“Manual labour”

The end of last week consisted of massive amounts of manual labour. At this rate, I’ll be as strong as an ox in no time. Thursday morning we started off in the conference centre with G, the appropriate tech guy who loaded our brains for three hours. His presentations were about climate change, peak oil, wind power and solar power. It was interesting, but it wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard or presented on before. I’m always surprised when people don’t know about the ins and outs of climate change. I guess I’ve lived in a climate conscious bubble for the past few years. Thursday afternoon, we went out to Sim’s house where one of the big wind turbines is. It’s a 10-15 minute bike ride out there, up hill both ways. No joke. We spent the afternoon digging holes to plant our solar panel properly. That night, after another delicious dinner, we headed out to the “Ay Papi” centre (rec centre) to watch a documentary. It’s a movie called Surfwise about a man who raises his 9 kids to be nomad surfers and they travel all over the U.S. for 23 years together. Odd.

Friday morning came around quickly and since it was such a beautiful day, the schedule was rearranged and we spent the day outside, working the land. In the morning, we headed out to Simm’s and we spread compost on the field. After that, we hoed and made nice little rows to plant potatoes in. We managed to get half of the field planted before our lunch break. It’s incredible to apply all of the theory I’ve learned in school in/on the field. This kind of work makes me really appreciate fossil fuelled machines. And makes me appreciate the extra money that organic food costs. Seriously people. If a head of organic broccoli costs 0.4$ more than non-organic, just think of me, breaking my back shovelling, hoeing, planting, weeding and pest-controlling everything by hand. Then imagine doing this on a slightly larger scale and for longer and you can justify the extra few pennies that help the farmers. Friday afternoon was a little more of the same, except that it was A and me in J’s garden, spreading compost, hoeing lines, planting seeds and de-rocking the garden. We were literally ROCKING OUT! Hahahahaha. Apparently the most common crop here is rock. We wheel-barrowed out 4 loads of gravel that went into the driveway to fill the holes. Nothing wasted here.

Friday night was our first bonfire party. It was drizzling slightly but we made it work. The bonfire lasted for 6 hours and we had a jam session with a guitar, an accordion and some tamtams. And rum. Some of the permanent staff and locals showed up and we mingled and chatted and drank.

The last men standing were E, one of the M’s and me out at the Wrecked Centre and we ended up crashing there. I woke up way too early for my own good and E and I ended up sitting in the cabin for about two hours chatting and not wanting to venture out into the pouring rain to make our way back to our home. The rest of Saturday was spent quietly, all of us hanging out together, working in parallel on our computers. You would never know that we are off-grid.

In the afternoon, almost everyone went to one of the staff’s house to milk the cows and make butter for us all. E, S and I stayed behind and watched tv shows. What a treat. The crew that left ended up getting a flat tire and having to put on the donut. Meanwhile, we were sitting in our cozy house, sipping tea and letting our brains rot.

It was an early night for everyone. Today I woke up early to the image of the chickens suffocating in their coop so I ran out in the rain to let them roam free. They were fine. And smelly. The rooster reminds me of Foghorn Leghorn. He struts like nothing I’ve ever seen before. We spent the weekend baking, eating, sitting around and talking. It’s been lovely.

We have another 5 days of rain to look forward to and this week will likely be mainly indoor workshops.