My partner and I visited Christine for a full week to help her with some stuff on the premises and do some hiking in between. We felt immediately at home at her parents' former farm, which she is beginning to turn into a place where people can come together and do cultural, healthy, and maybe also spiritual things.
When we arrived, we sat
… read more together with tea and Christine listed a number of things we could help her with and hiking tours we could do on other days. We opted for some craft activities and some heavy lifting. Some other things we said we'd rather not want to do, and that was perfectly fine with Christine.
In the days to come, the three of us started the day with a rich breakfast (in my case vegan, which was not an issue at all) and then started working together for some hours, then ate a salad and some whole bread, worked again for some hours, had tea together, and finally cooked a nice dinner and sometimes sat together around a small fire in the patio below Christine's row of Nepalese prayer flags.
Making good use of my partner's crafting skills, we repaired the barn door's lock and constructed some window panes.
In terms of the heavier type of work, we cleared the former barn of some garbage, sorted through some wooden beams that lay around, selected some of them that we would then use to close a big whole in the barn's gable to protect the roof from storms, took down a large surface of cardboard paneling from a wall to set free the beautiful wood below it, removed some unnecessary and half-broken beams from the patio's gallery to give it a lighter and more elegant look. All that was big fun for someone like me who spends his days at a computer otherwise!
Finally, we also spent an afternoon harvesting what felt like thousands of apples from some ancient trees in her fruit orchard.
Our week at Christine's place was made into a wholesome experience by two intermediate days of hiking in beautiful Frankonia, and spending an evening in a thermal bath and sauna in a neighboring village.
Christine is a very warmhearted host, speaks perfect English and has a clear and respectful way of communicating, and is always open for suggestions. We will probably return to her place next year! And not to forget: the apples are delicious :-)