Wandering Becca

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.

So perhaps some people are wondering what's happened to me...or perhaps not. Either way, we've been living it up at Elaine Brook's wonderful home and garden. Working an average of 6 hours a day, 5 days a week and very much enjoying staying in and doing our own thing on the weekends. We haven't really had internet access since we arrived though. Not until last week and before then it was a walk down a hill to Elaine's house and our connection cutting in and out every couple of minutes while we were on. Sooo we have a much better connection in the house we're staying in now (Yay us!) and it's catch up time.

I'm going to start by giving you some picks I never posted from a walk Mark and I took before we set out on our wwoofing travels. It was where we were camping before we left, on a trail from our site to a nearby town. We arrived in the town after our destination, the farm shop, closed, so instead walked across the street to the pub and had a couple of beers. The owner/bartender was so sweet and figured we were camping and possibly in need of water. Not only did she fill our water jug, she gave us eggs! Absolutely fantastic lady. Sat outside and had a cigarette with Mark and chatted about her business ideas to keep the place alive. Really hope it all goes well for her. No pics of that I'm afraid, but here are some from the trek...

Mario's world is in Cornwall, UK

And Mark wondered onto a window's desktop...

This is pretty much what most of the trail looked like. So pretty!

The end.

Now, it's time to see a few of Mark's kitty, Meme. She was only making sure to look absolutely beautiful and too adorable to pass by, so it needs to be shared, of course.

Seems natural enough, but I assure you, she knows what she's doing.

This would be her, "what? I was just lying here enjoying some relaxation on the carpet directly in front of your feet" look.

"...but you must notice how cute I look right now. Don't deny you want to pet me."

Mark made his mark (hehe) on our van...it's his favorite band. :)

Cucumbers! These were my little babies for two days. I wonder how they're doing now.

One of the few warm days we had while at Jeremy's farm. So we decided the beach was in order. We took some food and beers and ourselves a kind of picnic. However, it was actually still quite cold thanks to all the wind. Oh well, it was still a great time though!

Fellow WWOOFer, Manon!

Mark and Jonas (another WWOOFer) enjoying their fags. (yup, that's right, I said "fags")

Loved our resting spot.

Back at the farm. This is looking out over most of the crop. Poly tunnels are to the right.

The entrance to the farm shop.

The granny van/our home parked to the right of the entrance.

Our walk out to the farm every morning.

...aaand from the other direction.

In the garden area outside the shop.

From the other side of the shop where the wwoofer's caravan is.

The ducks! I just loved watching them waddle after us during feed time.

The shop's cafe seating area. Caravan to the left. Really could have gotten a better picture here, but it was much sunnier than this picture's letting on.

There were a few cafe tables in the garden as well. Loved it! Miss the food, man. SO good.

Inside a camping pod at Cathy's farm.
Cathy is Jeremy's sister and the original farm we'd ask to work at. She didn't have as much for us, so we only spent about 3 or 4 days total there. Really enjoyed it though! Wished we'd had more time.

The day after our bush craft course weekend our instructor, Dale, discovered an oil leak...very sad. So, being that the recommended mechanic was located in a tiny area with little to do, we were stranded for some hours while we waited for the Granny to get repaired. Nice guy though, the mechanic. Put the kettle on so we could make tea! ...Yeah, pretty much everyone has an electric kettle here. I think it's unheard of not to.