O're Fen and Moor - One Month on the Job

Question:  Raise your hand if you know what a fen or moor is?  Remember the hymn Lead Kindly Light, verse 3 it says "So long thy pow'r hath blest me, sure it still will lead me on.  O'er moor and fen,  o'er crag and torrent till, the night is gone"    Well, a fen is a wetland, like a marsh, swamp or bog.  In this part of England we are surrounded by places called fens...like Woodwalton Fen, Pidley Fen, Fodder Fen, Burnt Fen, Mare Fen....the list goes on and on.  It seems that long ago hundreds of miles of land in central England was once under water as marshlands.  In the 17th century the Dutch were brought in to build canals and drain the swamps to make the land suitable for growing crops, but the fen names have stuck, and there are a lot of canals around here.  This area is now the bread basket of England, and so we have a lot of fields that used to be fens.  This has been your history lesson for the month.

It is wonderful being in the countryside because the fields are vast and the towns and villages are quaint, and we see a lot of thatched roofs.

The main problem with the picturesque towns is the narrow roads.  I get off easy because I only have to drive a small Ford Focus that has an automatic transmission.  But Bruce gets the challenge of driving a stick shift pick-up pulling a trailer, on roads that are only built for one car at a time, but are full of on-coming traffic....which is sometimes large farm equipment...driving on the wrong side of the road.  So far, so good.

This month has been busy with mowing, weed whacking (they call it stremming here), pruning bushes, working on three newly built houses that needed some finishing touches, planting grass at the new houses, working on repairing lawn mowers and weed whackers, and painting on the outside of a large storage barn.

We have also fed the missionaries, supplied a meal for a family with a new baby, given talks in church, and made several trips to London.  Speaking of church, Bruce and I are teaching a Primary class for three weeks while the teacher is on holiday in France.  At the same time, I received a calling to be the 1st Counselor in Young Womens!  Hooray!  So I will teach Primary the second hour then go to YW the third hour.  Our ward is so small that no organization is fully staffed.  Every president only gets one counselor....if they are lucky.

Jill and her kids are with us for church!

While on the topic of feeding missionaries and families with new babies, my oven is very small and on the bottom of the appliance (called a hob), making it a little awkward to put pans in and out.  The cookie sheet that came with the house doesn't fit in the oven at all, so I made cookies on pizza pans that happen to have holes in them.  Some dough fell down through the holes and I ended up with mini-sized cookies just the right size for a Barbie doll.

I love my freezer because it has handy drawers which pull out.  The food is separated and easily accessible.

At the produce section of the grocery store I found this lovely bin with fruit in it with a sign.  What a brilliant idea!  They even provide little bags to put the peels, pits or cores in.  

Some of you will be familiar with Weetabix (which we really like), and they also have Oatibix, (which we also like).  For those who haven't had the opportunity to taste this wholesome cereal, it's a bit like shredded wheat except it immediately goes soggy in the bowl when the milk is added, and is suitable for people who may not have functioning teeth.  In the bowl it looks like you are about to have a heaping spoonful of pencil shavings!

One last note about food, we have an established tradition with the senior missionaries downstairs that Thursday is fish and chips night, so we always know what we're eating that day!

Some earlier senior couples created a "Mother Goose Garden" that graces our yard, but when we discovered it there were so many overgrown weeds and vines covering it that we couldn't see what was going on.  Four wheelbarrows full of weeds later, we were delighted to see what was there.  Sister Manning (lives downstairs) and I have been working to restore it to it's delightful origins.  Besides major cleaning, we added some colorful flowers, a few more figures, signs and a pinwheel.  The creators of the garden put a lot of work and love into this project, and we have enjoyed it.

Three Little Pigs

The Queen of Hearts

I'm not sure this is a Nursery Rhyme, but I didn't know what else to attribute the teapot to.

Our daughter Jill and her family have been living in Jerusalem for the past year and will be returning to the states in a couple of weeks.  So she and three of her daughters made a trip over to England to visit us for five days.  We had a great time showing them the sights, roads, and foods in this beautiful country. How fun is that!

This was a fun sign near the Globe Theater in London

This is the Tower Bridge in London

We went Punting on the Cam River in Cambridge

This is the Burghley House which we toured, then we played in their Surprise Gardens

Jill cut this picture for us to hang on our wall.  She wanted to do a watercolor background, but we didn't have any watercolors, and we live out a ways from a store, so she used food coloring!

Our first trip to London was to attend the temple.  What a thrill it was to be in this historic temple as we contemplated the many apostles and prophets and family members who have been here before us.  This week we are going to the Preston Temple to do a session and enjoy the British Pageant, which is only presented every four years.

The British people are very friendly and enjoyable to talk to.  Some are harder to understand than others...like our farm manager, our bishop and some of the tenants we serve and the farmers we chat with.  We are grateful for this opportunity to serve the Lord in this part of His vineyard and are looking forward to meeting and serving the people here.

FIRST WEEK IN JOLLY OLD ENGLAND

After a brief three-and-a-half month stay at home we are off again on a new mission....this time on a farm in England!  This is our apartment house, and we are in Flat 1 on the top floor.  We are surrounded by fields of rapeseed plants and wheat.  A short drive connects us to other farmhouses and charming villages.  Most of the church-owned farms are not connected, and there are 11,500 acres in all, so we do a bit of traveling to get where we need to go.

It took us a few days to acclimate to the new time zone because we are 7 hours ahead of Utah.  After taking the red-eye flight to London,  we were met by a driver, then we then had a 2 hour drive north from the airport.

Inside the flat we have 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a kitchen, living room and laundry closet.

This is the guest bedroom, and it has a bathroom attached.

This is a very small washer and dryer.  I'm sure that one sheet would fill the wash tub!

Notice that neither bathroom has any counters or drawers.  Most English bathrooms are like this.

This fan is what us commoners call the "air conditioner"in our kitchen and living room area.  There is also a fan in our bedroom.  We open all the windows at night, but there are no screens on the windows, so we get some "visitors" that fly in uninvited.  They don't snore at night, so we're OK.

Also in the bedroom is a closet which is used as a pantry.  It's on the opposite side of the house from the kitchen, but it comes in handy....especially since the former missionaries left us a bunch of food!  They were former military, so we have a bit of American food, like Skippy peanut butter, Miracle Whip, Pace salsa, Starkist tuna, Jello, Kraft salad dressings and Campbell soups.













This is an herb garden that has gone wild.  I have been trying to clean some of the weeds out, but discovered the stinging nettle right away.  It only took one day to get over the stinging and swelling.

 This shows you what our mowers look like.  We have two John Deeres and one Kubota.  This mower happens to be the smallest one, which is also the stinker mower, due to some annoying problems.  It's a good thing I'm not a swearing gal, because this mower has been driving me crazy!  The Elders are trying to fix the problem, and a part is on order. The lawns are never level and smooth like you picture well manicured English lawns to be.  Sometimes you feel like you are on a bucking horse and at other times we are on some precarious slopes.  And now I understand how Alice in Wonderland was capable of falling down a rabbit hole....they are quite large!  (See also Wallace & Grommet movie "The Curse of the Were Rabbit")

Besides mowing, we also trim using week-wackers and tree trimmers.  The pile of tree limbs doesn't look too impressive until you realize that it is taller than I am and represents two trailers full of green stuff, as well as some boards, an old chair and a lot of critters!

This is our Ford Focus that we get to drive.  The a/c isn't great, but the windows work just fine, and soon enough it will be winter!  We haven't actually driven it yet, because we are still learning our way around the area and we generally drive with the other missionary couple.  We have learned that there are very few straight roads in England.

Two days after arriving we celebrated the 4th of July with some other Americans in the ward, and the young-but strapping Full-Time Elders.  We are with the other missionary couple, the Mannings. 

We are in Sister Manning's kitchen having some fresh fish and chips after a day of mowing.  The men were washing up.

On Saturday we went on an outing to the North Sea beach at Hunstanton.  The water was surprisingly warm, the food was good, and the town was charming.

On Sunday we attended church in the smallest building I have ever been in.  We were surprised when we were called out of the meeting to introduce ourselves and bear our testimonies.  It was great to feel the spirit of the members in this area.

The farm has begun to harvest the rapeseed this week.  They mainly grow wheat and rapeseed plants. Rapeseed oil (which is Canola oil basically) is the 3rd largest source of vegetable oil in the world, and has been harvested since the 14th century.  It is surprising because the seed pods are small and slender and the seeds are the size of mustard seeds.  It's hard to imagine that anything that small can produce oil.

The sun setting in our backyard the first day we arrived

FILLMORES IN HURRICANE COUNTRY

Yes, we just had a hurricane in Florida.  Our first, and we survived well.   The men boarded up our windows (we only have two in our tiny place), as well as most of the windows on other cinder block houses on the ranch.  People living in wood frame houses were encouraged to evacuate.  There are 70 homes on the ranch, so it took a lot of plywood, plus they were working all day in a pre-hurricane rain storm.
















Through the night we heard the wind howling and noticed a persistent scraping noise on our roof.  The next morning Bruce went up on the roof....notice the trees...the wind was still blowing pretty hard.  We had tree branches scraping the roof, which Bruce cut down.  No damage was done on the roof.  We lost power and water for about 6 hours, but it was restored quicker than for the residents on the coast.

The first thing we noticed was a lot of tree branches down, and "lakes" everywhere.  This picture is in front of the Visitors Center, and it is normally a beautifully manicured lawn....with no water on it.  This is the same "lake" where we found an alligator the next day. You can see that the water was up to my knees.













This is the gator that was in the lake above.  We called two cowboys and they came to move the gator to a more appropriate spot....like a canal.  The first guy went into the water and grabbed the gator behind the head with his bare hands, and dragged him to the bank.  The gator was thrashing around, trying to flip out of the cowboys hands, and beating him with his tail.  So the other guy held the tail down, while a third guy used his foot to close the alligator's mouth, then used duct tape to secure it.







The gator was put into the cowboy's truck with the duct tape securely in place, and we made a short trip  down the road to the canal.

Once there, they put the gator on the ground and rolled him onto his back.  If you stroke the gator's tummy, they will relax and almost fall asleep.












The tummy feels like soft plastic, and the paws were softer than a dogs paws.  It was pretty cool.  Once the photo shoot was over, the men positioned the gator on the bank of the canal, peeled off the duct tape, then stood back.  The gator took several steps and slithered into the canal.  He's just a little guy but it was soooo exciting.

Some of the cowboys here delight in catching 2 or 3 foot alligators and planting them in peoples bathtubs.   I'm not up for that one!





On that first Saturday and Sunday following the storm we answered the call to help with hurricane clean-up crews.  We got our nifty yellow "Helping Hands" shirts that the church issues, and wore them proudly.  I had two people stop their cars to ask where the yellow shirt people were from, and I let them know we were from the church.  We went up the following Saturday and helped again.  We always came home tired, dirty and grateful that we were protected, healthy, and able to help out a few people with our efforts.











One Saturday (Pre-hurricane) we went to a Sea Turtle Wildlife Preserve where we were able to watch five hatchlings crawl off to the sea.  They will come back to this very beach in 25 years to lay their own eggs....if they survive the predators out there.



















We most likely won't be here in Florida to greet them when they get back.





Bus tours are always interesting.  One day we experienced a mini cattle stampede when we encountered 25-30 cows who were out of the pasture and running down the road on the bus route.  The missionary driving the bus simply stopped and let the cows run around us.  Our tour patrons were thrilled with the experience.  On the tours we occasionally get large groups (the bus holds 24) or maybe only 2 people will come.  I have learned that I should have studied harder in my German classes, and Spanish and Chinese would have also been good choices.  Some people are mainly interested in finding gators, and other want the nitty-gritty information on the cow breeds, types of grasses or general operation of the ranch.  It pays to be prepared. I am also becoming more familiar with identifying birds, turtles, turkeys and some snakes.





Just another picture of me trying to clean out the same pond again...this time on the banks instead of using the man-lift.  I was with another couple and we worked quickly because we knew there was an alligator spotted living in the area.  We got away unscathed, except for a nasty spider bite.  I think we are done trying to clear out ponds for our gators.  They are on their own now.






We had a wonderful Zone conference with our Mission Directors out of Salt Lake.  After touring the mens building projects and the women humanitarian projects we were individually interviewed by our Director.  While waiting for our turn to be interviewed, we all sat around and did some "stuffing 'n stitching" on bears and fleece balls.  Even the men got involved, and that made the event all the more entertaining.  Elder Fillmore (the former engineer) was heard explaining the "First Law of Blind Stitching" to our resident electrician (which is to hide the knot)  It was great!