New views, new skills, new challenges

This next host is proving different again, as I suspect every single one will do.

We arrived yesterday afternoon but the wife who I have been communicating with by email and phone is not here at the moment and she is the one who deals with WWOOFers. We were directed onto the camping field, a small enclosed area with spacious pitches for five campers with electric hook up and water on each pitch. We said we would be self sufficient for the first night as we have our store of tinned food.

The views are utterly stunning, 360 degrees of gorgeous south Devon countryside, bordered by the edge of Dartmoor and a glimpse of the sea. We watched a beautiful sunset, listened to the cows in the barn next door and as the sky grew dark and lights twinkled on in the town below us it was nice to be back in Willow again.

This morning we wandered over to the farm after a fairly lazy start to the day, enjoying the view out of the window while breakfasting :)

There was no one about so after some debate we decided to head into the nearest town for some lunch supplies, clearly if we're not doing any work we can't expect to be fed so we thought to be on the safe side we would ensure we were topped up with essentials like bread and milk. Willow wasn't super keen on this idea and flatly refused to go up a rather steep hill which meant I had to leap out and help guide Ady into a scary reverse and turn around manourvere in a fairly tight space and blind corner. Eek! She warmed up and seemed fine after that but does a fine line in occasssionally reminding us she is a more mature vehicle with limitations just like the rest of us!

Back at the farm we parked up, had an early lunch and headed back to knock on the door again (we had left a note with our phone number explaining where we'd gone, when we'd be back etc.) This time we caught up with the host, G (D, his wife is away until later today, hopefully we'll catch up with her this evening or tomorrow morning) and had a tour of the cattle - a range of breeds from week or so old calves to finishers. We met the rather gorgeous - and enormous - resident bull, a 3 year old. They are all in barns from over wintering and will be out to pasture pretty soon.

We were then tasked with mowing the grass in the camping field. I've never used a petrol lawnmower before so I was very keen to have a go at that :) Ady taught me how to start it, which various levers did which various things and I happily spent a couple of hours pacing up and down the field (about an acre) in (close to) straight lines which Ady raked up loose grass and loaded it into the back of the trailer G brought over for us on the quad bike.

The kids got a ride on the trailer and spent ages playing with Kim, the resident dog having cooed over the calves and let the cows lick their hands :)

Kim is a lovely dog actually, I'm certainly doing well with my dog phobia management - there has been at least one dog at every place we've stayed so far and I've coped just fine with all of them.

We're looking forward to seeing more of the farm tomorrow and getting going with some work but for now the kids are out playing in the field, Ady is taken arty pictures of a hot air balloon drifting past the setting sun and I'm about to pour a glass of wine and go and join them out there.