sophie and matt's woofing blog: September 2011

Phew
well it is Monday now and so far we have been back to our normal routine of scouring the blueberry field in search of the ever more elusive berries. However, this evening there may be a bonfire so looking forward to that We have had some amazing talks with all the different people we have met. Yesterday some of Wei wei's friends from China came and it was great to talk to them I had no idea how hard they have to work to get into University in China, apparently if they don't get into the best Unis in China they then start looking to go to the best of our English Universities. I had a lovely talk with one of the girls called Agnes she actually got into and through university in China in electronic communication and is now in the last few weeks of her Msc at Bristol. She has had to work so hard and she is convinced her english is not good enough to stay here, but I think she was brilliant at English. It certainly makes me think of living in England and already speaking English in a new way.

We have both come to the realisation that we have not seen enough of the world and we have been seriously considering taking up Vicki and Simon's offer of a wwoof opportunity in New Zealand. When they go back I think they are going to sell up and buy some land and become Wwoof hosts themselves. We have been looking at how we might do it and how much it might cost and it is not as expensive as I thought it might be.

Tuesday through thursday we have had many hours of picking blueberries we are becoming experts in picking. It does make me giggle because the trays we use remind me of cat litter trays, but when we fill 5-6 of those to half full every day that is a lot of blueberries.

Francesca and Matt carrying trays of blueberries

One days collection of blueberries

Other than that we have been spending a lot of time being sociable in the evening too! On tuesday night we had a bonfire (Vicky and Simon ripped out a lot of old woodwormy floor boards out of the barn that they were converting) which was fantastic, Wei wei also had these lovely lanterns which we lit and we wrote wishes on. These were then released into the sky and we watched until we could no longer see them.

getting the lanterns ready

releasing the lanterns

the bonfire! which was huge!

From the left to right: me, Matt, Rober, Vicky, Robin, Simon, Alex and Francesca.

Right to left: me, Alicia, Rober, Vicky, Robin, Simon, Francesca, and Alex

Vicky and Simon admirring the ever increasing fire.

One of the cats decided to make friends with us as well This kitty is moonshine and he a very silly kitty it took him a week and a half before he had the confidence to sit on us!

Matt with Moonshine practically on his shoulder

Moonshine on my lap it took him a week and a half to work up the confidence.

On Wednesday night we went foraging for food, like hawthorn berries, rowan berries, blackberries crab apples and mushrooms! It was quite fun going out up to the cleave with everyone.

Francesca, Alicia and Matt on the search for mushrooms and berries.

Matt, Francesca, Vicky, Simon and Alicia.

Me, Matt and Simon picking hawthorn berries.

Matt, Francesca, Simon and Alicia picking hawthorne berries.

Friday: we had our last day on the blueberry farm and it was great we were allowed to have the afternoon off and we were able to chill out a bit and go up to the cleave for the last time. When we got back we had the most amazing sushi and other food i don't know the name of but it was amazing! After dinner we all decided to watch a film, so after much discussion and voting we agreed to watch 'the curious tale of Benjamin button.' It was a beautiful film, in fact so beautiful that I cried, I couldn't help even in front of everyone. After that we had to say goodbye to everyone which was sad but also happy, we have the email addresses of everyone. I have never had a good bye like it, I look forward to seeing them again already!

Saturday we left quite early and made our way to the next place, which I will not mention much other than we didn't like it there and we decided to leave, which suffice to say meant that on sunday night we unexpectedly found ourselves in need of a B&B after 7pm. However despite the negative aspects, we are now enjoying the very nice room in a B&B (that thank you very much to mummy bee for arranging it for us) in Cardigon. However, it also seems that fate has decided that we are able to go back to our favourite Welsh farm tomorrow! So yay!

Hello we are now a week into our 3rd Wwoof farm now, in Devon! We are working on a blueberry farm and it is fantastic! Unlike the other places we have been there are other Wwoofers at this place too. It does seem that not many English Wwoofers actually Wwoof in England. At the moment there are 2 from Spain, Alicia [alee-thia] and Roberto [rolling R-o-bear] and 1 from Italy, Francesca, and 2 from New Zealand, Vicki and Simon. It has been so fun and we have learnt so much about all the different cultures. We have also been enjoying the most amazing food as well, our hosts are Robin and Wei Wei [Way-way] and Wei Wei is the most amazing cook we have had some lovely real chinese meals as well as a variety of other food that she has learnt to cook while being here. We have also been treated to some real Spanish and Italian food too! Alicia and Rober have cooked paella (with seafood in it which included mussels and calamari and it was very yummy!) and they will be making Spanish omelette tonight. Francesca cooked real lasagne making the pasta by hand, it was quite tricky as she had to cater for three different diets (me and Alicia helped out and learned a lot), she had to make a meaty one for the majority, then a vegetarian one for Alex (who is the only member of official staff, and who has been brilliant at teaching us what berries to pick and generally keeping us entertained) and a gluten free meaty version for our Kiwi friends. She was amazing and totally unfazed, she just allocated us various jobs (stirring or acquiring ingredients) and just got on with it. She even made a pudding which is a type of cake that uses yeast instead of baking powder, both Alicia and I could only stare in wonder as she assembled this apple pudding (in two version, gluten free and normal).

Ok to review what we got upto over the last week.

Saturday we arrived and found out that the weekends are free time on this farm so didn't have to do anything on the day we arrived. We met our Spanish friends first as they had been here for 2 days already. So we were able to get settled in that night and got to know our hosts a bit as well as Alicia and Rober, who come from near Madrid. Alicia has just quit her job working for a company that assesses the route of least disruption to the environment for building gas pipes and roads and thing, but she really didn't like the corruption in doing that job especially when it was the oil companies who were paying for the answers they wanted. Rober is a GP back in Spain but I think he is technically taking time off before going back to work. They will be woofing until Christmas like us. We also went for a walk to see the Dartmoor Ponies at what is known as the Cleave, with Alicia and Rober.

Cows that live on the land called the Cleave

Mushrooms growing on the cleave

Hawthorn

Me curled up knitting in the Wwoof barn after a long day I didn't even know that Matt took this one

Sunday:
Robin offered to take us to a local torr in the morning it was brilliant especially as we were allowed to climb on to them and see the most amazing views of Dartmoor.

Widecombe in the moor Church

Saddle Tor

Matt on top of Saddle Tor

Matt climbing back down

Another climbing shot

Rober and Alicia climbing down

It was fantastic we had a great time we even stopped off at a church that Robin actually used to go to as a child, his family has been living in the area for a long time. In the afternoon we went for a walk by ourselves to the Cleave again and saw lots of Ponies and Beetles!

The view from the rocks at the Cleave.

On Monday-Friday we started our short career as blueberry pickers, its not quite as easy as it looks in the beginning. You only pick berries of a certain size and any berries with brown marks or that have been bitten by animals are immediately not able to sell. At the beginning I was not very good at it and both me and Matt got the wrong end of the stick. But over the next few days we were evn able to give advice to our new arrival Francesca. Francesca is lovely, a little shy (however I think this is mostly because she is still learning how to speak English) but she is lovely. She comes from Milan and her family own a vineyard she is also a twin. She has recently just finished her degree in bioscience (?) and genetics, her last year project even looked at genetic markers for those who have lung cancer! She is great fun and learning more and more English everyday she is even studying the english language in the evenings.

I have spent most of my days this week picking and talking and teaching various bits of english, but Matt has been doing a variety of things. He has often been borrowed to move things with Alex or fix things or weeding in the vege patch. I feel I should mention that Alex our supervisor and he is not much older than us in fact he is only 25. He has recently got a first doing a degree on environmental science at Plymouth. He is brilliant fun and even taught us to play ping-pong.

When our Kiwi friends arrived (who have been to North Harton repeatedly as well as can recommend a farm that we have booked in November and were a bit dubious about going to!) lots of different jobs appeared. Me and Fracesca carried on in the blueberry fields but Matt, Alex, Rober, Vicki and Simon were helping to restore one of the barns ready to convert it into more Wwoof accomodation including bathroom facilities.

Vicki and Simon are very experienced wwoofers and travellers, they are fantastic and have been telling us all about some of their adventures all over the world! They have definitely inspired me to travel abroad I felt strange being the only one who had never been to the world a bit. The places they were describing sounded amazing! They are also avid Rugby fans apparently this game is very big in New Zealand and since the Rugby world cup is actually being hosted in New Zealand, we have been getting slightly sucked into it too. They are saying at the moment that this might be there last long trip abroad as they are planning to start up their own Wwoof farm! I may have when they are settled whether they would consider us as wwoofers hehe! On Friday they were quite excited because New Zealand won against Tonga.

On Saturday we all had the day off so we went to the House of Marbles ( http://www.houseofmarbles.com/ ) Which was fantastic we all went there and saw glass being made.

This is the most amazing marble run it is on the wall at one end of the buildings and the only powered elements to it are the chains pulling the marble up to the top

A smaller scale marble run

Another one!

This one is a bit bigger than the others.

Some of the marbles that they used to make here!

Marbles!

A glass dish being made!

Board games throughout history that include marbles!

We were there for a while and they had a amazing shop where Matt bought some Alpaca wool socks! and we bought a travel backgammon for 2.50! We are planning to teach anyone who wants to learn how to play tonight.

Mini Backgammon

Alpaca socks which I don't know if it is deliberate that they are pink or whether they were mistaken for red but either way, they made a topic of debate about men and pink socks hehe! This conversation was very much in line with the debate about english swear words which was hilarious!

After our little trip we briefly went to an art gallery which turned out to be mostly shut in preperation for the upcoming exhibit later this month :(

But after that we went to Lustleigh which is the local and nearest village to the farm! Robin actually went to school there when he was little back when one of the buildings was the old school. We had a little walk around the village and into the local church. We even got to see the devon air amubulance come in to land in one of the fields on their way to rescuing someone. We also saw some lovely cottages I just loved the spelling on one of them.