On Sunday Christopher came up from Edinburgh to visit and we had a really nice day at the beach, napping in the tree house, walking around the loch and taking walking paths into town to watch world cup at the Auld Hoose pub.

Monday was the property owner’s grandson’s birthday, so we had a barbeque in the garden and I made a little herb potato soup to start, as requested. Yesterday Aaron and I pulled ragwort (a plant which is poisonous to horses and cows) in a huge field for three hours. Adam had returned from selling gems in Edinburgh the previous evening, so he made us a HUGE salad with greens from the garden, mushrooms, green onion and bacon, topped with tomatoes and boiled eggs and a fantastic herb dressing. And then we had a nap. In the afternoon I worked on sifting soil again for a few hours.

Last night Aaron, Adam, Diana and Richard, the owner’s son, and I all had cocktails in the tree house, ate dinner and after, Adam and Aaron and I played a pretty relaxed game of all-terrain golf and had a sauna in Adam’s home built bathhouse. He even has a tub just outside the door for a cold plunge, in which he adds macadamia nut oil (!) Inside we rubbed tiger balm on our sore feet (“It’s like a holiday for me wee toes” – Adam) and drank lots of water. Daily, I seem to wear a bit more cold-weather gear (hat, fleece and a scarf, on and off) and am usually colder than everyone else (thank you Texas), but going from the cold plunge (outside) to the very hot sauna, to a lawn chair on the top of a hill in a bikini, made 55 degrees feel like 70, which was a very perplexing way for my body to experience a Scottish summer.

Everyone who knows me knows that very hot saunas and minerals baths are some of my favorite things in the entire world.  I had a moment, while on the hill overlooking the property and loch and ocean, where I experienced a level of extreme happiness, similar to walking through the rice fields at night, alone in Japan. Cooling down from the sauna, sitting on a hill with lavender behind me, after physically working hard all day. Traveling alone is the best.

(Below) Walking home to the farm after dropping Christopher at the train station.

Got an audio and written interview with Adam McIntosh, one of the most unique characters I have ever met, last night, and have an interview planned with Diana, the 78 year-old property owner, tonight, after I make everyone dinner.

Off to pull ragwort in the rain…

(Above) This is a wind turbine on top of the hill I worked on today.

Craigencalt is amazingggg. Like another glorious, hilarious, even more humorous shire. I think this farm takes itself less seriously than Trill (Trill was a newer operation and had a lot of professional stuff going on, was run by a former business-woman etc, plus I know very little about this farm yet) which says nothing about how funny and relaxed and great everyone was at Trill, and more about the humor with which things seem put together around here…

Aaron, my roommate is a friendly, funny and fun Canadian. (Below) This is Aaron in a hide built for watching birds in the Loch without scaring them.

We had a nice time getting to know each other while digging in dirt and scrounging around the property for veggies to make a curry for dinner. Which we cooked in the tree house.

Adam, the guy on the property who organizes the workers and volunteers for the property owner and her son, picked me up from Kinghorn train station barefoot, in his van run on vegetable oil (which he filters himself), blasting the Beach Boys and Martha and the Vandellas. (Aaron says he listens to the ‘Good morning Vietnam’ soundtrack on repeat everyday). He built a super sturdy, fully kitted-out tree house on the property, which he lives in, built a sauna into the side of a hill and has a shower head he made from a conch shell. He mines gem stones by hand and runs a successful business selling them  in Edinburgh at the weekends. He is blonde and blue-eyed and looks like a surfer/hobbit mix (but taller).

On the property there are baby ducks, a creek full of watercress and a greenhouse full of BERRIES. Strawberries, raspberries, red currants and black currants, all red orbs of sweetness, which Aaron and I ate and ate and then put in our salad tonight.

Salad consisted of:

- wild strawberries

- raspberries

- spinach

- green leaf lettuce

- rocket

- what looks like “poor man’s fern” – Aaron

- horseradish leaves

- pea leaves (sometimes the stems are stringy)

- dressing of olive oil, salt and Bragg’s liquid aminos. Super savory, rich, salty perfection for the bitter greens and the sweet/tart berries.

Very lucky to be here!

Last week Taft and I had the opportunity to make soap with Ali, our farm friend and soap maker for Neal’s Yard Remedies for 18 years. Even though Romy, the owner of Trill, has sold Neal’s Yard, Ali still makes soaps for them using their essential oils. Ali says a standard batch is 140- 142 kilos, made in large mixers, but ours was just a very small one.

We used:

- coconut oil: 0.176 kilos

- palm oil: 0.281 kilos

- shea butter: 0.008 kilos

- olive oil: 0.176 kilos (we added a bit of color to this one. The soaps on the farm are this incredible black color and lavender scent. Heaven.)

- Sodium hydroxide: 0.327 kilos

- fragrance: 0.031 kilos

- Electric burner

- laser thermostat

- large plastic measuring bowl

- sturdy metal pot

- whisk

- electric scale

- plastic soap mould

First we added the (first) three solid fats together in the metal pot on the burner and melted them. (Ali says you want them to be about 40 degrees Celsius when you begin and they shouldn’t go over 60 degrees Celsius when they are melted).

Add coloring to the olive oil and add to the first mixture.

Measure fragrance. (Ours was lavender).

Add the oils to the sodium hydroxide with the whisk. (The color gets darker as you mix. The reaction time also varies, from 10 minutes to half an hour, depending on the amount of soap you make).

You can add fragrance after the oils and sodium hydroxide have reacted. Stir for 5 minutes.

Pour the soap into the center of the mould, to avoid bubbles. Shake the mould a little to remove bubbles.

Cover with blankets and leave to cure for at least 3 or 4 weeks, though Ali said the longer the curing, the better and harder the soap. (3 or 4 years can be best).

Making soap…

Making dinner and shucking broad beans. The rarely-found-in-nature fuchsia color of the chard is one of my favorites ever.

At a little natural, local foods cafe called The Good Food Store we ate Dorset apple cake with clotted cream, a roast veg, goat cheese and pesto panini and a traditional pastie with crisps and a salad.

So far, have had many atmospheric dinners and lunches here. All organic fruit and veg from the farm (no meat that isn’t from the farm or down the road) supplemented with all organic grains, butter, milk and yogurt from the market. It seems like organic vegetables and organic food in general costs less at the market and grocery stores in England than it does in the U.S. Dan (the farm manager) says the growing season has been really good this year, so the market is a little flooded, and people have to sell their goods a little cheaper this year.

Had such fun toiling away on the hay on Friday. Taft was such a trooper. At the end of the few hours we were totally covered in dust, hay and sweat. I think we thoroughly earned our weekend. The hard farm work strikes a pretty significant contrast with the completely idyllic setting and incredible meals and warm people at Trill. I think we have been extraordinarily lucky to have found this place and to have been welcomed so fully.

Fed the piglets some split radishes.

Baling hay was sort of epic: 203 bales (about 50 pounds per bale). Dan made bales with his tractor, zipping through the field (at a brisk 8 meters an hour) and we followed, gathering the bales into piles of four or six. After the field was full of stacks and bales, we hooked up a trailer to the tractor and (with the help of some builders and Ashley) swung the few hundred bales onto the back, some running around the field and some situated on top, stacking and placing bales to fit. Dan let me drive the tractor. I wish I had a photo; I was wearing sunglasses and a big straw hat, but we were too busy working to take any.

After we had gathered them all up, we drove the trailer to the barn and stacked them up, two stories high, to store for winter to feed the animals. I was perched on top of the hay, way up in the barn. A little scary, but it was also fun to balance and catch the bales Ashley threw me from the trailer.

Our eyes and noses were a wreck from inhaling and being exposed to all the dust and hay. Showers were extremely satisfying.

After work we met Romy, the owner of Trill, just in for the weekend. She normally lives in London, and operates Neal’s Yard Remedies, a posh natural body care shop in Convent Garden. She was very friendly, and hosted us for dinner with two of her friends,  Mike and Melissa, a married couple in town from London for the weekend.

After working in the fields and with her employees, it was interesting to see how the owner of a few successful green businesses lives. I have to say, I identify with the farm workers much more (I guess out of age, experience and how I’ve grown up) but dinner and talking with Romy and her friends was really lovely.

We started with a salad of lettuce leaves, basil and few light, delicate, weed-looking plants, red bell peppers, tomatoes from the garden, feta and green olives with a mustard balsamic vinaigrette I made. We also had white wine and crusty bread. Dinner was perfect roast potatoes with baby onions (is there anything in the world more savory delicious than a perfectly caramelized onion?) and huge whole cloves of garlic, just steamed spinach (a light green and spade-shaped) which was incredibly seasonal and light. For meat we had roast venison from the Trill property with bay leaves and rosemary (game-y like duck but more lean and very satisfying in tiny portions). Dessert (pudding, as they say) was fresh picked strawberries with a tiny sprinkling or sugar, red wine vinegar and damson wine served with clotted cream from Cornwall.

Cool scythe guy

Me and my machete

(Below) There was also a group of adorable eight-year-old boys that came to visit from a special needs school in Dorset. Their teachers were super nice and friendly.

Weeded a large piece of garden with Taft yesterday morning. Ashley and Kate have this garden business run through Trill. They do all the veggies and herbs that are sold through the farm and make deliveries etc.

(Below) Some troughs that took on this strange glow in the barn.

After lunch we herded Red Ruby cows to another grazing pasture. Who knew cows could run so quickly?? We had to run along the edges to keep up. They were fairly easy to contend with, compared to these guys below. Dan let us ride on the trailer attached to his four wheeler.

First, Taft and Dan and I erected a fence to contain the sheep and then made a smaller pen inside the pen to use as a treatment area. (We had to apply a pink, viscous spray to their backs and rumps that does not allow fly eggs to hatch. Gross and awful, if they are allowed to hatch, the worms eat their flesh!) So we were doing the sheep a huge favor, basically, and looking after them. It was quite difficult to gather them all up (I felt like a sheepherder, or Babe) as you have to keep them all together, as a small herd and feed them to coerce them into the pen. Sheep are stupid, according to Dan, and after Wednesday, I would have to agree. (I had to chase one around the field that got the yellow feed-bucket stuck around her neck. Took a while).

I’ll definitely add some sheep sounds in later. They seriously sound like a big joke, like a parody of how sheep are supposed to sound. Hard to explain.

After working we had a really nice dinner with Kate and Ashley. They made us salad from the garden (with pea leaves and flowers! A revelation. They are crisp and sweet as peas. Also gorgeous to look at), and pasta with a homemade broad bean and pea pesto and fresh beans scattered throughout the pasta.

We attempted to explain the concept and realities of U.S. sororities and fraternities with them, and were met with extreme confusion and incredulous expressions. “So is it like ‘My sweet 16′ on MTV, where posh kids throw parties?” – Kate, and “Do they have to pay to join? Do they have assignments and stuff, like university? Wait, they do them at the same time?” – Ashley. I guess that kind of thing doesn’t exist here…

(Below) This is the view at sunset from our table.

(below) These three guinea fowl are the golden girls, as Taft calls them. Obviously, not a color reference, but because they run all around the property and gossip and make shrill noise all day. There was a fourth, I was told, but she was eaten by a fox last week.

One of my favorite perks thus far has been picking veggies and fruit from the ground right before I eat them. On our first day we had broad beans and sweet peas, on this day we had fresh strawberries at lunch (I put a tiny bit of sugar on mine and a splash of balsamic vinegar and black pepper) that I picked form the strawberry patch just outside the kitchen. We eat many types of fresh salad leaves twice a day as well.

Also on Tuesday, Taft and I busied ourselves by baling actual hay. So stereotypical. Dan asked us to move a bunch of old stuff onto the back of a truck that he’d feed to the animals, which would free the space for what he’d just collected from the fields. Huge amounts of hay this great man deals with all day. Below is also a shot of the vaguely decrepit but also just cool looking and rustic barn the orphan lambs sleep in. Dan and his wife Linda said they were happily surprised we weren’t stupid, fat and arrogant (apparently Americans have a bad name?) Linda also said I looked so sprightly, like Peter Pan, she didn’t think I looked like I’d ever age. (Also meant as a compliment, though one of the strangest I have received. Do I really want to be thought of as a boy who will never grow up? Let’s hope it’s just the haircut, I’d like to be more feminine than that…)