Our AGM took place this year at the beautiful Monkton Wyld Court in Dorset on 20th and 21st September. We’ll provide a full report in our WWOOF UK News winter issue but wanted to give you a little taste here of the energy, focus and fun we experienced alongside the formal business and serious thinking that went on. It’s as much a members’ weekend as a business meeting really and we are trying to ensure we move to a different region every year to give as many people as possible the opportunity to join us. We were so fortunate to have Howard Davies (from Redfield community) with us – who’s a proper photographer – and here are some of his observations of the weekend.
We were privileged to have Simon Fairlie as our keynote speaker
And of course there was WWOOFing to be done….
We were delighted to welcome a considerable number of hosts who managed to get away to join us for the weekend and Fleur Kelly, a host from Somerset, sent us this reflection a day or so after we’d all packed up and gone home:
‘Just a quick note to say how much I enjoyed the AGM at Monkton Wyld this last weekend. Having been a host for the last eight years (I think) and benefited so wonderfully with all the amazing WWOOFers I’ve had, I wanted to say a real thank you to the WWOOFing staff, but never quite got the chance. Not helped by my leaving at about 11 am on Sunday; the wonderful morning made me realise how much I had to do at home, prompted by the lavender pruning and apple picking going on at Monkton.
Amanda Pearson and Nim Kibbler were brilliant speakers on important subjects, they made facilitating into an art form! What exuberance, wonderful to behold.
Simon Fairlie’s cheese was exceptional; laughed when on talking to him about it, he remarked his cheese started to go wrong once he attended classes, so promptly went back to his old ways of making it. I had similar experiences with bread making and dry curing of meat although never went to classes but have come across highly technical articles on the internet which really put me off for a bit. I had intended to buy some of his cheese but he was on a mission to demonstrate at Lyme and thought it could be after 2.30 pm before his return. Very many thanks to you all and those at Monkton Wyld for the weekend, such events take time planning and real hard work, you should feel well rewarded by its success.’
The WWOOF UK team learn from something from every event we organise and reflect on our experience to try to improve things for next year. It’s great to have feedback and to meet our members. Roll on AGM 2015!
