Workaway

We have just flopped on the sofa with a cup of tea to write up this blog entry on our first experience of Workaway.

Workaway is a website that allows people to volunteer to work on farms and in homes for a few hours a day in exchange for food and accommodation.

We started with a bang and invited three lots of volunteers who had applied to visit the farm. Judith came to help in the garden, she rocked up in her campervan and stayed for a week and a half, working her way through the jungle which hid the pond, she was amazing! Theo and Max arrived two days later, they are French engineering students who were spending four weeks in England as part of their course, they worked like machines digging trenches and clearing brambles. Finally at the end of the week Philip arrived from Ireland and got stuck in straight away, pruning and pig feeding.

We had an amazing week or so working with and entertaining our volunteers, it was really nice to sit down for meals each day with such a diverse group of people and to hear their ideas and get their perspectives on what we have been doing here. We will defiantly be workaway-ing again, it was brilliant! If you are interested in volunteering (with us or anyone else) have a mooch around the website – workaway.info

The pigs enjoyed the leftovers!

Hog roasting in Forest Row

Once a year my sister has a grand old bash and so this year, rather than a fatted calf, they had a prime and succulent Noggin Farm porker spit roasted over an open fire. After 8 hours over the heat, the crackling was to die for, yet the pork was succulent and tasty!

The pig put on its' smoking jacket...

Fire in the hedge!

At the top of the garden was an 8 foot Ivy hedge, that needed a slight pruning to remove the dead branches and reduce the height. There was going to be a before picture; but, by the time I had got the camera, Sarah had already gone to work! Not unsurprisingly we had to run and get the hose to make sure the fire did not spread to the rest of the farm...

Firefighter Sarah sets to protecting the Raspberries...

Going Potty...

Before I went a little pot crazy….

And after I had made use of every possible container, including 3 posh olive oil cans from work, a guzunder and a few buckets.

And here it is now at the end of August...

Hay harvest

The hay is in! Our first ever hay crop, feeling very farmerly and proper now!

A new home for Geoffrey & his ladies

After our week away, big thanks to Em, Paul, Georgina & Morris for farm sitting, we came back to a glorious weekend of catching up with the family Kane and a few little jobs. While we had been away Paul hade been busy with the chainsaw and taken down all of the conifer trees which totally blocked the view down onto the paddock and over the the Malvern Hills. It made a huge difference to the garden but surprisingly also to the inside of the house as the light flooded into the kitchen, before the trees were cut down we hadn’t realized that they had been blocking the light at all!

[before and after]

Anyway, onto the point of the post! Geoffrey has been a bit upset at being kept in his small pen despite me assuring him that it was only a temporary measure until we had built him a foxproof alternative!

So Em, Georgina and I set off to get some chicken wire to build a pen, de la pen that any chicken would be proud of. Will whacked the posts in record time and with Em and Paul helping we got the chicken wire in in double speed (and a lot neater than Will and I could have managed – we had a big ol’ shouty match when we tried to put some stock-proof fencing up around Plum’s pen a few months ago!).

[chook pen]

Hay... oh

Having wanted rain for months, in order to keep the water flowing from our bore hole, it would rain on the one day we don't want it - hay bailing day! The problem with using about 200 gallons of water each morning and evening is that every now and then the bore hole struggles to keep up! This has been particularly true of late with the long period of virtually no rain.

However, today needed a morning of glorious sun to finish drying the hay before bailing. Unfortunately, just as the tractors were due to roll into the field the heavens opened... fortunately, when it dries a little later in the week it can still be collected and wrapped for haylage; unfortunately, this reduces it's nutritional and monetary value. Hay ho, a farmer's life for me!

Pigs & Pipes on the paddock

We have pigs on the paddock….. at last, eight pens for the weaned piglets to go into. Jen & Max came to visit a couple of weeks after the first pigs moved in and after Max had ‘walked’ the hay field and given his farmerly opinion

And Will had parroted all of the hay knowledge that our neighboring farmer had told him so far…

Will and Max started to dig a trench across the paddock for the waterpipe to the troughs.  Jen and I set to work on some strimming and weeding in the top garden. I love having guests who get stuck in, it motivates us to get so much done! By the end of the afternoon we had done some serious weed clearance and plumbed in two double troughs; result!

Water, water, everywhere... well at least to these four pens!