Falling in love with the green side

My first 9 months in the UK were full of adventures and inspirations...and tasty organic foods!

Dinner table outside at the Trinity Farm

It has been more than half a year (more than 9months! to be exact) since I wrote the first entry.  I did not entirely neglect this blog, I can say, because I have been updating my Japanese blog.  To be honest with you, it is not easy for me to keep 2 separate blogs simultaneously.  Plus I'm far more comfortable writing in Japanese so quite naturally this English page was neglected.  Not to my surprise.  I do not suppose my non Japanese friends have frequently checked this page and got disappointed because it has not been updated at all.  However, I had decided to have an English blog in the first place and therefore I would like to stick to the first will.

Last May, when I just started Wwoofing

I have done a lot for the past 9 months.  So many things happened.  Living in the UK certainly changed my life.  I enjoyed living on organic farms far more than I expected.  Through WWOOFing, I have realised that I love living close to nature and taking care of plants.  Also, I love tasty food.  Organic, seasonal food is nutritious and full of flavour. Once you get the taste of it,  you do not want to miss this wonderful source of goodness.  I would also emphasize that living on an organic farm WILL make you fitter and healthier.  There's so much physical work needed, from weeding to harvesting.  Working outside made my body go back to my natural biological cycle and made my body generally stronger.  Without doubt, eating organic food and little processed food helped too.  Working on farms improved my mental health as well - I had almost no stress, or if I had any, it would be gone by the end of the day.  Getting fit helped raise my spirit and confidence as well.  And usually, I was so busy with the work and the thoughts of beautiful organic plants that there was not much space left in my mind for negative thoughts.  

Organic baked potato with just-picked organic salad.  Beautiful and delicious!

Flowers just picked from my host's flower bed

Working outside made me healthier than ever and brought me better smiles

I am not too keen to become completely selfsufficient - because modern society does provide low-impact convenience such as public transport and internet -  but I do want a sustainable lifestyle to save our precious planet as well as my health and wallet.  Now my ideal lifestyle is no longer living in a convenient modern city with lots of money and little time.  I have discovered a new desire inside me, which is to have my own smallholding.  I am dreaming of living in a log house, using as much natural resources and low impact energy as possible and growing as much food supply as needed by myself.  It would be very nice if there would be vegetable beds, flower beds, woodland and orchard, however small or big they might be.  I would want some chickens for eggs as well.

I did not know before how tasty organic eggs were

Another important change to my life is David, who I met at one of my WWOOF hosts (the one in Nottingham) and is now my boyfriend.  We have been together for over 7 months now.

He has an ideal lifestyle that is very similar to mine, except the fact he loves animals.  I don't want to believe that he is serious but he has a huge list of animals he wants to keep including snake and crocodile apart from ordinary chickens, pigs and dogs.  Sometimes I wonder if he likes me because I move around like a small animal.  Anyway, we share interests in organic farming as well as love for nature and as a result, decided to travel together this year.  We are currently living in a little town in West Midlands, close to the town where David is from.  The day is still short and oftentimes the sky is covered with heavy clouds that bring rain and snow.  Although the weather gets us occasionally, the prospect of this spring and summer is keeping us hopeful.  We are planning our trips to the south west England and Wales since I have already been to middle, northeast England and Scotland last year and that is where David is keen to visit with me.

This year I want to learn more about how to grow vegetables, fruits and flowers organically.  Also, I want to learn further about low impact energy as well as about cooking and food preservation for sustainable living.  There seems to be so much to learn!

I will see you when I feel like writing in English next time.
Hopefully not too much later!

Kunino