woofer – Uppedsticks with Pigs

At the time of writing a strange new virus (Corona/Covid19) has gripped the world and been declared a pandemic. There is pandemonium, panic buying and empty shelves in shops. It’s at times like this I am glad I produce so much of my own food. Today there were no eggs in one supermarket, but when I got home I collected 10.

In another, the vegetable shelves were bare. Up to this veg here has been fairly scarce but I discovered that the kale I’d planted last summer, which had all but disappeared thanks to caterpillars and then sharp-beaked hens had begun to make a comeback. The leaves are lovely and tender and cook down on a pan with olive oil and butter, like spinach. The purple sprouting broccoli is also just beginning to shoot.

The wild garlic season is just coming in and already you can pick young leaves in the woods in Tintern. It makes a great pesto until basil season. We also picked sea kale on Duncannon beach. This is also lovely sautéed on a pan in butter and olive oil.

So I think with my freezer full of lamb and the rest of my pork, a duck, a turkey and a cockerel all produced here, I won’t starve for a while!

My first Workaway left today after a month here. She was a terrific success and got loads of jobs finished (mostly inside because the weather’s been so crap). It helped that she had a great way with all the animals, although she was a bit wary of the pigs in the beginning and the goats played merry hell the one night I went away. Honestly they’re like a pair of kids (no pun intended).

In return for her help, I taught her to make sourdough bread and she’s now become proficient enough that I was able to leave her to make bread for Cake Dames. She really wanted to learn and rolled her sleeves up every evening and helped cook. I had been told that Workaways were generally older and more interested than Woofers and certainly with her, this was the case.

She loved Ireland and couldn’t get over how people who don’t know each other stop to have a chat on the beach; sometimes for ages. She found it hilarious that my neighbours asked her in for a cup of tea and she went. She told me afterwards that she felt she would learn more English by speaking to people with stronger accents than me. She jumped at the chance to ride another neighbour’s horses. Finally, before she left she decided she wanted to bake a cake for all my neighbours who she’d had contact with and then trotted off yesterday to give them to them. She insisted on buying the ingredients herself and getting recipes from home.

It really is true when you are open, friendly and interested in people that you get accepted and welcomed by a community. She got so many invites to come back and visit if she returns to Ireland in future.

I began to cure the sheepskins although I’m wondering is cure a big word for the process. They’re probably twice the size of a normal sheepskin and consequently twice as heavy when wet. It takes me all my strength to lift them. I mixed the oxalic acid in warm water as advised and then put them to soak in my water butt barrel. The idea is to stir them around in the salty oxalic acid solution every day for 3 days and I gamely tried with a tree stake. I’m convinced I heard a puncturing sound and panicked and then didn’t try again.

This morning I drained the water out to rinse them and soak them in washing soda but I’m convinced they need another go in more oxalic acid, so I’m going to order more and soak them individually this time. Sure lookit, it will either work or it won’t and nothing ventured; nothing gained.

A painter here last year recommended someone to paint my hayshed and he (a very strange individual with a funny manner) arrived to have a look at it and give me a quote. So hopefully the weather will begin to improve so he can get started. It’s currently sticking up like a big red rusty sore thumb. To get it painted will really be the icing on the cake. I’m thinking of a nice dark green colour. If only the wind and rain would bugger off though now because the area around where the tunnel was erected is a sticky, slithery quagmire and I’m going to come a cropper there, sooner rather than later. I need to block the hens out and get grass seed down.

Speaking of hens, I cut an opening in the wire on the field gate so they could get out there rather than decimating everything green in my garden. It took them weeks to discover it and only after the dopey ducks did first. But then a couple of them got shocked by the fence and now absolutely refuse to go out. Sigh. They pecked all my newly planted bulbs emerging after Christmas so I have the grand total of one daffodil and a few bedraggled looking tulips.

I’m really worried that with this virus scare, there will be no applications from Woofers or Workaways. I always have maintenance work here in summer, mainly painting. I am also really tied to the place if I can’t get anyone reliable to mind all the animals. This was brought home to me when the young lad I use went to Australia for a month over Christmas and then when I was going to a family funeral in the UK, his grandmother died and I was left high and dry. Only for a massive favour from a friend, I’d have had to cancel.

So fingers crossed they get it under control and we can all get back to normal again. If not I’ll just have to roll my sleeves up.

The new woofing season has begun and all of a sudden I’m inundated with applicants. They all have waffley bullshit on their profiles, for the most part translated by Google and I quote ” I think I own a great spirit of collaboration and adaptation, coupled with a full application of everything I do……….” And they all love animals and sustainability and the countryside; until the reality hits and they have to get out of their pit to feed same animals – in the countryside – before they feed themselves!

But one chap decided he didn’t need any old Google help and just sent me his in Spanish. I replied that I had done one year of Spanish which amounted to: muchas gracias, como se llama, uno, dos, tres Cerveza, donde este etc. He then sent me muchas the sameas above.

I took a woofer for a week, a French lassie who was at a friend’s the previous week. I actually needed her for the following week but was hoping she would work out and stay but she told me she had her next place lined up in Bantry. She’s a graduate of some sort of environmental/sustainability degree – gawdelpus.

I’ve now decided to tell them all they can come for a week’s trial. I was really spoiled by the two I had last summer and suspect I will go a long time before I get half as good.

The sap is beginning to rise though and I’m itching to get stuff done again. I was able to look out the window in winter and just sigh. Funny how longer daylight and warmer temperatures change your perception. I was out with said woofer having decided that it was pointless looking for a “man with a digger” trying to level an area on the opposite side of the hayshed where I had the Mickey Mouse tunnel last year. My plan is to move the tunnel here where it will get almost as much sun but will be sheltered from the south and the south west. Every time there was a storm last summer I was up in the night squinting out the window to see was it still there or was it airborne over Cardiff. Larry the neighbour appeared on the ditch like the proverbial hurler and proceeded to lambaste me. He said phone Jack “he has a digger” and gave me his number.

I ran into the house and grabbed the phone. It’s a mobile but it spends that much time plugged into the wall it may as well be a landline. Jack answered and said “when do you want it done?”. I said cheekily “today”. He replied he’d be there in the morning at 9.30am. I couldn’t believe my luck. I raced off down to Dunphy’s of Campile. You’d want to see this place. Stuffed to the gills with everything from a needle to an anchor. You have to duck going in the door so as not to get whacked on the head by a colander. If there is a tradesman coming out, you’ve to turn sideways to protect your modesty and are full frontal into a line of paint cans. Then you’ve to stand and wait your turn while one of the taciturn brothers takes their time to serve the person in front. They go off looking for each item individually, including out back, answer the phone, take in deliveries, tot up bills, do the invoices. So it can be a long wait. A resident Englishman (there every single time I’ve been) turns around and informs new customers “you best not be in a hurry.”

I digress. I was there to buy a new spade. One of said taciturn brothers helpfully dug (no pun intended) me out a womany one. I also wanted fencing posts and wire. Do. Not. Ask. How. Much. anything is because then they have to go off to check and this adds another ten minutes. Stuff purchased so I had to drive around the back to get loaded up. Same brother came out to load me up while the line in the shop grew ever longer.

Next morning – no sign of the woofer crawling out of her pit so as I was awake at cock crow (literally), I was out like an idiot feeding the animals. Then grab some breakfast to be organised for the man with the digger, who was late. He appeared at the gate on a JCB. I couldn’t see what I assumed was a trailer behind with a mini digger. I ran over to open the gate for him. Then it dawned on me it was only him on his JCB. I told him he wouldn’t fit in. “Show me,” he says. Why do men never take your word? He agreed he wouldn’t fit.

So back to the drawing board. My son says hire one and he will come down and do it. But he needs to check his roster and I need to book a digger and don’t you know the digger will be booked up for weeks and then his roster will change.

What I have decided though is to wait a few weeks before agreeing to take anymore woofers. The weather is just still too unpredictable and after a day’s rain yesterday where we got absolutely nothing done apart from bake.

And the less of that the better.

Tag: woofer

The Virus

The NWS