Willing Workers On Organic Farms

Christmas 2006, Laikenbuie

Dear Wwoofers,

Christmas is here again and it?s time to think about the past year and remember all our friends. Last Hogmanay we were involved in running a ceilidh so that our guests would have a traditional Scottish New Year. It was a great success and we only wish that you could all come! This year?s ceilidh is in the planning.

The biggest change is Jo?s move to uni in Edinburgh. We are getting used to the house feeling a little empty. She is very busy and very happy studying Ecological Science. It is cool for a student to be environmentally aware so I don?t suppose that she is telling all her new friends that she spent her teenage years complaining about having to live on an organic farm in the country! Her main leisure activities (she tells us) are a massage course and going to gigs. Her gap year went well with lots of travel, gigs and steady work as a waitress at an Italian restaurant. Eventually she passed her driving test at the nth attempt which made Dad very happy. Jo is an enthusiastic traveller and she is off to Lanzarote to see Annie and Tony before Christmas.

Jo?s ?little? brother has now passed the six foot mark so she doesn?t fight with him so often. Sam?s new activities include rock climbing with Angus (and Jo, when home), and wood turning on a lathe given to him by Andy. He is practising to make us a table lamp out of our own wood. Piping continues, and his eclectic taste in music took him to see a ?metal? band in Glasgow with his friends. He did well at standard grade and now enjoys physics and techy. Don?t be fooled to think that the new activities interfere with the hours spent shooting aliens!

Peter always said that he did not want to live in a community, however the unintentional community that has developed here makes Laikenbuie a very happy place to be. Really it is more like co housing, with each of us having our own space and different ways of making a living. Andy has been here over two years now and was joined in the summer by his partner Iona and her six year old daughter Aila. Iona is a lovely gentle person and has completed a shiatsu course with the hope of starting a small practise. We now have outline permission to build them a house. Peter is finishing the design at the moment. It is based on a central two story heptagon, with two single story octagons attached - and if that is too difficult to imagine you?ll just have to come and see it in a year or two! Angus has been here 18 months and after nearly leaving last Christmas says that he is very happy here. He managed the setting up of The Bakehouse, a restaurant in Findhorn, but left as soon as it was running smoothly. He now does freelance cooking at shooting lodges and still cooks here once a week. His eccentricities include buying a VW campervan in small bits and rearranging his apartment every two months! We all chat far too much, spend our birthday celebrations together and have bonfires to mark the seasons.

Therese started the year by joining a singing group organised by her friend Twobirds to make a CD of American Indian Ceremonial Songs and Chants. It contains the songs used at Sweat Lodges and other events that Twobirds runs and sounds very professional. After camping in January Therese decided to stay in her tent at least one night every month this year. This has been with different people, sometimes way into the hills, but also close to home ? Peter managed at least ten metres from the car! Gardening is still her main summer activity with more vegetables sold and a bumper crop of apples, cherries and plums. She has been on several courses including willow garden structures, felt making and a three day ?survival techniques?, with making fire by rubbing sticks a highlight. We think that she is preparing herself for a nomadic Neanderthal life in the hills. Maybe climate change will make these skills very useful in the future.

Our main project over the last six months has been a new sunroom. We have created a beautiful space, a garden room, that should get a lot more use than the unattractive cramped room that we had before. It is supported by two 4.8m traditional pegged trusses made by Andy out of Douglas Fir. They have lovely grain and knot patterns in golden browns contrasted by light walls and Caithness slate on the floor. We now know why fitting together random rocks is called crazy paving! As usual this year?s photos can be seen at http://website.lineone.net/~muskus/friends_fam.htm.

We have had another year with a lot of help from some excellent Wwoofers who stayed a total of 319 nights. Lucia, from Belgium, was here for last year?s ceilidh and returned again in the summer with her parents. Marie, the wide mouthed frog from Germany, stayed for six months and was so at home here that she started calling Therese Mama! You will see her grinning away among the photos. James came up from England for just the right week to demolish the old conservatory and is returning for the New Year ceilidh. Eve came from France in the summer for practical experience as part of her agricultural course. Next Heather brightened up our lives before returning to the US of A. She was very good with Lindsay who Therese looks after on a Friday. Our first Scotsman for a long time, Gav the reader, arrived in the autumn on his way to Mongolia. And last, but not least, Laura is here as she is in the process of relocating from England to Scotland. I don?t think we have ever had so many British Wwoofers.

Following last years Polish trip Peter organised a job for Antek from Krakow at The Bakehouse (he started as Angus left) so he stayed in Findhorn for the summer and visited here. Working in a Polish restaurant it would take over a week to save for a flight to the UK, in the UK it took just over half a day to earn the flight home! Peter is going to visit Antek?s family in January and have a few days skiing with him in the Tatras. Back in March Marta and Greg, who were working in Cambridge, came up for a few days holiday. We had a crisp sunny day, with snow on the hills, for a monster hunting trip on Loch Ness. Peter demonstrated a mole trap to Greg, who had not seen one before, and he assures us that it is just as effective on Polish moles. Previously they used to try and shoot them as they pushed the earth up!

Peter and Therese had a restful week?s holiday in Ardnamurchan during October. Therese did a seventeen mile walk across the peninsular and was lucky to pick the best day of the week. A pine martin came into the cottage window for food and a photo of it watching Bill and Kate on Autumnwatch should appear in the January edition of the BBC Wildlife magazine.

This letter would not be complete without some GM news. Back in 2001 Bayer withdrew the experimental rice LL601 without explanation. This year long grain rice in the US has been found to be widely contaminated with LL601. Bayer never applied for it to be passed for human consumption so it has been banned around the world, but has been found on British supermarket shelves. This has caused a major disruption of the US rice trade so the US authorities have ?deregulated? it, i.e. passed it for food use despite the fact that it has never been safety tested for human or animal consumption by any Government authority!!! This may not be the best news for Christmas, but at least you can avoid American rice.

As usual we wish you all a happy and healthy time in the New Year and hope to see as many of you as possible.

With love from us all, Therese, Peter, Jo & Sam.