We now enter a less vacationy portion of our trip. We decided that while we were on this adventure we would try lots of new things. Eating camel, beaching nude, drinking Rakia before white water rafting, walking 500 miles, sailing the Mediterranean. Another to add to the list was farming.
We don’t know a thing about farming. We know where fruits and vegetables come from, but other than some rosemary plucked from an herb garden, we do not get our hands dirty. It isn’t because we don’t want to. Elizabeth once had a beautiful tomato plant, but she managed to drown it before it could finish growing a tomato. I had picked squash, okra, and some other vegetables now and again, but it was about 15 years ago.
So we decided to volunteer for a month or so in Scotland. It would give us a way to see a different part of the world, meet actual families, save some money, and extend our trip. Hopefully, we would also learn something about small farming practices which is the primary goal of this volunteer work. We went through an organization called WWOOF, a very popular international outfit that has been around since hippies decided to help the world.
To get to our first of two farms, we caught a ten hour night bus from London to Glasgow. From there we caught a couple more buses over a couple more hours to a little town called Gatehouse of Fleet, where we met the patriarch of the family and the littlest family member who was only a few months old. Another 20 minutes later and we were near a town called Borgue.
Borgue is barely a town. I would not call it a town. At least not in the sense of a town having stuff and things. Two and a half miles away from our farm was the city center, consisting of a local run hotel/bar, church, and community center. That sums up the town.
As we arrived and got settled, we got to know the family. It was a lovely group of six, four of those ranged in age from a few months to age 9. We learned everyone’s name and also learned that all the children able to talk loved Harry Potter. We didn’t know it was possible but they loved it more than we did, or at least loved talking about it more than we did. The children were constantly throwing curses at everyone, mostly the killing curse.
Our first day was a bit truncated with all the traveling, but we did get a little farming in. We harvested onions and garlic. Having never picked either, we learned the proper way to pick both. We got our hands dirty and it was fun.
Eventually we were called in for tea. Except it wasn’t really tea. It’s what they call dinner. We had hamburgers, sausage, and kebabs. For dessert, we had pudding. Not actual pudding, but that’s what they called it. The actual name of the dessert was called “mess”. It wasn’t a mess though, it was a strawberry shortcake type dish. We always find it interesting to learn that while we speak English, we don’t know everyone’s English.
We spent two weeks with this family. From 8 AM till noon we worked on the farm. Some days we weeded the garden, mended or added to the raised plant beds, harvested potatoes, made peanut butter, chopped wood, etc. Whatever was needed that day, we worked on it. On Fridays, we spent our time clearing a piece of land. The family clears the land for another family in the town, and in return gets firewood. Our family’s home is heated by firewood in the winter so this is a huge benefit to clearing the land for a few hours each week.
While staying with the family of six we had the opportunity to visit a few areas near Borgue. We visited the Mull of Galloway, Castle Douglas and one weekday we took a family field trip to Kirkcudbright (pronounced “kid-COO-brie”) for Scottish Night.
Scottish Night was a fun community event where we enjoyed some more fish and chips, bagpipes, traditional dancing and a tug of war contest with the local team. Kirkcudbright’s T.O.W. team has never lost a game. We were volunteered to tug against the champs. As much as I would like to say we crushed them and ended the streak, we were no match for the ferocious and precocious team.
On Scottish Night we also got our first glance at The Kelpies. A Kelpie, if you are not familiar, is a mythical sea creature from Scottish lore. In Falkirk there is a large statue of two kelpies in the form of horses. Not everyone can make the trek to see the 30 meter high creatures so a smaller model has been traveling around the world. Before the model arrived in Kirkcudbright, the kelpies were on display in NYC. The town was so proud to have these on display.
We also went to the beach one day and visited an long abandoned castle on another. There was always something to do or see in our spare time. Our beach trip involved a cave, a jellyfish, cold water, and the 9 year old completely losing her mind over a sunburn/jellyfish sting. It was extremely eventful. Our trip to the castle involved cows chasing us through the fields because they thought we would be letting them out. They were wrong and we were constantly terrified of begin stampeded (which almost happened).
We went back to Kirkcudbright during our last weekend with our WWOOF family. The town is known as the artist town. Scotland has a Food Town (Castle Douglas) and a book town (Wigtown) in addition to a artist town. We were lucky enough to be in town during the annual artist festival. People open their homes, gardens, churches, and shops and fill them with all kinds of art. We met a few artists who work textiles, traditional water colors, metals, woodwork oil… you name it they have it. It gave us another chance to walk the lovely town and meet so many locals. We were also lucky enough to pick up a piece of art for ourselves.
We enjoyed our first two weeks WWOOFing, it was a strong departure from the adventuring we had been doing. While WWOOFing, we had two whole weeks of no packing, homecooked meals, and steady work. It has never been so nice staying still. When our two weeks were up in Borgue, we moved on to another farm in West Calder, Scotland. During our time there we were able to go to a few more cities and even to Edinburgh. More on that in our next post.
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