At first glance (and, to be honest, second and third glance) my next placement was not one of my better choices! I arrived in pouring rain at the Walled Garden between Keith and Dufftown in Banffshire and was dismayed to find SIX other WWOOFers already there: there were two boys and a girl from Wales, who were staying in the cottage at the garden; a young couple from Massachusetts, US of A; and a young French guy from Bordeaux. They were all young students and they were all crowded into the living room of the cottage (known in Scotland as a ‘bothy’) drinking tea. They looked quite surprised when I introduced myself as the new WWOOFer but recovered enough to offer me a cuppa, too. When the rain eased off briefly I was taken on a tour of the garden. My hosts run a gardening business as well as trying to reclaim this semi-derelict walled garden and it is definitely a work-in-progress with shoulder high weeds in many beds, interspersed with vegetable plots and the odd herbaceous border. They also have a startling array of livestock: geese, ducks, turkeys, chickens, peafowl, rheas, rabbits, guinea pigs and two grossly overweight Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs.
I was staying at the house in Dufftown and for the first few days found it very difficult to adjust to my new surroundings. The house was quite large but there were nine adults living there, also two working cocker spaniels, a litter of five eight-week-old puppies and a very talkative African Grey parrot! The noise level was what got to me most and I would skulk off to my room at about 9.30 to read and wait until the house finally quietened down at about 11.30 before I could go to sleep.
We were ferried over to the garden in the mornings in the lorry and left there all day and then picked up again at about 5.30 (although sometimes it was quite a lot later, depending on their gardening jobs). We self-catered lunch from an interesting array of ingredients in the bothy – it was quite a squash when all seven WWOOFers were in there. The first day, I discovered blight in the potatoes and spent most of the day cutting the slimy haulms back to ground level in the hope that it hadn’t progressed to the tubers. Unfortunately, some of the tubers were affected too which meant that they couldn’t really sell them to customers, as they couldn’t guarantee that they were OK. This was a blow, as last year this was one of their major vegetable sales. Most of the work in the garden at this time of year is weeding, although we did get to pick red and white currants and also a few raspberries and strawberries, although the beds were pretty overgrown with weeds – they are going to make new strawberry beds for next season.
The weather for the most part was drizzle interspersed with rain – again I was very glad of my waterproofs! However, most of the others were really cheerful, so working in bad weather was not such an unpleasant experience and we had some good fun. On most days, the cocker spaniel puppies were at the garden in a pen, so that was always a good excuse for a break – the puppies needed to be checked (i.e. played with)! Unfortunately for us, all but one of the puppies went to their new owners in the first week that I was there, so puppy playtime was not quite so boisterous (although the house was a degree less chaotic).
Because there were so many WWOOFers to feed, my host used to go to the local shop just before closing time and buy up all the reduced items (she got Anchor butter for 5p for 250g one day), which led to an interesting mix of food in the fridge at any one time. They didn’t seem to reduce fruit and vegetables very often, and I began to wonder how quickly scurvy could set in! It is amazing how the body adapts to different diets though, and by the second week I hardly noticed the lack of greenery on my plate.
It was only after I’d been there a couple of days that it dawned on me that Dufftown is the whisky capital of the world (it actually says that on the town sign) and there was even a distillery opposite the house, so on my first day off I walked to the Glenfiddich Distillery and went on the free tour. It was very interesting and informative but, more importantly, I got to try three samples at the end – 12, 15 and 18 year old – you try saying ‘three, free samples’ after you’ve imbibed! I did toy with the idea of going back to do the tour again at some point, but never got round to it. Mind you, I didn’t really need to as my hosts were very generous with their whisky which was usually a 12-year old Balvenie, served like a glass of wine!
Set into one corner of the walled garden was a decking area complete with hot tub. The hot tub was heated by a woodburning boiler and this was fuelled by oak staves from old whisky barrels. I only know one person who has a hot tub (Hello, Mary!) and I thought she was a bit weird when she said how fantastic it was to relax in the hot tub, outside, in winter, but my hosts assured me that it was and that I should try it. They always had a hot tub evening when any of the WWOOFers was leaving, but the first time I declined as I felt very shy of getting into a hot tub with a bunch of young students, plus I had no idea what you wear in these situations. It turned out that most people wore shorts and T-shirts, so I would have had to borrow some shorts from someone anyway. However, as I sat on a picnic bench and the rest sat in the hot tub, I decided that it wasn’t really a spectator sport, so the next time that it happened, I borrowed a pair of shorts, donned as big and baggy a T-shirt as I could find and clambered in. It is actually very pleasant sitting up to your neck in warm water, drinking Port Dufftowns (a 50-50 mix of port and whisky, so-named by the American contingent!) and chatting convivially (and eventually, non-sensically!!) to people from different parts of the world. The worst bit, of course, is that moment when you have to get out, clothes dripping, and the cold wind blows your T-shirt against you before you can wrap a towel round you and head off to get dry and dressed in the bothy!
After a shaky start, when I wondered if I would stick the two weeks, I grew to really like my hosts and their challenging walled garden and have not ruled out the possibility of returning next year – as long as I get to stay in the bothy so that I can be quiet in the evenings!
I am currently doing an unofficial WWOOF for a family friend who lives near Aberdeen and then, on Tuesday, I head off westwards to Dunoon, a journey of at least 5 hours, to a smallholding 5 miles up a glen.
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