Perhaps some of you may remember the scene in Monty Python's
Holy Grail where the peasants of England are working on their fields. The most miserable, wretched, pitiable creatures, covered all over in dirt, toiling in the mud. It is not that bad here! But we are toiling in the mud too. With shovels, hoes, wheelbarrows and buckets.
I'm at my third and last
wwoofing placement this week, which is an organic vegetable farm 30 km north of Brisbane. They had very heavy rainfalls here a month ago, and we are still working on the aftermath of the floods. The soil here is clay. It is rock-hard when dry, but turns into horrible, heavy mud when wet. We need to get that mud out so that the furrows between the vegetable beds drain off the irrigation water better. The work here is the hardest I've done in a long time.
On the positive side, the accommodation is very good. I have my own room in a nice and newly built house. They can accommodate up to four wwoofers here. At the moment we are two, Matt from France and myself. We work with Anthony, who is employed full-time at the farm, a young guy whose hobby is to talk the ears off of anyone who is polite enough not to tell him to please shut up at least for 5 minutes. The food is good and we wwoofers can do some cooking too. On Tuesday Matt made pizza and yesterday I cooked a German dinner for all of us.
The owners are Len and Renee, who have a little daughter (18 months) named Stella. She is of course the star of the family (and she can say my name: "Martin!"). Her Italian name has a reason: Len's father is an Italian who migrated here after the war. He had a big poultry farm here on this land before he "retired". Now he's 80-something and still works on the field every day. An admirable man. And Len is short for Leonardo. He was in marketing before, but it had always been his dream to become a farmer, so 3 years ago he gave up his old life and started up this organic farm here. These vegies are their first crops.
Sally from Rainbow Love Farm (see 2 postings below) has updated
her blog today, with some more photos of me. "We have just had a wonderful week with our second wwoofer."
Perhaps some of you may remember the scene in Monty Python's Holy Grail where the peasants of England are working on their fields. The most miserable, wretched, pitiable creatures, covered all over in dirt, toiling in the mud. It is not that bad here! But we are toiling in the mud too. With shovels, hoes, wheelbarrows and buckets.
I'm at my third and last wwoofing placement this week, which is an organic vegetable farm 30 km north of Brisbane. They had very heavy rainfalls here a month ago, and we are still working on the aftermath of the floods. The soil here is clay. It is rock-hard when dry, but turns into horrible, heavy mud when wet. We need to get that mud out so that the furrows between the vegetable beds drain off the irrigation water better. The work here is the hardest I've done in a long time.
On the positive side, the accommodation is very good. I have my own room in a nice and newly built house. They can accommodate up to four wwoofers here. At the moment we are two, Matt from France and myself. We work with Anthony, who is employed full-time at the farm, a young guy whose hobby is to talk the ears off of anyone who is polite enough not to tell him to please shut up at least for 5 minutes. The food is good and we wwoofers can do some cooking too. On Tuesday Matt made pizza and yesterday I cooked a German dinner for all of us.
The owners are Len and Renee, who have a little daughter (18 months) named Stella. She is of course the star of the family (and she can say my name: "Martin!"). Her Italian name has a reason: Len's father is an Italian who migrated here after the war. He had a big poultry farm here on this land before he "retired". Now he's 80-something and still works on the field every day. An admirable man. And Len is short for Leonardo. He was in marketing before, but it had always been his dream to become a farmer, so 3 years ago he gave up his old life and started up this organic farm here. These vegies are their first crops.
4 comments:
Was ist der Unterschied zwischen "pitiable" und "wretched". Der LEO bringt da fast die selben Ergebnisse.
Gruß
Alex
Hallo Slumdog,
hoffentlich ist die Arbeit im Überschwemmungsgebiet nicht zu schwer!
Gruß Papa
Ja Alex, das sind auch im Prinzip Synonyme.
Miserabel, elend und erbaermlich.
Da gibt's auch glaub ich einen Namen fuer die rhethorische Figur.
@Papa: Ja, anstrengend ist sie auf alle Faelle. Du kennst das mit dem Erde-bewegen ja von eurer Archaeologenarbeit.
Tautologie. Das war's.
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