Fruit Cage

Mark's been building a cage for Betsy's fruit trees/plants. Not done, but nearly... Unfortunately I can't be too much help in this project, but I have been attaching the chicken wire together with wire. :) I got a little I can offer.
I've mostly been doing a lot of clearing/weeding, because that's really always needed somewhere.

Mark's First (no added sugar) Apple Pie

We've been off sugar for the last couple of months (you know me - health stuff) save for a very small amount of fruit here and there and the tiniest bit of honey in my teas, so Mark decided he wanted to attempt his first no sugar added apply pie. He's never baked one before (neither have I though), so this is new all around. He did a pretty decent job if you ask me! It was definitely yummy - especially for someone who hasn't been having sweets.  We've got some ideas for improving the next one.

Silly me, I didn't get any pics of the finished product! Anyway, I thought he did an awesome job for his first pie. :)

 More pics of projects coming soon...

Catching up: Part 3!

7-27-13

The weekend is here! And a rainy one at that. We've had a few showers at night for the past month, but mostly hot and sunny and completely un-England.

It's cool here at Elaine's. A beautiful, somewhat chaotic (which I enjoy) garden with flowers, herbs, and veggies scattered about. I know where the chives are, but that doesn't mean I won't find them somewhere else also. I know where the lettuce is, but you can find other salad worthy leaves scattered about in other places as well if you know where to look. Every evening before dinner Mark and/or I will walk through the garden foraging for healthy additions to our meal. Pretty sure it's one of my favorite parts of being here.

We have our own tiny "eco" house that is usually reserved for retreat guests. So we went from our simple camper van (where we were at our previous farm) to a little shed-type room with bed, desk, and camper stove at Elaine's to an apartment sized house with bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, and living area. Yeah...we may be too comfortable here! 

On the patio I have 4 trays of strawberry plants I pulled out of the carpet paths in the fruit cage. They were never supposed to be in the carpet, but they had gotten out of control, so while I was cleaning the cage out (it was so bad!! Mark did most of the initial clearing though. :) I decided to try saving what I could. They are now my babies and all but one or two seem to be very happy in their little homes.

While we're happy to have internet, it's been really nice not having a quick connection to the outside world. Or at least not one so readily available. We've been doing a lot of reading and small projects. Mark's been playing more guitar than he had been. Really really good. 

Speaking of the small projects, we've also been drying and jarring some of the herbs we have access to around here. There's so much lemon balm, we couldn't possibly pick it all! And I'm kind of addicted to having it in my morning cup of green tea now. Mark's just finished up with jarring some apple mint yesterday and I'm about to start sewing some little pillows for the lavender I've dried. Spearmint is another one we've got ready for use in the kitchen now. All of this makes me so excited about one day having our own herb garden! GAH! Can't wait!

As cool as this place is, Mark and I have been thinking we will move one soon so that we have plenty of time for more experiences. But it's not an easy place to leave. Elaine seems to really like us being here and isn't eager to see us go. On top of that she introduced us to a friend of hers, Robin, who is trying to employ us to take care of a large scale garden. It's a project he's been working on for a while. The whole thing is set up to help kids/teenagers learn how to grow their own organic food. It's a really awesome thing he's got going, but it's kind of in a bad state at present I guess and he needs some good hearted, honest people to hep maintain it. Awesome opportunity, but not really something that looks very doable for us seeing as how my time is limited.

My happy little carpet strawberry rescues.

 Tell me they aren't lovely.

The little eco house.

 Patio (probably needs a little attention).

 See the green man to the far left? Carved by Elaine's ex. He was apparently very good.

 Inside...At this point we're all spread out and feeling pretty at home.

From our patio.

 Every Thursday is market day in Hay-on-Wye in Wales.We're stay in Peterchurch which is just outside Wales. Here we're sitting outside a cafe watching people set up for the market. We have to rearrange our work week to be here in the morning when we're supposed to be working already, but I'd say it's well worth it for local organic produce and amazing freshly baked bread by Alex Gooch. Will miss this place!

8-14-13
We have made dandelion root coffee and it's awesome!
I've barely been drinking coffee (I know, where did Becca go?). Aside from the once a week outing for groceries and such when I get a small "soya" cappuccino, I don't drink coffee. It's all tea, baby. I've been drinking a lot of dandelion leaf tea and thought with all the dandelion weeds I see all over the yard, surely I can make it myself rather than buy it. But I looked it up first and discovered that dandelion roots can be made into a coffee substitute. Coffee? From dandelion root? Heck. Yes. So the other day while weeding the strawberry patch I came upon quite a few dandelions and so began quest. But, I'll be honest, I didn't really want to make it so badly that I immediately resorted to pulling up all the dandelions in the garden. I tried to buy it first. Oddly enough though, all the dandelion coffee I found had shit added to it. Sugar, caramel color, and other weird stuff that didn't make sense to me. But, yeah, that's really what I did first.
Anyway, it's not difficult, but it does take a little time and effort.

 Picked 'em, washed 'em, cut 'em up.

Then dried them for a couple of days in our little conservatory.

 Then, while using the oven for jacket potatoes, we slid a dried dandelion root filled cookie sheet in underneath to roast them. Smelled SO good. 

 We then crushed some up (no coffee grinder available I'm afraid, but that would work better) for our first trial cup.

Just before our first sip.

 

 And it was fan-fucking-tastic! Seriously much better than I had even hoped. Being that I love black coffee anyway, I could definitely drink this stuff without anything added. But I felt like some soy milk and honey in this one. While I love the caffeine in coffee, it's good to have a caffeine-free substitute that's actually healthy. Thank you mother nature - you're awesome!

8-20-13

We've left! Tried hard to find our next wwoofing spot, but would you believe that everyone's booked with wwoofers?! Had no idea there were so many out there. But it works out because after hearing all that Mark's mum was doing in her garden and what she needed to do, we decided we really should be helping her. She's incredibly knowledgeable about gardening too. Why hadn't we thought of this before? So that's where we are now - back at Mark's home for some weeks. The next move is still up in the air, so I won't say anything for now. 

But here are some pics from the last couple of weeks at Elaine's...

 Day in Hay! :)

 

Such a beautiful view. It's a shame to have an ugly car park spoil it!

 

 One of the two asparagus beds. I spent a couple of days on the both of them rescuing the poor babies from the weeds. Now it's asparagus beetles and itty-bitty caterpillars to look out for.

 

 Happy happy strawberry cage! Now imagine not seeing any of the strawberries or carpet, but only weeds up to your bellybutton. Everywhere. That was it's condition when Mark began clearing it. Yikes!

 Finished path! It's patchy here because we were doing exactly that - patching up.

 

 Here nearly every single stone and bit of cement came out and mark had to do the entire thing.

 Buddha sits quietly in the meditation/yoga circle.

 Mark's very first wall.

 Castle in Hay. We didn't go in.

Hay is known for the book shops. They're everywhere! It's a truly beautiful thing. Even as much time as we spent there, we never did make it to every one!

 All the signs include the Welsh language.

 Our drive from Hay headed toward Cornwall.

I'm absolutely going to miss the heck out of Elaine's garden and Hay-on-Wye. Hopefully I'll have another chance to visit down the road.

Time to get busy in Betsy's garden now! 

Catching up: Part 2

Let's just jump right into it, shall we?

About Jeremy's Farm/Farm Shop - began on 6-17-13

Our first farm was a good place to start, I think. A cute family owned and run farm shop is where we set up camp. While the set up made it hard to learn much, it was good food and really great company. Two wwoofers, Manon (the last “n” isn't pronounced), 24, from France and Jonas (the “J” sounds like “y”), 18, from Austria. Neither were completely fluent in English which made things fun. It's interesting how your mind works when you're having conversations with people who won't be able to understand everything you say. There's a lot more gesturing and expression involved. I loved it! Definitely miss Manon, she was absolutely awesome. As far as the work went, my favorite parts were the days we had to go out and pick the salad lettuces they'd be selling for the next couple of days (there were so many!) and in the poly tunnel when we set up bamboo with string attached to the cucumber plants for them to climb up as they grow (Pictures of this in the last post). Other than that there was a lot of weeding, of course, and a little planting. Mark and I have decided that while we love planting experience, we most definitely prefer weeding!

Leaving Jeremy's 6-28-13

We left Jeremy's farm as soon after 2 o'clock lunch as we could. We were slowed down by Mark having to change the Granny's spare tire. It's Friday, we've been working all week, so we're worn out and now we're gearing up to drive (or ride passenger in my case) for about 4 hours so that we can find where we need to be Saturday morning, find a place to camp out for the night, have dinner, and get some sleep before we go on our weekend bush craft course (not exactly restful, ya know?). There was a lot going on that day. Very extreme highs and lows. Rocking out to Chili Peppers By the Way after getting jacked up on coffee and chocolate muffins would have to be the highlight though. Oo that and scoring a bunch of 90s discounted CDs in the grocery store not long after we'd talked about needing to find some for the van. It was fate, I tell ya.

The Bush Craft Course 6-29/30-13

The Bush Craft course was not about killing, gutting, and eating rabbit as a cook at the farm shop had informed me it would be. We learned some knife skills for making tarp pegs, pot hangers for our camp fire cooking, bow and hand drills, and spoons. We did fire lighting (with our bow drills – Mark worked with the hand drill), some useful knot techniques, shelter building, learned about wild plants, and how to make string out of stinging nettle (ouch! But stinging aside, it was fun!). All in all it was a very useful experience and we loved it. Mark had taken the 5 day course already, so it was a bit of a refresher course for him. I really wish we'd taken my phone for some pictures, but unfortunately my mind just didn't think about that when I was gathering up my stuff. Our instructor, Dale, might have some pics however, so we'll have to ask him. Speaking of Dale, I don't think we could have had a better teacher. He's absolutely without ego. I would expect someone with the skills and knowledge he has to kind of show it off a bit, but never ever did it feel that way. He was taught by the famous (or at least in the UK) Ray Mears and has been asked to teach some other guy who's going to have his own bush craft/survival television show, but Dale's head is still at a relatively normal size. He really does enjoy what he's doing and is a bad ass at it. 

7-1/2-13

After the bush craft course we knew of no where to camp and were invited to park our van at Dale's place. Not knowing how things would go, we had not set up a WWOOF host to stay with after the course, so we were scrambling around for one last minute on Monday, hoping that someone would be able to take us the very next day. Host after host either didn't have room or were not taking wwoofers at that time. Finally, after spotting a profile we hadn't seen before, we decided that would be a perfect place for us if only the lady would take us the next day... Sure enough, Elaine Brook, running a Buddhist retreat center said we could come one over the next morning! 

When we arrived (late. we underestimated travel time by an hour - partly due to getting lost) we found out that Elaine didn't take wwoofers anymore, but it just so happened that the very Monday we called her she had planned to call the gardener and I guess she just figured it was fate.
Beautiful garden, full of herbs, some veg, fruit, and flowers. Kind of a chaotic set up, but really beautiful and tranquil. We new we'd love it here.

All of these pics were taken the first week of being here.

This one is from the bottom of the yard, furthest from the house just outside the first room we stayed in.

Overlooking the middle of the garden, up toward Elaine's house.

Compost beds in the distance. There are five total in the whole place. Mark's supposed to be peeing on them ('cause man pee is awesome for it somehow), but I think he might be falling down on the job.
...I take that back, he just used it.

The house/room/hut place we stayed in the first few nights before being bumped up to the house used for retreat guests.

Circle for yoga/meditation/whatever else. The sun makes it's way right over top of it and it's perfect for sun salutations in the morning...I have not used it though.

The conservatory. Yup, that's a grape vine on the ceiling. :)

Tomatoes to the left there. This was taken about a month ago - there are actually tomatoes on the vines now!

This spot is in need of some attention and has been worked on some this week. There's a stone wall hiding in that circle somewhere. And that little place up top is the "round house." The sun is shining on it most of the day, so it stays super warm. I believe it's used for meditation and other group activities.

The entrance to "our" house.

At Elaines 7-6-13

Elaine went out of town on our first weekend at her house, giving us her whole hedged, and thus private, garden to enjoy for ourselves. And so we opted to do what any sane hippy-ish couple would do – play Adam and Eve of course (Too much information? Get over it, we're all naked underneath our clothes). If you have a private back yard, I highly recommend it. In fact, I think everyone should spend more time naked in general – it's just so liberating. We attempted some nude swimming pool time, but got ambushed by horseflies. So not cool. Wonderful time otherwise.

7-13-13

Over this past weekend we decided to try out some spoon carving. We had learned a bit about it during the bush craft course, but we'd run out of time to have any hands on experience. I've been itching to try it out. Wood carving has always just sounded like a good idea to me. I can't explain the satisfaction I get from whittling away at a split hazel branch to make something useful.

Beginnings of my first wooden spoon...

A little further...

  

It's actually nearly done now, but no pics of that yet. We don't have a spoon knife (those curved knives for the bowl of the spoon), so it takes a little longer. Plus, my hands have been so sore from some of the work I've been doing! Who knew weeding could be such an intense hand workout?!

Mark's first spoon and ladle. Nice, yeah?

My sweetie hard at work. So very concentrated that he didn't even know this picture was being taken.

7-16-13

Today is day two of our 3^rd week at Elaine's. Also nearly 3 weeks since we last saw rain or even felt a bit chilly for that matter. Two new things happened today though. One is that we had a little cloud coverage happening, helping us endure the hot as hell sun. The other truly new thing though is that, as I'm dumping my wheelbarrow's contents, I hear the wind pick up above my head. As the sound grows I think, “huh, the wind sounds an awful lot like bees.” I look up to see the largest swarm of bees I've ever seen outside of My Girl (and there were much more than even that), only thankfully they weren't interested in any humans below them, they were off to find a new home and drawing a lot of attention in the process. None of us had ever seen this happen before (or if Elaine had, she didn't let on). Quite a strange experience. The Birds flashed through my mind for a moment and I had a fleeting image of these bees swooping down to attack us. It was a very cool thing to see.

7-26-13

Spent the entire work day (6 hours) “clearing” a path. It's made of stone which was once held together by this cement/dirt mixture that was supposed to be more permanent, but has not kept it's promise. Winding a bit between a lot of raspberries, the strawberry/fruit cage, and rhubarb, the path isn't entirely fucked. And I kind of like the moss growing over and between the stones – it gives it character and a kind of Secret Garden feel. But there are sections where you see nature attempting to reclaim it's own via the craftiest of weeds. In those areas is where I come in; wire brush, tiny shovel, spade, and an iron pick thingy – that I can't explain well enough to give an accurate visual – in hand. The idea is that I'm supposed to clear out the weeds and moss to clean it up and any areas where the previous cement mixture is failing us, I remove the stones, brush out the cement dirt and Mark will come behind me with cement to fix it back up (am I boring you yet?). Thing is...under this cement dirt and stone there was a slab of cement put down and as I started to remove the top layer I found it wasn't the only one causing a problem. There are some sections where the entire bottom slab is either broken to pieces or just gone with only dust in it's place. Bad mix we're guessing. Anyway, it's a much bigger job that originally thought and I'm really wishing I had some before pics to show so that I could show the dramatic transformation...Wait...I do have some before pics! Unfortunately they're not from the absolute beginning, before I uncovered the hidden path, but they're enough. 

Not the full path, but you get the idea. When I started on it you couldn't even see the stones or that there was any sort of path at all. The Valerian had taken over either side...This is after I'd taken a bunch out and look at how much more is still there! (For anyone who doesn't know what Valerian looks like, as I didn't when I began clearing, it's the tall white flowers on either side of the path.) 

After pics coming soon...Please, don't get too excited.

 

And that concludes Part 2. If you can believe it, I do indeed have a Part 3 on it's way. Wouldn't want to give you more than you can handle in a single post. That's right, I'm thinking of you.