One Week in Lanark, Scotland

Throughout our travels, we came across a couple platforms where you can sign up to participate in pet/house sitting and workaway opportunities. This is how we ended up in Scotland for a weeklong stay after London. We stayed on a beautiful property in Lanark where we had the opportunity to house sit while watching two dogs, Bugsy & Ruby and a parrot named Purdy. Our hosts were so great to us, making sure we felt right at home in their cute country cottage. Our kids really loved taking care of the pets, especially throwing pinecones with Bugsy and teaching the parrot new sounds and words to say. We also loved the country feel, beautiful landscaped yard, and grazing sheep next door.

While we were there, we ventured out a little bit. Phil adjusted pretty quickly to driving on the left side of the road. He treated me to a dinner at a traditional Scotland restaurant. The food is delicious and we’re big fans of their version of beef stroganoff.

As a family we went out to see the Falkirk Wheel, the only rotating boat lift in the world. It’s a fascinating structure and even more fascinating to watch it transport a ferry from below, to the canal above. The entire rotation takes five minutes.

Another interesting site was the New Lanark Power Trail. Phil, Gavin, and I hiked the trail to Clyde falls and learned more about the 18th century hydro technology used to power the cotton mills back in the day. One of them still runs to showcase how they worked over 250 years ago. The engineering innovation of using water to generate clean energy is currently giving power to the local buildings.

With quite a few rainy days, we mostly stayed on the property, exploring, schooling/working, and dominating the European Ticket to Ride game. Everyone is so friendly in Scotland. At church they were eager to give us assignments that we weren’t able to help with, but appreciated the friendly greetings and fun discussions.

Our time here was short, but by the time we left our host felt like family, we sure enjoyed getting to know them!

Two weeks in Wlen, Poland

We went back to Poland for a workaway stay and learned so much from a great family trying to make a wholesome living off their own land and efforts. Everything they use is Bio-friendly, no sprays, chemicals, or anything unnatural are added to their garden or animals. It was fascinating to learn from them and with them as they have only started this adventure three years ago. Their goal is to build up a small community of like-minded families who are willing to contribute their part and share everything together. It’s opened our eyes to some ideas of our own of what we might want to do in the future. We’ve been introduced to a healthier way of living that we hope to also continue to some degree at least.

I have to admit I always thought I was a pretty healthy eater and meal creator until we learned about how unhealthy all the veggies, grains, and dairy that are put into the stores compared to the bio and self-grown foods are. While we admire this lifestyle, it’s going to take great effort, knowledge, and changes to make it happen. Definitely a goal to aim for but perhaps down the road.

Their property is surrounded by rolling hills and fields, with a beautiful view. They have goats, chickens, horses, bulls, bees, and a couple of Anatolian shepherd dogs to help scare off any wolves and other predators. Their animals are all kid friendly (minus the bulls & bees), trained well enough that the kids can be around the without a concern.

We all learned how to milk the goats and helped with this chore each morning. We shared four liters of goat milk between families and to help us keep up with the quantity, Phil made goat yogurt every day. Our kids say they like goat milk more than cow milk now. After milking, the goats are then led up the hill to their section of land where they can roam freely during the day. The kids would pay them a visit throughout the day and feed them leaves from the nearby cherry trees.

All of our kids enjoyed chasing the chickens around the yard as well. They learned however, that if the chickens are stressed from being chased so much then they won’t produce as many eggs. This didn’t stop Zeeger or Hallie, especially when the chickens found themselves in parts of the yard they weren’t supposed to be in, like the garden.

Our hosts daughter Nina (13 years) is in charge of training the horses herself. She is very skilled and was graciously willing to not only give our girls riding lessons but also teach them how to train and care for the horses a bit. Our girls also learned a few tricks on Pinto the pony, like trotting, cantering, sitting backwards, and standing on his back. They loved every minute of it.

Instead of schoolwork or screen time, we wanted the kids have a hands-on experience with doing jobs around the farm. They seemed to really enjoy it too! They helped with horse dung removal, tree removal, wood chopping, mulching, weed pulling, cherry picking, horse-care and training, four wheeling, and even helped harvest honey. We enjoyed joint meals with our hosts- conversations, sunsets, walks, and games. We ended most days feeling completely exhausted.

Phil and I are doers and often felt the urgency to stay busy to do our part well enough to maintain our keep. While yes, this was the tradeoff in leu of paying rent, it certainly wasn’t an expectation from our hosts to have us work long hours every day. This is a mindset rooted from learned programming since childhood. We would have conversations about this with our hosts and felt relieved to learn that they weren’t so concerned measuring the hours as much as learning to listen to your body and focus on what’s needed because there will always be more work to do. The idea of leaving a project half done was challenging but also eye opening because it helped us take a step back to really enjoy the day instead of push ourselves until a task was completed. It’s harder than it sounds and will take some more practice- I’m sure we burned out our hosts more than they expected of us.

This sweet family was so patient with us and our kids, so gracious in sharing their home, property, animals, skills, and knowledge. They aren’t religious but they respected that we are and allowed us to pray over our meals together. They even joined us for church the Sunday before we left. Overall, if was incredible opportunity! Thank you Germaan, Lindsey, Nina, and Zeeger for the memorable experience, we miss you already!