Thursday 25 May 2017

Life on the farm....Camping!

This is the third post in the series I am doing about the fun I had as a child when living on a farm....You can my first post here and the post about the vehicles I used to ride and drive....


Not long after we moved to the farm my brother and I tried camping out.....Just in the front garden in a huge tent....We didn't much like it....The cows mooching about didn't really didn't let us sleep properly and I think we were back in our own beds by about 4am after waking my parents up and causing chaos.....

A few years later.....I was about 11 or 12. There was a half build hut/shed in the corner of the furthest away field from the farmhouse. a good 10 minute walk away....It was built to store feed for the animals but never got finished. It was about 7 or 8 foot square so the perfect size for a den!

On the farm there was always plenty of wood and building materials laying about so we would load the Vespa Moped up and take it up to the hut.....It is quite surprising how much wood you can carry on one if you position it just right.....We borrowed tools from my dad and got building and repairing....

It was just a square hut...Four walls and a flat roof. We made a door out of some plastic sheets we found and put some on the roof to make it waterproof....It worked....It was pretty darn good....It was warm and dry. We couldn't have asked for more.

My friend was visiting and we jokingly said to my mam we should sleep in it....She said OK to our amazement. I think she expected us to come crawling back home in the middle of the night cold or scared.

It was the middle of the summer so it was warm and light until late....We'd already taken old sleeping bags and cushions to make it comfy and it was.....

We gathered supplies....Drinks, sweets, pop, bacon, eggs, sausages and bread....We needed to eat. We'd already made a fire pit....We dug a little hole and surrounded it with bricks....We found some wire mesh and an old frying pan and we had been trusted with matches.....We were kids but we were not stupid when it came to fire....I don't think I ever burnt myself as a child. As an adult I burn myself at least once a week on the oven. lol

We stayed up until late chatting and playing word games. We had a cassette player with batteries which worked well and listened to Chubby Brown songs. It was the early 90's he was big then and forbidden....hehehe

In the morning we started our fire and cooked our food....There was one thing missing though. Tomato sauce! My brother drew the short straw and went back to the house to get some on the Vespa of course....hehehe

From that weekend I think we slept in there every weekend until the winter....Even when it was raining!

It was so much fun and the skills we learned were valuable....I can start a fire, cook on it, boil drinking water, make shelter and survive a thunder storm.....Just call me Bear Grylls.....hahaha

10 comments :

  1. We used to go camping a lot when I was a kid and just before our holiday my mum would set the tent up in the garden to check it out. Then I'd get to stay in it with a couple of friends. It was only in the back garden and we didn't really learn any skills from it, but it was fun. It's strange how you never burnt yourself as a kid but you do it now! I love reading your farm stories, what a great childhood you had.

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    1. Ahh! That sounds like a lot of fun.
      Thank you x

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  2. Aww it sounds like fun. Great memories :) I would not know where to start in trying to make a fire!!

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    1. Making a fire is easier than it looks. hehehe
      Thank you x

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  3. This sounds so much fun, life so munch easier. I bet it was joyful writing this X #pocolo

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    1. It was wonderful to write...I smiled at all the memories x

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  4. Tomato sauce is always a must! Can't live without it when camping! Sound fun!

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  5. I haven't been camping in years, but i remember borrowing a tent from my Dad, which was kept upright by 4 inflated airtubes at the corners instead of ropes. Of course as it got colder overnight, we found we hadn't filled these enough and the tent sagged onto us and woke us up

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  6. Wow - sounds a great experience - love that you needed tomato sauce though. Guess brothers are useful for one thing! Thanks for linking to #PoCoLo x

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