JULY
July started with a lot of young new people in the farm who where participating in a short term volunteering here. I met some Spanish people and made friends with a couple from Netherlands, who I’m willing to visit when I finish my project.
During this workcamp we made adobe rooftop for the greenhouse and we start building a new chickens coop. For this we learnt how to make the adobe and its worth and usefulness, we also gained a lot of skills about wood work for the building project such cleaning the logs’ barks, how to burn them properly, how to fix them in the ground, how to cut and prepare the surface of the logs to set the structure of the building, and how to use several tools like saws, chisels and even electric tools like the round saw.
May
I arrived at the end of April, so May was my first month here and some small projects were already ongoing. One of the first things I did at the farm was preparing the soil of the garden for the planting season, what meant remove weeds and loose the soil surface mainly. In this way I learnt to use the soil loosening tool for first time and the importance of doing it. Also, we were carrying-out a construction project, so I learnt how to use a chainsaw and mix concrete all along this. But, I can’t leave without mentioning my first day here, when I learnt how to use a chisel, cut a tree, remove the bark of it and some other practices about wood work because I went with my host, to our neighbors’ place to frame a wood shower structure at the spring.
But I also have to say that, during this month, the weather wasn’t that good and shiny so it pushed me to get one of the skills I’m more proud about: making fire to warm up the room and even cook on it.
JULY
July started with a lot of young new people in the farm who where participating in a short term volunteering here. I met some Spanish people and made friends with a couple from Netherlands, who I’m willing to visit when I finish my project.
During this workcamp we made adobe rooftop for the greenhouse and we start building a new chickens coop. For this we learnt how to make the adobe and its worth and usefulness, we also gained a lot of skills about wood work for the building project such cleaning the logs’ barks, how to burn them properly, how to fix them in the ground, how to cut and prepare the surface of the logs to set the structure of the building, and how to use several tools like saws, chisels and even electric tools like the round saw.
JUNE
By this time, the planting season arrived so we spent most of the time in the garden, planting all kinds of plants: onions, carrots, mangolds, corn, salads, paprika, eggplants, zucchini, cucumber, pumpkins, beans and loads of tomato plants. Thanks to that I learnt how to plant seeds both in the greenhouse and in the garden ground, how to transplant the grown plants from the greenhouse to the garden and what fertilizing and mulching the soil means, what is basically covering it with cow shit and straw (we used to say “shit work day” when the main task of the day was mulching the veggies beds :D ). This let me to use the garden tools like the wheelbarrows, the fork or the rake more confident and easily.
This month lot of things happened actually. I went to visit my family in Spain and when I came back to the farm, it was taking place a very cool women meeting about childbirths and the post-giving birth process for the mums with a worldwide known midwife.
Then we had our post-arrival meeting for a lot of volunteers in Hungary, so we went to Visegrád to spend a whole week in a training about team management and getting to know other volunteers like us and their different projects. And the last days of June arrived 15 more volunteers for a 3-week volunteering project at the farm.
AUGUST
August was a bit more relaxed even though it started with a one week training about permaculture, sustainable lifestyle and agriculture. This time the people that came where all from Hungary. I attended almost all the workshops although I couldn’t understand any single word but there were very interesting things happening: workshops about flower water and essential oil distillery, adobe work again, medicinal herbs, permaculture, bread making…
After this, we went back to the routine and the calm was back at the farm. All the garden was shining and productive so we could start harvesting. The tomato plants production was huge so I learnt how to make preserves with them for the winter, so they don’t go to waste.
But, without any doubt my highlight of the month was the Gyüttment festival. This festival was first organized by the owners of the farm, my hosts. It is about sustainability, community, agriculture, health…there were super interesting talks and workshops around there during 4 days such community issues management or healing practiques. I volunteered there during a week, in the preparation and during the festival days. I was working in the kitchen, but I could meet a lot of people around and attend some workshops in my free time.
SEPTEMBER and OCTOBER
We spent these months very focused on harvesting the veggies from the garden and making preserves but also, we priorized the construction process of the chickens coop and it is almost done. I am very glad I’ve could see the whole construction process so now I know which ecological materials and “natural” techniques use to build a small but functional hut. We have been also developing the water collecting system with some concrete work. That has been a whole learning process since it is very different from woodwork, but it has been a lesson not only about construction but about planning a water system too.
However, the best part of September was the fact that some friends were spending few time at the farm. Two Spanish girls that already knew the farm came to spend few weeks here and one of the best friends of my hosts came also with his family to spend the whole month with us. This allowed us to push the work in the farm and I had the opportunity of meeting more people with different ideas who I shared a lot of time and conversations with.
I have also been investing more time in my own little project about soil quality analysis.
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