I entered the Slad Valley on a soaking wet Friday morning. The rain was lashing down so hard that at times the wipers could barely cope. I was extremely grateful that it was only a twenty minute drive from my Mum's house, but even so, not knowing the road terribly well I drove like a novice, slowing at every bend and downhill section, especially as I knew I was looking for a tiny turning somewhere in Slad but I wasn't sure just where. When I finally spotted it I had to turn really sharp left and then immediately the lane plunged down the side of the valley and up the other side and was only wide enough for one car. It was quite a relief to find the farm, and I donned my waterproof jacket and ran to the front door. By the time I made anyone hear, I was already quite damp and more than ready for the cup of coffee that was offered.
After coffee I was launched into my new placement with a vengeance! Firstly, we put the seven ponies out in the field, then I got to muck out the stables and empty the wheelbarrow on the muck heap which is across the road from the yard and through a field gate. All this time 'the rain it was a raining' and I was glad that I'd put on my wellies. After that Sarah had a meeting with a couple of people ("I'll be about half an hour") so pointed me in the direction of a pumpkin and some onions and asked me to prepare them, put them in a roasting tin with some olive oil and put them in the Aga to prepare a base for some soup that she will be making for a catering job that she is doing at the end of October. She also mentioned that she was going to do a leek and potato soup too, and then she disappeared for the rest of the afternoon! After I'd done the pumpkin, etc I was at a bit of a loose end as everyone seemed to have disappeared, then three very bedraggled people turned up looking for Paul, so I pointed them in the direction of the large green barn which was the last place I'd seen him, and then a girl turned up to say was it OK to put her stuff in the caravan? I said it probably was if she'd already agreed this with Sarah. She introduced herself as Rosie and I had to suppress a smile - well we are in Laurie Lee country and he did write 'Cider with Rosie'! After that I decided I might as well prepare the leek and potato soup base too so hunted around the kitchen until I found everything I needed and got stuck in.
I certainly felt as if I'd been parachuted into an unknown territory and had to hit the ground running! Doing this 'job' you are catapulted into people's lives: some of them stop and carefully explain the ins and outs of their set up, what jobs need doing and your part in the overall picture; and others, like Sarah and Paul carry on with the story of their lives, complete with ups and downs, minor disasters and catastrophes and somehow expect you to slot in and merge with it whilst assimilating information as you go. It's sometimes alarming but never dull, and I like to feel that I've risen to the challenge!
The second day that I was here, the weather was really warm and sunny, but the ground was still sodden. For most of the day I picked apples in the orchard. The orchard is situated in front of the farm on a slope that runs down into a dry valley and I was picking apples into a bucket and then transferring them to crates by the orchard gate. There were approximately three bucketsful of apples to the crate and I picked five crates. At the end of the day I loaded the crates one at a time onto the wheelbarrow and pushed this across another paddock, up a slope through a gateway to the green barn where they were to be stored until there were enough to go to the apple juice bottler a few miles away towards Gloucester. By then I was getting tired so decided to load the two final crates together onto the wheelbarrow. All was going well until I stopped to open the gate out of the paddock. When I tried to push the wheelbarrow forward my feet started to slip on the mud in the gateway, I paddled furiously for a few seconds until the inevitable happened and I fell face down in the mud. Unfortunately, I was still holding onto the wheelbarrow handles so, as I fell I catapulted two crates of apples over my head (remember that's six buckets full) and then had to watch as they rolled away down the hill! I heaved myself to my feet, brushed off as much mud as I could and picked up every single apple and repacked them in the crates before staggering back to the house to change - was I going to survive two weeks?
On the third day I was here I weeded and pruned the front border by the house with the help of Rosie who is attending a course at Cirencester Agricultural College and staying in the caravan in exchange for one day a week work on the farm. Strangely enough, she comes from Cheddar and went to the same school as Dave and Jeni, although she is a bit younger and doesn't remember them. The day started off really wet and I had on full waterproof gear especially as I was pushing into sopping wet shrubs, but by lunchtime it had cleared up and got quite warm. By the end of the day we had created an impressive pile of weeds and woody material from just a small area of garden, but when Sarah came back from her course, she didn't think I'd been hard enough!
As part of their farm diversification, Paul and Sarah have set up a market garden area that is manned by volunteers on a Thursday and sometimes on a Tuesday, in return for a box of seasonal vegetables, so I have been assigned to work with them a couple of times. They are a lovely bunch of people and made me feel very 'included' and I have really enjoyed my time with them harvesting and weeding in the polytunnels. There are also several other enterprises on the farm that I have not been directly involved with, namely a small pasty business (not small pasties, a small business!) and a firewood business using some wood from their 40 acres of woodland but also some timber that they buy in and cut up.
I have also helped with the animals: putting out the ponies and mucking them out several times; helping to move the beef youngstock to a new field after being wormed (luckily they had a cattle crush and some gates all set up but it was still a long, hot job); turning over and foot trimming 37 sheep which was exhausting as it was just Sarah and me doing it with some help manning the gates from a lady and her teenaged son. In fact, after coming out of that relatively uninjured, I was so tired that I slipped in the bath and smacked my arm on the edge of the bath causing a bruise of impressive size and colour!
I had the day off on the first Wednesday I was here and managed to arrange to meet up with my childhood friend, Carol and her husband, Pete, who live on the other side of Stroud. We had a lovely time together and took her dog for a walk on a nearby common which has stunning views across to the River Severn and beyond. We haven't spent much time together since we were adults and it was lovely to find out that we still get on really well. Strangely enough, she and her family had spent many summer holidays at Lee Bay near Ilfracombe which is where I am going next - small world isn't it?
On my second day off, Saturday, I met up with my sister, her husband, my niece and my Mum at Stroud and went to the excellent Farmers' Market that they have there. The place was heaving! Then we went off to Painswick for lunch and then, as it was such a dull and chilly day, we headed back to Cheltenham for the afternoon and evening and my sister drove me back to Slad after dinner.
Apart from a couple of days of rain and one very cloudy, overcast day, the weather these last two week has been amazing and I have quite often just been working in T-shirt and trousers. On 12th October the contractors turned up and cut three fields for silage, which doesn't often happen so late in the year. I took a couple of photos and they could almost have been taken in midsummer as the sky is so blue and cloudless, only the slight changes in the colours of the trees gives a clue that autumn is really here.
It's certainly been 'all go' on this farm but I have thoroughly enjoyed most of it. I have met some lovely and 'interesting' people and have felt very embraced by the Stroud area - perhaps that's because it's not far from where I was born and grew up and so feels familiar or whether it just is a really welcoming place generally - I shall certainly return here, probably at the beginning of April to help Sarah with the lambing before I move further northwards again for the summer.
After coffee I was launched into my new placement with a vengeance! Firstly, we put the seven ponies out in the field, then I got to muck out the stables and empty the wheelbarrow on the muck heap which is across the road from the yard and through a field gate. All this time 'the rain it was a raining' and I was glad that I'd put on my wellies. After that Sarah had a meeting with a couple of people ("I'll be about half an hour") so pointed me in the direction of a pumpkin and some onions and asked me to prepare them, put them in a roasting tin with some olive oil and put them in the Aga to prepare a base for some soup that she will be making for a catering job that she is doing at the end of October. She also mentioned that she was going to do a leek and potato soup too, and then she disappeared for the rest of the afternoon! After I'd done the pumpkin, etc I was at a bit of a loose end as everyone seemed to have disappeared, then three very bedraggled people turned up looking for Paul, so I pointed them in the direction of the large green barn which was the last place I'd seen him, and then a girl turned up to say was it OK to put her stuff in the caravan? I said it probably was if she'd already agreed this with Sarah. She introduced herself as Rosie and I had to suppress a smile - well we are in Laurie Lee country and he did write 'Cider with Rosie'! After that I decided I might as well prepare the leek and potato soup base too so hunted around the kitchen until I found everything I needed and got stuck in.
I certainly felt as if I'd been parachuted into an unknown territory and had to hit the ground running! Doing this 'job' you are catapulted into people's lives: some of them stop and carefully explain the ins and outs of their set up, what jobs need doing and your part in the overall picture; and others, like Sarah and Paul carry on with the story of their lives, complete with ups and downs, minor disasters and catastrophes and somehow expect you to slot in and merge with it whilst assimilating information as you go. It's sometimes alarming but never dull, and I like to feel that I've risen to the challenge!
The second day that I was here, the weather was really warm and sunny, but the ground was still sodden. For most of the day I picked apples in the orchard. The orchard is situated in front of the farm on a slope that runs down into a dry valley and I was picking apples into a bucket and then transferring them to crates by the orchard gate. There were approximately three bucketsful of apples to the crate and I picked five crates. At the end of the day I loaded the crates one at a time onto the wheelbarrow and pushed this across another paddock, up a slope through a gateway to the green barn where they were to be stored until there were enough to go to the apple juice bottler a few miles away towards Gloucester. By then I was getting tired so decided to load the two final crates together onto the wheelbarrow. All was going well until I stopped to open the gate out of the paddock. When I tried to push the wheelbarrow forward my feet started to slip on the mud in the gateway, I paddled furiously for a few seconds until the inevitable happened and I fell face down in the mud. Unfortunately, I was still holding onto the wheelbarrow handles so, as I fell I catapulted two crates of apples over my head (remember that's six buckets full) and then had to watch as they rolled away down the hill! I heaved myself to my feet, brushed off as much mud as I could and picked up every single apple and repacked them in the crates before staggering back to the house to change - was I going to survive two weeks?
On the third day I was here I weeded and pruned the front border by the house with the help of Rosie who is attending a course at Cirencester Agricultural College and staying in the caravan in exchange for one day a week work on the farm. Strangely enough, she comes from Cheddar and went to the same school as Dave and Jeni, although she is a bit younger and doesn't remember them. The day started off really wet and I had on full waterproof gear especially as I was pushing into sopping wet shrubs, but by lunchtime it had cleared up and got quite warm. By the end of the day we had created an impressive pile of weeds and woody material from just a small area of garden, but when Sarah came back from her course, she didn't think I'd been hard enough!
As part of their farm diversification, Paul and Sarah have set up a market garden area that is manned by volunteers on a Thursday and sometimes on a Tuesday, in return for a box of seasonal vegetables, so I have been assigned to work with them a couple of times. They are a lovely bunch of people and made me feel very 'included' and I have really enjoyed my time with them harvesting and weeding in the polytunnels. There are also several other enterprises on the farm that I have not been directly involved with, namely a small pasty business (not small pasties, a small business!) and a firewood business using some wood from their 40 acres of woodland but also some timber that they buy in and cut up.
I have also helped with the animals: putting out the ponies and mucking them out several times; helping to move the beef youngstock to a new field after being wormed (luckily they had a cattle crush and some gates all set up but it was still a long, hot job); turning over and foot trimming 37 sheep which was exhausting as it was just Sarah and me doing it with some help manning the gates from a lady and her teenaged son. In fact, after coming out of that relatively uninjured, I was so tired that I slipped in the bath and smacked my arm on the edge of the bath causing a bruise of impressive size and colour!
I had the day off on the first Wednesday I was here and managed to arrange to meet up with my childhood friend, Carol and her husband, Pete, who live on the other side of Stroud. We had a lovely time together and took her dog for a walk on a nearby common which has stunning views across to the River Severn and beyond. We haven't spent much time together since we were adults and it was lovely to find out that we still get on really well. Strangely enough, she and her family had spent many summer holidays at Lee Bay near Ilfracombe which is where I am going next - small world isn't it?
On my second day off, Saturday, I met up with my sister, her husband, my niece and my Mum at Stroud and went to the excellent Farmers' Market that they have there. The place was heaving! Then we went off to Painswick for lunch and then, as it was such a dull and chilly day, we headed back to Cheltenham for the afternoon and evening and my sister drove me back to Slad after dinner.
Apart from a couple of days of rain and one very cloudy, overcast day, the weather these last two week has been amazing and I have quite often just been working in T-shirt and trousers. On 12th October the contractors turned up and cut three fields for silage, which doesn't often happen so late in the year. I took a couple of photos and they could almost have been taken in midsummer as the sky is so blue and cloudless, only the slight changes in the colours of the trees gives a clue that autumn is really here.
It's certainly been 'all go' on this farm but I have thoroughly enjoyed most of it. I have met some lovely and 'interesting' people and have felt very embraced by the Stroud area - perhaps that's because it's not far from where I was born and grew up and so feels familiar or whether it just is a really welcoming place generally - I shall certainly return here, probably at the beginning of April to help Sarah with the lambing before I move further northwards again for the summer.
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