This week

This week has been quite interesting and also quite hard, more emotionally than physically. There seems to be a certain amount of farm/internship politics related to managing to do what you want and working in particular areas. I have learnt that working in the cafe is something that is often given to new people often with the hope that they will take it on almost in a management capacity so that the owners can have someone that does that for free. Because i have experience working in cafes and restaurants i guess i seemed like a good fit for that but that isnt what i came here to do so a lot of this week has involved battling with the people in charge of the rota so that i can get a chance to do a variety of things while im here rather than just working in the kitchen and cafe.

Monday was a good day as i was in the store, i had been wanting to find out more about the clientele and the produce. From what i could gather they were pretty much as i had expected and fall somewhere under the yummy mummy category. Though there were also a few older locals that seemed to be regulars as they got their papers from the store. I was quite surprised to learn that most of the vegetable produce is not actually from the farm but from other ones in the area, apparently we sold everything we grew and then there are other things that we don't grow so have to buy in. To me that seemed to defeat the point of the sustainable farm especially as we were selling lemons and oranges that weren't even from the country. The meant however all comes from the farm and there is a lot of it and it looks great. There was a funny moment for me in the strore when i overheard an interaction between the butchers assistant and a customer, the butchers assistant is a very straight talking young woman from Hungary, she was trying to help a customer buying lamb, the customer was remarking on how small the cut was and the butchers assistant said very matter of factly "yes thats because it came from a very little lamb" this seemed to upset the customer a little and put her off a bit, which the butchers assistant didn't get at all. I thought it was brilliant because the woman was buying meat from the place where the animal was born and raised, i don't think she had really thought about how close she was to where it all happened, the butcher ofcourse knowing very well.

Today was also a good day as its the day i bake for the store, we made similar things to last week plus some pastry cases, i discovered im actually wuite good at making pastry which i didn't think i would be because of my ridiculously hot hands. I also got to see inside the butchery and abbatoir which was fascinating for me, i have never seen in my life such an enormous amount of meat, it seems like a very intense and aggressive environment, with people hacking away at so many dead animals. There were pigs and cows hanging in the chiller which were pretty impressive looking. The only animal that is slaughtered at the farm is the chickens and everything else is taken away. I want to know a bit more about the butchery but I find it a bit intimidating at the moment and the two guys that work in there don't speak English very well.

On the night before me day off i went to london and had a lovely evening and next day there and got to catch up with some people. It hadn't been so long since id been in civilisation so it wasn't so weird.

Ok thats all for now. X

someone bought my bread!

I think i need to start by apologising as this post isn't going to be particularly related to farm life, it is about my life here at the farm but from what ive been doing i really could be anywhere. It should get a bit more farmy in the coming weeks as i have said i want to help when its lambing time and here and that will be early April so that should be an interesting time. For the period before that i have been taken off livestock for a while until i get settled and will be mainly working in the cafe and cooking, which is really not what i thought i would be doing here but im trying to find my feet before i take on too many new things. Might not make for interesting reading though! Yesterday was a good day for me as i was in the prep kitchen in the morning and helped to bake a gingerbread, lemon and poppy seed cake and two kinds of bread, these were then sold in the shop today, i have always wanted to cook something that goes on to be sold (and not bought by friends or parents!) and it happened today so it was quite a little achievement for me. In the afternoon i worked in the cafe and was in there all day today, it is quite long hours for no money at all so a little hard to keep going at times!

I moved into my new room last night in the caravan, it is approximately the same size as a standard double bed but it feels like luxury in comparison with the couch i was on for the previous two nights and it has a working heater, all i need now is a duvet and i should be set!

For a bit of farm news, a calf was born this morning just as the interns were going out to feed the cows, apparently mum and baby were fine.The last one to be born was in October so it has been a while. It is a tad worrying though that we don't have a trained vet at the farm and during lambing season the person who will oversee everything is the man who owns the farm and im not sure how much training he has had. Anyway we will see how it goes.

Thank you for reading my blog :) i will put up some pics soon

She's a right stick in the mud

I was contemplating writing a post last night but i decided against it, what happened yesterday as quite traumatic and i guess not so much to do with the farm, not in the way that i intend this blog to go anyway. I will instead write about today. I got up at half 7 after approx 2 hours sleep and got ready or breakfast, all the interns have breakfast together at half in the cafe. I didn't really have an appetite but tried to eat something as i knew it was going to be an intensive day then. Then after signing my paperwork with the HR lady and watching a ridiculous food hygiene video i went to meet Luke, one of the interns who is experienced with livestock. We loaded up a trailer with pig feed and rode around the farm going to all the different fields where there were pigs, about 15 in all. It was quite scary for me as the pigs were hungry and excitable and as soon as they knew you had food they were noisy and chased us. At one point my welly and i got stuck in some mud and two huge sows began to jump at me and i dropped the food which only made them more excitable, i had to call out to Luke so he could come and yank me out of the mud. I was a bit flustered but carried on as i didn't want him to think i was a wimp, though i was shaking in my boots!
Luke asked if i wanted to have a go driving the trailer up a field so i gave it a go, it was hard to change gears as you have to apply a lot of force but it was reasonably simple after that, and a more comfortable seat than riding on the bit at the back! After my morning of feeding pigs i got changed and washed and helped out in the cafe after lunch, it was quite quiet so i went into the kitchen and helped glaze a ham and peel a crate of artichokes and then helped to cook the interns' dinner which was mainly veggies that were not good enough for the veg boxes and we made apple crumble for dessert with rotting apples, yum!
Im finding it all quite overwhelming and not very settled as i don't yet have a bed to sleep in but im trying to give it my best shot and wait and see a bit longer before i decide how long i will be here, it might be a relatively short lived blog! stay tuned x

Here we go

I have set up this blog to share my farming adventures with friends, family and anyone else who cares to stop by. I don't have so much to say for the first one as i haven't yet moved, but as well as being new to farming im quite a novice with blogging also so im mainly just seeing if i can do one successfully in advance. Im a little apprehensive about the move but also looking forward to it. Im aware that it is going to be quite a big change from living in London, particularly because when i lived there i worked nights and so will now likely be getting up and starting to work at the time i used to go to bed. I will miss certain things about London, mostly friends, but i am ready for a change and im very excited to live to a more natural rhythm and especially to be there at this time of year with all the new life and everything coming into bloom i think it should be an interesting and rewardable time. And off we go...