Dipping a Toe into 'HelpX' Waters

Hollyhock

Another slow-news week and this time I really will keep it short. In the last post, I warned the reader that I'd not much to say and then went on a medium sized epic about concrete and what not. Not this time, I'm afraid - genuinely just plodding along the old familiar paths but about to embark on a new adventure, namely hosting some volunteer labour for the price of bed and board. Yes. A big change - instead of adding to the amount of man-hours we NEED in a day, we are adding to those available. Step forward the on-line service, Help-X.

From their own website (http://www.helpx.net/) "HelpX is an on line listing of host organic farms, non-organic farms, farm-stays, home-stays, ranches, lodges, B&Bs, backpackers hostels and even sailing boats who invite volunteer helpers to stay with them short-term in exchange for food and accommodation."

Black Marans hen decides to take a turn at this broody-ing.

So on one side of this arrangement are loads of places like ours with too much to do in the day and weeds taking over the veg' gardens, buildings in need of repair or, at the right time of year, lambing, sheep shearing or any amount of other livestock tasks PLUS spare room(s) and a willingness to take in complete strangers and feed and accommodate them.

Might be man-junk and old paint tins but at least it's TIDY.

On the other side, thankfully, are an army of people whose idea of the perfect holiday or the best form of research into whether they'd like to do this job for real. They just have to get themselves to you and then do, the general rule says, around 25 hours work for you per week. The rest of the week is theirs to go touristing, shopping or what ever they fancy. They live with you as family.

The 'bird house' still needs white lime at the far end in the
goosey bit. You can just see the broody bird holding the job up.

Both sides register their existence and advertise their wares on the Help-X website, with a view to trying to attract interest from the other. We, the 'hosts' have to make our place sound and look enjoyable enough to hook some volunteers and they have to apply to us and convince us they are the kind of volunteers we'd love to have around.

Amusingly, on the website, each side can see the other's previous 14 transactions/emails so while this negotiation is going on you can tell that your applicants are also applying to many other places. It is a bit like an E-Bay auction and we 'lost' our first 2 sets of applicants and began to wonder whether these people were looking with half an eye to the 'down-time' and hitting the night life and clubs and pubs of an anticipated nearby city. Perhaps, out here in the wilderness we'd never attract anyone.

The Hubbard meat-birds half way there at 45 days

But, No! No need for pessimism. Earlier this week we got a possible 'bite' from a couple of lads from Spain. These guys had a quick conversation with Liz on the website e-mail system and have now gone as far as booking flights and asking for directions to us from the airport. I do not want to tempt fate and say too much too soon so I will stop here and promise more on this when it is really happening.

We like a decent sized "new" potato on this farm. These are just
volunteers from the compost heap.

We are very excited and planning how we will feed them and what we will put them to work on and so on. We want them to be very happy with us and very happy here as well as wanting to be delighted with them. It is our first little dip into these murky waters, though we know of several friends who have used these websites before and have a long and happy history of using the volunteers.

Messing with the sour dough starter. Every now and then you
must split it and 'discard' half. A friend suggested make a 'gallette'
pancake/crumpet to eat with butter and honey.

Some are 'Help-X' but others use the stricter ORGANIC farming service "WWOOF" (website wwoof.net - the acronym is for the Worldwide Federation of Organic blah blah Organisations but is not in English). WWOOF volunteers are known as 'Wwoofers' but we are not sufficiently organic to qualify. Our new friend Anne, working with my Sligo-based Texel sheep owning chums, is a Help-X volunteer. She is in the middle of a 6 week stint there, she is delighted with how it is going and I know that Colin and Alayne are over the moon with her.

There now! You don't get a dog's ear-'ole on
every blog, do you? Towser is now all clean
and a healthy pink. More comfortable too. 

More on this later. Oh, and if you're into this post so quick that you saw it without pictures, an apology. The camera battery went flat as I was trying to download pictures (actually at the exact second that having selected the pics I wanted and chosen the destination folder and reached for the 'Paste' button). You will just have to be patient, like me, while I charge the battery and can then get the thing to boot up again.

Purple loose-strife

Until next time, then.

Ouch!

One of the three turkey poults - they are doing well.

Today sees us roughly in the middle of that Liz "Dentist Hell" of which I spoke in the last post - easily the most painful day but also the 'bottom' of this particular helter skelter ride. From now on, in theory, it is all mend, repair, getting better, recovery and the like. Just to add salt to the wound, this would have been the day she should have flown to Spain, off on a lovely sunny, relaxing, food-rich, sociable (long) weekend with a group of Internet chums including our good friends Mazy-Lou and Airy Fox.

Dustbin Lady and Crate Lady out on the front drive with the
babies.

Yes. As we were driving to the dentist, Liz should have been on the bus from Ballaghaderreen to Dublin Airport, checking in for Bilbao. Then this dental thing loomed up with rubbish timing and Liz decided that exploring the foods of Spain was not really practical for now, so she dropped out.

A lovely gift of acorns from Tara. Genuine Irish Oaks.

So, off we toddled to Balla-D and Liz's date with Destiny and as we turned out of our lane at the crossroads in the village I spotted, sitting on the kerb, a lady runner in jogging shorts and a bright pink top. Thinking she was just resting, I recognised her and said to Liz, "Hey, isn't that your friend from The Play?" It was and Liz had already spotted that both her knees were bleeding from nasty grazes.

All quiet in the pig pen - just a million footprints

Obviously we stopped, did a quick U-Turn and scooped her up. She was feeling very foolish as she had just fallen for no reason she could see, but was also in a lot of pain and shock. Ouch! We drove her home (she'd already run about 2.5 km outbound so was a way off, especially on bleeding knees) and all agreed that now that we are 'grown ups', to fall and graze knees takes you right back to school days where the teacher would gather you up and pass you to the School Nurse who would wipe your cuts down with horribly stinging antiseptic stuff. The days of stretchy pink cloth sticky plasters.

A good vet could get them back on their feet? These ladies went
down to Castlerea in a trailer but came home in the car. 

That, though, is surely enough pain and hurt for one blog. Mine is only the mental 'anguish' of finishing my lovely Oxford Sandy 'n' Black piggies, Somerville and Ross. It hardly compares and especially now that we are through it and able to enjoy the 'product' end of the process - getting our meat back and butchering it up into joints and cuts. The whole job has gone seamlessly. I always worry that something will go awry - we'll fail to load the pigs or we'll have a break down or puncture. So far it has gone well with us (pre-dentistry!) working well as a team, loading, hauling, talking to the butcher, then collecting the split carcasses (he even split the heads for the brawn), butchering them up and finally stowing them in the freezer(s).

All you need to cut up a pig - Scott Rea's excellent videos on
YouTube.... oh and maybe his 25 years experience!

This year we discovered a series of videos on YouTube by a butcher from the UK, Scott Rea. Scott videos himself with a camera over the shoulder as he does master classes in the various aspects of butchery. They include making salt beef, making brawn (or "head cheese") and so on but most importantly today, in how to cut up a pig.

With the ribs removed, these lovely sheets of front "belly"
will become string tied, rolled rib roasts. 

He has 25 years experience and shows and explains the process really well, so I found myself watching a chunk of video, then pausing the tape while I did THAT to my carcasses, then looking at more. Respect, Scott. You are now my go-to butchery mentor! I learned some new cuts this year which I had not seen or done before this year; a (string-tied) rolled rib roast, for example, steaks from one of the big muscle blocks in the leg and boned out loin-chops. Also a new way of doing rib-chops.

The Dining Room Table gets a bit of abuse.

All that lovely meat is now cut up, bagged, labelled and (amazingly) squeezed into the freezer. We had been going a bit mad using up thawed portions of frozen left overs; the shopping list dry-wipe board says "BUY NO MEAT OR FISH" in big letters at the top. We had also been turfing out stuff that had a lower priority than our new 'harvest' and might survive long enough in the fridge to get used up safely.

All bagged and labelled ready for onward shipment to the
Utility Room freezers

I can also tell you that the pork is GORGEOUS. Tonight (fairly late after all the butchery and other normal jobs) I cooked a couple of the boneless loin chops, deliberately very simply so that I could get the full flavour; just veg oil and heat. I served these with mash and broccoli. It pains me to say that Liz missed out on this too, restricted as she is to soup today. She said it smelled and looked lovely. Finally on pork, we have salted down 2 of the whole legs to try our version of 'Parma' or 'Serrano' ham. These lads get a dry cure of mixed salt, sugar, star anise, bay, peppercorns, coriander seed and dried chillies (Thank you the Strawbridge father and son team) patted and massaged into them daily for 21 days (and the brine which gets sucked out of the meat by the salt layer, drained off). They then get air dried for about 8 months hanging in our spare room. Last year it worked a treat, hence we have gone for 2 legs this year. It's an expensive cut if it goes all smelly and maggotty but so far we have not had that happen.

K-Dub rollers down the first layer of mix and the matting on
our newly buit roof sheeting. 

Meanwhile, the kitchen project moves on another stage. K-Dub spots a dry day and zooms over here so that we can sheet over the roof frame and apply the fibre-glass weather proofing. I am told that "no-one uses torch-down bitumen felt" any more; the stuff we used so dramatically on our Utility Room roof (flames, smoke, coughing, worries that the whole place would go up in flames). There is now a good product spawned out of the boat industry, a modern (non itchy!) version of fibre-glass which comes in rolls that you can just tear to shape. overlap, squidge round corners and mouldings and then cover with a 2nd, pigmented layer of the same mix (softener and catalyst) as a top coat (or 2).

The pigmented topcoat

It is quite new still so no-one really knows what the life will be on roofs but all indications are that it will go longer than bitumen felt and is certainly less easy to damage by walking around on it. The building industry has adopted it whole-heartedly and the fire-regs boys also prefer it. K-Dub (and colleagues in Dublin) have done some huge roofs in the city with it and they love it. It is also a nice, trustworthy, solid GREY. It LOOKS like it will last. Inevitably it is more costly than torch-down felt but hey, you have the added bonus of getting high on the fumes! I was talking about falling over whisking you right back to school days; well those fumes had me right back to building fibreglass canoes at school, too.

Well, I suspect that this is enough for this post. I hope that by the time I write again, I will be able to report Liz well on the mend and with at least one pork supper to her name (and the fallen lady jogger fully recovered). Good luck now.