Greetings faithful and first-time readers! I'm Alix, a 22-year-old American currently volunteering at the farm. I guess this blog will host a long series of different authors since there's a pretty constant rotation hostel occupants. I'm here with my boyfriend, Josh, for 2 weeks. Also here are Laura, 26, from Holland, and Toby, 22, from Germany. Laura and Toby are planning to stay for a month. Josh and I have been here for a week already and we’ve really enjoyed the experience so far. Mark and Sol and their kids are all warm and welcoming, making us feel right at home, and more like guests than workers. Some days we work really hard all day, and some days are more relaxed. Rarely does everything work at once—a light bulb burns out just as the second toilet gets fixed, or a heater stops working just when we finally find the sweet spot that allows us to connect to the internet. But these little inconveniences keep life interesting, and there’s always a way to work around them.
Over the weekend we rebuilt the tool and seeding shed. We erected logs and salvaged metal poles as posts, digging into the ground to make them more stable and connecting them with bits of wire left over from some other project. We then attached mismatched corrugated metal sheeting overhead for the roof. At times the lack of proper materials and tools was frustrating, but ultimately, finding a way around these shortcomings was more rewarding. When the rusted hole in a sheet of metal lined up perfectly with the forked branch of a log, we celebrated the coincidence as an accomplishment. The whole thing was essentially improvised, but by the end we had a pretty decent-looking shed.
This idea of working with what you have and using recycled materials instead of always yearning for perfection, to me, exemplifies what Family Farm Hostel is all about.
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| Alix |
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| Josh |
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| Laura |
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| Toby |
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