It is almost exactly a year since I was last here in Cornwall – I realised that when I noticed that my MOT was due and I’d had it done here last time I was down, so I promptly booked it in again at the same garage. ‘Lucky Launceston’ did not let me down – two light bulbs and a bit of sealant on part of my exhaust! I begin to warm to my little Peugeot – it’s only taken three years and I feel that the ‘bonding’ is still incomplete, for a start it lacks a nickname which is almost unheard of with vehicles belonging to me!
Cornwall is just as wonderful as I remember: the air is incredibly clear and a big lungful is enough to set you up for the day, like a swig of ice-cold spring water. As soon as I could I went for a walk to the woods - there were still drifts of crisp oak leaves carpeting the track and I kicked through them like a small child, just to hear that rustling sound, while overhead the ancient oaks lifted their gnarled, winter-bare branches to embrace the blue expanse of a Cornish spring sky, and down below the primroses peeped from the hollows alongside the track and the wild daffodils shyly nodded in the breeze. Bliss!
One of the first things I did was to help James vaccinate the sheep – they are due to lamb at the beginning of April and are all beginning to look quite large. If I was ever going to keep sheep again, I would definitely be tempted by this breed (Lleyn from the Lleyn Peninsula in Wales) as they appear friendly and docile, are good mothers and are small enough for me to turn over for foot-trimming, which is a job that we did during my second week here. By then we had been joined by YaYa, a Chinese girl, originally from Northern China but currently living in Hong Kong. She had never WWOOFed before and never been to this country before but, having a couple of weeks left on her student visa after studying a module for her Master’s Degree at the University of Warwick, she chose to come here. She was very keen to take part in every aspect of the life on the farm so, while James foot-trimmed the larger sheep using a contraption called a turnover crate (the clue is in the name – the sheep walks in to the crate, is clamped securely in place with ratcheted metal arms, and using counterbalances, the mechanism turns the crate over, supporting the sheep at all times, so you can work on the animal without it struggling) I showed YaYa how to catch, turnover and foot trim the smaller ones. She was a quick learner and, although slow, did a good job and really enjoyed doing it. In fact, that epitomised her attitude to everything – she was enthusiastic, eager to learn and unfailingly cheerful. She stayed for twelve days and we seemed to get on really well together, talking about our respective cultures while we dug, weeded, processed apples, put glass into the greenhouse and cleaned the bungalow ready for the first holiday let of the year.
For most of the winter James has been engaged in building a traditional shepherd’s hut that will be sited in one of the fields, with a view down across the pond to the fields and woods beyond. This is the next stage in their farm tourism business (www.organicfarmholiday.co.uk ): they already have the most wonderful barn conversion and also the bungalow that I helped decorate last year, and this new venture will be two huts, on wheels, sited in a secluded place on the farm, so that couples can really feel that they are ‘getting away from it all’ while still having a certain amount of luxury. One hut will contain the sleeping/sitting accommodation and the other will contain a shower room and a kitchen. Initially, it is intended to offer it as Bed and Breakfast accommodation, with breakfast being left in a basket on the shepherd’s hut steps every morning, but it can also be self-catering. Jo mentioned buying a ‘rustic’ hot water bottle cover to go in the hut, so I finally got inspired to knit something with my hand-spun wool that I made in the autumn, and I also used some hand-spun, hand-dyed (with lichen) wool that I’d made a couple of years ago to introduce a stripe. When I’d finished it, James made some exquisite little oak buttons to use as fasteners – you can’t get more rustic than that!
One of the jobs that I started and YaYa helped me to finish was clearing a gap in the hedge to open up the vista from the shepherd’s hut to the pond. I also helped James when he chainsawed up some fallen trees that had broken some stock fencing in one of the fields. There were about four of them and they were all silver birches that had blown down in the pre-Christmas gales. The following day we went back down and mended the stock fencing using some amazing little gadgets called Gripples. The broken wire is inserted in one side and is gripped by a one-way clamp and then a new piece of wire is inserted in the other side and the whole thing tensioned with a sort of ratchet tool – a very clever (and British) invention that saves a huge amount of time and money on fence repairs.
I also spent one very peaceful day weaving in the new willow growth on the living-willow bower down by the pond – the sun was warm and all the birds were singing and the little freshly emerged tadpoles were basking at the edges of the pond, and from the far side of the pond I could hear a moorhen in the rushes. For part of the day I was accompanied by one of the farm dogs, Shep, who likes to attach himself (like glue) to lone women and is a real ego booster as he greets me ecstatically each time I step outside the back door. He did eventually get bored with my self-absorption and trotted back to the farm.
Another job is to get the vegetable garden ready for spring-time sowing, but first we had to re-glaze part of the greenhouse, so that we could use it to plant seeds in. YaYa and I managed to re-glaze the majority of it using some old recycled greenhouse glass, but we had a couple of disasters trying to cut the small angled bits at the top of the gabled ends, so Jo got some professionally cut in Launceston so that we could finish the job – I am now hoping to make some raised beds inside on two sides with a potting area on the third side. We then turned our attention to weeding the vegetable beds which is quite a daunting task as the area is quite large and the soil heavy in places. We’ve made a good start on it and, considering that she has never done this kind of work before, YaYa made a great attempt at forking over the ground and digging out the docks and dandelions, not to mention the creeping buttercups!
Since I have been here the weather has been remarkably mild and I have been working in a long-sleeved T-shirt on a couple of days. We have only had two days of rain and that was when we processed some of the remaining apples from the orchard, par-cooking them ready for the freezer. We also sorted all of the Wellington boots into matched pairs and sizes – there are a lot of them as Jo and James supply their guests and children with suitable footwear, but they had all got rather muddled up. By the time we’d done all that the weather had brightened up again, so it was back to the garden for a spot more digging!
Jo and James always treat their WWOOFers as part of the family, including us in outings and social occasions, and this time here has been no exception. On the second day that I was here I helped with the local Luncheon Club dinner, acting as a waitress to the thirty plus members of the community who attended, the same evening I was taken to a talk by Alex Langlands of ‘Victorian Farm’ and ‘Edwardian Farm’ fame – he is such an enthusiastic person and a very natural speaker, so it was a fascinating evening with supper afterwards in the church hall; then last week it was WI and I also attended the Mothering Sunday service at the local church where I was presented with a small bunch of daffodils and a piece of Simnel Cake and made to feel very welcome by the small congregation. You can begin to see why I always enjoy coming back here!
Cornwall is just as wonderful as I remember: the air is incredibly clear and a big lungful is enough to set you up for the day, like a swig of ice-cold spring water. As soon as I could I went for a walk to the woods - there were still drifts of crisp oak leaves carpeting the track and I kicked through them like a small child, just to hear that rustling sound, while overhead the ancient oaks lifted their gnarled, winter-bare branches to embrace the blue expanse of a Cornish spring sky, and down below the primroses peeped from the hollows alongside the track and the wild daffodils shyly nodded in the breeze. Bliss!
One of the first things I did was to help James vaccinate the sheep – they are due to lamb at the beginning of April and are all beginning to look quite large. If I was ever going to keep sheep again, I would definitely be tempted by this breed (Lleyn from the Lleyn Peninsula in Wales) as they appear friendly and docile, are good mothers and are small enough for me to turn over for foot-trimming, which is a job that we did during my second week here. By then we had been joined by YaYa, a Chinese girl, originally from Northern China but currently living in Hong Kong. She had never WWOOFed before and never been to this country before but, having a couple of weeks left on her student visa after studying a module for her Master’s Degree at the University of Warwick, she chose to come here. She was very keen to take part in every aspect of the life on the farm so, while James foot-trimmed the larger sheep using a contraption called a turnover crate (the clue is in the name – the sheep walks in to the crate, is clamped securely in place with ratcheted metal arms, and using counterbalances, the mechanism turns the crate over, supporting the sheep at all times, so you can work on the animal without it struggling) I showed YaYa how to catch, turnover and foot trim the smaller ones. She was a quick learner and, although slow, did a good job and really enjoyed doing it. In fact, that epitomised her attitude to everything – she was enthusiastic, eager to learn and unfailingly cheerful. She stayed for twelve days and we seemed to get on really well together, talking about our respective cultures while we dug, weeded, processed apples, put glass into the greenhouse and cleaned the bungalow ready for the first holiday let of the year.
For most of the winter James has been engaged in building a traditional shepherd’s hut that will be sited in one of the fields, with a view down across the pond to the fields and woods beyond. This is the next stage in their farm tourism business (www.organicfarmholiday.co.uk ): they already have the most wonderful barn conversion and also the bungalow that I helped decorate last year, and this new venture will be two huts, on wheels, sited in a secluded place on the farm, so that couples can really feel that they are ‘getting away from it all’ while still having a certain amount of luxury. One hut will contain the sleeping/sitting accommodation and the other will contain a shower room and a kitchen. Initially, it is intended to offer it as Bed and Breakfast accommodation, with breakfast being left in a basket on the shepherd’s hut steps every morning, but it can also be self-catering. Jo mentioned buying a ‘rustic’ hot water bottle cover to go in the hut, so I finally got inspired to knit something with my hand-spun wool that I made in the autumn, and I also used some hand-spun, hand-dyed (with lichen) wool that I’d made a couple of years ago to introduce a stripe. When I’d finished it, James made some exquisite little oak buttons to use as fasteners – you can’t get more rustic than that!
One of the jobs that I started and YaYa helped me to finish was clearing a gap in the hedge to open up the vista from the shepherd’s hut to the pond. I also helped James when he chainsawed up some fallen trees that had broken some stock fencing in one of the fields. There were about four of them and they were all silver birches that had blown down in the pre-Christmas gales. The following day we went back down and mended the stock fencing using some amazing little gadgets called Gripples. The broken wire is inserted in one side and is gripped by a one-way clamp and then a new piece of wire is inserted in the other side and the whole thing tensioned with a sort of ratchet tool – a very clever (and British) invention that saves a huge amount of time and money on fence repairs.
I also spent one very peaceful day weaving in the new willow growth on the living-willow bower down by the pond – the sun was warm and all the birds were singing and the little freshly emerged tadpoles were basking at the edges of the pond, and from the far side of the pond I could hear a moorhen in the rushes. For part of the day I was accompanied by one of the farm dogs, Shep, who likes to attach himself (like glue) to lone women and is a real ego booster as he greets me ecstatically each time I step outside the back door. He did eventually get bored with my self-absorption and trotted back to the farm.
Another job is to get the vegetable garden ready for spring-time sowing, but first we had to re-glaze part of the greenhouse, so that we could use it to plant seeds in. YaYa and I managed to re-glaze the majority of it using some old recycled greenhouse glass, but we had a couple of disasters trying to cut the small angled bits at the top of the gabled ends, so Jo got some professionally cut in Launceston so that we could finish the job – I am now hoping to make some raised beds inside on two sides with a potting area on the third side. We then turned our attention to weeding the vegetable beds which is quite a daunting task as the area is quite large and the soil heavy in places. We’ve made a good start on it and, considering that she has never done this kind of work before, YaYa made a great attempt at forking over the ground and digging out the docks and dandelions, not to mention the creeping buttercups!
Since I have been here the weather has been remarkably mild and I have been working in a long-sleeved T-shirt on a couple of days. We have only had two days of rain and that was when we processed some of the remaining apples from the orchard, par-cooking them ready for the freezer. We also sorted all of the Wellington boots into matched pairs and sizes – there are a lot of them as Jo and James supply their guests and children with suitable footwear, but they had all got rather muddled up. By the time we’d done all that the weather had brightened up again, so it was back to the garden for a spot more digging!
Jo and James always treat their WWOOFers as part of the family, including us in outings and social occasions, and this time here has been no exception. On the second day that I was here I helped with the local Luncheon Club dinner, acting as a waitress to the thirty plus members of the community who attended, the same evening I was taken to a talk by Alex Langlands of ‘Victorian Farm’ and ‘Edwardian Farm’ fame – he is such an enthusiastic person and a very natural speaker, so it was a fascinating evening with supper afterwards in the church hall; then last week it was WI and I also attended the Mothering Sunday service at the local church where I was presented with a small bunch of daffodils and a piece of Simnel Cake and made to feel very welcome by the small congregation. You can begin to see why I always enjoy coming back here!
Wow! that hot water bottle cover is awesome!! sounds quite idyllic down there, glad to hear you're enjoying yourself! Keep the blogs coming, you evoke the countryside so beautifully!! love you mummy xxx
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