Chapter 67: My days at Time Out Farms

Generally, my days look like this: I wake up between seven thirty and nine, depending on cat activities, the weather (there are no curtains in the wwoofer room) and if someone of my room mates happen to be on horse feeding duty. Then, I usually stay in bed for a while, reading a couple of chapters in “Anna Karenina” (the chapters in it are so wonderfully short) and maybe cuddling with a cat. If I have horse feeding duty, that is to be started at eight.

Breakfast.

At ten, the stable work begins: we let the horses out into their paddocks, clean the stalls and change the water, clean the paddocks and sweep the concrete walkway in front of the stalls. All of this while the radio channel Sonic plays its extremely un-imaginative music. That is usually done by twelve. Then we give the horses their lunch hay and so our stable chores are done.

After that we eat lunch, mostly prepared by ourselves – which means sandwiches or leftovers from the day before.

Sometimes we have afternoon chores, like doing something in the garden or helping with the renovations that Diane has going half speed in the house. But mostly we’re free to do whatever we want. And, you know me, I always have things to do: writing, reading, photographing, knitting, baking. Peter started a 1000 piece puzzle, and when he left a few days ago, I took over the responsibility to finish it. I have groomed a few of the horses, almost choking on all the hair that starts flying from their shedding winter coats.

Sometimes Jay, the horse trainer, comes by to have a lesson or train the horses. Then I stand leaning on the roundpen fence, trying to catch his every word. He’s got such amazing contact with the horses, he makes everything seem so simple, and I will write a lot more about how he works, but not now. It requires its own chapter – if not five or fifteen.

Since Tuesday, I’m also allowed to ride Zena, the horse that Jay has his lessons on, on the day that he doesn’t have any lessons. He started using her only this week and before that she hadn’t been ridden for a while, so she’s fat and totally out of shape. She needs exercise, so on the days that Jay isn’t here, I take her out into the roundpen for some lounge lining and riding. She’s such a cute horse, small and round and quite untrained.

At six, the horses get their evening meal, so if I’m on food duty, that’s what I’m doing. But otherwise, we hang around the kitchen, assisting, waiting for dinner to be served, which usually is at about seven. Diane loves to cook, so when she’s here, she’s in charge. When she and Willie are not here, we take turns cooking. We’ve had some amazing German and Spanish dinners.

After dinner, we wwoofers usually remove ourselves to the wwoofer room, play a game of poker or watch a movie, and then we go to bed. The guys here become sleepy so early, so I tend to stay up in bed for a while before putting out the light, reading a little, writing in my diary, listening to some Swedish podcasts.

At about eleven, eleven thirty, I crawl into my sleeping bag, turn off the light and fall asleep quite immediately.

So. That’s how most of my days look. Not especially busy, not tiring, in fact, quite relaxing. One day a week, I get off, but excepting the morning stable cleaning chores, the free days tend to look quite the same as all the others. And this far, I have really enjoyed myself.