A Chance to Lend a Helping Hand

Our neighbours here in the village are so helpful and generous - it felt really good over the last few days to be able to help them in return. There are many jobs to be done at the end of the summer, getting the harvest in before the wetter, colder weather begins. Here you can see how we helped a little with the corn. It's wonderful to see how the whole plant is used: the cobs themselves are to be ground into chicken feed and some of the stalks and leaves get chopped up for cattle fodder.

Here everybody helps everybody, and while that is so refreshing for us, here it is just the norm - it's just what you do. I'm not really sure whose corn it was we were picking but one person got the stalks for his cows, another got the cobs for their chickens. A woman down the road was getting the husks to weave into mats, and our neighbour drove back to the field with a trailer especially to bring us back some stalks for building our succa. Everybody around was helping, old and young, singing, laughing and joking all the while. Although there was plenty of hard work to be done it was done with fun and a sense of community spirit.

I remember my Dad telling me of holidays he spent as a child, hop-picking in Kent. For his parents it was a working holiday but he remembers the time very fondly - and now I think I can really appreciate why.

Here's a short video (more to come later).