Day 39-43: Farm life :)

Wow what a long, fun, intense couple of days!!

Tonight is the night before my day off, but I'm actually going to go work tomorrow off the farm to make some cash for Thailand. I'll be driven their by Tina tomorrow morning, work all day, pitch a tent in the back yard for the night and then work all of Friday when they will take me back to the farm at the end of today. All that being said, this will still be a fairly short post since I actually have no days off this week.

We got our milk cow, her name is Missy Moo, she is fairly gentle but can be painful if she steps on your foot! Also she as horns that she will accidentally bonk you in the head with while you try to clip the lead rope into her halter.

We also had a frost a couple of nights which damaged a good amount of our crops because the weather only said 40 degrees so we didn't put out row covers, this also meant the last couple of days chores have been literally in freezing weather.

We traded a raw foodist $200 of raw beef for is beef smoothies (seriously), for 3 gallons of raw honey because he is a bee keeper. The honey is the best thing I have ever had especially when mixed with hot milk that is as whole as it can be, often times with a layer of cream just resting naturally on top.

On the drive to and from Sunday market, Me, Jim and Guy had some really good talks. Jim is incredibly knowledgeable about other religions and it was fun to pick is brain about that. He also said that Tom Cruise picked him up one time when he was hitch hiking through some city in California, he said Tom Cruise tried getting him to be a Scientologist. That Sunday started at 4am and I didn't go to sleep till 12am  so I was up for about 20 hours!

Oh and I made sure to take a picture of my blueberry muffin this week so you guys could see it. It's about the size of a softball!

Over the next couple of days, Monday and Tuesday, I was on the tractor all day. I logged about 16 hours of tractor time and feel quite comfortable up there. I was mowing all the pasture so that we can plant our winter cover crop of alfalfa. While walking out to the tractor one day I had to go through the middle of a herd of cattle and felt quite small and vulnerable, if any of them wanted to they could have trampled me. Later on when I was in the tractor trying to mow a field they were grazing, the roles were reverse and I had to make sure I didn't snap any legs on accident with one wrong twitch of my foot on the clutch. The power of diesel and hydraulics completely turned the tables. It was an interesting glimpse into the human temptation of not wanting to feel vulnerable to nature.


Bull getting frisky:

Wednesday it got to 95 degrees and it was the day we were trenching alllll day! We started chores at 5am and then Jim went to town to rent the "Ditch Witch". We trenched about 3,000 feet of earth, thank god for the Trencher otherwise that would have been an insurmountable task for 3 people. I personally hand dug about 200 feet of trench, it was just when I had to follow behind the machine and clean up areas it didn't get or when we were crossing a potential electric line or water line that Jim didn't want to risk hitting with the trenching saw.

For Dinner tonight Tina showed Guy and I how to marinate some meat and then slow cook it in the crockpot. We marinated two packs of Walking J short ribs, and we through in a Walking J round roast to split. We let it marinate over night, and then stuck in the slow cooker first thing this morning, it was sooooo good! The fat was actually my favorite part of the meat which is odd because normally I don't like fat at all.

To end things on a beautiful note, here is a sunset that occurred with a full moon next to it. Gorgeous!



Goodnight everyone!