June 6 2018 - Chicken chore day - a huge responsibility

Hugh showed me how to do the chicken detail.  It takes about 1 1/2 hours at 7:30 AM to open all kinds of doors, electric gates, and to weigh the chicken mash and feed.  There are 3 chicken houses far from the farm house, and they were moved here 3 weeks ago with a huge tractor onto the old potato field, so you have to move a wheelbarrow in between furrows and over the bumpy furrows.  The water dishes have to be empty, scrubbed, cleaned and re-filled, chickens let out, eggs gathered, feed placed into the feeders, and each house has to be recorded separate from each other with the # of eggs found.  

I will go back at 10 AM and do the job all over again with measuring the feed, wheelbarrowing the food back up the hill, unlocking the electric gate, changing the water, and collecting eggs.

At 2 PM I go up to collect eggs and check water.  Eggs will be laid all over the large field and I have to go on an egg hunt.

At 10 PM I have to go back, again, and put hens to bed.  The littler hens may have to be hand carried back in and onto a perch.  Then the gate has to be turned on to electrify the fence for the night.  Chicken day is a lot of responsibility and I have to hand wash all the poopy eggs, allow to dry, then place into egg cartons to sell in our market.

There are currently 300 chickens on the farm.

Before going out at 7:30 AM I washed some pretty nasty, muddy clothes, and when I came back at 9 AM, they were hung out.  Praying for a good dry day.  This is my 2nd wash since arriving Sunday evening.  We have to share one small washer and a small clothesline between 7 of us so I try to be courteous of water usage and sharing the lines.  

It is 9:58 AM and Hugh has gone off to Penzance to the dentist, and I am on my own doing round 2 of chicken care.   I hope my shortness of breath due to the concussion/bulged disk in my C 5 - 6 will not hold me up.  I need to pace and go slowly, but pushing a wheelbarrow uphill with head bent is a bit of a challenge.   

Carry on, as they say!!!!

Andrew made an amazing lunch - pizzas on Vicky's artesian bread, mashed turnips, steamed veggies, pasta baked in cheese sauce.  So delicious.   

I've pulled the wash in as it began to slightly mist at 2 PM.   We are all going to the chickens to do the weekly scrubbing out of their 3 houses.   Lots of chicken poop.  

I had to run the store from 12 until 1 so I quickly learned pounds per kilo, and the British coins.   I had 4 customers and they were all so polite and pleasant.  

more tonight.

It is 4:45 PM   I am back from the 3rd trip up the hill to the chicken houses.  This time beside changing the water, gathering more eggs, and searching a huge field for more eggs, I had to break up multi grain loaves of old bread and feed th 300 birds this bread.   Also several woofers had to use shovels and wheelbarrows and scrape out tons of chicken poop and bring the barrows to the composting area.   I washed more eggs and the total for the day was 144 eggs gathered.  They were placed and labeled into egg cartons with June 27 2018 as expiration date for selling.

I have to cook dinner, tonight for 7:15 PM and go out at 10 PM to lock up all the chickens.   This is NOT a 5 hour work day, and I'm so exhausted, I go straight to my room and collapse.   I need a tooth brush, desperately, and a trip to the Post Office, and was told it is a 15 minute walk to town.  With both big toes damaged from walking in this ill fitting L.L.Bean Duck Boots from the main road when we planted the flowers, there is pooling of blood underneath both nails and it is quite painful.  It's all I can do to get into bed and elevate my feet.   Even my ankles are swollen at the end of the long and very hard work day.  I am about 45 years older than the other volunteers.   Not too shabby for a Grandma working neck and neck with fit and lovely millennials who are very polite and nice to be around.  I need to close my eyes as I never slept a wink last night from over exhaustion on the farm.  

The field is massive and is an old potato field.  Searching for eggs in it is a very big job, but Hugh, Bastian, and Loddie all helped with the task and we found 41 eggs along the fencing, mostly, well hidden.   All washed, in the shop, and I have to lay flat on my back and ease the pain for a few hours.  I have to cook dinner by 7 PM.  

PS

I went downstairs at 6:15 PM to make dinner in extreme pain in the lower back, and feet.  I washed dishes in the sink, took a handful of garden mint and a lemon, 3 green tea bags, and made a pitcher of tea when Andrew and 2 others came into the kitchen to tell me I didn't have to make dinner, after all. There was plenty of lunch leftovers, and everyone was exhausted.  I was so grateful.  So I set the table, sliced bread, put cheese out, and the hot carafe of mint lemon tea, heated 3 large bowls of leftovers, and went upstairs to bed. I brought up a very small plate with some food.   While laying here with laptop on my lap, and head propped on pillows by the open window facing the sea, there was a knock on the door.  It was my little 24 year old  friend, Markie, from Ohio, smiling and walking over to me with a brand new tooth brush.  She heard I didn't have one, and had been brushing my teeth 10 days with a Q-Tip and toothpaste, and knew it was too much to walk 15 minutes into town with my toes in such pain from deep purple bruised toenails.  She and Bastien had driven into town.  

I feel blessed and happy right now.  What I love the most about Cornwall are the people!!  <3

June 5th 2018 - the hard work day is done.

Farm day is the hardest job of any job.  I used a wheel hoe and Markie, the other American, age 24, used a Dutch hoe and we hoed this field by ourselves from 9 until 12.  (with a 30 minute tea break at 11 AM.


 

Then we cleared out a hoop house in the afternoon .

I hand pulled all these plants out and Markie wheelbarrowed them to the compost heap which was quite far away.  Hugh expected us to clear the plants out, lightly turn soil over, and apply compost inside the poly tunnel to prepare for 90 tomato plantings.   Is he crazy?    I didn't get to take the finished hoop house shot of it being all cleared out.   I carried 2 pitch forks back to the front barn and walked with Hugh and used the pitchforks to help me walk - like 2 canes.  HAHAHAHAHA

This is now completely cleaned and looks great.  We left it with not one piece of a plant or a root in the entire area.  What a day it has been. We are both tired.  

It's 5:50 PM.   I offered Markie a hand peeling potatoes as it is her day to make supper.  We'll eat at 7:15 PM.   I will sleep like a baby, tonight.  

I am so exhausted I cannot sleep and have tossed all night  It is 4 AM and I have to be downstairs at 730 AM for chicken duty 

June 5th 2018 - St. Just

https://www.cornwalls.co.uk/St-Just

Tuesday, June 5 2018

Awakening at 5:45 AM to a hazy day - 58 degrees and going up to 63.  Everyone is sleeping.  They all came in at 11:45 PM from the pub.  Sounds like they had a good time.  Lots of birds singing, lots of quacking.  Today my work consists of farm work.   (No cooking, doing the chickens, or working in the shop).

An eco house built on the farm by volunteers

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                                      A view from my window.  The ocean is straight ahead.  

                          Seeds sown the other day - lots of broccoli and other vegetables. 

Lots of compost is made for this large farm. 

                    Outside the Farm Shop we sell herbs plants that I hand watered yesterday.  

It's 6:30 AM and time to get out of bed.   I have been craving porridge for a week  Andrew bought French coffee, yesterday.   We had a TESCO delivery at 7:30 PM of lots of food to feed the WWOOFERS.    to be continued...

June 4 2018 Bosavern Community Farm - Day 1 of work

Some of the WWOOFERS at the Farm - Andrew aka Otta - Animal Spirit name is one of our managers.  He is in the middle.  John on the right is from Australia.  Lotta is from Germany.

I am having great difficulty uploading pictures and I have so many to share.   The American girl is loaning me the correct adapter for the electrical connection.  I am so mad I left mine in the upstairs bedroom at the last farmhouse I stayed at.  I would be here with NO cell phone and no Internet.

I have bills to pay online tonight and my Internet is very important for this.

Started the day up at 6 AM and washed dishes in the sink, made breakfast,  washed my undergarments, and hung on the line, early.  At 7:30 AM I observed Bastian, from France, be instructed on his turn to take care of chickens.  WHAT A JOB - 7:30 AM, 10:30 AM. 2 PM to collect eggs.  It's a very long walk to 3 chicken houses.  electric fences.  Each door you open about 75 chickens jump out on you.  You have to wheelbarrow weighed plastic containers of food to 3 different age groups of birds.  Change water, scrub water dishes.  If rain barrows are empty, you have to walk far on an old potato field with furrows that are covered with dock and other weeds and find the spigot. Give them water and check field for eggs hidden in the grasses.   Then close the doors, lock the fences, and wash the eggs, then put in storage.

 Then we went up to St. Just cemetery and the main roadway and planted many containers with 100's of beautiful flowers like petunias, verbena, begonias, impatiens, pansies, white and purple trailing lobelia, bacopa, geraniums, I was in heaven doing this.

 I picked a bucket each of snow peas, dragon kale, broad beans, and I weeded the broad bean row.

 working in poly tunnel was very hot.

Once the kale was picked I had to weigh 200 grams per bag end seal them with a label,  Same with freshly picked organic salad greens.  I had to weigh 100 grams each and make a label and bag them for market.   I made 25 bags of salad and only 6 of Kale.   The broad beans and peas went straight into the farmer's market shop 

 These bags I packed below go to the market in town.

We had lunch at 1 PM with tortillas made by the German girl, and leftover curry stew, rice, and cooked greens.   After I got done bagging the food, Otta allowed me to retire at 4:15 PM instead of 5 PM.   I did a lot of walking and work today.  

There is a folk music gig going on in the Village tonight but my 2 big toes have purple discoloration underneath the nails and my feet are swollen.   I feel very tired.  I think I'll go down and have supper at 7:15 PM and stay here while the young folks go out.  I'd be interested in seeing how the locals live and party, but my feet need some care.  And I need a little rest.   I never stopped all day except to eat.  

Oh and I cut down the comfrey for comfrey tea as well as mentioning they have seaweed tea, as well.

So this is my home for the next 2 weeks.

June 3 2018 - Safely arrived at Bosaverne Community Farm around 4 PM

David Trestrail kindly drove me from Probus to St. Just, and took me all around Hayle, Gwinear,  and Angarrack.  My grandmother Bessie Knight, was born in Angarrack.  It was a darling little village.  We took pictures of Great Grandma Minnie Trestrail Jenkins cottage at Phlebe Row - where a famous oil painting was done of her cottage.  We tried Trevaskis Farms for dinner around 1:30 PM but there was an hour wait without reservations We decided to drive back to Hayle for a pasty at Philps, and we went to St. Gwinear Church, where my great great grandparents, Elizabeth and John Hendra, are buried right outside the church door.  The church was built in the 13th century.  

I am having great difficulty uploading pictures due to being in a very VERY rural area next to the Atlantic Ocean.

I regret leaving my international plug for connecting to electrical services up in my bedroom at Riverside Cottage and I cannot the bag of other adapters.  When this lap top dies I may not be able to post daily journals.   :-(

So I will sign off just saying this is about how I expected this community farm to be.  YOUNG foreign WWOOFERS from Australia, France, Germany, England and one girl from America.  I was supposed to share a small room with 3 girls on a bunk bed.  But the manager, Andrew, Otta, his animal spirit name, kindly sensed I'd be happier in a room to myself with an old big 1873 farmhouse window opened for fresh air.  I gratefully accepted and am sitting here now at 8:45 PM in daylight, writing this brief entry.

Tomorrow we walk to the village of St. Just and plant flowers in all the flower boxes in the village.

Dinner tonight was cooked by Andrew, a professional chef, and it was so delicious - a curry dish, salad, white rice, and homemade bread with country sweet butter.

I have a 14 day commitment, and God willing I will remember Harry's Trager messages and remember he re-set my brain back to factory settings.

Good Night to all.

My first meal at the farm.  

June 3 - Sunday - Traveling through N. Cornwall to St. Just with David Trestrail

Happy as a duck
Wet as a shag (cormorant)
As yellow as a Keet's foot
Thirsty as a gull
A temper like a fowl
As weak as a goose chick
Sick as a shag
Mazed as a curly (curlew)
Wisht as a winnard (red wing)

~ Cornish Sayings


Feeling tired but at the same time feeling concerned I did not have the energy yesterday afternoon to volunteer in the hoop houses.  I was getting exhausted just trying to fight the exhaustion that came over me from walking through cemeteries.  I must do the simple exercises Harry taught me (through Trager)  to re-balance for the second leg of the journey at a community farm.

to be continued.

I leave my heart with the greatest affection and respect for the hosts of Riverside Cottage,  Harry and Julie Dalford.  I will never forget their kindness and strong presence ~ two remarkable people of great strength, determination, intelligence, love, and a mindful work ethic managing a pristine and sustainable organic farm.

And so I leave paradise behind and have the luxury and comfort of a ride by David Trestrail to Hayle, Gwinear, and St. Just.  David's kind offer was a Godsend, really, as I never could have made stops along the way with all my luggage.