WWOOFing close to Gent at Beatrice´s place

As the plan was not to stay too long at the same place I moved on after three weeks at the Wereldwerf in Olen. I arrived in La Pinte next to Gent on a Sunday evening.
This place couldn´t be more different than the place I came from. You have to think about a place where just everything is growing when you only put a seed in the ground.

Beatrice must have some green hands, and the soil must be just perfect. I didn´t even know it would be possible to plant some peach trees in Belgium. But as a matter of fact you can. There were many of them on her grounds. Peach trees next to cherry trees and apple trees next to oak trees covering each other and in the heart of it the vegetable garden. Beatrice is living here with her 91 years old mother doing a biological garden. Her mother is still fit. She spent hours in the garden collecting red current and cleaning them out. And she is as well still active in the kitchen. On my arrival there was a group of friends sitting in the backyard. We had a nice chat and a bottle of wine. Later Beatrice showed me around the grounds.

The accomodation was a room on the second floor in the house.
As soon as I arrived at this place I saw already what had to be done. Wood work. The place looked like it really could deal with some work. But that was actually what I was expecting. In the discription of the place Beatrice told me there is a lot of wood work to do. To be honest, this was the reason I came here. So on Monday morning I started the day by trimming some hedges. But I couldn´t wait to do some tree cutting. There were two chain saws on the spot. But one was too small, just big enough to cut some branches and the second one was too big and heavy and wouldn´t start anyway. I decided to use my own chain saw.


So the next four days I was just clearing out the grounds. It was amazing how Beatrive knew every single tree on the grounds. And even when and how it was planted. We decided together which trees to cut. The only problem was that she actually wanted to leave as many as possible and I just wanted to give them sunlight and oxygen. But at the end I reckon we found a good compromise. The wood work was only interupted by one day when we were clearing out a spot and built a wall to store firewood.
Unfortunatly I had to leave the same week on Friday morning. There was a conferenc in a place called Arnica Hof. A place were they built an authentic kenian village. I really wanted to go there to meet the people and to learn about the project.
Instead of two weeks staying I just spent 5days at Beatricé place. But you never know, maybe I will come back later in the year and finish the ground clearing. I had a very good time, good food fresh from the garden and I met many members of her family. Her grandniece who is living in Tanzania came over for a visit with her three boys. She was a source of information about life in Tanzania. And she invited me to pass by when I am on my Africa trip.
So thanx to you all for having a good time.
To watch some pictures click on the Link below.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/constructafrica/sets/72157624344202937/