Darren with the first fairy houses. If you explore the area behind him you might spot a minature Aussie dunnie with a rope ladder!
Darren outside in sub-zero temperatures oiling the facing boards. He loved escaping the Aussie heat for our cold winter! The Hobbit Hideaway sign on the gate was Darren's handwork!
Clémence helped to create a herb garden which she also a touch of her own magic with hand-painted stones with herb names and fairies.
Meg helped with loads of shrub choosing and planting around the hideaway and hand painted the whisky barrel sign to stop our visitors heading up the hill to Waggytail Boarding Kennel!
Alli designing and painting signs for the sign post that Mark fixed into the ground. A gorgeous old and gnarled apple tree branch he knew would come in useful one day!
A team project!
Alli starts work on her gorgeous celtic inspired mural inside the hideaway.
What do you see?
Tanner and Alli with us. No idea why we all have tiny gnomes, but we seem happy enough!
Tanner chatting with my dad on our adventures to Edinburgh.
Thanks to young and nimble Markéta's tree climbing ability,we have solar lights up high!
Look what clever Markéta made all by herself. Three houses for some lucky fairies!
Juliana spotting dolphins in the Moray Firth.
Markéta and Juliana beig inspired at Gordon Castle's gorgeous walled garden.
Markéta having fun lighting up fairy land.
Markéta and our kid rolling and being kids at Culloden moor.
Angela, a professional photographer and Workaway volunteer, prepares for a night shoot in the fairy glen. We have so many gorgeous photos to use thanks to Angela!
Creative fun in the kitchen with Glen, Camille and a big wad of wool!
Angela displaying her Pledge Project craft work.
Camille and Glen sawing planks for the new woodstore.
Happy smiling Glen!
Camille taking a break from trimming back the unrully kitchen garden.
Ken, a journalist and former war correspondent, shooting some videos in the fairy glen. You can see the video on our website.
Ken was very keen to chop firewood!
Neighbour Sean is to blame for us having chickens and soon turkeys too! He helped us for 1 day in exchange for a night in the hideaway to propose to his girlfriend. She said YES!
Fiddler Louisa and piper John playing some jaunty tunes on a summer evening! They were a great help getting started on the chook house.
It must be Friday garden veg curry night for the chook house building team John, Louisa, Sarah and Lois.
Sarah drilling in the chook house floor boards as Loiusa waits paitiently for her shot!
Lois refining her joinery skills on the chicken house frame
Louisa and Sarah checking the others are behaving. Not a chance!
Sam, a former hobbit house student builder, and now family friend taking time-out from building the chook house for a spot of archery in the garden.
Viktoria helping out with the test patches of clay render for the chook house. Viktoria, an architectural technition, was a great help with our chook house design plans.
Sam teaching the art of bale splitting to Sally & Brent.
Brent and Sally were a real power-house with getting the chook house finished before winter. They even added a chook!
Sally and Brent in the chook house.
Holly looks on as Sally & Brent figure out what to do with that piece of wood!
Sam custom made and shingled the chook house door. He's definitely coming back!
Sam and Holly placing another bale in the wall.
Sally and Viktoria take a break to admire the bale walls
Holly and Sam still smiling after a hard days work!
Brent the super human in action!
Brent,who washes windows of skyscrapers in Canada was quite at home up on the roof!
Sally mixing up another batch of render with clay and cow poo!
Dancing in the muddy render
A happy muddy Meg applying the second coat of clay render to the chook house
Meg hard at work applying clay render
Sam making the door wind and water tight
Artists at work! Meg made the chook feet whilst local artist Edie scupted on the walls. The place really, really needed to have Baba Yaga inspired chicken feet!
Local artist Edie sculping clay on the chicken house
Edie,a true artist at work!
Magan helping to re-turf patches of the green roof
The Beatles were not wrong when they sang about getting by with a little help from your friends! Since discovering www.workaway.info in 2019 our hearts and eyes have been opened to the incredible world-wide network of volunteers who simply love Scotland, and want to come and help in exchange for food, board and a warm welcome into your family!
Our special place has become so much more special with the many magical touches and legacies left behind by all the friends and volunteers we've hosted over the last two years. Many of these volunteers have now became forever friends!
In 2019 we were blessed to host and work with Darren & Alex from Australia, Clemence from France, Meg from Australia, Tanner & Alli from USA, Markéta from Prague, Juliana from Columbia, Angela from Australia, Ken from Singapore, and Camille & Glen from France.
Spring 2019 was our first year in business and we had a building site to transform! With our volunteers, we cleared and moved barrow-loads of debris, sowed grass seed by the box load, planted hundreds of bulbs, shrubs and fruit trees and let nature take its magnificent course. With an abundance of creative help, we worked alongside Mother Nature and observed our wee slice of Scottish paradise evolving into something special. A gnarled old apple tree branch became a sign post, areas were given names and we had loads of fun bringing them alive! We grew food, made tiny homes for fairies and were blessed with an abundance of gorgeous photos and a huge, celtic inspired mural inside the hideaway!
A global pandemic in 2020 meant we needed to close our doors to visitors, but it gave us the precious gift of time. Time to become chicken owners and spend hours outside creating paths and nurturing the soil to grow more delicious food. A strawbale chook house was in the planning, so as soon as lockdown was over, we quarantined and welcomed more wonderful volunteers, mostly local, but a few from further afield; including Louisa & John from Edinburgh & Fife, Lois & Sarah from Moray, Sally & Brent from Yorkshire/Canada, Holly from Moray, Sam & Meg from England, Viktoria from Hungary/Aberdeen and Edie & Meeghan from Moray.
The chook house was an ambitious project, but we completed it with a little help from our friends. It was a lot of fun as well as hard physical work, but evenings spent outside sharing food, banter and a cold beer (or a nice bottle of red!) were the best!
The chook house is as unique and quirky as you would expect! So what's our plans for 2021? You'll just need to wait and see...
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