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.
Awww really looking forward to seeing you all too. M&A were really excited when I said how soon it was that we’d see you all again 🙂
Hope you get the 2 weeks filled ok.
Comment by Kirsty — 27 April 2011 @ 8:41 am
Not just M&A, I’m really excited to see you all again.
Comment by Michelle — 30 April 2011 @ 10:18 pm