Cornwall's Events in June 2018

https://www.greenbank-hotel.co.uk/our-hotel/blog/whats-on-june-2018-cornwall-diary/?utm_source=jarrang&utm_medium=email&utm_content=main&utm_campaign=email2018JuneC01SplitB

Saturday, June 9, 2018 - 2 full days off. Sunshine, 61 degrees along the coast.

 8 AM  Standing at the entrance of the Community Farm, and looking west toward the Atlantic Ocean.  Sunshine, 16 mph winds, and zero chance of rain.  A beautiful day!!!

Nobody was down stairs, yet, so I took the duvet cover off my comforter, and put it in the washing machine.  There was so much rice pudding that I made yesterday, and it was chilled, this morning.  The giant bowl took up the whole bottom space of the tiny refrigerator.  So I had a bowl topped with thick fat-rich organic milk, and a teaspoon of Scottish raspberry jam.  French coffee and cream, and I am satisfied for the morning.

A FB friend, Palden Jenkins, who has authored many books, and does many guided tours of the ancient places and his friend, Lynn, are picking me up around 1 o'clock ish and taking me to Penzance because they have to shop, and to show me some mystical spots.  I know I will be in heaven, today.  Lots of pictures to follow.

June 8th 2018 - Friday evening in St Just at Bosavern Community Farm listening to 96.5 FM

https://tunein.com/radio/West-Cornwalls-Coast-FM-965-s230699/

7:30 PM  West Cornwall Radio Station.   Farm work is done.  Been working 10 hours cooking and managing the shop.  The young volunteers are all out at the pub in the town of St, Just.  I'm in bed.  It's broad daily light but I don't have the energy to walk uphill to town and don't like walking downhill in the dark on winding narrow roads with no sidewalks or street lights.  So I made a huge Pyrex of rice pudding and the rice didn't fully cook after hours in the oven.  But I covered it boiling hot and put on top of stove to see if it would steam itself.  I may go downstairs and have a look.

Otta came back and saw it and put it back on the stove with 2 more qts. of milk.  Now it's done.  I used the wrong kind of rice and tried to convert starch with milk, according to him.  Now it tastes good but there is SO MUCH of it.  lol

Everyone is getting ready to eat supper at 7:15 PM and then going out, and I'm in bed resting my back from a long 10 hour day working the shop and cooking for the farm. 

  I used the zucchini that were no longer good for the organic shop and made a casserole, salad, potato salad, fruit bowl, sliced bread.

I love it that young people come in to buy black kale,  turnips, tree spinach, cucumbers, salads,  we sell out fast.

time for this ol' girl to get some rest.

Friday, June 8 2018 - A sunny, nice day. 59 degrees at 7 AM going up to 63.

Yesterday, Hugh mowed a large open field we have to walk along many times a day.  We only had a path along it and tall grasses grew here.  Now it is getting ready to be a campsite area,  as a way to generate a little income for the community farm.

I have shop duty from 9 AM until 6 PM.  with a 1 hour break for lunch.  Then I am off until Monday.  This was not the 5 hour volunteering I thought it would be.  I have pushed myself to the limits and have had quite an experience of what it is like working on a 36 acre farm and while in almost constant pain.  It will be good to work the store, today, and not put as much exertion on muscles that have been sleeping since last October 27th when I had surgery & a head injury while at Good Samaritan Hospital.

June 7 2018 Working on the Farm Doing Multiples of Chores

After a long morning of harvesting Tuscan Kale for the boxes people order, and making 4 trips to the back field to hand carry 6 giant pails of it, I had to weight it into 200 grams each for customers, and into 500 grams for 6 restaurants.   Upon completion, Marie, from Germany, cooked up a delicious hot lunch for us.  A huge pot of Polenta and a vegetarian stew.   Of course there was plenty of artesian bread and butter to go with it.  

later in the afternoon, just to squeeze in more work, Loddie, from Netherlands, age 23, and I were asked to weed the kale beds.   It just began misting when we stopped and then had to close up the 5 enormous poly tunnels at 5 PM.   The other WWOOFERS all walked into town for fish n chips and to go party at a pub, and I went upstairs to lay down and attempt to calm the spasms in my lower back.

During 11 AM coffee break, a volunteer, Bridget,  who comes from St. Just to work on the farm offered to drive me into town to the Post Office to buy 3 stamps and mail 2 birthday cards and a post cart.  It cost almost 5 pounds to mail them.  So happy I was able to mail them after a week of having no means to find a Post Office.  She drove the neatest Renault Kangoo mini van with a sleeper and a mini kitchen in back.

The Star Inn is where the Diddly Dees played Monday night - Celtic Folk Music.  Everyone went at 7:30 PM  but me because I couldn't make that long walk up the hill and back at 11:45 PM.   I was in a lot of pain and tired. 

As we drove back from the St. Just Post Office, this open topped tour bus was turning the corner.  I was told this is a big tourist town.

St. Just is the very last town in the U.K.  before the Atlantic Ocean.  It has stone buildings with colorful wooden doors.

Loddie, from the Netherlands, and I worked in a greenhouse today winding cucumbers counter clockwise around twine to assist them in growing taller.  

  

With everyone out for the evening, I am going to take a shower and get to sleep.  I work in the store, tomorrow and I have to make the main meal for the group.   Hmmm  all the pounds of cheese we had is gone.   I have no idea what to cook for the group. I have to cook it while running the store - next door - and run back and forth while cooking and attending to customers.

The young people who are volunteering here are all such good cooks.  I'm very impressed with their work ethics, and respect they have.

Good night from St. Just and the Bosavern Community Farm.

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