So back at Knockanstockan we were all given tons of work to do in order to get the festival up and running. Before we arrived, the deal was supposed to be that everyone did 6 hours of work, either in the morning or the evening, and the rest of the time was free. Once we arrived, of course, we realized we wouldn't be nearly as lucky.
Besides being just about completely isolated in our giant knockanstockan farm because of no public transportation, we basically just worked all day for the first 4 or 5 days we were at the camp, and then partied all night. I was lucky enough, at least it seemed at first, to be chosen to work the kitchen staff. So instead of having to do physical labor all day like carrying giant heavy palettes of wood across huge fields, I got to chop onions and scrub dishes, and carry giant buckets of water up and down hills. Plus my shift was always 7:30am-1:30pm. I covered breakfast and lunch and got to skip out on the dishes after lunch for the next shift to do.
Of course during the first few days when I still had a ton of energy, I went and helped everyone else for the next 6 hours, building tipis (yes, I mean real giant native American tipis), clearing nettles and plants from the camping fields, and dragging palettes across fields. I was one of the few brilliant people who brought work gloves, which made the work not nearly as bad.
As for the food, there was a constant lack of funds sent to the kitchen, so for the most part, in the morning we cooked porridge with raisins and cut fruit. Sometimes there were rasher sandwiches (bacon sandwiches) and if we were really lucky, there were rasher and egg sandwiches with sausage. I think that only happened once.
For lunch we usually had some type of stew which was basically just tons of chopped potatoes, leeks, onions, carrots, and any other veg we could get our hands on. We'd also do some buttered bread and maybe a bit more sausages or rashers. It doesn't seem like much to cook, but most of our time was spent trying to keep this outdoor kitchen in some form of sanitary conditions without any running water. It was pretty ridiculous actually. Everyone had to wash their dishes in tubs of water that got dirty almost instantly. Halfway through the camp we also found out that we couldn't dump our dirty water in the stream right next to the tent so I had to start lugging the giant buckets of water down to the pig pen an entire field away. That was no fun at all.
Then once the festival started all hell broke loose. It was pretty much impossible to keep volunteers from destroying the kitchen and it would take all morning just to clean up the drunken mess they'd made the night before. After a day of this, most of the kitchen volunteers, including myself, just failed to show up to make breakfast....heheh. And that was about the time we all decided to check out a day early and go to the city, which is where I am now! Yay!
The only other really cool fact about working in the kitchen is that the tent was from the 40's and was used during either some Irish civil war or WWII. I'm not sure which but it's some damn old army tent and it was really cool.
People eating in the tent on a rainy day
Fiona, the coolest kitchen volunteer around and me. She was my mama hen during the entire festival and made sure I was okay and well fed :)
The giant cooking pots and paella dish (even though we never made paella)
Chopping the veg in the kitchen
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