Day 4: Farm labor/maintenance

Today was a sleep in for me! 5:30am wake up and I was up before Jim, because to me when people say chores start at 6, I can't help but be there at 5:50 ready to go, perhaps I should try and do myself a favor and loosen up my punctuallity screw. Anyways, today since I was early, I just started the chores with out him. However he came out just at the right time to help me chase down the turkeys that got out through the gate as I was going through with the golf cart. After regular morning chores Tina who normally milks the goats, taught me how to milk them. It was interesting.. I knew intuitively that the milk would be warm, but it still took me by surprise the first time I accidentally squirted some on myself! It was hot!

For breakfast I had two nights ago's pasta, which I would have eaten last night except that I fell asleep to early to really have an appetite, and I was physically to tired to even just warm up left overs. I don't have a microwave so warming things up means putting it on a low heat on the gas stove and stirring it constantly so nothing burns to the bottom. Anyways, I had to eat the pasta and squash medley for breakfast because it was in the pot I use to cook oatmeal, and I have no tupperware to transfer the pasta into! 

Today's work included no harvesting! Instead we were re-organizing the out-building with all of the lumber and steel and other random farm things in it. It was hard work, and heavy lifting, but I felt good all the way through it, despite yesterday's heavy lifting as well. I can only hope that some day I'll be as good of a farm boy as Clark Kent (That's a Smallville reference for those who don't know its my favorite show, featuring a teenage superman). Once we did a lot of organizing and shuffling of stuff, loading a lot of it onto the trailer. During all of the moving around I saw my first scorpion, it was dead, and then 20 minutes later I saw my second scorpion and this one was alive! It was tiny though.

After everything was loaded Jim fired up the tractor! Woo hoo! I love heavy machinery, it fascinates me, he gave me a quick tutorial of how to operate it all and then I hopped in the back while we headed out to the "bone pile". That is what Jim calls his pile of junk that isn't junk enough to dump, but not worth keeping near by. The bone pile is located on the back 40 of their property and was a good ten minute tractor ride. We unloaded everything at the junk pile, and then Jim said, "Now we are gunna go load the tepee poles onto the trailer, I promised Maggie I would set the tepee up for her by her birthday." Now I had heard Tina say that they lived in a tepee for a year and a half, but I had no idea that they still had it! I'm so stoked to help set it up! Again for those of you who don't know me, anything having to do with Native Americans, or indigenous cultures in general gets me real fired up! 

We took everything back to the main house, dropped it off, and broke for lunch, but since it's labor day I guess some friends of the family are headed over for a BBQ so I had the rest of the day off until evening chores, around 4:30 or 5. But I wanted to help Jim set up the tepee with for the kids so I could learn how to do it! It's surprisingly simple! But so cool, I took some pictures of it, one from outside, one from the inside.

While we were setting it up I absolutely grilled Jim for information about how it is to live inside, and as much I as I wish I could capture all that I learned about it, it is to much, but I can share a couple of ingenious nuggets!  For example, he said that it can be quite comfortable in there at 0 degrees Fahrenheit in just shorts. The secret to this is an additional layer of canvass that we haven't set up yet on the inside that goes all the way around the circumferences of the tepee from ground level to about 8 feet up. Then a third piece rims half the circumference, but this time coming out like a shelf rather than laying flat against the wall. The shelf piece traps heat from your fire down on your level rather than letting it rise, and the second layer creates 3 or 4 inches of air space between you and the outside elements. But because you have a fire going the warm inner layer forces the cooler air trapped in the air space up and out of your tepee. Ha, to be honest, I don't truly understand the physics of it all, but I trust Jim since he lived in one for a year and a half. Another tip he gave me was for at night when you have to let the fire go out, it gets really cold so you have to have good bedding, but he said in the morning you should have a tinder ball and kindling pre-made so that if your fire pit is at the foot of your bed, you can crawl down to the end of your bed, chuck the tinder in, and then he said he had a 3/4 inch copper pipe that he would blow on the fire with, from inside his covers! How cool is that?? That's a tip you only get from someone with first hand experience.

Today was a fairly easy day! I had a quick time with the evening chores, and then I was done by 5, and to top it all off, tomorrow is my day off! I have nooo idea what I'm going to do though with all that free time.

And for dinner tonight I got pretty fancy since I was off early, and have tomorrow off. I made some veggies, sauteed with butter and sesame seeds, it was green beans, squash, corn, okra and garlic, it was delicious! I actually ate it to fast, and didn't even think about getting a picture of if for you guys until later. And then the main course was pan fried salmon mixed in with rice and beans, on some of the most delicious tortillas I have ever had! Tina picked out the tortillas for me because she knows whats best, she said,"Being so close to Mexico has some really good benefits, like damn good tortillas!

 Well that's all for tonight!