Our 2nd farm

We are quite disappointed with our 2^nd farm. The biggest let down is that no one speaks English here. On the WWOOFing site they claimed to speak English and German.  I feel sometimes that they get frustrated with us because we don’t know any German. With the communication barrier we are unable to learn much from them. Christopher is our host and the person we have to communicate with the most.



Our digs for the week, like I said clean!

At the farm they have about 3 hectors of land that has two fairly small gardens, many fruit trees, and some horses. Everything here is very well maintained and groomed. On our first day of work we had to trim a bush, weed, and sweep the front sidewalk. We were both surprised that our work for the day was to make the front of the place look pretty! At Ulf’s farm there was no time in the day for such silly things. The farm has two large buildings sectioned off into apartments that house the whole Neumann clan. We’ve learned that the farm has been in the family for many generations. There are a total of 5 families that live here currently. We have noticed that everyone has their tasks they do daily. Grandma takes care of the bunnies, Christopher the sheep, his father is an all around fix it guy and Markus’s family tends to the horses. They are very well organized and planned in that way.



Part of the small garden

The biggest difference between this farm and Ulf’s farm is self sustainability. Here they are not self sustainable. They have two gardens and some animals; they buy most of their groceries at the market. Ulf’s farm was a well planned out operation. Everything he did affected something else in some way. All the weeds we pulled went to the chickens or  pigs whose crap was then used as manure for the gardens. Anything we didn’t eat was fed to the pigs, so he had essentially no waste. He had fresh milk; cream and cheese daily form the milking cow. He harvested vegetables from the garden, made jams from his fruit trees and meat from his pigs, cows and chickens. We can’t forget about the honey the bees produce!  Almost everything we had to eat at Ulf’s was self made on his farm. Pretty much everything we’ve ate at our current farm has been processed crap! Things I don’t even buy or eat at home. Ulf told us many times that he feeds us better than any other farm ever will. At the time I didn’t believe him but now I think there may be some truth to his words.  We’ve said many times now how much we miss Ulf. We had long hard days while staying on his farm but we were rewarded for everything we did. Most of all we learned form him. We feel we can’t complain too much though, we do have a safe and clean place to rest our heads at night.

Ulf, Me and Lucas the night before we left

 We’ve spent the week catching up on our planning for future travel. Next week we fly to London where we’ll spend 3 nights sight seeing. Then we take a train to south England to our first farm in the UK. We are really excited to travel the UK for many reasons, and English is one of them!



My favorite thing about this farm is the baby horse