Bring It CLON

…As the locals call the city Clonakilty.

Well, I finished up on the farm Thursday this week. It was rather bittersweet – my cabin fever was overjoyed that I’d be seeing new places, but I was going to miss having good food, a real home, and a family of sorts to come home to.

View from one of my windows, showing the polytunnel (greenhouse)

All in all, my experience on the Van Dam farm was great. Some people have asked what an average day was like while I was WWOOFing, and while it’s no longer relevant to my life at the moment, I will share one response I sent! To Matt LaChance!

One of my $18 work gloves after only three weeks. It's hard to tell in this picture, but the first three fingers are completely open at the tips, and it's starting to rip up one side.

“Average day, hmmmm. I wake up at 7:30 AM, make myself a simple breakfast in the mobile home, and get out to work by 8. There's a coffee break around 10 or 11 with my hosts, and dinner (lunch) is at 1 PM, a nice big home-cooked meal with fresh veg. That usually goes until 2 or 2:30 ("half two" as they'd say) and then it's back to work until....well, the end time is relatively undefined, so far it's ranged from 4:30 and 7:30, but usually around 6 or 6:30. Then, usually, I go back to the mobile home, cook myself some dinner (with ingredients they've provided/grown) and take a bath(!!!) around 8. After that I'll fart around reading, listening to music, watching a video or two (luckily I torrented the entire series of "Earthworm Jim: The Animated Series" shortly before leaving). If it's cold I'll light a fire in the heater-stove (which is pretty ineffective outside of the room it's located in, actually). I generally get into bed around 10:30 and that gives me plenty of sleep to wake up at 7:30 the next day!”

The Wall and its soil, the weeding/digging/leveling of which composed the single longest-running job I had on the farm.

The Van Dams were great to me, too. I was allowed basically full access to their personal garden (leek, onion, potato, spinach, chard, parsley, oregano, rosemary, thyme, lemon balm, spearmint, chive) for my own cooking, and the food they made was always delicious. I even surprised myself by enjoying two dishes composed primarily of eggs! I don’t think I could stomach them straight-up, but apparently my tastes have changed enough to tolerate them when mixed with more-flavorful things. The Spanish omelet was my favorite. Maybe I’ll try a quiche next! They brought me along on many family outings – in the process, helping me to get out of the immediate area and, probably, further helping me get through my depressed period! Then there’s the sharing of their home-made beer and wines, all of which were delicious and deceptively strong and led to good conversations. Also, their twin boys were adorable and very fun to babysit when I was tapped for such a task.

View from another of my windows, showing the backyard.

My only complaint – though perhaps one that can’t be helped – was that Mark and Debbie would argue rather frequently, even while I was present. It made me super uncomfortable whenever it happened. If they’re reading this right now, I hope they don’t take it too personally. At least I got to see their loving side as well, so I'm not too worried!

…There is, of course, the issue of the aforementioned bad period. I think it was a combination of boredom, separation anxiety, homesickness, and cabin fever. True, for the first couple weeks, I really wasn’t doing much at all after work. On the other hand…that’s totally normal for me. When I’m at home and I have a busy day, I’ll spend the evening just relaxing. So, I don’t think boredom was a HUGE part of it. But getting out more certainly helped the healing/acclimating process.

Are you familiar with Ryan Air? They are the super-budget airline that goes all over Europe for small handfuls of euro. They’re super cheap, but as the saying goes, “you get what you pay for”. I just tried booking my flight to London and I got a “fatal error”, then I tried re-booking and got the same “fatal error”. After that failed, I started booking through another airline. A few minutes later, luckily before I’d booked with the other airline, I got a (single) e-mail giving me confirmation on my flight through Ryan Air. Way to get off to a good start, dudes. I just hope I don’t soon find out that I’ve been charged for both errored bookings….