Waking up at 7am in the farm is not my thing to do but in the first day I couldn't sleep more - breakfast for 9 people and preparing for all the work had to be done before 9am. Although mom promised to do the breakfast, my control-freak part had to make sure everything is under control and the pride of an ex-catering manager made me to organize the buffet table in a systematic way like we did in big conferences. And well, it took all 3 of us - me, my mom and my sister, to think of everything, cause we did it for the first time. But I think we did pretty good.
Most of the names of volunteers I managed to learn already but the Chinese...their American names Bob and Louis didn't make much sense either and I can't call a Chinese boy, Hey, Bob! I just can't. The first days lunch was covered by Italians, but for other days we needed a system also, so I hit 2 flies at the same time as we say. We wrote all the names of the volunteers on a board and made it a cooking schedule, so everyone will have the opportunity to help in the kitchen, make some food from their own country and also we can have a better chance to learn Chinese names. After all the names, the board looks like this:
Deja (Slovenian girl) and Albert (Spanish boy) were the only ones who had seen an axe before, so they got the job of piling wood and making some of it smaller pieces with an axe. We just ignored Albert's comment about the fact he can do it only for 10 minutes in a row because his back starts to hurt.
Zhang Liang (Chinese boy) and Gi-Pum (Korean girl) started to collect the leftovers of sheep shearing - they collected the sheep wool into a big bag.
Zhuang Zimin (Chinese boy) piled up our sauna wood in front of the sauna and Claire (Australian girl) did some gardening.
Anu was the one to explain to everybody what to do and how exactly, I was responsible for the kitchen as I've worked in food business my whole life and my knowledge of farm work is still quite vague. With our lovely italianos the time in the kitchen was pure fun. Daniele and Claudio or Daniella and Claudia - as they called each other with friendly sarcasm were picking on each other constantly. The cooking team:
Our first lunch together was really good. Preparing pasta bolognese (or ragu as Italians call it) for 15 people isn't an easy target but the amount was calculated perfectly and the taste would have made their mothers very proud, I'm sure. As after 4 hours of physical work everybody was very hungry but we still found time to make a first-lunch-together-picture:
But of course everything wasn't meant to go so smoothly. Just before lunch Zhang Liang stepped into a rusty nail and just in case we took him to our family doctor who was very helpful and did the tetanus shot for him for free. My father congratulated me for that - great success, already getting rid of them one by one. (remark for the people who didn't understand: this is the typical Estonian humor)
After lunch it was time to panic again - as it was raining, Deja discovered that somehow water had found the way into her tent and got some of her stuff wet. Mildly said she was very unhappy about it. From her first reaction I thought that something like this has happened to her tent:
Of course it was bad, her stuff got wet and it is disturbing but I guess over the years of meeting emotional people and also living together with my mom who is overemotional, I still haven't got used to it. But luckily I had borrowed another tent from my friend and Deja moved into that cause we couldn't fix the tent.
After lunch we had fun chasing sheep from one place to another. We probably had almost 1 person per 10 sheep...never had so many people doing that and we really didn't need so many people but if a Chinese boy is telling you so happily that it was his first time to touch a sheep, you just want to share the fun of having sheep with all of them and I'm sure they had fun. Friendly comments like "oh, wait there are more sheep" referring to Spaniards or "Apply your mathematics, man!" to a Chinese who tried to close the gate were just a normal part of that fun.
The evening was spent with live music, I was singing and Claudio was playing flute. Although after my 3rd song everybody left with an excuse of getting warm clothes and hot tea...I carried on singing until I had almost no voice left, cause I didn't put warmer clothes on and didn't drink any tea. This is me singing and Daniele laughing about my voice
Most of the names of volunteers I managed to learn already but the Chinese...their American names Bob and Louis didn't make much sense either and I can't call a Chinese boy, Hey, Bob! I just can't. The first days lunch was covered by Italians, but for other days we needed a system also, so I hit 2 flies at the same time as we say. We wrote all the names of the volunteers on a board and made it a cooking schedule, so everyone will have the opportunity to help in the kitchen, make some food from their own country and also we can have a better chance to learn Chinese names. After all the names, the board looks like this:
Zhang Liang (Chinese boy) and Gi-Pum (Korean girl) started to collect the leftovers of sheep shearing - they collected the sheep wool into a big bag.
Zhuang Zimin (Chinese boy) piled up our sauna wood in front of the sauna and Claire (Australian girl) did some gardening.
Anu was the one to explain to everybody what to do and how exactly, I was responsible for the kitchen as I've worked in food business my whole life and my knowledge of farm work is still quite vague. With our lovely italianos the time in the kitchen was pure fun. Daniele and Claudio or Daniella and Claudia - as they called each other with friendly sarcasm were picking on each other constantly. The cooking team:
Our first lunch together was really good. Preparing pasta bolognese (or ragu as Italians call it) for 15 people isn't an easy target but the amount was calculated perfectly and the taste would have made their mothers very proud, I'm sure. As after 4 hours of physical work everybody was very hungry but we still found time to make a first-lunch-together-picture:
But of course everything wasn't meant to go so smoothly. Just before lunch Zhang Liang stepped into a rusty nail and just in case we took him to our family doctor who was very helpful and did the tetanus shot for him for free. My father congratulated me for that - great success, already getting rid of them one by one. (remark for the people who didn't understand: this is the typical Estonian humor)
After lunch it was time to panic again - as it was raining, Deja discovered that somehow water had found the way into her tent and got some of her stuff wet. Mildly said she was very unhappy about it. From her first reaction I thought that something like this has happened to her tent:
Of course it was bad, her stuff got wet and it is disturbing but I guess over the years of meeting emotional people and also living together with my mom who is overemotional, I still haven't got used to it. But luckily I had borrowed another tent from my friend and Deja moved into that cause we couldn't fix the tent.
After lunch we had fun chasing sheep from one place to another. We probably had almost 1 person per 10 sheep...never had so many people doing that and we really didn't need so many people but if a Chinese boy is telling you so happily that it was his first time to touch a sheep, you just want to share the fun of having sheep with all of them and I'm sure they had fun. Friendly comments like "oh, wait there are more sheep" referring to Spaniards or "Apply your mathematics, man!" to a Chinese who tried to close the gate were just a normal part of that fun.
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