Mud, Veg and a Blind Date!

The weather during my second week at Saltash did not improve; it remained generally wet with occasional periods of very wet! However, for one morning the sun shone and it felt quite springlike. I took a lump hammer, spade and crowbar and went to mend the corner of a hedgebank in a gateway. There was a tumble of rocks and stones on the trackway and I had to disassemble the area still further to get a good base, then I rebuilt the bank, packing earth between and behind the stones and sloping them backwards to try and give a stable structure. It’s a very satisfying job when you’re on a roll, but towards the end I was having to pinch stones from other bits of the bank!

The main job of the second week became the tractor shed: between us we managed to erect all six elm trunks and packed them in place using a local stone called schillet. I personally think there are too many letters in that word to best describe this stone! I was very glad we were not trying to build anything with it, as it just breaks up into small fragments, like slate, when it has been exposed to frost. Luckily, it was ideal for our purposes, as it packed down really tightly around the posts. Malcolm was into reusing materials, so the next job was to somehow lift into place three A-frames that had come out of the Cider Barn when it was turned into a cottage. These A-frames were either oak or, more likely, elm and were very heavy. After a great deal of thought we decided to use the mini-digger, without its bucket, as a type of crane and hang the A-frames off it by a chain. This idea worked up to a point, but the arm of the digger was not quite long enough so we had to lift one end into place and then winch the other up using a ratchet strap. Everything was very precarious and Heath Robinson-ish (lots of ropes lashing bits temporarily to other bits to stop them toppling over, etc) and I had to wear a very becoming hard hat whilst Malcolm swung off unsafe ladders wielding hammers, nails, saws, etc.! To make life even more difficult, the ‘floor’ of the new shed was a claggy quagmire of sticky mud that made walking a challenge and nearly led to several face-down- in-the-mud scenarios. By the end of the second week we did have the skeleton of the shed in place and Malcolm can work on it by himself for a while, until the next WWOOFer arrives.

Malcolm and Miriam took me out for a meal to a very nice pub called The Weary Friar at Pillaton, a village a few miles from them. I am seriously impressed with the pubs in Devon and Cornwall – this one had Addlestones and Thatchers Dry Cider on draught! Decisions, decisions....! Having managed to eventually eat most of the mince that Miriam had given me, I steered clear of the meat on the menu and went for a salmon steak with veg and new potatoes – it was so delicious that I almost licked my plate!

I have now moved to my next host near Truro, and things are different again. This is an organic vegetable farm supplying boxes to individuals via their own delivery van, on several different routes over three days of each week, as well as there being a farm shop, too. For the first three days I hardly saw the outside of the packing shed – not that it mattered as it was heaving it down with rain and I was definitely in the best place – weighing out and bagging up vegetables and ‘picking’ orders.

There are two other girls here at the moment, one from France and the other from New Zealand, and we all seem to get on OK even though I am more than twice their age. We are completely self-catering again and the kitchen is situated in the farm shop so that is where we tend to hang out when we’re not working as our rooms are too cold to sit in (I slept in trousers, T-shirt, Hoodie and two pairs of socks for the first two nights until Greg got round to sorting out the heating). We work five hours a day, five days a week which means we start at 8.00am and finish at 1.00, leaving the afternoons free.

I drove the girls over to Padstow on Wednesday as Mallory had a job interview for the summer season and it would have taken them hours to get there by public transport. It would have been a lovely afternoon out, as Padstow is quite pretty, but the weather was wet and misty and quite cold too, although, true to the intrepid British holidaymaker spirit, the place was busy and some people were sporting shorts!

The girls went off to Newquay for the weekend to try and find some nightlife and I have hung around the farm as the weather has not been brilliant and I didn’t feel like sightseeing with it still being half term – perhaps I’ll go to Truro sometime next week for a look round. As we were getting short of bread and the alternative is sliced shop-bought I spent part of Saturday making bread – very relaxing, especially when it turned out OK.

Yesterday evening, Greg asked if I would do him a favour – would I go to a concert in a local village hall with his next door neighbour? A strange request, I thought, but it was because Greg and his wife Teresa had bought tickets but did not feel like going so had given one ticket to their neighbour and then thought that I could use the other one so that it wouldn’t be wasted, so off I went on a blind date! Of course, it wasn’t a date but if it had been I think I got the better deal as he was quite good looking and several years younger than me and he was a GP. I refrained from asking his opinion about my various aches and pains and we actually had quite a good evening. The concert was by a young folk singer from Devon, who writes most of her own material and she was very good. Afterwards we retired to the pub where we struck up a conversation with a solicitor who turned out to be originally from Bristol and knew Draycott and Wells very well. I think my little GP felt a bit left out but never mind, eh?

Today, I am going to make some scones and try my hand at Lemon Drizzle Cake – no doubt the results will be eaten however they turn out as there are usually six of us (there are two other male employees) at coffee time and lunchtime and they seem to have big appetites!