After my two "days off" Thursday and Friday, coincidentally enough I got another "day off" on Sunday! By that I mean Guy and I did chores in the morning as usual, and chores in the evening as usual but from 10 till 5 we were on an Ethnobotany Hike through Sycamore Canyon which is south of us. Sundog was our guide and Carla, Artemis and Scott, all friends of Jim and Tina, also accompanied us on the hike! Sundog is extremely knowledgeable about all the different plants in the area and all of there medicinal uses, it was a great hike I learned a lot!
Sundog teaching about the uses of the Agave plant:
As Tina put it, we were a fairly "Motley Crew". It was a fun, odd collection of people! Everyone brought something very unique to the hike! It was also a funny distinction between Guy and I and the rest of the group. Where everyone else was decked out in hiking boots, backpack, wide brimmed hats, with 2 water bottles each and a full packed lunch, Guy and I were in sneakers, with one water bottle each and a bag of peanuts to split that we carried in my drawstring shoe bag. But we did just fine! Ha, I think everyone else just got excited for a big hike, but it ended up being fairly tame!
There was a lovely, but freeezing water hole at the turn around point of the hike.
Sundog set the tone by stripping down to nothing and jumping in, so Scott, Guy and I followed suit! It was extremely cold water to be skinny dipping in, and Scott and Sundog hurried out as soon as they had hurried in. Once again Guy and I stood out from the crowd. We climbed up high onto some over hanging rocks and started jumping off them, it was very fun! Of the two girls, Artemis and Carla, only Artemis went in the water, but she had a swimming suit. Carla later told Tina that it felt like the scene out of the Diseny movie Mulan, where Mulan, who is masquerading as man in the army to save her families honour, finally gets a moment alone from all the men and his having a bath in the river, enjoying the solitude and serenity, when allll the dudes come charging through, naked, and go jumping in the river! It was a pretty accurate analogy I think.
In other news we have had record highs for the month of October this past week, which means by midday it is cooking at around 95 degrees!
Monday I went with Tina to do some errands. We had to dump the trash trailer at the land fill which was extremely depressing. It was my first time at landfill and I had never truly realized that a landfill is literally a mountain of trash. And to be the actual person who was throwing trash bags out on the dirt was an awful feeling.
After the depressing land fill we went to go pick up the new turkey we bought. They were big turkeys and required a fair bit of wrangling! One of them actually clipped me in the mouth with it's wing and made my lip start bleeding, which isn't actually saying a whole lot considering how dry and windy it is here. But still, it was the first time a bird has drawn blood from me!
On Tuesday, 10/18, the first leaves started to fall, it was a cool moment to all of the sudden see cotton wood leaves on the ground and realize that even though it's 95 and it doesn't feel like it, that fall is actually on it's way!
On a similar note, in general I feel much more in tune with the cycles of nature since I have been here. For example, since I beat the sun up every morning I notice the change in time that it rises (as well as sets since I am usually still working then as well). Also I have been watching the phases of the moon ever since I got here and it is fun to notice the change in it's rise time as well! I have no real knowledge of the stars or constellations yet, but it is still fun to gaze at them as well as the milky way! Arizona skies can make you feel quite small, in the best possible way of course!!
Tuesday night Jim broke out the aerial shot of the farm and diagrams and projection charts and gave me and Guy a wonderful big picture reminder/update of where he wants the future of the the farm to be headed. He talked with us for about an hour about different plans he had, some as long term as 10 years off. It was a really great talk though and it definitely rekindled some of my passion for being here. I suppose over the last week or two, I slipped into a bit of a mental rut, feeling like I had "seen and done it all". Which of course is not true, but it is a fairly easy mental trap to fall into, yet fortunately, just as easy to get out of! To be clear, it was never a feeling of boredom or resentment, it was just a feeling of routine, and comfortableness. Which to a certain extent is a good thing, I'm grateful chores feel second nature now, and that I can do them rather quickly, and I'm glad harvesting is really easy and fun for me now as well as weeding and planting. But Jim's talk reminded me that we are making moves and steps towards more and more sustainability and regenerative practices each and every day and that although progress is slow sometimes, it is still progress!
After our great talk to cap off a wonderful evening, Jim gave me the backpack that he had promised me, and Oh My goodness it is the prettiest thing you have ever seen! Although it is about 20 years old and has a bullet hole in it, I love the thing! It is an awesome teal color and I will be most excited to travel around Thailand with this beauty on my back! I tried expressing to Jim how grateful I was in words but in the end all I managed was a moment or two of speechlessness and then many "wows" and "thank yous" as he showed me all the ins and outs of the bag and the nifty things it could do!
The next day, today, was a fun day of electric fence set up for me! I spent all morning weed eating around the perimeter and interior of the the fencing making sure no grass was making contact with the fencing and grounding it out, essentially lessening the shocking power of the fence. It was a good solid 4 hours of weed eating! At one point my spindle at the end of the machine got twisted up in some of the line and I immediately shut off the machine and began to unwind the fencing. It was pretty tangled in there and I ended up spending 2 or 3 minutes getting lightly shocked while trying to untangle the mess! It was a odd sensation in my arms. Similarly, When I switched from the perimeter fencing to the interior, where the electric lines were much lower and closer to the grass I was getting shocked pretty often through the weed eater. I didn't realize it at first though because as anyone who has ever operated a weed eater knows, they come along with a certain amount of numbness and heavy vibrations in the arm. But when I switch to the interior fencing I thought at first that I had been hit with a wave of fatigue because my arms were absolutely numb for the first 20 minutes of it. Then I got smart and realized that the metal head of my weed eater had been conducting electricity into my arms for the last 20 minutes!! Although as I mention, the interior fencing was much lower than the perimeter, so even when I was aware, it was still quite difficult to keep the weed eater in the 5 inch margin between the ground and the electricity, so I still ended up getting shocked quite a bit.
I made a new batch of cheese tonight after milking Missy Moo, it is such a cool feeling to be the one that feeds and waters her, milks her, and then makes delicious cheese and butter (which I made Tuesday night) from it, as well as drinking the milk straight! Such a close connection to that animal!
Well, Tina is going through her final Yoga Teacher Immersion Course so I don't get to do any hired out work over the next two days off, but I will be doing chores tomorrow since Jim needs at least some help while she is gone, as well as going to market with him Friday morning, so the streak of "days off" continues! :)
Feel free to email me or leave a comment with any questions!
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