Soo quick entry tonight. Since I last checked in, I went skiing again. It was really good. I did 20km without stocks (skaters), another 10km with stocks and then walked back to Freudenstadt (10km) with skis because I couldn't be bothered waiting for the bus heh. The next morning I got up early to go for a run because I was leaving that afternoon. It was good up to 3 minutes before it was scheduled to finish. And then, on a tricky descent, I twisted my ankle badly, heard a loud crack and yelled an expletive. My first thought was obviously that I'd broken a bone. But I was able to walk back (400m) even if it hurt quite badly, so that was a good sign. At worst it was sprained, probably not even that.

I had lunch with the owners of the Gästehaus where I was staying in Baiersbronn and then caught a few trains to Alt Tublach, where my WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms = you work on a farm in exchange for a bed and food) hosts live. They have a nice big house with stalls to the side where they keep chickens, sheep, ducks and geese. They also own a field about 1km from the house, which holds about 10 horses (and another field next to it, which I think they cultivate vegetables in, but nothing's happening there at the moment). They gave me a quick tour of the house, then after dinner I went straight to bed (I'm sleeping in their son's room while he's at uni) and slept for 12 hours lol.

The next day, Sigfried..at this point I need to describe the household. There're 2 girls (Maree and Friedreke) slightly younger than me, their mother (Sigfried), their Father (Martin), and next door live Oma and Opa (I think they're Sigfried's parents, but am not entirely sure)...strapped my ankle (she's a nurse) and I went with her out to the horse field. For a few hours, I picked up (with a scooper!) what are euphemistically called 'Horse apples'. That wasn't too bad, I was just very careful to avoid standing behind the horses after seeing one of the bigger ones buck and kick at another horse!
We went home after that, had a quick lunch, and then Sigfried went out to take Friedreke to the dentist. I stayed home and made dinner (Green lentil soup with random vegies), which was fun:) Everyone got back at 4:30ish to eat dinner (seemed a bit weird to me, but everyone was hungry, me included, so why not), and then I went out with Sigfried and the girls again for more apple picking. That night there was a bit of an intense supper conversation, which I didn't really follow too well because they reverted into Schwabisch (a strong german dialect), but which seemed to revolve around whether they were going to have to look after another Oma, who suffered from a mental illness and had had some kind of accident that day. I felt a bit like an intruder, so I went to bed asap, and read for a few hours.

This morning Sigfried asked me why I'd gone to bed so early, and when I haltingly explained, she said it was fine and they liked having me there, so I felt a lot more at home after that:) Today I helped Martin clean out the mobile chicken hutch. First we had to manhandle the 90 chickens into another stall. I was worried I was going to break their legs or injure them in some way, so thanks to my sympathy, two chickens managed to escape from my grasp and had to be recaptured by Opa:P Before that, the door to the chicken wagen blew open and about 10 chickens escaped! After trying in vain (we got a few, but the rest were too hard to catch) to recapture them by blocking them into a corner and then trying to grab their legs with this long hook contraption (man I didn't know chickens could run that fast!), we left them to chill out for a while and moved the others. Opa and I set up a chain (obviously because he realised if he let me carry them all the way on my own, more would escape:P), while Martin hunted the chickens inside the hutch, and it went fairly smoothly after that. We eventually managed to trap the renegade chickens and it was on to the next part of the operation. I was in charge of scraping the befouled straw from the bottom of the van into a wheelbarrow waiting below, at least I was until the girls called us in for a quick lunch, while Opa finished off the scraping for me. We collected the eggs from the roosts and then I got to use a high pressure hose to scour off the inground gunk. That was pretty fun apart from the few times when I accidentally sprayed into a corner and all the chicken shit flew up into my face, eurgh:P Then I put on a facemask and sprayed the whole wagon with this chalk mixture (using an air compressor, wheee:D), which supposedly 'kind of' acts as a disinfectant.

I was in serious need of a shower after all that, but at least I was done for the day:) I made samosas for dinner tonight, which went down well:). Almost the whole left side of my foot is covered in a massive bruise, but in spite of that, my ankle is almost completely pain free, I can walk around normally now:) I'll probably be able to start running again on Monday:)