Sunny Wales

Despite the fact that everyone we've talked to has mentioned that Wales is a wet place, we've had wonderful weather for our first week here. Our hosts claim that the farm is located in a coastal microclimate that gets about half of the average rainfall as the rest of Wales. It's been mostly sunny here, though we did get a day where the weather did that weird UK thing where it alternates between rain, hail, or sunshine every half hour. The ground is usually quite frosty when we get up, but by 10:30am it's warmed up a bit, the frost is gone and I've shed at least one layer that stays off until after 3pm. It's probably not as warm as it feels, but Josh and I have been doing tasks that include digging a trench and hauling wheelbarrows full of leafmould up a hill--you know, the kinds of things that really get your blood flowing.

The work may be hard, but I am having quite a good time here at Gerallt. Our hosts, a middle-aged couple, serve us delicious meals (always accompanied by pudding!), are great conversationalists, and have an interesting collection of gardening books. I've been reading quite a bit about permaculture, which seems like a brilliant gardening system. Permaculture focuses on building agricultural systems which require minimum labor to maintain while producing bountiful yields. I encourage all our gardening readers out there to do a little research on Permaculture, I think you will like what you learn!

I suspect that you looked at the name of the farm and assumed that it was pronounced "Jeralt." Boy is that wrong. The G is a hard sound and the LL is pronounced like "KHF." Yes, you read that correctly. The correct pronunciation is Ger-akhft. Or something like that. It's ok if you can't make the sound. Most non-native speakers can't either, but somehow it just rolls off the tongue of every Welsh speaker we encounter. The town we are in is called Llechryd. Good luck trying to say that.

Ellingham Hall

Our imminent departure spurred me into picture taking action! Here is a shot of the hall from the far corner of the Victorian garden.

Here's a shot of the lovely pond. It's home to assorted water fowl including ducks, geese and swans. A second swan pair tried to move in while we were here and we witnessed several days of epic swan battles* before they were finally chased off.
I think we put about 7,000 raspberry canes into the ground over four days. They all had to be heeled in (the job I got stuck with) and then trimmed down to about 6 inches (a job done by an only partially willing group of local teenagers).
The new Team Wwoof Headquarters a.k.a Magnolia Purgatory
Psst. I think she was lying about the food. She just called us over to point that little box at us. How lame is that?

*Epic swan battles mostly involve a lot of honking and beating of wings on the water's surface.

While we've been digging in the dirt...

... our host Vaughn has been getting himself shot at by the Taliban.

I was tensed up the whole time we watched this report on TV. I knew intellectually that the war puts people in insane situations, but some of the images Vaughn caught are as surreal as they are violent (i.e. walking in straight lines even when under fire so they won't step on mines or IEDs). Most bizarre is the fact that never once do you see the enemy; I don't even know if the soldiers could see them or just guess where they were by where the bullets were coming from.

Anyway, strap yourself in and see what the guy who owns this farm has been up to while we dug in the ground, raked leaves and planted raspberries.

More (random) photos

Pigs! Aren't they cute?

Norwich castle, unusual in that it looks like a giant cube. Someone must have thought it was a good idea...
Some graffiti I saw on the streets of Norwich. I highly doubt it's a Banksy, but it's his kind of thing.
I took this photo because I was confused as to why there were roosters being kept right near a busy road. This wasn't a one off thing either. The 3-4 times we've walked to Bungay, there have been roosters in this spot. And no flat ones on the road, either. But the really funny thing is, as I was looking through my photos, I realized that I've caught a shot of an elusive three wheeled car! What a treat for you, our readers, to be able to see one of these strange wonders of the UK! Click on the photo to see an enlarged view.
These are the ruins of the castle at Bungay. My camera is not good at taking shots of large things close up, but I couldn't get any farther away. Anyway, it was neat looking.

Just a few quick pics

From the first shoot. The male pheasants were quite stunning.

A shot of the Admiral's Room! This is where we slept for our first few weeks at the farm. What luxury! Now we are in the wwoof cottage, which is much warmer, but doesn't have anywhere near the Victorian charm.
And for those of you who thought I was joking about the stuffed tigers, here's the proof. I'm sitting next to this thing as I type this post! Rawr!

Norwich (don't pronounce the 'W')

Today Josh and I went for a trip to Norwich, which it turns out is a lot closer and easier to get to than we previously thought. We intended to walk three miles to catch a bus from Bungay, but luckily discussed our plans with some more knowledgeable people and thus discovered that there was a bus stop in Broome, less than a mile from the farm. The bus took about 45 minutes to get us into Norwich center. The city was bustling and we walked around in the crowds looking for used book stores and a cheap place to eat lunch (Thai buffet!). Then we set out to find a particular pub, called the Fat Cat. Bob, the farm's horticulturalist, had drawn us a very rough map of how to get from the bus station to the pub. We were a bit worried that we were going to end up on the far side of nowhere following this thing, but at the exact moment we were about to ask for directions, we came across Nelson Street and the landmark "laundrette" on the corner.

The pub was all we had hoped for and more! I had their Fat Cat Ported Porter (which wasn't that good), Oakham Inferno (lot's of flowery English hops), and a lovely, unpasteurized, unfiltered hard cider. They had a bunch more beers on tap and in bottles, and it is a tremendous shame that we probably won't get back to the Fat Cat to sample the rest. However, I will console myself by continuing to plan for our trip to Belgium. We've found a farm to take us during the second half of March, and given the small size of the country and its excellent train system, I fully intend to tax the filtering capabilities of my liver and kidneys.

In other news, we have a little over a week left at Ellingham Hall before we make our way to Wales. I expect that we'll be spending the whole week planting the estimated 9,000 raspberry canes that will be arriving any day now. Luckily, we won't be digging 9,000 holes, since modern technology has provided us with tractors and furrow diggers. Praise be the Gardening Gods, but Josh and I were quite worried that hole digging was in our future. Matt, our fellow wwoofer, has left us for a trip to the US, taking with him his extensive board game collection and his dvd player. We've been watching The Wire with him, and it's turned out to be an excellent show. If you are looking for something to watch, I suggest you give this series a view.

Anyway, I have a bunch of pictures on my camera (including shots of the Admiral's Room! and the Stuffed Tigers!) just waiting to be transfered to the computer and posted online. Some day soon I will get off my lazy bum and make it happen. Stay tuned!