Cornucopia in The Candy

Firstly, dear reader(s), I apologise for the lack of blogging recently, but I have had some issues with my internet connection so couldn't get online at all at my last host's house, and I didn't have a mobile phone signal either! What did we do in the 'olden' days, when I was just a lass?

My last hosts were situated about 2 miles outside Oswestry in an area called The Candy Valley. It's quite a steep sided valley (obviously U-shaped and therefore glacial in origin) with a small stream flowing in the bottom. Near to this stands the house in which I was staying, which used to be a pub and, at some point in history, a corn mill. There is nothing to show that the building was once a mill except for the mill pond that has just been re-excavated and a couple of old grind stones propped against the wall.

My hosts, Lindsay and Anita, have been there about seven years and have made huge alterations to the house to make it into a comfortable home, and now they have turned their attention to becoming more self-sufficient. Their vegetable plot, although not enormous, is incredibly productive, particularly at this time of year with soft fruit. The secret apparently lies in mulching well in winter with wood ash and manure. I couldn't believe the raspberry canes - they were fully ten feet tall and had been pruned back because they were getting too tall. Even standing on tiptoe I couldn't reach the raspberries at the top! We picked raspberries every day while I was there and froze pounds of them on trays so that they would be free-running when stored in plastic containers. On the second day that I was there we harvested gooseberries - just two bushes yielded nearly fifty pounds of fruit, so we made five gallons of gooseberry wine, froze some whole and pureed a whole lot more as they took up less space in the freezer and can be used for gooseberry fool, ice cream or swirled into yoghurt - or my own special favourite - served as an accompaniment to fresh mackerel. (Don't say I don't give out useful tips and information in this blog!)

One morning Lindsay and I went out to look at the chickens and I found the most beautiful moth in the grass. I picked him up gently and cradled him in my hand where he sat quite happily while I took some (out of focus) photos. He had white legs and antennae and his body was sage green and magenta. I thought it was some kind of hawkmoth but wasn't sure, so Lindsay took me down the road to meet a neighbour of his who was a bit of an expert. He also took photos and looked it up in his moth book and it turned out to be an elephant hawk moth (if you've ever seen the caterpillars you would know why it is called 'elephant' - not only are they huge but when frightened they can puff up one end of their greyish body and look just like an elephant's trunk!). We then walked back down the road with the moth still sitting on my hand and Lindsay got his camera and took some photos - he is going to email them to me as mine are just not clear enough, although I shall post them on my Facebook album shortly. Eventually I persuaded the moth onto some rosebay willowherb (it's preferred food plant) where it's incredible colouration immediately rendered it virtually invisible.

I was only in the Candy Valley for a week, but on my last day there I helped make raspberry and redcurrant jelly as it was raining heavily nearly all day and we couldn't go out into the garden. I had hoped to have done some work with Lindsay's bees but the weather was too changeable to go into the hives, so I had to content myself with viewing their activity from a safe distance and sampling some of last year's honey crop - delicious!

I'm now heading back south towards Hereford for a week before I go back to my Mum's for a couple of weeks break and the Fairport Convention music festival at Cropredy in Oxfordshire!

I have been here nearly two weeks now and feel quite at home - it never ceases to amaze me how 'settled' I can feel in just a short time. When I first started to plan my journey I thought that the minimum I would want to do would be four weeks in each place, but now I feel that two weeks is quite long enough to get a good feel about a place and learn how to do the jobs that are required.

I have continued to work in the vegetable patch weeding, preparing beds and planting a variety of plants. The vegetables are all grown in beds about eighteen feet long by four feet wide that are raised on one side to lessen the effect of the hillside and this means that they don't present such a psychological challenge when you come to work on them. It means that 'weeding the onions' can be seen as a finite job and then you can move on to 'weed the cabbages' rather than being presented with one huge plot to weed. I shall definitely go for raised beds or, at least seperate beds, when I have a veg plot of my own again.

Up until now I have been moving north ahead of the season, so everywhere I have been the fruit is not quite ripe before I move on again, but here, at last, the season has caught me up and we are beginning to harvest soft fruit. Yesterday I picked some blackcurrants and today the new Wwoofer (Helena from Hong Kong) and I picked more blackcurrants, gooseberries and raspberries. When it started to rain this afternoon, we came indoors and have just finished making jam out of the blackcurrants and gooseberries. Dawn is now going to start some winemaking with the rest of them and we will have a fruit salad with raspberries, etc tomorrow.

On a few days in the last week I have spent about an hour each day sawing up wood from some of the fir trees that they have felled and stacking it in the log shed for winter. The shed is beginning to fill up nicely now and I feel quite proud that quite a lot has been cut and stacked by me! I know - sad, isn't it!

When not involved in the veg patch or log sawing, I have been weeding one of the herbaceous borders and transplanting ornamental grasses and other plants from different parts of the garden into it. It is now beginning to look quite good and is inspiring us to gradually progress along this level, clearing as we go.

I had another day off on Thursday and decided to drive around and look at the scenery in this part of the country (which is actually Powys, not Shropshire). Just a few miles away is the pretty village of Llanrhaeadr and the famous Llanrhaeadr Falls, so I felt I should start there. As it feels a bit odd at times sight-seeing by myself, I have decided to share, as best I can, some of the places that I visit with you, my avid (and not-so-avid) readers! The Falls are 240' high from top to bottom which is 60' higher than Niagara Falls and are, apparently, very spectacular after a lot of rain. They were still pretty spectacular after hardly any rain at all! I decided to follow the footpath to the top of the falls but did wonder, halfway up the steep climb on slate steps cut in the rockface, why I wanted to climb yet another hill! However, the view from the top was quite impressive, but I didn't go too near the edge as there was no fence and I thought I might get vertigo and take the short cut back to the bottom! When I returned to ground level I treated myself to a cold drink from the cafe strategically placed at the bottom of the footpath.

Then it was off to Lake Vyrnwy, a large man-made reservoir, where I drove along the lakeside road before taking the mountain road to Bala. Up on the mountain there were only sheep for company and a single track road snaking away into the distance clinging precariously to the steep mountainside. In places there were metal crash barriers to prevent the careless driver from plummeting over the edge, but as the wooden posts that supported them looked pretty 'ripe', I hoped I wouldn't have to put them to the test. At last I reached civilisation again and turned northeast to continue my big circuit. At a place about nine miles from Bala was a glass studio called Glassblobbery where they made sophisticated versions of the glass ornaments I had in my bedroom as a child. The most beautiful ones were brilliantly coloured dragons that hung on the wall. They were about a foot long but as they cost £250 they were a little out of my league! I got chatting to the man who was in charge of the gallery and told him roughly what I was doing and as soon as I mentioned 'gardening' he handed me a leaflet about a garden back the way I had just come and said I really ought to visit it. As I didn't have a particular timescale for my drive I once more headed towards Bala turning off at a village called Sarnau and driving up (yes it was 1000 feet above sea level!) a small lane to Caerau Uchaf gardens. It was certainly worth a visit - the gardens were quite inspiring and the view across Lake Bala to Snowdon was breathtaking, plus the cream tea was quite good, too.

From there I headed back via Llangollen and Oswestry having covered quite a few miles during the day. It was only the next day when I went out to my car for something that I realised I had a completely flat rear tyre! All I could think was 'Thank heavens that didn't happen on the mountain road!' I'm going to get it mended in Oswestry on Monday as I shall need the car on Wednesday when I move to my next place just a few miles from here.

Oh No! Not another hill!

On the Saturday before I left South Shropshire, as it was another day off, I decided to go to the nearby town/village of Clun. They were having their annual Open Gardens weekend and also the little town museum was open in the morning. The museum was quite fascinating as it had a lot of old artefacts from various rural craftsmen including a collection of the tools of their trade and old smocks, etc. It also had a lot of relics found at the various Iron Age and Neolithic sites around the area. There were a tremendous number of flint tools and, as the custodian pointed out, flints don't occur in this part of the country at all and probably had to be brought in from the east coast! Whilst I was there I purchased for the princely sum of £1 a booklet entitled Heritage Trail which took you on a walk around Clun detailing places of interest. The starting point was the ruin of Clun Castle and then I meandered around the streets looking at old tanneries, temperance hotels and mills. In the end, I combined both the trail and visiting the open gardens and had a truly wonderful day, stopping off for a cream tea at one of the farmhouses and chatting to all the various garden owners, who were all really friendly.

On the Sunday, I repacked the car and realised that I had a tiny bit of spare space, so I asked if I might buy one of the Shetland sheep fleeces as they were so lovely and soft, but Christine wouldn't hear of it and insisted I just helped myself. I chose a really pretty blue-grey fleece and hope one day to be able to spin it into a fine yarn. It's really nice to be able to take a little part of the places with me when I leave, especially as I feel that I have been leaving little bits of my heart behind in several of the places I have visited.

I arrived in North Shropshire late on Sunday afternoon and drove slowly along very narrow but thankfully deserted rural lanes further and further into the depths of the countryside. I was carefully following the directions that I had been sent so I knew I wasn't lost but I did wonder where I was going to end up! Eventually I entered a steep-sided valley and drove past a small lake and then I was there. The cottage is set in three acres of garden and woodland and it's all set on an angle of about 45 degrees up behind the house! I'm beginning to think I should have gone to East Anglia!

The couple who own it are about my age and have only been here for about three years. Before they bought it, the cottage had belonged to an elderly couple who had been there for thirty years. In that time they had turned the garden from a steep, bracken clothed hillside into a beautiful garden on several levels with interconneting pathways and steps. Unfortunately, as they aged the garden got beyond them and it is now like a mini Lost Gardens of Heligan. I still haven't seen all of the areas, but at every level there are the most beautiful specimen trees and shrubs all sadly over-matured and in need of some drastic action, even to taking out some of the ones that have got completely overcrowded. It must have been fantastic in it's heyday and will be again, I'm sure if Dawn and Tony keep working as hard as they do at the moment.

I try to split my hours equally between work in the vegetable garden (Tony's main domain) and the other areas (Dawn's pride and joy) and feel as if I have already made a difference. The trouble is, I get so absorbed that I forget the time and got totally exhausted the other evening when I realised that I'd done 9.5 hours instead of 6!

Tomorrow is a day off so I am going into Shrewsbury with Dawn as she has a stall at a Green Fair for the day and I'll be able to look around the town as well as perhaps help her set up and take down the stall.

Realisation and reality

My last day in Herefordshire was as busy as I predicted. I fed the chickens and discovered a wasps nest in one of the poultry houses. This was the fourth wasp nest that had been found in outbuildings around the farm and I wrote a warning on the chalk board in the kitchen as the egg collectors will need to be a little wary if they have to go into the house. After I fed the chickens I went to milk the goats again and got on slightly better this time, although I think my slightly arthritic thumb joints might let me down if I had to do it every day! Then it was off to the dairy kitchen to start the goat cheese - unfortunately it wasn't due to be ready until Saturday when I would be somewhere in Shropshire.

Later in the day, when I was weeding in the asparagus beds, I heard the tractor and baler start up. I was completely unprepared for the wave of nostalgia and regret that swept over me when I heard the 'thunk, thunk, thunk' of the old Massey baler - it was the same model that we had, and I just stood in the garden and wept for everything that I had lost. It just brought home to me that I am still running away - am I actually moving forward at all? I was very glad that, as it was mid-week, I was alone in the garden. Later, I emerged from the garden and went to help haul the bales home which was a lot of fun with so many helpers, but then the baler broke down (inevitably) and so we all went off for our communal evening meal, where I felt quite welcome and at ease, in marked contrast to my first shared meal.

The next morning I packed up the trusty Peugeot and, promising to return later in the year, drove in a slightly zig-zag fashion (I took a couple of unintentional diversions!) to South Shropshire and assignment number three.

I can't keep saying how blown away I am by my first views of places, but I was delighted with my first view of the smallholding. It was reached up yet another long, winding uphill farm track but then I rounded a corner and the most beautiful thatched house hove into view. The owners are obviously still having a lot of work done on the house and it's surroundings but I have a pretty bedroom with a pitched ceiling and double-aspect windows and a bathroom next door. There was another Wwoofer here when I arrived who had the other bedroom in this part of the house, but she left on Saturday and another girl came on Sunday and has left today.

I thought that there had been a misprint in my wwoofer handbook as it said I was only required to work four hours per day, but this is true, so it has been very much like a luxury holiday with delicious meals cooked for me and I am not even allowed to do the washing up! I realise that I can't fall on my feet at each place I go but the last two have been fantastic!

In return for this luxurious accomodation (it's a bit like something out of Grand Designs) I have been 'budging' thistles in the five acre hayfield. "What is 'budging'?" I hear you cry, and that's exactly what I asked . Because this is an organic smallholding, no chemicals are used and getting rid of perennial weeds has to be done manually. Thistles are not really wanted in hay as animals tend to waste a lot trying to eat round them, so Sylvia, the Chinese wwoofer, and I were given a budger each, which is like a narrow sharpened hoe on a long handle, so that we could work our way across the field and cut the thistles off at ground level. Apparently, over a period of a couple of years, this continuous cutting of the thistles will kill them off or at least greatly minimise the number occurring. I have also fed the pigs and sheep and helped load a sow into the trailer for her last ride to the abattoir. It was very sad as she was not an old sow, but she had suffered a stroke a few days after having her last litter and although she had successfully reared all nine piglets to weaning age her mobility was severly compromised and she was obviously not going to get any better, so the decision had to be made.

On my day off (yes, I get those, too!) I climbed to the top of a nearby Iron Age hill fort. It was quite a hard climb following the sheep tracks through thickets of gorse but the view from the top was spectacular. I had chosen a particularly clear day with blue skies and a gentle breeze, and from the top I could see hilltop after hilltop in all directions. It was so peaceful up there with just the bleating of the sheep on the hillside and the lazy buzz of insects, and when I looked up I could see two red kites spiralling effortlessly in the thermals. It reminded me so much of lying on clifftops on family holidays when I was a child that I was almost surprised that I couldn't hear waves breaking on the shore below me. I stayed up there for quite a while, loth to come down to earth again and face reality once more, but there are always more thistles to 'budge'!

Tranquillity and frustration

Today is my last full day in Herefordshire - and it is shaping up to be a very full day! It is now just gone 6.00 am and I am already up, washed and dressed and sitting outside on a bench by the lake. Above me stretches a pure blue sky, unblemished by even the merest hint of cloud, the birds are singing their early morning songs, the grass is wet with dew beneath my feet and there is a slight trail of vapour above the lake. It's going to be a scorching day. It's also going to be the first hay baling day in the lower paddock and this evening it will be all hands on deck - a time when, traditionally, every community member lends a hand to haul the bales home. The grass was cut on Saturday as the weather forecast was good, by Saturday evening there was talk of a light shower on Sunday; on Sunday there was talk of a heavy storm; Sunday evening and for most of the night it hammered down! Since then the weather has improved day by day and volunteers have been turning the hay each afternoon.

In a little while I shall go back indoors and have a bit of breakfast and then I am scheduled to give the chickens their breakfasts, plus I have volunteered to help milk the goats again, with a view to seeing a goats cheese made from the milk, and then I expect I shall be weeding again. My working day is supposed to start at 10.00 and finish at 5.00 with a leisurely lunch in between but I have found the place so beguiling that I have done far more hours than that. Spending time in the highly productive walled garden has been a soul restoring activity and to see rows of neatly weeded vegetables or newly turned soil at the end of my endeavours never ceases to satisfy.

I have not only weeded; I have harvested comfrey to put on the compost heaps; done a bit of hand-milking of both the Jersey cow and the goats; helped with the production of a cooked goats cheese called Halloumi; helped on the maintenance gang painting the inside of the large greenhouse and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I am going to be very sad to leave this place but I have a lot more travelling to do not only physically but mentally too before I can decide on my future.

The frustration here, and hence sitting on the lawn in the cool of the morning on a cold metal bench, is the inconsistency of my mobile internet connection. The laptop has been on a table in my room for over a week and most days I can get enough signal to at least check my emails - today, nothing! In fact, I couldn't get a signal anywhere in my room so I've come outside to be near the huge mulberry tree on the lawn that apparently stands on a ley line that increases the signal! It's true that it is a good signal here, but the downside is that, in bright daylight, I can barely see the screen so I hope that my typing is accurate! Only once, since I have been here have I managed to catch Jeni on line, and there ensued the most frustrating hour as I tried time and again to speak to her on Skype. We gave up in the end, defeated by technology, and I can only conclude that mobile broadband (which is incredibly slow even with full signal) is not up to supporting a Skype connection. I shall have to hope that I can get internet at the next place I am going to and that Jeni and I coincide at some point down the line as it is over a month since I last spoke to her. For anyone who doesn't already know, Jeni is currently in Paraguay and you can read her blog at http://mothsandbeetlesandbugs.blogspot.com/.

Well, I must go now, breaksfast and hungry chickens are calling me! I'm off to Shropshire tomorrow for assignment number three!

From the ridiculous to the sublime

I was blown away by the first site of my next Wwoofing assignment. I approached it through a set of imposing Italianate (I found out later - I'm not that hot on architectural styles!) gates, up a third of a mile driveway through the remains of an avenue of oak, copper beech and sycamore trees, through another set of gates and round to the front of an amazing brick Georgian mansion (I did recognise that it was Georgian, all by myself!). I pulled up in front of the main house and surveyed the 2 acre lake in front of me. Unfortunately, there was no Mr Darcy pulling himself dripping wet and sexy from the reeds, so I got out of the car and went off to find the Wwoof co-ordinator.

I have a lovely little guest suite in the main house, overlooking the front driveway and the lake (still no sign of Mr Darcy). It has a very comfortable bedroom with carpet on the floor and good electric lighting; a bathroom next door with loo, washbasin and shower (and hot water on demand) and a little kitchenette with a fridge, kettle and toaster so that I can get myself breakfast and hot drinks, etc. After my first experience this is indeed luxury.

The set-up here is probably unique in that it is run as a co-operative community but each family unit owns its own apartment within the main house or the converted stable block; most families have at least one breadwinner who works outside of the community and there is no particular ethos (such as shared religious beliefs) that hold them together. The community was started back in the 1970s and seems to be a very stable and well-organised entity with consensus being reached on most things through meetings, which I think are held weekly. The farm and 2-acre walled vegetable garden are run as a co-operative with everyone sharing in the chores and also in the crops that are produced.

At this time of year there is a lot of weeding to do, so my services have been mainly used doing that so far. I have a grid pinned up on the wall in the dairy kitchen and people fill in either a morning or afternoon slot for me to work for or with them, and then they usually give me lunch or supper correspondingly. So far I have only had to cater one supper for myself and I just wandered round the garden picking salad leaves, took fresh mozzarella from the dairy fridge and hard-boiled a couple of eggs and served it all up with a slice of freshly-made bread (made for me by the Wwoof co-ordinator). There is one thing for sure - I am not going to starve while I'm here!

For some time until the community bought the house from Herefordshire County Council it was the local secondary modern school and at one end of the building is a later addition that was originally the music room, but was converted into the gymnasium. It still has the climbing frames and ropes along one wall and took me right back to my school days. I almost expected Mrs Gutteridge, our old PE mistress, to come out and tell me to climb a rope! It is now used for the occasional outside event, such as weddings or conferences, but is mainly used as a fantastic indoor playground for the children who play football and rollerblade round it when it's wet outside. The whole set up is ideal for children as they have 40 acres to roam around in and there are numerous dens dotted about. There is also an outdoor swimming pool that is unheated. I have been invited to use it if I want to but I don't think I will as I don't even own a swimming costume anymore and my days of skinny dipping are long gone!

Shades of Hansel and Gretel

I realise that it's been a while since I last blogged - doesn't time fly when you're enjoying yourself! I have certainly enjoyed my first Wwoof job, even with the cannibalistic sow, and have been invited to return whenever I want to for however long I want to which has really boosted my confidence.



The second week of my stay was very hot and I started feeding the pigs earlier in the morning so that I wasn't completely exhausted by 9.00am. The good news is that mother sow didn't eat any more piglets and the three left with her were usually to be seen scooting in and out of the barns at high speed, as I used to let her out into the yard during the day where she mooched about and found shady, muddy places to wallow the hot hours away. I must admit that there were times when I wished I could join her! The three poorly pigs continued to improve slowly whilst they were having their course of antibiotic injections, but the day after the course finished one of them had a very bad relapse. Again, he cheated death after a further injection and all three were still alive when I left, although they certainly weren't out of danger and I do worry that no-one would have had the time to spare to look after them as there were no new Wwoofers due for a couple of weeks and everyone else was always so busy.

I had a disastrous walk on the second Saturday that I was there - I'd planned a gentle 3 mile walk, partially on forest trails and therefore shady and cool as the day was searingly hot, to an Abbey that had the remains of a Cistercian monastry in the grounds. I encountered my first problem when I emerged from the wood at the end of the farm into a field and discovered a herd of cows, calves and a large Limousin bull all lying in the gateway of the field that I had to cross! I'm not usually nervous of cattle but I thought caution was a good idea so found a gap in the hedge and squeezed through that instead. After that the way was along a farm track, down a rocky path past some cottages and onto the forestry trails and I happily sauntered along listening to the birds and generally enjoying the day, until I realised that I had been walking for ages and there was no sign of the woods coming to an end. I began to feel a little like Hansel and Gretel, but decided not to retrace my steps as I must surely be nearly at the furthest point from the farm. Eventually I emerged, by way of another field containing another herd of cows, calves and Hereford bull, onto a road near a village called Blaisdon (famous for its plums) and several miles further on from where I should have been! Suffice it to say that, realising my map reading skills were rubbish, I walked back along the road - a distance of about 4 miles, in the blazing sun. I reckon I had walked at least 8 miles by the time I got back and I was completely exhausted and my water bottle (yes, Karen, I had remembered to take one with me!) was drained to the last drop. On the Sunday I did very little!



When I look back on the second week of my stay I can't remember what I really achieved, even though I worked for 8 hours every day. I did quite a lot of weeding in the flower borders at the main farmhouse, and I sanded down a lot of teak garden furniture that had been stored in a barn over winter and was needed in the craft courtyard for members of the public to sit on. I also helped clad the end of a barn in waney-edged timber and make a dovecote to go in the apex of the same barn wall and of course I fed the 'ciderheads' every morning, too. Even the local pheasant population were constantly on the lookout for cider-soaked barley that had been dropped and even helped themselves out of the buckets if I hadn't rinsed them out thoroughly. After many not-so-subtle hints about how I liked cider, I finally got to try the farm cider - it was not your usual scrumpy, but a far more sophisticated drink with a slight fizz that was extremely nice drunk straight from the fridge!



Finally, on Friday 28th May I packed up my little car, bid the old cottage a fond farewell and drove off through the Forest towards Monmouth and a week of R & R with my family before I started on my next Wwoofing adventure.