WWOOF Hosts
Herbs & borders, soft fruit, vegetables, teahouse & pond, wild patch & bees… Meals & accommodation provided in return for twenty five hours per week of your help in the garden, on our outbuildings or in the house - depending on skills and time of year. Work alongside us or independently for short periods. We have been WWOOF hosts since 1982 and now enjoy the smallholding as a retirement project. We can teach: use of tools, the making of bread and compost.
Come and harvest in the widest sense of the word and visit the compost loo. Specialised interests: felt making. After 20 years of caring for breeding ewes, we have now taken down most of the fences.
You might just want to improve your English language skills!
In your time off, we can provide you with a bicycle, you can go for country walks in the North Downs, into Reigate or catch a train to London.
WWOOF host since 1982 - more here in Info for WWOOFers
History
Originally, The Bungalow belonged to Shagbrook, a Victorian residence. It was converted from a small brick storehouse into a two roomed dwelling with scullery in the 1930’s. The cart track remains and leads on towards the blue, tree-lined, once exotic Pleasure Garden, around the Reigate Stone lined pond, past the laurel patch and a wonderful, mature apple tree, up to paddocks and a shelter belt of Corsican pines. The orchard was eroded with all other established UK orchards in the 70's. The woodland also holds mature trees like oaks, willows, lime, Otto Luyken English Laurel, rhododendron.
The Smallholding
At a time 'when you never had it so good', in 1982, I moved from London to Surrey to start an organic smallholding with those 3 1/2 acres and my then partner. Two extensions were added to The Bungalow to satisfy modern standards. Grassland served as paddocks for a flock of four Shetland sheep for 20 years. We also kept free range chickens, geese, ducks, bees and some quail.
Since the great hurricane of 1984, the shelter belt at the back has been cleared and replanted with a variety of trees. There is plenty of wood to feed the stove in winter. The pond has been desilted to stop flooding.
A large vegetable patch was established to produce organic crops to sell at local markets. Now much reduced, it still produces crops for the house; part of it serves as a herb garden.
Since the Permaculture Design Course held here in August 1991, there are undulating edges, butts full of rainwater, a spacious compost loo and various salad plants and herbs nestle successfully under plum, mulberry, quince, cherry and pear tree. Perennial patches of edibles are encouraged to supply their own seedlings and have become well established. The beehives serve as a sanctuary for the beekeepers' club.