The last couple of days were fun, but hard! I have begun to notice some more shifts that show my month of experience is starting to pay off. Firstly, the other morning the goats got out of there pen before I was ready to let them out, and instead of chasing them around like I used to do. I was able to properly command Cristos and I got him to round them up for me! It was a cool moment! Another exciting thing about my month of being here is the progress I see in my hands. Let me start by telling a story from Jim. He was working on a ranch when he was about my age. The rancher he worked for was a really hard core, tough old dude, and although Jim never complained to him, his co-workers did. They would complain about how the fencing they were putting up was to splintery and rough on there hands and wanted the old rancher to buy them some leather gloves. His response was, "Leather costs, money, you can grow more skin for free." and that was the end of it! Jim told me this story after he had bought me some gloves, and although he bought me them, I still have gotten much tougher hands because I don't use the gloves a much as I could. While I was working with some really splintery wood I got about 4 or 5 splinters which are actually still in my hands right now but they are shallow enough that I don't feel them thanks to all the tough skin I have developed since I have been here.
On Thursday I was off the farm all day with Jim and the kids. We had to go to the butcher and packing house to pick up the steer that Tina dropped off. While we were their, Jim was in the trailer organizing the freezers and putting the beef in them while I shuttled to beef to him from the big freezer. While Jim was in the trailer the butcher came around the corner and gave me a weird look. "Umm, can I help you?" If I had been paying attention I would have been able to tell by her tone that she thought I was up to trouble. "Sorry, what?" I didn't hear her that well at first. She was wearing a revolver on her hip and pulled her jacket up over it to make sure I got a good look at it and repeated, "I said, can I help you!?" I caught on to her accusatory tone this time and realized she thought I was robbing her or something, she obviously didn't know who I was. I wasn't sure of what to do, I had never been threatened by a female butcher with a gun before, "Uhh, Jim?" I called into the trailer, he came forward and poked his head out. "OH my gosh, haha, you scared me, I didn't recognize your helper, I thought I was being robbed!" She patted her gun re assuringly, "Good thing I'm always armed though." She smiled at me. I found out later from Jim that she is the only female butcher to complete her butchering school or whatever it's called, in the state of Arizona.
I ended up working the majority of the market myself Thursday night which was interesting! It shows a lot of trust on Jim's part which I think is a good thing!
Today was my day off, but, since Tina is in Canada right now, Guy had to go with Jim to market, so Jim could watch the kids, same reason I went with him to market last night! So I was all alone at the farm which meant I had to do chores in the morning. While doing chores I was listening to music and singing at the top of my lungs again like I did around day 5 of being here when I was on the farm all alone. It was a good morning of cruising in the Golf cart and singing to the animals all of my favorite songs. When I was watering the turkeys, a song by Temper Trap came on and their lead singer has a pretty high voice, so to keep up with him, I switched to my falsetto range. I guess the turkey's didn't like it because they started gobbling and making a whole bunch of racket when I was singing. I stopped at first and looked at them, they got quiet and looked right back, then I started singing again, and they started making a bunch of noise again! It was pretty funny!
After chores I was feeling lazy after yesterday's easy day of driving around, and today being my day off, so I went for a run, and ended up doing an 8 mile run, which is twice as far as I have ever run in my life! I just set off in the beginning of the run telling myself I would go till I got tired and then turn around. But I just didn't really get tired. I turned around eventually because I realized I was very dehydrated, all I had, had to drink since 8 o'clock the night before was a small cup of coffee. So I turned around and headed home, it was cool not really getting tired!
That's all for now!
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