Baled Out - Thursday morning

Thursday 19 December 2013

A massive thank you to everyone who came to help - virtually the entire Smith family from Neohori, Amanda from Art Party, Robbie and Sue, and Mark from the band.  And an extra thank you to Martin and Maggie for stopping by with pea and ham soup!

We had decided to split the workforce into teams - Bale Luggers and Lifters; Bale Splitters; and Bale Painters.  This worked pretty well, and gave us some experts ready to help newcomers as the day progressed.

 Paris (Rowan's girlfriend) working with me gets the hang of bale splitting

 Jade (age 12) and Amanda tackle bale painting - a very mucky job

 Dave was technical expert on the actual build

 Robbie and Sue arrived latish, but still before lunch, and got stuck into lugging and lifting

 Lin, also arriving just before lunch, having had errands to run, learned clay slip making from Dave

 Amanda had to leave after a couple of hours, so Pete, who'd been doing a lot of lugging and lifting with Dave, took over bale painting with Jade giving instruction

 While Sue moved on to bale splitting with Paris

 and Robbie did some stuffing!  Slip-straw into the gaps, that is.

 By which time it was 1.30, Maggie and Martin had dropped off hot soup for the workers, and we all welcomed a break.  I had done a good bit of the bale splitting, a bit of fetching bales out to the painters and splitters and most of the bale tying (which is a tedious job that I didn't like to inflict on volunteers)