Rosenhill

So we arrived at the farm that we will be working at for the next two weeks. Again, I was kind of nervous about meeting new people, but mostly for the work. No hiding in the cabin this time. We showed up and right to work we went. The first task was cleaning out the caravan that we would be staying in. No problem there. We got the caravan cleaned up in little time, and I cut a path in the field it is located in, to the front door. Even though it is a little on the wobbly side, it will suit us fine.

It turns out that the farm is amazing, and tons of fun (or maybe kilos of fun). Everyone here is super nice. The farm is owned by one family, Lars and Emelia, and their two kids. It is a small apple orchard, growing carrots, lettuce, chard, tomatoes, cherries and keeping bees. Incorporated into the farm is a cafe and community spot. The cafe is the main source of income, making it possible to put the crops on the back burner. If I had to guess, I would think that the cafe has about 75 to 90 people a day. The menu at the cafe changes quite frequently, but sandwiches and soup are the staples. There is a variety of baked goods that are displayed nicely in a case.

The farm it's self is made up of the cafe, a community barn, work barn, donation barn and about 6 houses and cabins, and a tee pee. There is a family that lives in the tee pee.

I believe that there are only two paid employees in the cafe, and the rest are wwoofers. Currently there are 7 wwoofers here. One from Seattle, three from france, one from New Zealand, one form Canada and one from Holland. We are all between the ages of 20 to 30. All the wwoofers are very nice, and are fun to talk to. We are all fortunate (us mostly) that english is everyones second language.

So our day starts out with breakfast and a short meeting to plan the day. We all chose what we want to do for morning duty. I favor feeding the pigs and hens. Morning duties take about an hour to complete. During breakfast we each pick our daily duty. We are asked to sign up for six, one hour time slots that include dishes for the cafe, weeding the garden, and any other chores that need to be done. We make elder flower lemonade in the cafe, so my day was spent picking flowers in the morning, weeding for a few hours and then dishes for an hour.

The day seems to fly by quickly. We all get along well, and enjoy the work we do. It is very neat how much pride people take in their work even though we are volunteers.

Dinner is around 8:30 pm and is up to the wwoofers to make. Cooking for 20 people can be challenging, but gets done anyhow. We all take turns with diner, and clean up.

After diner we all hang out together until we get tired. Many of the wwoofers are musicians, so we have lots of music in the evening.

The cafe is closed on Mondays, so most of us take that day off. Yesterday we went to go see a movie, but it was sold out. We ended up walking around the city all day.

In other news. We bought tickets to Spain. We leave August 4th for Barcelona. Looking forward to a change of scenery and a new farm. We already think that it will be hard to beat this farm. All the other wwoofers say this is the best one they have seen. So we'll see.

We have both been very healthy and happy. Sorry about not writing more. Just very occupied.

Guess that's about it for now.