I didn’t go to bed til 2am last night. I’ve been going to bed earlier and as a result getting up earlier too but havent’ actually been sleeping all that well, waking around 5am, so I didn’t go to bed until I really felt tired last night which seemed to work and I slept much better.
But it did mean a later start all round 🙂 Scarlett was in a stroppy mood and couldn’t find any clean knickers. I thought it was because she’d either not been putting them in to be washed, or not putting clean ones away in the right place but a quick scout round showed she only seems to have about 5 pairs. I know I have been chucking them out as they come through the wash if they are too small or the elastic is going so I suspect I have culled to critical point. She does have a stash from an older friend but they are still too big so she needs some pants! Today she elected to wear none rather than borrow a pair of Davies’ or wear yesterdays again. Fortunately she made it to the end of the day without being hit by a bus. She was also disappointed with the breakfast cereal selection on offer and the sandwich fillings at lunchtime – end of the month seems to be hitting Scarlett harder than anyone else this week… payday tomrrow though, so it’ll be new pants, honey nut shredded wheat and tuna fish all the way for her! 😆
Davies and Scarlett did some bedroom tidying while I did some drafting a biography of us to approach the first 15 potential WWOOFing hosts with. I went for a personalised intro for each farm mentioning what had drawn us to them and we were most interested in, referencing their website if they have one, saying when we were in their area and then a copy and pasted bit about us as follows:
We are Nic, Ady, Davies and Scarlett. We are hoping to spend a year from March 2010 travelling around the UK WWOOFing. We have been hankering after a more self sufficient, greener, simpler lifestyle for several years and have been moving towards it in small ways in our home on the south coast of England. We have an allotment and grow food in our garden at home. We keep chickens, bantams, ducks and quails, most of which we have hatched in an incubator or bred from our own livestock. Our eventual goal is to become self sufficient and have as small an environmental impact as possible. We want to learn all we can about all the aspects of this lifestyle while getting a realistic idea of what it all entails. We are hardworking, fast learning, friendly and cheerful. Our children are well behaved, responsible and keen to learn alongside us.
Below is a little bit about us, the things we have done before and are doing now and what we’d rather be doing more of:
Ady currently works in retail support and merchandising of bedding plants. He has previously worked in all sorts of careers including Retail Management, game keeping, managing an indoor rollercoaster and a spot of TV presenting. Ady wants to leave the 9-5 behind, learn about rearing animals and butchery, spend more time with his family and live a simpler life.
Nic has also worked in a wide variety of jobs from Retail Management, Recruitment and Marketing but currently works part time at the local library whilst being at home with Davies and Scarlett. Nic had done some volunteer shepherding, overseen the hatching of over 100 birds, loves baking, preserving and is learning about wine and beermaking in an experimental fashion! Nic wants to learn more about beekeeping, dairy farming (including milking a cow, making cheese etc.), lambing, calving and growing fruit and vegetables. Nic can crochet, knit and sew a bit, has done some basket weaving, rag rug making and interested in natural crafts. Nic is a qualified Waste Prevention Advisor volunteer with the local council which involved a course learning about composting, real nappies, waste collection and processing, recycling and landfill and other green issues. Nic loves the idea of off-grid living and would love to learn more about sustainable, renewable and alternative energy and building.
Davies is nearly ten and loves bushcraft, survival and being outside. He’d love to learn to drive a tractor and understand how it works. Davies loves animals, particularly sheep. His other passions are film making, drawing and storytelling.
Scarlett is nearly eight and loves animals. She has hatched and raised ducklings this year and is interested in breeding, rearing and keeping animals.
Both Davies and Scarlett enjoy baking, breadmaking, growing fruit and vegetables and learning about where our food comes from. They are interested in nature and wildlife, the world around them and how everything works. Davies and Scarlett have always been Home Educated.
We’d love to come and meet you and work with you and look forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards,
Nic, Ady, Davies and Scarlett
I wanted to strike a balance between making us sound interesting and useful and the sort of people you would want to meet and have in your home, not too know-it-all but genuinely interested and up for learning not just slogging on hard labour tasks, clear we are a foursome and want to work that way but also getting over enough of who we are that if we are likely to be incompatible then it will be clear to potential hosts from the outset. I sent the first 15 and was gratified to have one almost instant reply:
To you all, thank you for you email, that sounds quite a possible idea: the only thing is I think you will have far more to teach us than
the other way around!! We have done many of the things you mention: poultry incubation, home butchery etc, but have rather streamlined our
life lately to fit in other things we want to do: D photography, J counselling, but we could fill a very happy week with work
together I’m sure. I can not at the moment organise that far in advance as I am now a student & it depends when my essay deadlines are (
no one would want to be around as they approach!)But March is usually a good month for wwoofing for us, so shall we keep in touch & see
what the new brings?
Best wishes from J.
which sounds very promising 🙂 A second reply came a bit later which is also pretty promising too:
Thank you for your enquiry. You have a very interesting lifestyle. We are not organic but a farm that uses little fertilisers etc… We run about 200 cattle and a small flock of sheep. We also have a few chickens and share your interest in hatching eggs etc…Previously we have also had pigs and goats.
I did a butchery course and we are interested in maximising profits from our cattle. I have lots of ideas but they all cost money to get started and running a farm, caring for my elderly parents does not give us much time to set something new up. Especially after a cold spell and then a drought in the first part of the year, alot of my time has been taken up in sourcing feed.
We also run a Certificated Caravan site for 5 units and last year put in electric hook ups and a water tap to each pitch. The jobs ongoing for this project are grass cutting and bin emptying etc.. The current wwoofers have helped us with making steps and a water tap for the chemical disposal point and dry stonewalling amongst many other jobs. They are involved in the routine work which includes feeding calves and cattle and cleaning out the sheds which house the cattle.
Wwoofers generally take a part in the household chores as well, preparing meals and general cleaning, laying and clearing the meal
table etc….
The other side of our farm is where my Mum & Dad live, this is an old georgian house with nine bedrooms and very overgrown gardens and orchards. We are trying to reinstate them, to produce vegetables and fruit trees to include apples etc… It may be that the work might be between the two sites.
Does this sound like what you are looking for?
I would need your membership No, if you want to book in
Regards D
We got our first knockback – a disappointing one as these people had sounded potentially very suitable:
Hi,
Sounds like we have many similar interests. However……..we will be building our roundwood timber-framed house in 2011 and life will be somewhat hectic to say the least and all volunteer spots are taken. If you would like to go on our house-build mailing list you will be kept up-to-date with progress and any possible opportunities to get involved.
Happy WWOOFing,
and we will indeed get ourselves on their mailing list. And finally an outright no:
Thank you very much for enquiring about WWOOFing at Darracott Farm.
Unfortunately we have already placed some WWOOFers over that time.
Best of luck in finding a host.With best wishes,
which if it is a rejection rather than the truth is a nicely put one at least :).
I can’t share these emails with the world at large on the wonderingwanderers blog and I don’t really intend to copy and paste them all here either but it’s been exciting making the first real moves towards this part of the plan today so I wanted to mark it here, also I thought people might want to see what I’ve written and the response we’re getting. I may think about tweaking our email for the next batch if it proves unpopular.
We had lunch and then were supposed to be going to a localish (driving distance) park to meet up with Mel, Liam and Lily. It had been grey and cloudy all morning so I was expecting it to be quite miserable in the park anyway but we never actually got there. My car had very little petrol in it so the petrol station with my last fiver was first port of call anyway but thanks to all the rain and quite possibly the lack of petrol it didn’t want to start. I spent ages turning it over and finally got it going but it kept spluttering and dying which had me thinking it was petrol related too so I emptied a can we had in the garage into it and it did then start. It juddered and took ages to be happy (quite possibly proving what all Dad’s insist about dragging the crap up from the bottom of the tank and clogging up the carburettor or something) but finally was ticking over just fine so we set off. Unfortunately just as we were about to hit the dual carriageway off a roundabout it died again and I just managed to pull into a bus stop before the engine stopped.
I tried texting and ringing Mel but got no reply so as we were right next to a different park I left a message to say where we were and that if they wanted to meet us there instead we’d hang on and hope to hear from them for 10 minutes or so before trying to get home. The car eventually started again and was fine driving round in a big circle to get to the park car park where I finally got hold of Mel and invited them to our house instead. The car restarted fine there and again at the petrol station so fingers crossed no damage has been done and it was a one off.
Davies and Scarlett had been on Park Mode so felt the need to run round the garden while I was on Sofa Mode so gave in to that and then Mel, Liam and Lily arrived. It’s been an unlikely friendship really, we met online on netmums or some other such forum that I think I only visited the once when Scarlett and Lily were about 2 and the boys were 4 and 5 (Liam is 9 months older than Davies). The kids have been to each others birthday parties and always play okay together although I doubt any of them ask about the others when we don’t meet up. Mel is a VAT inspector and really active in the kids’ schools but somehow we have always got on really well and she really champions Home Education and seems to get it in a way that so few school-using parents do. Liam has a statement whilst Lily is on the G&T register and the two of them couldn’t be more different with their approaches and biases and Mel does a fab job of supporting them both really well in their different strengths.
The kids all played really well today, some of the time all four of them and then the girls spent some time with the birds while Davies and Liam X boxed. Mel and I chatted and drank tea and coffee. I caught up on all her news and she heard all about our planned adventure and was really enthusiastic telling me ‘this just feels like the logical conclusion to everything I know about you and how you have lived for the last five years’. She was very positive and made some interesting observations. She also went into the playroom for a browse and came out with some books, a globe and a toy bin and put some money in the campervan fund pot :).
They left and I sorted out some tea for the kids (leftovers from last night, no complaints from either of them on that count 🙂 ) and checked the status of some ebay auctions I had ending today to find we’d sold another £25 worth of stuff. That brings our sold total to over £150 and we have saved £300 this month too. We have another huge pile ready for carboot selling next weekend and more things listed on ebay ending over the next week and I’m thinking about doing some job lots of books and videos Buy It Now for local collection to see if that sells as a friend has recommended that as a way of clearing things quick.
Ady came home and cooked a ‘random selection of items from the freezer’ dinner for us. I read about half of ‘The Last Wolf’ to Davies and Scarlett. Scarlett fell asleep quite early, Davies has been sending me picture texts from his bed :rolls: I’ve also been knitting today, I have a plan to use up lots of my wool stash by making another patchworky blanket as it will be warm and useful on the journey but I can also unpick it again later if I want to use the wool for something else :).