After returning from Ghent, I’ve settled into a rhythm here on the farm. I get to sleep in reasonably late (till about 9am), work on the farm for 4-5hrs with a long lunch break, either relax or take a bike ride in the afternoon, eat dinner with everyone, and then head to bed. Of course there may be small changes to this each day, but I basically follow the same routine.
On Thursday, my first day back from Ghent, I worked on planting the remaining trees and beginning to rework the chicken enclosure. I planted fig, persimmon, and mulberry trees. One of these went alongside the others inside the chicken enclosure, while the rest were scattered across the food forest. By planting these trees, I had essentially finished months of wwoofers’ efforts to plant all of the trees in the food forest.
The many varieties of trees making up the 135 tree forest will take 2 years to grow before the first harvest, so I won’t be able to see the results of my work for a while. Kley and Karen keep a whatsapp group of all of the alumni wwoofers from the farm, so I’m looking forward to seeing photos of my trees in 2 years.
For the chicken enclosure, my task was to double the area of the chickens’ space by adding new fencing. The funny part about this is that the chickens already seem to have free roam of the entire property. While they act stupid, they’re smart enough to find holes in the existing fencing to escape. After cutting a hole in the existing fence that separates the field from the food forest, I laid a temporary fence around some trees (that they apparently like to roost in once they escape) and wrapped it back around to the main chicken coop. While the chickens stay in their coop at night, they roam around the enclosure during the day. That being said, some chickens and roosters have been known to spend the nights somewhere outside (Cluck Norris most recently did this). The process of setting up the fence was quite arduous, as it was hard to lay in by myself without having it get caught in itself and form knots. Most of my time ended up being spent unravelling the tangled portions of the temporary fence. The chickens would soon prove to be very happy within their expanded territory that included more big trees, providing them with a tasty buffet of new dirt and grubs to enjoy.
Moving along, the past few days have included a lot of chainsaw work. South of the food forest there is a large swath of undeveloped area that is now full of large trees and prickly brambles and annoying vines. One day, Kley intends to turn this area into a glampground for Airbnbers, but before that happens the land needs to be cleared a bit. A few larger trees had already been cut down, but had yet to be broken apart into smaller pieces that can be carried off and then dried to be used as firewood. I spent a lot of time sawing the trunks and branches into more manageable pieces. A son of one of the construction workers was hanging around the site yesterday, and he was excited to help me by carrying the logs into piles after I had cut them. I’d guess he’s about 10 years old, and even though he doesn’t speak English, we were able to communicate with each other well enough to know what the other wanted. He was also super happy when we played soccer afterwards (though you know I had to show him what’s up by crossing him up and breaking his ankles).
Alongside the area where I broke down the trees, Zoe, Van, and I planted some larmarckii (apparently also known as juneberry) trees that will be seen from the road (and look pretty once they flower).
On Friday night, Kley hosted a bbq for all of the construction workers, who had been promised one once they finished the foundation and framing for the new kitchen. We had burgers, sausages, and roasted chicken, all of which were great. We also had a ton of beer; it’s pretty hard to keep up with the Dutch workers.
Today, I got to cut down my first trees. Kley taught me the technique of cutting a wedge out of the tree on one side, and then sawing from the other side until it is ready to fall. I asked him to get a video of me felling the tree, but unfortunately he stopped the video just 3 seconds before it fell.
I’m sure I’ll have a chance to cut down another one soon. The next project we wanted to work on was to till the land between the rows of trees in the food forest and plant grass and flower seeds. However, the continuous rain we’ve had for the past few days (and forecasted for the next few days) made us decide against completing this project now. It’s much better to till the soil when it’s drier. Instead, we went about improving my initial job of expanding the chicken compound, but this time with 4 sets of hands, rather than 1. We reinforced the sagging sections of the fence with additional poles, and then tore out the original “permanent” fence that divided the chicken enclosure from the food forest. This fence split the area enclosed by my new temporary fence down the middle, and was no longer needed. The fence proved tricky to pull out at points, as tree branches and roots had grown through it in the years since it was installed. Thankfully the old fence was no match for our electric saws to cut away pieces that we could not just pull out. Once we finished, the chickens were even happier to have easy access to more delicious land. Hopefully our reinforcing of the fence will keep them in check; it’s really quite annoying to stop what you’re doing to run after a loose chicken.
Moving away from my day-to-day work, I have to say the larger concept of owning and building up a farm is quite exciting. While Karen and Kley have quite a lot of projects going on now (between planting the forest, expanding the chicken coop, and building a new kitchen), the farm will be awesome once everything is finished. Being able to walk across your land at the end of the day and point to all of the things you built or planted, and tell all of the stories behind them, really is satisfying. It’s also really nice to live on bucolic farmland, but also be within an hour’s drive of great cities like Ghent or Antwerp.
Which segues well into my plans for the rest of this week. I think my plan will be to leave for Antwerp on Friday night, spend a day or so there, and then arrive at my next farm Sunday afternoon. I was thinking of heading to Antwerp or Bruges for my days off this week, but then decided against it as I had to leave for somewhere on Friday anyway. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some more bikes rides in between the rain – I had a great ride to a town called Hulst the other day where I checked off two classic Dutch sights: tulips and windmills.
Leave a Reply