To Kingdom Come - Let's go riding on wild horses yeah yeah

Friday 10 June to Friday 1 July

PART TWO

Day one on the farm

Or perhaps let's not go riding on wild horses and instead let's leap over electric fences to escape the bolting, steely eyed, flat eared creatures who apparently do not wish to participate in the human/horse bonding session.

This post commences on Monday 20 June, where we leave Liverpool behind and board a train to Helsby for our first WWOOFing (Willing Workers On Organic Farms) experience. 

For the very reasonable price of ₤30 I've signed both of us up to gain access to the contact list of farms offering the WWOOFing experience.  We then contact the farm to see if they have work available, which we will exchange for food and board.

I managed to find a sweet sounding a berry farm-come-B&B with horses and dogs that could take us for a week's worth of work, outside of Helsby in Chester, along the Sandstone Trail (a walking track which runs throughout the region).  The farm is two short train rides and a 6km drive away and we agree to meet one of the ladies at the station on the Monday after we visit Liverpool.

We arrive at about lunch time and are greeted by three dogs, a sister of the lady who collected us and another WWOOFER, Niels who is Dutch and has riden his bike all the way from home.  It's a gorgeously sunny English summer's day and we're shown to a quaint little caravan, decorated with fresh flowers and over looking the raspberry patch, where we will stay during our visit.  Once we're settled we met Niels in the garden for lunch in the sun.

The two sisters, who were probably in their 60s and called each other "Watson" (across the paddocks and through the house), were obviously pleased to have two strapping lads about and showed their appreciation for this by sending them both off into the horse paddock to clear a hectare or two of of thistles by hand.  My job for the afternoon was a little more relaxed and I was sent to the orchard to pick raspberries and black currants in the sun.  This was a tame beginning to a week that promised to be far more hectic, as the sisters were planning to host a mid summer market at their property on the coming Friday afternoon with a variety of food stalls, a band and a fortune teller due to set up camp on this pretty run down property.

That was when we were told that we were expected to re-locate from the caravan to a tent for at least the Friday night.

So knock off time arrived and we took turns washing away the day in the showers located inside the stables (the bathroom inside was not for WWOOFers) and got ready for dinner.  And waited and waited a bit longer.  To pass some time I headed to the kitchen to see if I could be of any assistance, but instead of finding any makings of a dinner I found a load of dirty dishes, a pair of washing up gloves and a suspiciously small pile of cooked vegetables that I assumed were for the compost.

Thankfully I didn't make any moves to shift the vegies to the compost as I did the dishes as I then learnt that they were promised to our pizzas.  Pizzas?  I don't see any pizzas!  We were called to the table after the clock ticked over to after 8pm and my stomach was rumbling like mad, I was ready to devour a family sized, deep crust, extra cheesy supreme in one mouth full!  Come on girls, serve me up!

With a look like Oliver Twist on my face I held my plate up to be served and withdrew my newly filled plate to discover it was not so filled...  We had each been allocated a single slice.  Even Big Niels!!

So I took my time on my dinner, trying to make it stretch not only the eight hours from lunch to dinner that had already passed, but also from dinner until breakfast the following morning.  To my relief, when each of us had consumed every crumb on the plate and had started eyeing off the dogs as potential food sources we were each invited up seconds and a second slice.

After taking the dogs out for an evening walk we were then invited back into the house and beyond the walls of the kitchen, into the sitting room to watch a detective show with the girls on telly.  Things were going well with us all until one of the characters on the show stabbed another character in the eye with a pen, Niels let out a great big yelp of an F word and I spilt my tea on myself in shock.

We weren't invited inside to watch tv again after that.

That night Jono and I nestled into our super dooper sleeping bags inside the caravan and repeated our mantra of 'home is where you make it' (or in the Waterboy 'I like to see homeboys naked') as we drifted off to sleep.