For breakfast I have been having eggs with my oatmeal to try and ward off my hunger for longer than an hour. Eggs however are a pain to clean and I have been trying to figure out the best way to cook eggs so that they are the least stuck to the pan at the end of cooking, I got so tired of scrubbing egg off of my pans that today I decided to eat them raw! It wasn't that bad once I committed mentally to doing it! So breakfast today was oatmeal, goat's milk and three raw eggs. It worked like a charm too, zero clean up, less time eating, more time working, and no hunger pains till about 11!
Part of the cleaning I did in preparation for Guy's arrival was laundry, which means I had to wear the old Carhartts that I came here with, normally I use the smaller waste size ones that I found here. My old ones were sooo big on me though, and I also had to cut a new notch in my belt just to keep them on my hips!
After my breakfast, I had more planting and mulching to do. I worked non stop for about 4 hours and finished off the planting project! It felt good to cross it off my list! It was another scorcher today until about 1 or 1:30 when a breeze picked up, but up until then I was sweating profusely. Planting is strenuous in a whole other way than other farm labor. A good metaphor is that the regular farm labor I'm used to is more like weightlifting, where as harvesting and planting is more like yoga. You are often in weird positions, holding "poses" for as long as it takes to get all the seeds in the ground, moving slowly but still breathing hard and sweating! It's really good for me, helping to balance me out I think. I learned another lesson today while I was planting, it was a lesson surrendering to uncontrollable situations, as well as focusing on my mission. Although I should say that its more that I experience these lessons, because most of this stuff is all things I have heard or been told but it's not until I experience them that I really take it to heart. This experience was brought about by flies. I thought that normally flies don't like direct sunlight but for whatever reason they were out in droves today while I was planting. There were about six at any given time circling my face, landing on it, crawling around my nose and lips. If I swatted they all just buzzed off for about 1 second and then landed again, I realized quickly that swatting at them was not helping at all, and that it had slowed my pace of planting down to about zero. So I took a second to reinvent the sensation of flies on my face, instead of finding it highly irritating I pretended that it was really rather pleasant and that it was a form of "face therapy" that some people pay hundreds of dollars for, and I was getting it for free, that I should be so lucky to have these flies all over my face. That did the trick, they didn't leave, it wasn't one of those things where I made my peace with them, and then they left me alone. They stuck around for about 2 hours until it really heated up outside. But that was 2 hours worth of experiential lesson learning in my book! :)
As I was planting Frank and Lloyd, those two brothers I mentioned a couple days ago passed the garden in their truck and honked like they always do! They are super friendly guys. I'm reminded of a story about them that Tina told me a couple days ago. They had left the house at one point during the evening and gone out to do errands, and when they got back they found out they had been broken into. Then they found their bull mastiff and he had a bunch of jean denim stuck in his teeth! He obviously got a chunk of the intruders leg or something. They were really confused about the whole thing but figured it was some illegal immigrant because that type of thing is quite common. It wasn't until later when they heard on the news that the juvenile detention center had, had a big break out of boys from their premises, and that facility is only a few miles from where we are. I can't imagine breaking out of a detention center, breaking into someones home, and then getting attacked by a huge dog. Anyhow, I thought that was just an interesting comment on the area that I am living in, its fairly normal thing for break-ins and what not.
Around 1 I broke for lunch after I finished with all the planting for the day. I spent the first twenty minutes of my lunch break just enjoying the breeze flowing through my back stoop. I still had music going from work it was my pump up playlist from spring Rugby back in college, so the whole time I was planting I was having flashbacks to my rugby days! But I shut it off for my break and just sat and listened to my environment. The birds were chirping, the barn flies were buzzing, the chickens were scratching in the dirt, the cicadas were rattling out there summer song. It was an incredibly peaceful moment. I really enjoyed just doing nothing for a little while, usually I'm either eating (or some task relate to eating like cooking or doing dishes) or working. Which I love! I love being constantly active and working hard for something I am passionate about. But it was really nice to take a twenty minute break from work and quiet my mind. Soon though my mind was racing again, it usually is, this time I was thinking about the evolution of language and how whole cultures made up of millions of people agree that the letters "c-h-i-c-k-e-n" are the representation of an animal. Then someone observed the way chickens scratch in the earth for food, and noticed the markings it left were similar to someone's hand writing that they had seen, then they probably made an off hand comment to someone else about how "that guy's hand writing looks like chicken scratch." and then the phrase of "chicken scratch", in reference to handwriting, was born. Now, how ever many years after the birth of that phrase, people commonly say, "I can't read your chicken scratch" and the meaning of it is generally understood by most people. Even though they two subjects were originally completely unrelated! Humans really are strange!
Oh and here is a couple shots of drip irrigation lines at work:
Each wet spot in the dirt represents a hole in the tape where water very slowly seeps out. Those spots above represent about half an hour of dripping, we leave the water on for about 2 hours per bed until all the circles of water expand and eventually the whole bed is wet.
After lunch I went to find Jim and he said to go box up some of the Garlic that was hanging in the hay barn and that I could have the rest of the afternoon off until chores! It was really nice of him and I initially asked if he was sure that there wasn't anything to be done, and he said well there is always stuff to be done, but that you also need to learn when take a break. So I took a break.. for about an hour, then it was time for chores! :)
Chores passed by in normal fashion, except that when I checked the chicks one was dead, so I disposed of it the same way Jim had, by giving it a little birdy cremation in the burn barrel. Except, before I burned it, I pulled it's head off, I wanted to see what it was like because Jim said it was really easy. It was super easy, it was weird though, as soon as it's head was in my left and its body in my right, it just looked like a broken toy or stuffed animal. It was a pretty surreal five seconds as I stared at it. The chicken round up was easy enough and I continued my nightly routine of playing with Asher, but tonight I also decided to give Shawnee some love because I often see him trying to play with Boris, but Boris isn't at pretending to be a puppy, which makes sense considering he is a 350 lb boar who just eats and sleeps.
As I went outside to turn of the barn lights, I noticed these bats roosting up in the corner!
I wonder if they have been there every night for the last month, but I just now am noticing them.
One other aspect of preparing for Guy was moving my bed off the futon, and up onto the actual bunk beds. So tonight will be my first experience on the real beds! Hopefully it goes well!
No comments:
Post a Comment