Wandering Becca: 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!