not been used to big meals for weeks so went to bed but I woke a couple of hours later and was very sick 🙁 I just about managed to get outside of the van and was ill into the hedgerow, staggered over to the loo to clean my teeth and have a wash with very compromised vision in the dark without contact lenses. I did fall straight to sleep and slept through til morning.

Monday started far earlier than I’d have liked with both kids sitting on the bed playing DS – they are into some Farm World game which is hugely inaccurate, which they keep pointing out at length with their new status as farming experts ;). I felt pretty washed out and feeble but no longer sick. We had a quiet morning, I managed to eat some lunch and still feel okay so we had a walk in the woodland oppposite the farm this afternoon. It was very lovely, we spent some time just sitting still and quiet in the woods to see what we could see and hear and Davies spotted a deer quite close to us that we all watched for a while until it got spooked by us and ran off.

Scarlett found a geocache! We paused at two tree trunks to look at butterflies and she noticed a bag shoved between the two and pulled it out to find a box. That amused us all lots 🙂 we’ve been on plenty of geocache hunts with friends where the cache is never found despite fancy GPS machines, detailed clues and lots of people looking!

Back at the van the kids played with Zoe on the farm, I blogged and had some time online and Ady hung out with me in the van. We went in to have dinner – roast turkey, one of the ones we helped prepare last week – with everyone and chat about the coming week.

I have photos to add but poor Ady is falling asleep at the table so I need to help him turn the van into a bedroom and let him go to bed!

Ady was off to market early this morning and had a really good day there with Amanda. They didn’t sell loads but Ady really enjoyed playing Market Trader and bantering with other stall holders and customers and loved the whole bartering and swapping of produce that goes on there. They came back having sold a bit and had fun along with getting a load of fancy filo pastry pies for everyone’s dinner tonight.

I spent some time first thing with Pete helping unhitch and attach bits to the tractor to move some silage over for the calves to eat and then had half an hour sitting in the sunshine with the kids listening to the animals around the farmyard make their various noises and free range about doing their thing while we sat on a wall chatting. There is so much about this lifestyle that makes all four of us so very happy. We’re seeing the really tough side to this life here with money worries, incredibly long hours, dirty, dusty, smelly hard work and various other challenges but we all feel really at home, are enjoying everything and seeing how it could really suit us and our skills and ideas. It was one of those lovely snapshots this morning 🙂

My next job was to wash down some plastic crates ready to stack meat into so the kids and I got busy with hosepipe and brushes and cleaned them all up then it was time to go into the cutting room. Our first job was to put loads of pork through the mincing machine so we did that while Pete cut up another pig. The kids were then tasked with weighing out the mince into batches ready for sausage making while I got shown how to use the vaccuum packer and label printing scales and packed up all the cuts and joints. I did some marinating to make some barbecue packs of ribs and chops and we all watched Pete do various cuts and tieing of joints. As the weather is so nice Pete cubed a load of pork and gave it to Scarlett with some bamboo skewers and tasked her with making kebabs so she did about 25 of those and we packed them in various numbers for barbecues.

That took us to lunchtime so we went in for a sandwich and then sausage making commenced in earnest. Pete showed us how to make up batches of sausage mix, using the bought in packs of flavouring and preservative. They have made their own 100% fresh meat sausages before but as you can’t vaccuum pack sausages (they squash flat!) the dates on them are simply too short without preservatives so they stick with these. We washed off the salt preserved sausage skins and put them to soak in water then put the sausages mix through the finer mincer setting to get sausage meat.

Pete then showed us how sausages are made through the machine, fed into the skins and then twisted into linked strings of sausages. Today was a very busy day with a massive workload so we didn’t get a go at actually making them but hope to next week some time. I suspect there is far more of a knack to it than Pete made it look like ;).

The kids went off to play then, having spent hours in the cutting room and I did the cutting into individual sausages, putting into trays, wrapping, weighing, labelling and packing which I quickly got the hang of, along with making up various other mixes of sausage meat including; cumberland, pork & apple, hickory smoked, sweet chilli and traditional. We made both chipolatas and sausages in the thousands. Trays and trays and trays of them.

I really enjoyed it; I like the rhythym of work like that and the big trays of perfectly packed and labelled sausages ready for market tomorrow at the end of it really appealed to me. Ady arrived back and cleaned out the 4X4 car ready for market tomorrow and Scarlett came back in to have a go at the wrapping, weighing and labelling for a while. She was pretty good at it – definitely able to do that to saleable quality within a few days I reckon!

Dinner time was noisy with everyone catching up on each others days and working out who will be where over the next couple of days – can’t quite believe we’ve only done 3 working days so far… I had a shower to wash all the little bits of meat off that were stuck to me and then we retired to the van for hairbrushing and ear cleaning out as Mum & Dad are arriving tomorrow and will no doubt be checking kids for neglect levels ;).

Pics are slowly uploading to flickr, will drop them in when done but right now I need to get the van turned into a bedroom – I’m off to market in the morning!

This morning our first job was to work with Pete to move sheep. About 50 in the barn (that we had moved from a field into the barn yesterday) needed to go to another field 4 miles away as they have all now lambed. Pete did say ideally they would be walked to the field both because it can be done in one go and would take 90 minutes or so to walk the four miles and then keeps all ewes and lambs together the whole time rather than several runs (four in the end) with a trailer with an element of splitting up ewes and lambs for a while if they end up captured in different runs but the lambs are still too little to walk that far really so we did it the trailer way. This meant chasing a trailer load into the trailer, driving to the field, releasing them and then driving back for more. They are pretty stubborn sheep ;).We did the lot in about 90 minutes and four runs though and all the lambs got reunited with ewes.

Next we dropped Pete off to collect his tractor and Ady drove the 4×4 and trailer back. That got us to coffee o’clock.

The rest of the day was more bitty really – there was pasty and pie making happening inside but it was a lovely day and the kitchen is pretty cramped so I stayed outside with Ady. We did some hosing down a very dusty and dirty (although brand new) toilet and sink ready to go in the camping field toilet which is being built, cleared various rubbish, rubble, weeds out of the way to make the area look nice, took down some fencing and dug out some rubble to make a place to lay waste pipes.

Lunch was pasties 🙂 fresh from the oven – veal or pork and apple. Dinner was omelettes using the fresh eggs the kids had collected during the day.

The rest of the week is shaping up to look interesting. Tomorrow Ady is off to a market while I do some sausage making and meat packing; Friday I am off to market while Ady helps get the camping field totally finished and Saturday we are going to different markets as they do two, then it’s Sunday and Monday off.

because this seems to be a rather perfect place for us!

Up this morning and in the house for breakfast at 8am. A bit of background on the people here: Emma and Pete, married couple, together for 11 years. This is Pete’s in-the-family-for-four-generations farm land, but the original farmhouse went to his older brother who is not a farmer, so Pete has the land and has just got planning permission after about 6 years of farming here for a farmhouse to be built. Currently they live in a collection of portakabins, statics and farm buildings. Pete did leave farming and is a builder, but came back to it when he married Emma. Emma is a hairdresser by trade, very horsey family and is now a farmers wife / baker. Emma’s 3 kids all also live here – son aged 21 lives in a static with his girlfriend – he breeds ducks and rare breed chickens and is a carpenter. Other son aged 20 lives here and is a trainee brickie, daughter aged 19 usually lives here but is currently in Ireland working in horse racing with family. Very close family. Also here at the moment is a friend, Amanda, with her two daughters; Gemma aged 17 and Zoe aged 8. They are planning on moving down here from East Sussex and are having a working holiday helping out with various stuff here with a long term aim of selling up in Sussex and moving here to work for Emma and Pete. They are here til the weekend.

This morning Emma took one of her sons to the doctors as he has bad toothache. Ady, Davies, Scarlett and I helped Pete (and Zoe and Jess the sheepdog) move sheep and lambs from the field into a shed. This was harder than it sounds and we lost two down the road. Once all the others were in we had to track them down and the kids had to stop traffic while we chased them. I commented to Pete that I now knew why you don’t see fat sheep farmers! Me, running, before 9am!!!

We then followed Pete in his tractor delivering it to a nearby farm which meant driving a farm truck for Ady and riding in the back of it for the rest of us.

Next we chose 2 sheep and a calf for the abbatoir. This involved chasing various sheep, catching and turning them over to see if they were still feeding lambs by squeezing them to see if they gave milk. By 930am I had been dragged over by a ram and squirted with ewes milk so I had sheep shit and milk all over my top. Sheep and calf in the trailer we went for a cup of tea and learnt how to fill out the Defra paperwork for moving lifestock before heading off to the abbatoir.

It’s a really small abbatoir, based in a farm where one of the sons worked at an abbatoir and another at a butchers before bringing it home and setting up at the farm small scale. So they rear their own meat to slaughter and sell direct to the public from a small farm shop, take in animals to kill for local farmers and will either slaughter and store ready to be collected or do butchering for people too. They do pigs, cattle and sheep. The skins of the cows and the fleeces of the sheep are all kept and salted to be used for leather / sheepskin rugs and sold on.

We hung around for quite a while because the vet who is always on site at an abbatoir had been in an accident earlier in the day (car, nothing to do with animal killing!) and so all of the work had been delayed waiting for him. While we waited we looked round at the butchering area, the cold meat storage where animals are hung, the skins drying in the sun and then helped catch some runaway sheep making a last bid for freedom. We then watched some pigs being slaughtered – stunned, hung up and throats slit and helped move some more livestock about before leaving the lambs and calf there and collecting two pigs which had been dropped off last week and were now hung and ready to bring back for butchering.

It was really interesting. Pigs are squealy anyway but there was no feeling or atmosphere of fear like I was expecting there. Dispatch was calm, kind, very speedy and I personally was most reassured by it. Davies and Scarlett were really interested, dealt very well with it all, asked loads of relevant questions and had the perfect mix of compassion for animals while still being meat eaters. I was proud of them.

Then it was back for (a very late) lunch.

The kids went off to play, they have been looking after some of the lambs including one which is suffering from ill-joint, an affliction a bit like arthritis with sore and swollen joints which happens due to a naval infection at birth. The afflicted sheep has had an injection which should perk it up.

Ady worked with Pete all afternoon, labouring for him really. They are opening a field for camping so have been putting in hook up and water taps and today built a very rustic shower and toilet block which a plumber is coming to plumb in tomorrow. Ady has been doing all sorts of stuff including chainsawing, cementing, humping stuff about etc.

Meanwhile I helped out in the kitchen. Emma and Pete sell meat and produce at various different markets and farmers markets in the area with fresh cuts of meat and sausages going first and any unsold coming back to be cooked up into pies and pasties and sold at the next market. They try to barter for all the rest of their produce at markets – so the fruit, veg, bread, dairy produce, cheese etc is mostly swapped with other farmers for meat. Today we were making pie and pasty mix with pork, lamb and veal which meant chopping up and cooking veg, frying meat, making up enormous volumes of pastry and pre cooking pie filling ready for assembling and baking tomorrow for market on Thursday. I made 9kg of flour worth of pastry, peeled and chopped many, many veg and stirred lots and lots of frying meat. It felt like Christmas camp! Flour, splashes of cooking fat etc. all added to my grubby t shirt.

Then we all went out to catch cockerels which will be made into chicken pies tomorrow. There were 7 around the farm and they took some catching with involved further running, grabbing and chasing and a full body slam dive for Ady to the ground which unfortunately missed the chicken but did entertain and amuse all of us! 😉

Then it was dinner – cottage pie 🙂 and sausages :). Food is bloody good here, meat-tastic again!

After dinner we went back out to help kill and pluck chickens and turkeys. The 7 cocks we’d caught and 5 turkeys which had already been enclosed since yesterday. They have a licence to kill poultry and fowl here so we washed down the killing room and set up our assembly line. Chicken or turkey goes upside down in a cone with head hanging out the bottom and is stunned with electric prod then throat slit and hung to bleed. Once done it goes into a hot water bath to open pores and then onto a plucking machine which removes about 95% of the feathers. It is then hand plucked to remove the rest along with the head and feet.

Pete did all the actual killing, Ady did some hanging and passing live and dead birds, the kids did some plucking and passing and checking the water temperature was right for the bath and I did some hand plucking and finishing with Emma.

Scarlett did cry at one point as she struggled with the alive and then dead bit and the flapping as muscles twitched as she is understandably attached to chickens more than most other livestock (except perhaps ducks) but we all talked it through and she was fine afterwards and carried on helping. I am pleased that neither of the kids has a blase attitude to the slaughtering and that they are showing compassion and caring but at the same time I don’t want to end this year with vegetarian offspring so I am glad they are able to work it through.

I’m sure I have more to say on the subject and I know I have stuff to talk about my own feelings on it too, but that will have to wait. For now I wanted to get down what we did today as it was so full on, so filled with new stuff and so very much what we left the house to do I want to make sure I record it all while still fresh in my mind as I suspect every day will be like this here.

Back in for showers – final splattering on my t shirt was chicken and turkey blood along with lots of tiny feathers – and a glass of wine with everyone before heading back to the van for the night. Today has felt like all of our WWOOFing objectives in one day and although there is plenty here which is not what we are wanting to do and this is not our own personal goal we are going to learn and see so much here I think it will be one of our most valuable places despite not actually being an offical or even planned host!

So, a 15 hour day, bloody hard work and every chance we will be having 3 weeks worth of long days, early starts, late finishes and learning on our feet but I think it might well be the equivalent to cramming a 4 year degree into 3 weeks.

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!

This morning we went down to the big farmhouse as Ady had offered to have a look at a bit of leaky outside pipe from the kitchen sink to the drain. Denise gave us a lift down in the pick up and she went off for a walk round with the dog and the kids while Ady and I did that. To be fair it was mostly Ady who did that, I stood watching and wrinkling my nose at the smell of a blocked drain pipe 😉

We then had a guided tour of the house, which we’d only been in a couple of downstairs rooms of previously. It’s three floors with grand sweeping staircases, nine bedrooms, pantry, kitchens, parlours and so on and despite being in a very bad state of repair is simply stunning. The views from the top floor are something else.

Back up to the farm and Ady and I did an hour or so of mowing, him following me as I had the mulcher and he the mower. The kids played with the dog and Scarlett spent time with the cows and calves. Denise then dashed down with some eggs to her mum who had started baking and realised she’d run out so I finished laying out lunch and we all ate. Denise made me go and get the last of our dirty washing which she got washed and dried for us – she has been fantastic to us :). I checked it was okay to have Steve & Sarah to come and visit and she sent us round to the campsite with their chairs and instructions to move benches, along with talking Sarah in over the phone when they rang to say they couldn’t find us.

A lovely couple of hours sitting chatting to Steve and Sarah in the sunshine. It felt most odd to be playing host in a field that isn’t ours but has been our home for the week. I know Ady enjoyed being able to make people cups of tea after so long being a guest to other people! 😉 Davies and Scarlett showed Josiah around and then they sat in the van with consoles :rolls:

We wandered back over for feeding time and helped fill up sacks of feed ready for the morning, the kids had a last ride in the quad bike trailer and a last game of football with Kim the dog aswell as a quick self timer or three in the cow shed 😉
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Then it was dinner time – beef (naturally 😉 ) burgers and chips followed by the most spectacular take on baked Alaska ever – flan case crammed with strawberries, loaded with ice cream then topped with home made meringue baked in the oven. Divine :). The kids, who have eaten like horses all week were finally beaten on this one and didn’t manage to finish their seconds!

We were presented with a lemon drizzle cake baked just for us by Joan, Denise’s mum as the kids have raved about it all week, so that’s cake rations for the rest of next week :).

It’s been a fab stay here after a rather shaky start, which Denise is still beating herself up over. I confess to not having loved all the gardening but the highs have more than made up for the lows and we could have happily stayed here another week. Another place with offers to come back another time and stay in touch, more ideas to add to our list and more new skills and experiences had here.

Tomorrow we move on to our longest planned host of 3 weeks. Fingers crossed for another good one.

Ady went down to the farmhouse this morning to finish the garden, while I went across to get the mower. Denise asked me to do some clearing out in the cow shed first though as the grass was still quite wet with dew, so I spent half an hour or so sweeping, wiping and mopping the corner of the shed where the calves formula feed is made up. The calves were really funny, edging away from me while I was looking at them but then creeping up behind me while I was working and nibbling and sucking at my clothes. They are like toddlers – weaned but still like chewing and sucking for comfort so will suckle away at your fingers or a corner of your clothing.

When I’d finished that I went into the kitchen and had a cup of tea with Glyn then we took the mowers round to the camping field and I went up and down with the mulcher while Glyn followed me with the mower cutting slightly lower and picking up the clippings. We paused for another cup of tea when Denise came home (she’d been into town) and brought out drinks for us, which we sat on the bench in the camping field with chatting to a couple who had just arrived – we have neighbours both sides of us now having had the field to ourselves all week. Both couples in caravans, both local and just here for the weekend.

I carried on mowing til lunchtime and Davies appeared having walked up to join me – he and Scarlett had spent the morning down with Ady playing with the dog at the farmhouse. Lunch was once again a luncheon 😉 leftover beef, pizza, salad, home made coleslaw and potatoe salad and bread.

We met Sam, the hosts son over lunch which was nice, he’s an interesting bloke – a lorry driver for Riverford. Several friends arrived after lunch so we left them to it and came and chilled out in the van for an hour or so. Then we walked down to the farm next door – about 15 minutes away where Glyn was doing the afternoon milking shift to watch. 120 cows, all milked by machine, 6 at a time. After learning how that all worked I asked how easy milking by hand was and Glyn showed me so the kids and I all had a go including squirting into our hands so we could try it ‘straight from the cow’. Glyn said afterwards we should have brought a bottle down to milk into and bring back – wish we’d thought of that.
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We stayed for about 90 minutes watching it all happening and having a couple of goes before walking back up the hill again for dinnertime. Glyn was there for another couple of hours finishing up and waiting for the milk van to collect.

Dinner was chicken – first time we’ve been here and not had beef! Very lovely again though, chicken and leeks in cream sauce, bacon and potato gratin, carrots cooked in honey glaze and more home made bread, followed by waffles and maple syrup and served with a bottle of rose wine! Definitely, definitely the best food hosts so far 🙂

We all had showers, caught up with Glyn when he got home, had interesting chats with Denise and Sam about organic vs local vs seasonal vs welfare food vs fair trade and what hierarchy you choose, what ethical really means and whether Riverford is really any better than Tescos. Fascinating stuff :).

Face is very nearly on the mend. It is still puffy first thing in the morning and I have various dry and sore patches around my eyes along with lots of flaky bits and several spots but at least I now just look like a rather older and more tired version of myself instead of someone else entirely. We’re doing a couple of tasks in the morning and then looking forward to an afternoon catching up with Sarah & co 🙂

A *much* better day today 🙂

This morning we were back to the big house for gardening but the kids and I had a wander along to the village to the post office as Ady had managed to bring a key from Jill’s along with us in his jeans pocket so we posted that back. It was really nice to have that half an hour with Davies and Scarlett and we chatted about all sorts of things including which host has been their favourite so far. They are both still missing Steward Wood and would go back there (and live!) in a flash. I’m really chuffed about that for all sorts of reasons, not least because they have so not been seduced by the delights of the holiday cottages and were able to tell me all sorts of reasons why they loved SWC (all of which were very in line with Ady and I and our chats).

Back at the house I tackled a pampass grass and some cutting back of roses and brambles – all the prickliest jobs! I’ve never really believed when people say pampass grass is sharp but it bloody is, it was like sandpaper on my arms and drew blood in a couple of places. Still preferable to weeding mind you ;). We had a cup of tea / coffee / slice of cake with June who is a fascinating woman – farmers wife, mother of 3, ran a B&B, foster mother, now carer to her husband and worked since she was 14 at all sorts of manner of jobs. She’s well into her 80s now but very sprightly, still busy all the time and was telling us today how she can ‘do the email’ :).

At 1pm we headed up the hill for lunch with Denise and Glynn, home made (every single bit from scratch) pizza which was delicious. This afternoon we’d said we were up for a change of task and were given making up some sheds to do. They had got them second hand and dismantled from someone previously using them as kennels although they are going to use them as chicken coops. They were in about 8 pieces each, excellent quality and really heavy so we dragged them all out and worked out how they went together then Denise went off in her pick up, taking Davies and Scarlett with her along for the ride to get some nuts and bolts as the fixings were missing.

When they got back Ady and I put them together and then Glynn took one of them round on the tractor to put in the camping field. It’s to be used as an information shed with eggs and other stuff for sale with an honesty box, leaflets about the local area and information about the site. The second will be the chicken shed. The kids learnt how to hammer nails straight again to re-use.

With time built in for a tea break sitting in the garden chatting about how Denise and Glynn met – he was 18, she was 13, she said she knew she’d marry him the day she first met him 🙂 that was the afternoon gone.

They have various little sayings here, both of them say ‘arp’ lots, just like one of the characters on Hot Fuzz, they also say ‘ideal’ a bit like Ness on Gavin & Stacey says ‘tidy’ and they both call objects ‘he’ or ‘him’ – things like plates, spoons, sheds etc. Ady and I are enjoying joining in with that ;).

Dinner was roast beef and all the trimmings – we’ve never been so well fed! Every lunch is proper sit down fayre and every single dinner has been beef from their cattle; stew, bolognaise or roast. Home made desserts and cake twice a day. I am being very sensible with portions and not drinking wine as I really don’t want to undo all the healthy eating although I am still keeping my salad, fruit and veg portions up too :).

After dinner the kids went back to play outside til it got dark – about 9pm and we sat chatting. We have clicked with them now and get on well, I came clean about not really loving the gardening and it was agreed I would do some mowing in the morning while Ady goes and just finishes off the gardening. We are supposed to be ‘off’ tomorrow afternoon and were thinking of going into Plymouth but the offer came up to go along with Glynn who does milking for the neighbouring farmer tomorrow afternoon so we’ve jumped at that instead. Hopefully we can also do something livestock-wise on Sunday too before moving on on Monday.

D & G love Davies and Scarlett, they think they are fab. They seem to really like the Home Ed idea and both coming from farming families where kids were always missing market day and haymaking times off school to help out at the farm and learnt far more there they are very supportive of what we’re doing this year. They have 2 children my age; one lives here part time but does HGV driving for Riverford, the other lives in Australia and have foster parented for years. Denise said today she loves spending time with children like Davies and Scarlett after so many years dealing with damaged children and they are both endlessly tolerant and indulgent of their noise, muddy feet, grubby hands and huge appetite for the meat at the dinner table!

It’s taken a bit of warming up here, the start wasn’t great with Denise being away and there has been excessive amounts of gardening but once again the people make up for it and we’re getting in plenty of the sort of stuff I am interested in in these last couple of days. I think one week is probably too short for here and I would consider coming back for 2 weeks with a clearly set out ‘project’ to while here as I think they value people who come with an aim – previous WWOOFers have done stuff like dry stone walling, building kennels from scratch, helping install stuff in the campsite etc. But the food is supreme, the conversation interesting and the support and interest in us and our lives and plans is really lovely :).

But made my peace with it – I can tolerate almost anything for four days 😉

This morning we walked down to the farmhouse and spent the whole day in the garden there. The kids had a great day, playing with the dog, drawing and just adventuring around the place. Ady and I did weeding but we had a laugh and lots of chatting so not so bad. I still hate gardening though…

Lunch almost made up for it, another ‘proper spread’ of quiche, salad and home made jelly and ice cream. The kids had set the table and made us tea and coffee too which was nice. It feels a bit like we’ve slipped into one of Enid Blyton’s books somehow.

I had a phonecall from Jill this morning who said she is missing us and pizza night was very quiet without us last night. I had another phonecall this evening from Julie and we’ve got a visit from Mum & Dad next weekend so it’s been good to have contact and we’re looking forward to some real life catching up with people soon.

This evening we went in for dinner and I got to stick a load of washing in the machine which is good, we had already racked up a full bag of muddy and wet stuff. It’s interesting to see the wear and tear on clothes, I have a pair of jeans I guess I’ll be chucking out rather than washing again, they are through at the knees and leg and I must have lost weight as they keep falling down too. I can see why Barbara Good wore dungarees! Scarlett must have grown too as she’s complaining all her jeans are too tight. At least we’re getting plenty of wearings out of clothes though, no point in putting clean stuff on to get it filthy again within half an hour of wearing it. I do worry we’ll all be like Bod in the photos of the year – wearing the same outfits in every single location! 😆

Tomorrow we’re finishing off the garden in the morning then doing some chicken house making up in the afternoon, which Ady is dreading but I’m looking forward to – something practical and useful, hurrah! Not sure what we’re expected to work Saturday and Sunday with regard to days off etc. I’m hoping at least one of the days we’ll have a chance to head off for a walk around the area. I think one week hostings are great for places you are struggling to cope with but I suspect you don’t get a really good feel for the place as it’s just not long enough. It will be interesting to see how our next host pans out as that is for 3 weeks.

My face is sore and tight and feels chapped and my eyes are really puffy in the mornings still. I need to read back last years posts and see what it was doing then – I’m a bit worried that I’m supposed to be reducing my steroids dose from tomorrow but I don’t feel it’s properly stopped yet.