Undeceivable - Moonraker Zen...

Ride-On Into the Sunset

Aside from weeding, potting, separating ponies and sheep, and splitting wood, I've also been doing a bit of ride-on mowing with the Kuboto. Oh, it's good:

Planting and Weeding

This new wwoofing place on Dartmoor is pretty neat. A different style from what I am used to - we eat every meal together and sit and chat - but I'm enjoying it a lot. It's funny what we think we'll like is sometimes something we don't end up enjoying and vice-versa. Maybe just doing all sorts of different things is the best way after all. Just jump on in - you can't fall off. I don't think so, anyway.

Yesterday was spent weeding blueberry plants and today was spent repotting plants. I'm still feeling a bit sick - it's OK, I'm not pregnant - but I'm carrying on regardless.

I have a new plan which I'm quite excited about. But the strange thing is, it's the most boring plan I've had in years. And another strange thing is, these 2 and a half years of strawberry picking, volunteering, WWOOFing, grape-picking, working at my brothers' on his allotment and on converting the lofts, and in-between staying at a monastery, may in fact have been the best thing I could have done. Along the way, often if felt like drifitng, but maybe it wasn't.

Interesting, huh? I won't tell you the plan though, 'cause it's boring.

Walky Walk On Dartmoor

I had a little amble up on Dartmoor this afternoon. I think I've eaten something strange because I felt a little sick after an hour or so of walking. It was nice though to not depend on the van for a day:

TV WWoof

Well I left my organic farm wwoofing place and slept in my van for most of the week. It was a weird week, let me tell you. OK, let me tell you.

It was the first time I've been woken up by the police whilst wild camping:

"Are you local?" they asked.
"No, I'm just wwoofing in the area," I replied, sleepily - it was 5am.
"Ah, it's just that we don't tend to see many cars parked here at night." I was parked in a lay-by off a quietish country road.
"Ah, yeah I'm just traveling around looking for my next place."

They seemed quite interested in wwoofing. I gave them my driving licence and they checked it on their system and concluded that I wasn't a threat to anyone or anything. They were really nice and if I hadn't been so sleepy I'd have had a proper chat.

After that night I tended to go from random place to another whilst checking my email and waiting for responses from wwoofing hosts. Being pretty poor at finding camping spots I would end up driving for hours looking. Admittedly I could have phoned a host and sorted something out straight away but I was waiting on one place that had said I could go but whose phone number wasn't working - it turns out their house was flooded and all the electrics have been taken out. Anyway I stayed on Exmoor, Dartmoor, in a car park in Exeter, and in a lay-by. It was comfy and thanks to a bit of inspiration from my experience at the organic farm I was eating well - lots of rocket and salad in my sandwhiches.

Finally, someone responded and I arrived earlier today. It's a blueberry farm (picking doesn't start till July but there's lots of weeding to be done) and the hosts are lovely as are the other wwoofers. Once dinner finished we started watching TV - The Voice and now Die Hard. To be honest I've been craving some normal cosy TV lounge evenings for weeks, so it's pretty perfect.

I'll only stay here a couple of weeks though as I have a week's stag-do surf trip to go to up in North Devon next.

Surf's up...if I'm not too scared.

It's the End of the Road Festival...

I've always wanted to go to a music festival in the UK and each year I watch Glastonbury on TV and am left regretting not having gone. Well, Glastonbury is not on, so I won't regret that this year, but another festival caught my eye - The End of the Road Festival in North Dorset.

It costs £150 for the full 3 days so that was out of the question. But a quick application and a refundable deposit later I had applied to be a steward for the festival. And now I've been accepted. If only jobs were as simple as a passport-sized picture and a bit of customer service experience!

The main pull for this festival was the first few bands on the line-up: Grizzly Bear, Grandaddy, and Beach House. I'll probably be pulling a pint - or something like that - whilst they are on, but hey, it'll be fun to be around.

What about the Woofing you ask? Well I'm a picky Woofer, it seems. I am currently Woofless and searching! Fortunately, my van is proving to be very comfortable.

We've Found a Leek, Sir

Today after harvesting 3 crates of white spear, it was time to go pick over 150kg of leeks. In the rain. In the RAIN.

The movie Seven takes place almost entirely in the rain, if I remember rightly, and that was pretty much what it was like picking leeks for 2 and a half hours in non-stop, cold rain - minus the severed head finale.

For our finale we had jacket potatoes.

I entered a little online music contest a few weeks back and my "Dreamer" song has made it to the semi-finals. Whoop whoop! Have a look at Kozmickonstructions Music Contest and the bumblebee bats are in the male singer-songwriter division.

Weeding, Sewing, and Picking

The past few days have been spent doing a bit of everything: I've been sent off to harvest white spear broccoli on my own, lots of early morning spring onion harvesting, some chard, spinach, parsley, and salad leaves. Yesterday I spent the afternoon sewing various different squashes, which was great fun. Then today after a bit of picking I spent about 6 hours (I worked through the afternoon too - woofing overtime!) weeding the frickin' carrots! Once again the shoots are tiny, the idea being to protect the carrot when it's young, but as the day went by it became instinctive to discern what was carrot and what was weed. Working a 10 hour shift is tiring and I think I've over compensated for being so tired by eating a little too much - oh, well.

At the weekend I went for my first surf for a month and it was awful. I was barely able to get into the water without feeling a bit panicked. Weird. I think that maybe I just need to become a stronger swimmer and this will give me a little more confidence getting in when there are massive rips.

Just a few more days of pod-heaven left and still no-one has offered to rent me one.

Life is Chard

The first thing I harvested today was swiss red chard. After this I was sent off to pick a big crate of spring onions. After this 3 of us went to harvest 6 crates of leeks. After morning break we went to get some psb and then white spear broccoli. For lunch we had jacket potatoes that had been slowly cooking in the oven all morning. Delicious.

That's about it.

I'll be heading off at the end of next week, east of Exeter, to a small holding with gardening work and lots of walling. It doesn't seem like I'm staying here at the farm very long, but I've already done a week and a half. At the previous place the same amount of work would have been a day and a half! I had my usual adjustment problems at group living at the start but am quite enjoying it now, but the fact I'll be podless in a couple of weeks decided it for me...

There Is No Carrot

Amidst the leek harvesting today, we spent a good few hours weeding the carrot beds. But this wasn't your normal weeding, as it was almost impossible to actually see what we were protecting from the weeds - the carrots only had the tiniest little two-pronged shoots coming through. So, on our hands and knees, we pulled out tiny weeds that looked, to my eyes, almost identicle to the 'little two-pronged shoots' I was trying to save.

Having said this, after morning break, we were back at it, and I could now tell the difference between grass and carrot shoots quite quickly. It's interesting how quickly one learns.

In addition to weeding we had to pick up any slugs we saw and put them into a bucket - they would be given to the chickens or , dropped back on the carrot shoots by accident...which is what I did.

My pod is still awesome but I can only have it till the end of the month. Then I'm in a porta-cabin in the packhouse by the tractors. Not quite as idylic! So I have decisions to make...

Wwoofing is good but lots of places don't tend to reply very quickly. They're either very busy or just waiting till they need a Wwoofer to reply. The result is that, I sent off 5 emails a few weeks ago, and only here replied. Then I started here and everyone else replied!

So maybe once my pod is up, I'll move on to a place where I'm told there's a master waller...

Hoe Hoe Hoe

My first harvest for Monday was 6kg of leeks. Then 6 bunches of spring onions. After bagging and bunching these up, we spent the rest of the morning hoeing the spring garlic field. We had beautiful sunshine, chilly winds, hail, and rain.

Which was nice.