May 26th (Written on the 28th)

We woke up a bit late the next day, and Edelweiss didn't want to get out of bed. Eventually I convinced her to rise, and then we called our first pick host – John and Niki. Niki picked up the phone, and we talked a bit, and they said that they were ready for us to arrive as early as the next day. Both Edelweiss and I were quite happy about this.

After breakfast, we worked together uprooting the nettle stumps we had cut earlier, and moving them to one of the walls where they could better block deer. This took a while, then I went back up to reclaiming the metal. If I was going to leave the next day, then I wanted to at least get it done. I worked until a late lunch, and then worked some more after that. Eventually I had gotten all the rusted panels cleared up and put away, and only the rusty shards that had fallen on the ground were left. Eileen suggested that I use a rake and rake up the whole mix and pile it out of the way. I found that a rake wasn't the most effective device, as the denser rust chunks (small or not) tended to stay behind while the rake picked up all the surface detritus and whatever rust was trapped in that. I wound up having to rake vigorously and do away with everything on the surface, but eventually the area was clear. A big ugly scar where all the panels had lain for a year and a half, but clear nonetheless. I had filled up five large bags with rusted metal. I then spend the next hour or so cleaning up the tools (rakes, bags, saws, etc.) I had used and also the pieces of wood that had been attached to the panels (but sawed around the nails to be removed and used for firewood).

I then went down to the house and got recruited by Edelweiss to help with the soil and compost and dung. She had finished clearing out the former nettle-bed, and I helped her use a wheelbarrow to collect the donkeys' dung (apparently they choose one spot and shit only there) to use as fertilizer. We got a wheelbarrow of the stuff, spread it over the bed (and put the excess on the surrounding vegetable beds), then used a small ptichfork to turn and mix the soil.

After that, we washed up a bit, and started researching how to get to County Donegal, where John and Niki lived. Apparently public transportation in Ireland wasn't very good, but with a mix of express and local bus routes, we plotted out a course. Rather than getting up early in the morning, and then having to make a bunch of tight connections, Eileen recommended taking us into Loughrea that evening, and then we could take the bus to Galway, spend the night in a hostel, and set off really early in the morning to make a bunch of less-crazy connections.

I packed while Edelweiss figured out hostel and bus arraignments, then figured them out the rest of the way while Edelweiss packed. Eileen then drove us out to Loughrea, and we got on the bus and traveled to Galway. We arrived late in the night, found the hostel we had reserved a spot in, found an internet cafe with a printer to print out the rest of our bus tickets, and then found a grocery store to buy the next day's breakfast. Edelweiss got mad at me at the store because I didn't look like I was putting effort into finding anti-itch cream at the store. Part of this was that I was happy about the new host, and part of it was that I didn't know that the anti-tich cream was as important to Edelweiss as it was – while I had no bug-bites still itching, she still had a few very uncomfortable ones.

We got back to the hostel, split up (different rooms that time), and I took a shower. It was nice – I hadn't showered since the last hostel, so I got a lot of grime off of me. I then went downstairs to use the internet. I had a lovely conversation with KrystalAngel, posted up a lot of blog entries, and—over the course of hours—figured out how we would be getting from the new host over to Bubble B's family's place after we finished WWOOFing in Donegal. Looking at various costs, one of the cheapest was an overnight ferry ride from southern Ireland to a port not that far from Normandy. While the plane would have been faster, I liked this option because it would be relatively novel – and novel is good.

With the planning done, we went to bed at 1-something AM. On my end, however, I could not sleep, as I was tense about missing the alarm, and the other people in the suite kept going and doing things, with one loud cell-phone conversation in the bathroom being particularly prominent. I remember the 2am watch-beep and the 3am watch-beep. I think I slept from 3-something AM to 4:50AM, when my alarm went off.

May 27th (Written May 28th)

The next day was dominated by travel. We got up at 5am or so, packed up, ate breakfast in the Hostel lobby, then caught a 6am bus. That took us to Sigel, and then we got on another bus to Donegal, where we ate lunch. Lunch for me was a delicious and strangely sweet ham and cheese and other thing sandwich, and then (two hours later) I had half a pizza, which had sounded better on paper than it was in reality. Still good, though. The next bus, which was more of a van than a bus, took us up from Donegal to Dungloe/Dunglow, where we were picked up by John and Niki. Both of them are really nice people, and they took us over the hills to their home near Crolly. We were set up in the loft above John's martial arts studio, and then we ate a delicious stir-fry dinner that was just on the verge of my spicy tolerance. We then hung around and watched youtube videos of some guy presenting on an alternative understanding/treatment of cancer. As that went on for one 10 minute video after another, (there are at least 9), we got distracted to talking about other things. They pulled out some home-brewed beer, and talked some more, and eventually I went up to the loft and almost immediately fell asleep. I think it was around 9:30pm or so.

May 25th (Written 28)

On the 25th, we got up and after eating breakfast (Ran out of gherkins...), I went and worked on the metal reclamation some more. I got to it a bit better that day, and organized a system so that when I folded up the metal sheets I didn't drop flakes on the ground - instead they fell on a non-rusted piece of corrugated roofing, from which I swept them into a bag. On the pieces that hadn't completely rusted apparent, I scrapped off a lot of the rusted bits from them, so they wouldn't drop rusted chunks everywhere. I also started sweeping the rust/pine-needle mix from in between the panes into a bag, since I had no idea how to separate the two (Perhaps I could use a pan like the gold prospectors of old?). This got me quite far. Since my gloves were not dextrous enough to pick up shards from the ground, I used my chain-mail pliers to pick up pieces, which I collected and threw in the bags. Meanwhile, Edelweiss kept at the gardening, as far as I know. Eventually, I asked Eileen to come up and let me know which panels she wanted to keep, and which ones she wanted to throw out. She indicated such, and showed me how to put them up in a way in which they would largely avoid rusting further. After getting the panels into the right positions and the rest of the metal squared away for the day, I called it a day (the WWOOFing standards were roughly 5 hours each day).

After a bit of a break, I let folks know that I was going on a walk, and went up out of the farm and took a right and walked down the road. Edelweiss indicated she didn't want me to be gone a worrisome amount of times, what with me being alone and not knowing the area, so I limited myself to an hour or so. Walking down the road, I past some pretty fields and wilderness, and then an abandoned house, and eventually came to a fork in the road. Lots of walking, looking, and thinking. I came up with quite a few ideas for DnD and other things, some of which I wrote down when I got back to the bender. Eileen took off again while I was writing, and later came back. Edelweiss went down to read in the house, and I sought out Eileen to see what she was doing.

Eileen was putting up plastic fencing posts to measure out a new electric fence for the donkeys. I helped her with the electric cord. Apparently she is using the donkeys to eat the reeds that are infesting that (and a few other) fields. Looking at the field the donkeys were currently on, it looked rather effective (apparently the reeds come in big enough clumps that they can't be cut by hand or machine, so most people use weedkillers, which she doesn't want to use). After measuring the fence, we retrieved the actual posts, and carried them out to the appropriate locations. Eileen put them in, as she was wearing steel-toed boots, and the device to put them in was bad for softer boots in the case of it falling on them. We also nailed in insulating materials to hold the string.

I went back to Edelweiss and let her know that Eileen had said that dinner was going to be late, and that we might want to fend for ourselves. Edelweiss wasn't immediately hungry, so this was no problem for her. I had some toast and cheese, but decided to wait with Edelweiss so she wouldn't be eating dinner just with Eileen or by herself. (Edelweiss had mentioned earlier that she doesn't relish time with Eileen.)

Eventually Eileen came in and told us that she felt that the WWOOFing arraignment wasn't going to work out, because she wasn't feeling the right sort of WWOOFing atmosphere, but rather tension and hostility. She then went out to fix up a few other things, and Edelweiss and I talked about various options and other things.

Eileen eventually returned, and pointed us to the WWOOFer noticeboard, where a variety of WWOOFing hosts were posting up relatively urgent WWOOFing requests. We looked through and eventually found about four options we decided to try. We sent an email to one of the WWOOFers who did not have a phone, and resolved to call the others the next morning. We ate while doing this, though I felt awkward about it (and everything else, really).

Eventually we finished up and went to bed rather late.

(I mis-ordered the posts, so the 27th comes before the 26th. Just look for the May 26th post, and read that before the short May 27th post.)

Midges

Midges are apparently the menace of outdoor Ireland. They are an awful lot like mosquitos, coming out at during the morning and evening, and affected by strong winds. I was amazed at the lack of man-eating predators in Ireland - no wolves, no bears, no mountain lions, not even killers like rattlesnakes. But gosh, those midges are annoy. Like mosquitos, except they leave less of a mark, and hurt a lot more when they bite. Worse, unlike mosquitos they have managed something very smart - when a single midge bites you and verifies you are bloodfilled, they spray a phemone or something that attracts other midges to you.

Really quite the horrible pain. Apparently they are why Irish farmers farm during the middle of the day - less midges.

On the bright side, the truly sucky thing is if you are allergic to the midge bites - then instead of hurting and itching, the bites apparently swell up and are quite horrible, sometimes requiring specialized care for multiple bites. Fortunately I am not allergic, but it still seems like a worrisome prospect.

Just a few minutes ago, Edelweiss and I went and put up laundry, which the machine had just finished. It was about 10pm (past my bedtime, I know), and the midges were out in force. The cold was unpleasant, but the midges were just horrible. Even now my face still feels like they are biting it...

Housing

Reading the book The Straw Bale House got me thinking about all sorts of various housing ideas, or even environmental living ideas. my current first house plan has to do with a few shipping containers - even just three 9x9x40 containers makes for a fairly decent living space (that's 810 feet right there, plus another 270 per container) at a fairly cheap price. Of course, while shipping containers are similar to strawbale in terms of being a waste product (in the container's case because its cheaper to make them in China than ship them back empty), the insulation properties are completely different. Not sure which one is more expensive, of course. Strawbale certainly intruigues me, but I would have to know more to be sure what I think of it. I don't like having to worry about the straw getting damp, for instance. Who knows - I might combo with a container house with straw bale insulation.

While I was reading, Edelweiss picked up a book on self-sufficient living. We talked a bit about my tropical island scheme, where I exploit the ocean's temperature differencial for fun and profit. The basic idea revolves around the fact that even in tropical areas, as one goes deeper into the ocean, the temperature drops to 4C fairly quickly. What you then do is pump up the cold water in a closed system, and use it as a super heat-sink, along with other uses as a cold thing. For instance: Fresh water can be supplied by running the cold water through V shaped pipes, and collecting the condensation (this is part of why it is a tropical island scheme). Houses are cooled by the same thing (in fact, you probably could put the condensing pipes on the walls of the house). Electricity is generated using temperature differencial engines. Kelp farming and marine permaculture provides food. And then eventually the water goes back down to a little higher than it's original depth and is released - this cuts down the strain on the pump, as it really isn't 'raising' water overall. The whole thing is more or less sustainable. The main problem is initial investment - the pipes have to be coated on the inside so that seawater does not cause problems. When the cost of teflon coating is a bit cheaper, this may get a lot easier. (The alternative is a purely closed system that pumps the same fluid down to the depths to cool it, and then uses that - this may be easier in a number of ways.)

May 24th, 5:20pm (now with added content)

The next morning I woke up at about 7am, which I figured was perfectly decent for going to bed however much after 9pm I did (bed still problematic). I managed to sleep fairly well. The previous day I had found out that Eileen wakes up at about 10am, and since I didn't want to disturb the house that early just for myself, I contented myself to wandering around in the morning. It was fairly cold, and I wore a long sleeve shirt, my small black sweater, and then my fleece jacket on top of that. I also wore my boots with socks, both a hat an a bandana, and both my fuzzy and work gloves. At one point in the morning, I was reading a book outside the house, and Eileen asked if she could take a picture of me in all my warm clothes. I don't think she even knew that I was wearing three long-sleeved clothes.

Since my gloves were work gloves, I started collecting scrap metal from the rusty mess of corrugated roofing. This allowed me to fill a second bag. I also worked a bit on removing the small chunks of wood from Eileen's pile of broken wooden pallets.

Eventually Edelweiss woke up, and together we stormed the house, quietly going in and making breakfast. I had a breakfast identical to the previous day's lunch, though instead of eating an orange, I ate two pickled onions. I thought they were delicious, but Edelweiss isn't willing have me breathe next to her. I guess I can't tell how bad my breath is, but apparently it is bad.

After breakfast I read a book on straw-bale house-building, which was very interesting. Eventually Eileen woke up, and I told her that I was going to work on reclaiming the metal (if only I had fancy nanobots like in SupCom). I did this for a bit, then found that the midges were out in the morning. They bit me, and I went to work with Edelweiss, who was cutting down nettles. I helped Edelweiss with this, being useful with my tough and functional gloves, etc. We eventually got them all out, and then we went to weeding.

I have a bad history with weeding, so I went back to reclaiming the metal. The wind had picked up, so the midges were all lying low. Thus work was pretty good, and I filled up a third bag before the wind died and the midges started eating me again (on the face, since everything else was bundled up).

I went back to Edelweiss, and started weeding with her. I think I got a better sense of how to manage it. Eventually Eileen told us that she had made nettle soup from the heads of the nettles we had lopped off. I found nettle soup (which had a few other things in it) to be quite tasty. Edelweiss wouldn't have any of it, though - she made some sort of cheddar sandwich.

After breakfast, Eileen took me to go see the pond (filled with loads of tadpoles), and meet the donkeys. I managed to avoid either of them nipping me, and got to pet their big heads some. After that, Edelweiss and I collected all the nettles we chopped off, and smushed them into a large carton to use as fertilizer. We then took the carton and filled it with water and covered it in plastic (to keep the midges from reproducing in it).

That was our work for the day, more or less, so then I requested some wood, and stuck it underneath the beds to level them. It wasn't quite level, but I put off getting more until later. I took a short name, then picked up this computer and wrote this.

----Written on May 28th----

So some things have been happening. We left off on the 24th, last time - while I was writing the previous entries, Eileen drove off, Edelweiss slept, and eventually Edelweiss woke up and we talked, and we decided that this really wasn't working out for us, and that we should seek other options if possible. She managed to retrieve the number for the Duffys, who had said that she was welcome back, but when we called we found that all of the Duffy children were back in town for the summer. This was a great big disappointment to us both - to Edelweiss because she wanted to go back to the Duffys, and to me, because I had heard so much about them.

They gave us the number of a different WWOOFer who might be interested, but apparently the other family's son had come over to the Duffys while Edelweiss was there, and the two of them did not get along well. We decided to go look online for other options.

During dinner, Eileen ate outside, which was odd, while Edelweiss and I ate inside in the kitchen/dining room. After dinner, we started laundry, then we requested internet access, and Eileen put her computer online. It had a touchpad, but the right click and left click buttons were reversed - even double-tapping on the touchpad was a right click. It was very odd. Edelweiss went through her emails (slowly - everything was slow), responded to a few things, and looked around for WWOOFing hosts who had said they were open during this time. It was all very ineffective, though, and we came up with nothing. I checked my email quickly, and then gave the computer back to Eileen.

Both of us went to bed quite sad about the whole thing, but slept better with the improved beds.

May 24th, 5:20pm (about May 23th)

So didn't type anything last night - went right to sleep. Let's see... where did I leave off?

After writing on the computer a bit, I headed off to bed in the bender. I found that that while there is a mattress in the bender, the mattress is on a slope - multiple times I had to wiggle my way back up the bed. I was quite cold for the early part of the night, and used all the blankets that were avaliable. Once morning arrived, however, sun was shining on the bender, which heated like a greenhouse. Thus by 9:53am or so, it was quite warm inside the bender, and I relatively hurriedly headed on out (as did Edelweiss). I hadn't slept amazingly, but I had slept quite long. Edelweiss apparently had it worse, and was quite tired throughout the day.

We got up, and got changed into new clothes, and then headed over to the house. The front door was locked, but the back door was open. We creeped in, and I had a breakfast of Edelweiss's very old half-sandwich, a banana, and a pickled gherkin. A gherkin is a type of small animal, humanoid in shape, but very small. Some sort of thing the Irish fey are based off of? My knowledge of folklore leads me to something like a Redcap, which is downright disturbing. But it tasted mostly like pickle-juice, which was quite tasty.

The day was Sunday, which is an off-day, WWOOFing-wise. We loafed around and wandered the premises in the morning. Edelweiss took me around the premises and showed me all the various types of herbs and weeds. I think most of it went over my head, but I now remember the nettles and the spearmint plants. In the morning I also rolled up the barbed wire laying around near the tents, because the previous night I took a piss and worried that I was going to run into the stuff. My work-gloves and boots served me well against the rusty barbed wire, and that went well. Kinda fun, even. I also started clearing up the rusty metal remains of some corrugated roofing from an abandoned home repair project that got abandoned, but got tired of that and hung out with Edelweiss as she read my book.

We then ate lunch, which consisted of some sort of garlic-and-herbs cream cheese on toast, another banana, an orange, and a gherkin and a half (we have lots of the little things).

We then went over with Eileen and helped put up the second bender. The frame was all together, thanks to some French WWOOFers a while back, but it didn't have good enough covering. We worked mostly on the coverings, adjusting the assorted parts-of-tents that covered it, and adding new things. Lots of tying or untying of ropes. French WWOOFers did not leave friendly and untieable knots, unfortunately, and it had only had gotten worse over time.

After several hours of working on that, the midges started coming out, and Eileen sent us away to be in her house. Edelweiss and I rested on couch and read this book that detailed (with beautiful pictures) all these straw-bale-built houses. Eventually Eileen finished (she was working inside the bender, where she had shelter), and then she came home and made dinner. Dinner was rice and a semi-spicy stir-fry. Edelweiss didn't like the spiciness - on my end of things, I just diluted it lots with rice. Apparently Eileen had not been informed about Edelweiss (and me, to a lesser degree) not liking spicy foods. I can't be sure, but I think I ate another gherkin afterwards.

After dinner we finished the book, and then decided that since last night we had sleeping problems, that we should head to bed earlier. Thus we both headed to bed shortly after 9pm, and I did not write that day.