A Day in the Life at Camphill Dingle.

Greetings family and friends. It's been a little while since my last post! The past few weeks have been jam packed with tons of work during the week and fun festival on the weekends. Two weekends ago was something called the Food and Wine Festival in Dingle. This means all the restaurants in town open up there store fronts and offer a special part of there menu, it could be a sample of fish and chips, or a burger, or in some cases kangaroo skewers. The town gets packed with tourists and locals wandering the small windy streets of Dingle. Thankfully it was a gorgeous weekend to be outside. Because our group of people is so all over the place we divided up and wandered around tasting food. I was lucky to get to try kangaroo which tasted like lamb but very tender. It was really good! The evening of this weekend was also the birthday of a resident whom wanted to go into town and listen to the live irish music that is every night at all the pubs in Dingle. He is also a fond dancer so him and a co-worker danced around the bar. Really amazing to be a witness to such a lovely moment.

I've been getting a lot of requests to describe my day to day life. The way of life in Camphill is really hard to explain but I'm going to try and write out a schedule of my day!! 7:30 Breakfast 8:30 Leave for the land (farm and garden) 8:45 morning gathering (sing, talk about the day, who goes where for lunch ect, general announcements.) 9:00 Start work in the garden 11:00 Tea break 11:45 back to work in the garden 12:30 head back to houses for lunch. 1:00 Lunch 2:00 clean up/tea break and a rest. 2:40 Head back to the land. 4:00 tea break 4:45 back to work. 5:40 Head back to houses for supper. 6:00 Supper 6:45 Clean up 7:00 relax until bed time routines (depends on who needs help with what) The only difference in the morning to my personal schedule is I am normally at the house cleaning or cooking lunch. Then I go to work in the afternoon on the land. Sometimes there are activities to do in the afternoon like swimming or a resident has signed up for a class in town that a co-worker must accompany them to, for example, zumba, spanish, drumming. Other evenings there might be a concert in town or a game on in the pub which is open to anyone who wants to go. Other evenings you might relax, knit or play games. The weekends are really relaxed, we get to sleep in until 9 when breakfast is and then you do whatever, it might be going into town with a resident or going on a group outing somewhere, or going on a hike. Then in the evening we have festive supper where we talk about the highlight of our week, sing, have group silent time, and enjoy a meal as a community. This is really lovely because everyone is together, there is often great conversation accompanied with tons of laughter. This past week we went on an outing to Waterville to see a performance by a local center that works with people with disabilities and did some sight seeing, which with our group of people is always enjoyable.

Yesterday was a lovely day! Spent it out west which is just stunning as it like Dingle is on the water and surrounded by cliffs. So we spent the day at the beach, hiking and ended with a tea break and an amazing cafe/pottery store filled with gorgeous huge vases and amazing tea pots and place settings (robin you would have been in heaven. I thought of you the whole time.)

I hope this helps to those of you out there who wanted to know how my work is going. Its really not work, it's just life. Living among people who work along side each other. Its a really intense way to get to know people but really amazing because you get to know each other really fast. Its important to remember to have time for yourself and not constantly be all together, all the time. But it's very much like a family feel and for me was very easy to fall into place with everyone. No day is ever the same here. I've been licked, flashed, kept awake by a man who couldn't figure out how to take is Ipod out of ears, and tried to stop a man from peeing in public....failed. I hope you all are enjoying the fall so far and I think of Vermont often here as fall doesn't really happen. Love to you all, take care. xElsie

Happy Michaelmus!

Happy Fall everyone back in the states. I am missing me some apple pressing and crisp days spend looking at the beautiful mountains change colors. But I really can't complain, as I spent the weekend harvesting every veggie/herb/fruit from the gardens on the lang in Camphill. This past week was the celebration of Saint Michaelmus, a christian saint who was known for defeating Satan and about celebrating the earth and all it has to give us. We at Camphill celebrated with a festival. We spent the day on Saturday harvesting, making grape juice (from our own grapes), filling cow horns with manure for fertilizing the garden, and planting bulbs. Thankfully the weather was amazing and it was quite a lovely day spent outside with the community relaxing, working and chatting.

The other big part of Michaelmus is we put on some form of performance for select community members who know about Camphill and what we do. This year we put on a circus. We included everyone and put together a forty five minute circus. We spent the entire week practicing, hours of figuring out what people were good at and then pulling it together to form a show. We did a lot of laughing and getting to know each other this week and it was a highlight for everyone. Friday was spent setting up and decorating the barn on the farm like a circus tent. The show went off with out a hitch and many of the people said it was best show yet of Camphill Dingle. It was great fun to hear so many children laughing at the skits and enjoying our circus. The weekend ended with a big soup made from all the veggies we harvested. Everyone enjoyed this delicious soup together. It was an amazing week. Today I get a day off, spent cleaning, buying my bro a bday present and in the evening having a movie and wine night with my co-workers and writing postcards!

I hope everyone at home is doing well. I miss you all!! xElsie