My weirdest day yet

Ok... so things just get more interesting every day. I just sat at a cafe in Cork again and wrote down the events of the last 24 hours so that I would remember them in detail. Instead of recapping it here, I'll just copy my journal verbatum.
Sept 11, 2007:
"Sitting at a cafe in Cork City right now, feeling like I should put down the events of the last 24 hours so that my memory of them will be strengthened when I look back.
Took the early bus to Mogeely and arrived around noon to another sleepy little town with very little going on. I left Denise with the packs and went off to find some place that looked open so that I could ask where the lady in the tipee lived, as this was the directions I was given to find the new farm. There was little life to be seen and as I rounded the corner I saw a punky hippie kind of girl walking down the street. I stopped her to ask where I should go, only to find out that she was, in fact, looking for me, too. We went back to Denise and collected our bags and were on our way to the farm. The walk was about 15 minutes uphill, not too fun, especially for Denise, whose pack is excessively heavy with tons of extraneous bundles tied to the exterior. We came to a point where there was a tiny dirt path branching off the main road which we were led down, walking all the while on wood planks that lined the walk. As we neared the farm strange curiosities began to show up in abundance - a tree with televisions, phones, and doorknobs hanging from ropes beneath its boughs, horses roaming freely through a field with a few chickens and home-made structures mixed in. We were led first to our accomodation- two A-frame simple tents that were lined with plastic on the outside and patchworked carpets on the inside. The "beds" were wood palates with thick layers of cushions and FILTHY blankets strewn about. These tents smelled as if they were occupied by horses and dogs before they were occupied by dirty hippies who never showered and instead bathed in mud and then rolled around in the bedding. We dropped our bags and were brought out again to meet Astrid, the matriarch of the seven directions farmstead. We were led again down wood board covered dirt paths to what basically looked from the outside to be a pile of garbage covered by thick clear plastic. There was a small doorway into the dome. Inside there was intensely thick clutter everywhere - weird random objects, books, clothing, cats and dogs, dishes, drums, boxes filled with who-knows-what, empty tobacco envelopes, half drunk cups of tea, and a little lady named Astrid, who emerged from the clutter but who could have meshed back into it like a ghost into a patch of fog. She stood no more than 5 feet high and spoke with a thick French accent - she was smoking a cigareette with a long wood handle and had a strange half smile on her face as she walked toward us to welcome us to her strange, very distorted reality. Carolina, the hippie chick who had picked us up, excused herself to return to her weeding, and Denise and I stayed to have a chat with Astrid. She offered us tea, which I denied, and Denise politely accepted. She rummaged through a pile of junk until she found a coffee mug, and prepared the drink which had a thick layer of dust floating on its surface. We sat down on half broken piano stools and talked a bit about life, a bit about gardening. Astrid seemed to have had an exceptionally strange life which was really no suprise considering how she was living now. She had been living in this tent for 11 years and was originally living with a number of other characters who had since left the farm to persue other realities. We eventually got up to take the "grand tour" of the property. She showed us the polytunnels where they grow their food (these were the cleanest and most well kept spots on the property), the "bathroom" and "shower" which Denise and I explored more later, and the skeleton of a structure in the midst of being built. There were other plastic dome like homes we did not go inside of but that were surely equally weird to the rest. Scattered throughout the property were strange objects in strange places... mannequin bodies hanging out of trees, strange messages written out of broken peices of street signs and license plates and so on. We were assigned the task of picking green beans and planting some peas in one of the polytunnels. We were quickly devising our plan of escape once we were left alone. We picked beans and tried to adjust to the situation we found ourselves in. I questioned whether I could last a week - just roughing it out- I decided that if I did, I would just wear the same clothes every day, not take any showers, get really disgusting, and then escape to the city again where I could wash the filthy experience away. We heard clanging of pans outside and I found Carolina to ask whether it was a signal of some sort. She told me that it was the dinner bell. We saw Astrid coming toward us with a bag of food. She said she was not going to join us as she was not hungry, and so she gave the bag to Carolina and we were led to the dining area, another plastic covered, carpet lined structure, this time with two walls opened to the elements, again surrounded by crazy objects and messages scribed all over the walls. The table, plates, chairs, and floor were all coated with a thick layer of dirt, as was Carolina herself, once I got a closer look. The lunch was unpacked from the bag - a bowl of lettuce, some bread, and some pasta mixed with eggs, mayonnaise, and cucumber (and, as Denise and I both later found, a good quantity of dog hair). We were served all of this with filty silverware onto filty plates, and we sat down to the filty table on our filthy chairs and ate with our filthy hands, unwashed after our work in the garden due to the fact that a sink did not exist on the entire farm. The food, combined with the experience, was a repulsing mix. We ate anyway, and talked with Carolina, who was a crazy hippie with the dirtiest hands one could ever imagine. She had cut off all her hair so that she would not have to shower often and to fend off her stench she just put on copius amounts of patchouli oil, which wafted off her everyhwere she went. When the meal was over, we walked back to Astrids tent where Carolina put all the dirty dishes into a bucket of murky brown water in order to "wash" them.
Denise and I said we were going to return to our work and once out of earshot, began devising our escape in earnest. On our way back to the polytunnel we stopped to check out the bathroom and shower situation in more detail - what looked like a pile of carpet layered on a wood frame. One side was the "shower" which was a linolium square on the ground with a hose hanging down from above. The other half of the structure was the toilet, which was no more than a hole in a board with a toilet seat fastened above, all of which was covered in a thick layer of what I hoped was dirt and not dried excrement.
This moment was the last straw for both of us. We took a few photos to remember this strange dream and went back to our tents to collect our belongings. I wrote a quick note saying that the situation was not what we had expected and that we were on our way. I tacked it to Carolinas door, we grabbed our packs, waited for the coast to be clear, and made a break for it. We ran up the dirt path and back to the road and put out our thumbs to catch a ride back to reality. A man from the nearby cheese factory stopped for us and brought us to Castlemartyr, the closest semi-larger town, where we got a bus back to Cork City, where we checked into a hostel for the night. We called another farm that I had talked to earlier, one which has a website with pictures making it look semi normal and liveable. They told us that they had room for us and now here we are, waiting for another bus to another farm. I certainly hope this one will be more reasonable than the last two. I seriously doubt that it could get any worse or any weirder. This will be my last attempt at the whole farm thing... if it doesn't work out this time, I'm just going to travel about and stay in hostels for a while longer.. What a crazy trip this has been"

So, family and friends, there you have it: the next installment of my crazy adventure. I seriously fall asleep laughing every night at how crazy it's been... I never could have anticipated this. I'll keep you all posted as to what comes next. Pray for me! :-)