Day 6: Just another day, a good day though, just another good day :)

This morning was pretty basic, chores, then breakfast, then harvest. However the harvest was a little different today because I had some help from Carla. Carla is a girl that comes by every Wednesday to help out with that weeks harvest. It was nice having her help, plus, Jim made the smart decision of having her to the more disorderly beds of veggies because she was more delicate and able to tip toe around the vines on the ground.

During the harvest we had the winter hay delivered, it was incredible! Two semi trucks worth of hay, and then there was a massive forklift that unloaded it all. I really wish I had pictures to show you but I was harvesting at the time and didn't have my camera. But here is a shot of it all put away in the outbuilding. You can't really tell from the picture but it goes three rows deep all the way across.

I asked Jim how we access it, since the stacks are so high and he said that we will start by using a ladder to get up there and kick off what we need, and then each time we go up for more we will take some from the next layer until we have stairs formed. How sweet is that? Its going to be like a giant hay fort!

Lunch today was the usual, but don't get me wrong, it was delicious as always! Lunch is normally a turkey sandwich on homemade bread with dried onions, tomatoes, salt and pepper, provolone cheese, and fresh basil from the garden. Then I usually accompany it with some green been fresh from the garden, as well as either an apple, or apple sauce. It is quite good, but sort of a lot of effort, at times I don't feel like making that everyday, but I'm usually glad I do when I take the first bite. But it got me thinking today as I was doing evening chores (feeding everyone) about whether or not its a good thing we developed taste and culinary skills, because the pigs and dogs go absolutely bonkers everyday, twice a day for the same exact thing, corn, and dog food. The pups are as healthy of a dog as I have ever seen and as far as the pigs go, well they are gaining weight like they are supposed to. So where did we branch off and decide we needed well rounded meals with diversity, and beyond that, that we need things that taste good otherwise we are less happy with it. When did food stop just becoming fuel for our bodies to run on and do its day to day functions, and morph into this huge part of our culture and history as human beings. I'm not saying I'm going to start eating dog food or pig grain, I'm just stating some questions that came to me today, all this is just food for thought if you will.. :)

We are getting ready to plant a new round of veggies and that meant Jim fired up the tractor to disc the fields and what  not while I was screening the compost. Screening the compost means that we had a huge metal screen on a frame, slanted at about a 60 degree angle, we dragged it next to the compost pile with the tractor and then I started shoveling from the pile and throwing the compost onto the screen. The finer stuff fell through, while the bigger, not as well decomposed stuff rolled to the bottom of the screen. Jim got me started and then left me to my work for about 45 minutes, when he came back he was pleased to see the progress I had made, but the whole time I was thinking that the tractor could have done what I did in about 2 shovel fulls. He left me to my work again but now I was thinking all about tractors, and this is some of the stuff I thought.

The Evolution of Tractors:
Tractors started out as an experimental farm implement. They worked, so people started making them better and better and more and more efficient, more capable of doing that which humans and horses could not do. Then we reached a point, the present, where we have monstrosities of tractors, megalithic machines that can harvest an acre every 30 seconds Machines that contribute directly the that fact that in most places no matter where you are, for 1 pound of meat, 10 pounds of oil went into producing that meat. But do these gas guzzlers have a place here at my farm? No, of course not, they are for "Big Ag". The enemy. My sweet little blue tractor is a nice tame, 15 year old tractor that does exactly what we need it to, nothing less nothing more. It helps make Jim and Tina's lifestyle possible, it helps them produce organically grown veggies for themselves and their community. This is a good thing. The point that we are at now with Big Ag tractors is an abomination to farming and those tractors, impressive and as ingenious as they are, should have no place in this world, yet we are responsible for them just as much as the companies that own them, because they are just filling a demand that we, consumers created and continue to feed. Just because we have the ability to dream them up, and the technology to build them, doesn't mean we should! You could say the same thing about a couple other inventions over the past few decades, like nuclear weapons. I think, and this is my own personal opinion, that small farms need their tractors, small time farmers like Jim deserve their tractors. Big Ag on the other hand should be wiped out, however they won't be as long as their is still a demand for the products they  produce, which puts it my hands as well as yours to make decisions that will help farmers like Jim, and shut down the Big Ag companies. And as grateful as I am for the little blue tractor on our farm, I would give it up in a second and continue to labor by my own strength alone if it meant the end of diesel based agriculture.

Here is a link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xShCEKL-mQ8 to part one of a 45 minute video about the facts of diesel based farming. It is a great, informative video and a suggest that you take a few moments to check out at least part 1.

During evening chores I had to get the goats back in their pens for the first time, and I tricked them using a feed bucket with only a little grain in it. But they all came running in excited to be fed, and then I locked them up. I felt bad haha, the goats looked at me like. "This is it?! this is what you were rattling around in the bucket and making a big deal of?!" But its okay because I gave them more food later on. And Tina says they don't hold grudges. :) Also during chores I started to notice and observe some social stratification between some of the farm animals. For example, there are a couple of wild turkeys that hang out around the farm because they know they can find free food, but they aren't kept in the pens with the other turkeys, but when the wild turkey goes in to eat with them, the farm turkeys all scurried away to the next food bucket, and then the wild turkey ate alone for a while, but then then it tried to eat with the others again. Sure enough the farm turkeys scuttled back to the first feed bucket. Poor wild turkey. Also the piglets are fairly clique-ish as well, all though it isn't as well defined as the turkey's cliques. For the piglets, whoever is odd 'man' out at then end of me pouring feed into the 5 different feeders gets to run around and try to work it's way in somewhere at one of the feeders, usually the others squeal at him or bite him and he runs to a different feeder, but sometimes the pig will hold it ground and force the other one off, and then that  pig is the odd one out. It kind of resemble musical chairs. But the rules are, instead of when the music stops you're out, it's if you can squeal louder, you get to keep eating.

After evening chores I was parking the four wheeler and just had to lean back against the transport rack and watch the storm come rolling in over the mountains. There cracks of lightening, and pockets of rain, and a steady cool breeze that dried all the sweat on my body and made me feel all stiff and crackly from the salt residue. It was gorgeous! I really do love the Arizona landscape.

Here is 2 different shots at different times, but all of the same front moving in :

Dinner was delicious, salmon rice and beans left overs! Yum.

I realized that I have never been more conscious and deliberate about my water usage and intake than I am right now. For example, if I want hot water in the hose for my shower, I need to remember to leave the hose out in the sun in the afternoon and not use that spigot until after my shower. The sun solar heats the water in the hose and gives me about a minute of hot water. Or if I want to stay hydrated during the day, I know that I need to drink at least three nalgenes worth of water, but then I also have to be aware that I don't drink anything after 7pm so that I can get a full nights rest with out having to get up to go to the bathroom. Buuuut! I also know that to make getting up easier, if I have about 10 oz. of water right before I go to bed, that I will be asleep before it makes me need to urinate, but that by around 5:30am it will wake me up. Its all pretty complicated, yet necessary!

Here is some clouds being lit up by the setting sun!

 

Day 5: Day off!

Today was nice and relaxing! I did the opposite of everything I have been doing all last week! I slept late (7:15), ate a whole box of little debbies oatmeal cookies, went swimming, made some bread, did some laundry, watched some movies and did a little reading! It was a good relaxing day off!

I think I caught her, just as she was going to take if for a joy ride.

And as much as this looks like just another scenic shot, if you look close, you can see red and blue boarder patrol lights! Some sort of bust went down right outside of the property! I asked Jim and he said it was either illegal aliens or someone smuggling drugs! You cant tell in the picture but its about 5 border patrol trucks that have 1 white pick up pulled over.

Not much else to report!

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!

Day 3: A trip to the Farmers market

Today started at 4:45, I had a quick breakfast, and then was over by the trailer waiting for Tina so we could load everything. It was an hour drive to the market which started at 8, and it was supposed to take us an hour to set up. The drive was pleasant enough, but by 6:30 it was already 80, we knew we were in for a scorcher at that point. When we arrived we unloaded everything and my brain and body went to their happy places! For what ever reason, don't ask me why, I love the challenge of moving heavy stuff from point A to point B as fast and efficiently as possible. So I started working, taking as big of loads as possible, some times with the dolly/hand-truck, and sometimes just carrying things. At one point I had a 40 lbs bag of onions slung over my should and two in my other hand and was walking with them, trying to navigate the people there, when some old salt of the earth farmer grabbed his wife out of the way and said, "Look out honey! this guys got a LOAD with him!" or something to that effect. And whether it was onions, a huge cooler, or a dolly full of tables the same scenario repeated its self, and as I looked at the old farmers to thank them I could see that they understood what I was doing, which was a cool feeling.

It was around this time that I think Tina first noticed the benefits of having me around with her. What happened was she was backing up the truck to the trailer to hitch it up and she was off by a couple inches, so I picked up the trailer by the tongue, just enough to inch it over and hold it there while she cranked up the support leg. It is always fun to see the reaction of people when I do things that they consider impossible for themselves, mostly because it is so rare. But for the rest of the day, Tina was bragging to all her friends at market about her new rugby player intern, and also volunteering her "personal mule", as she calls me, out to other people who needed things lifted or moved.

The market experience in and of its self was really fun. I enjoyed pushing the buttons on the scale and ringing up peoples totals. As well as just interacting with some of the people who stopped by. Also there was a french bakery that had a stand just across from us and around 9, Tina grabbed a $20 out of the cash box and sent me over their to get her a chocolate filled croissant, and myself whatever I wanted, I went with a huge blueberry muffin, which was probably the best muffin I have ever had.  The people there were so interesting, customers and stand owners alike. However my favorite person I met today was a customer I talked to, he was this big 6'5" dude with really long hair in a purple shirt who out of no where started telling me about how he used to be a cowboy because his whole family was but that he never fit in with the life style of short hair, drinking, chewing tobacco and being a hard ass, he said that he much preferred his weed, and that in his high school he was just about the only one who looked they way I do right now (long hair). He went on to tell me about how just because he didn't fit in with the life style, didn't mean he wasn't a good cowboy, he won 4 national championships for roping cattle, and apparently he was high for all of them! Ha! Imagine that, a giant stoned cowboy with long hair roping cattle at Nationals! Anyhow, he said that he finally left behind all that cowboy macho crap, and came to a place like this where he fit in just fine. The whole story I was just nodding and saying, "Wow!... Oh, wow.. Ha, no kidding!... Wow, that's something!.. " and then he just left! That was the type of people I was meeting all day!

At one point, a woman who was buying onions said to me, "This is the place you have to come to get onions that aren't thisss big!" as she pantomimed holding a pumpkin. I laughed and agreed, but in my head I was thinking about the fact that the onions she was talking about were supermarket onions, most likely pumped with growth hormones by some massive scale agriculture company that knows it gets paid in overall tonnage and volume it produces. So why not make the onions as big as possible? Well because it is just essentially adding water weight to the onion and tomato, and whatever other produce that is produced by "Big Ag", as Tina calls it, while also watering down the flavor, in my opinion anyways. Another aspect of why fruits and veggies have slowly gotten larger over the last 30 years is that people who market them put out this picture perfect image of what an ideal piece of produce looks like, and that raised the expectation of the consumer, you and me, so that when we go shopping if we have a choice between a slightly smaller apple with maybe a little knick on it, we choose the perfectly formed one right next to it. So we have reached this point finally where people no longer are choosing the massive fruits and veggies, either because they realize they are paying extra for more quantity, and less quantity or for some other reason. In truth I have no idea what impetus drove that woman this morning to the market instead of a Dierburgs or Schunucks, or what caused her to seek out the organic, smaller, more bruised onions. All I know is that the paradigm of picture perfect produce is starting to collapse! This was confirmed later that morning when Tina was conversing with costumers about the corn we were selling and she would keep saying, we have worms in it so don't be shocked. That is a reality of growing organically, if you don't use pesticides, you get worms. Some people would be more wary of it, and quickly drop it into their bags as if it was about to bite them, but others! Others would say, "Good! Just the way I like it!" or "Well that's how you know it's good for you ain't it?" or my favorite, "Ya, that's just extra protein, I'm not to worried!" And the defining characterstic of the people who welcomed the worms was the fact that they were almost all over 65 or 70, meaning they were around before advertisements/brain washing campaigns had taken root in my generation. However I'm still grateful for those people that dropped their corn into their bags like it hot, because they were still there, and still buying our food, despite the conditioning they have about worms in their food.

Here is a picture I was able to snap of our spread and sign!

You can't really see in the picture what we were selling but it was all the same produce I have mentioned in earlier posts: corn, tomatoes, lemon cucumbers, Armenian cucumbers, sweet yellow onions, sweet and spicy white onions, purple onions, garlic, and of course chickens. You can also see in the picture the scale that I liked to push the buttons on. :)

So that was the market ended at noon, it was fun, and on the way home we got to stop at a goodwill so I could pick up some more long sleeve work shirts. I made the mistake of packing a half a dozen short sleeved shirt which are no good out here unless you want to burn off the first 5 layers of your arm skin, and the only long sleeved shirts I brought were for the anticipated night time freezes that come in November so they are pretty warm. So I got three new, awesome western looking long sleeved work shirts.

By the way, a quick note about today's mid-day heat, most metal surfaces were to hot to touch with bare skin, you had to have gloves on just to open gates, or climb inside the bed of a truck. I think the high was about 111 today, which I know most of you are thinking, "At least its a dry heat, its not that bad." Well it isn't a dry heat, its been at least 50 percent humidity because this is the end of the monsoon season so there's not enough rain or clouds to cool things down, but there's still enough humidity that builds through out the day to make it extraordinarily hot, as well as maybe a 5-10 minute rain shower around 5 or 6 pm, when you don't really need it, but still enjoy it.

On my break after the market, from about 3-4:30 I went outside because I heard a lot of clanking around and guess who it was?? That's right, the goat who likes to climb everything!

 And here is Hershey saying hello to the camera

I also was treated to more goats being goats, with a special feature of Arnold and his gobbling as you can see in this video.

And here is a still shot of the beautiful clouds that I panned to during the videos.



The evening chores went super fast! I am getting faster at everything with each day! But after feeding everyone (the hogs, dogs, and turkeys) I had to go do some harvesting, but it was by far my best experience with harvesting, this was largely due to the fact that it was 5:30 and the sun was behind clouds which shower on me every now and then. Other than that it was a fairly normal harvest, I did lemon cucumbers, which are so good I eat them like apples, and okra. I also figured out a really efficient way of harvesting, instead of putting my basket down a couple feet ahead of me, picking all the stuff in that area and putting it into the tote, then picking that back up, I just clipped the tote to my hammer loop with a carabeener and it was just with me the whole way! While I was harvesting, I came across tons of different beautiful bugs and grasshoppers, which I actually have orders to kill on sight from Jim and Tina, but I can't. I think I killed maybe two or three on my first day, but then I decided I can't do it, it just feels wrong. the bugs need food to, and this is their natural habitat. They way someone put it in the Permaculture course I took is that you are really just paying your tithes to your local wildlife! Anyways, I saw this one grasshopper today and it was about 3 inches long, pretty big, but it was the colors of the Arizona licence plates!! It was purple and green and brown all very beautifully blended across its body.

And since I'm on kind of a bug kick right now, I'll just tell one more quick story: I was talking with Jim about the army ants all around their property and if he had ever tried killing them off, and he said that they are pretty much indestructible. They tried once with an organic certified pesticide, but that it only slowed them down for about three weeks and then they were back in full force. He said the reason was that all the nests are actually connected under ground by literally, miles of tunnels. and that if you actually do some how kill the queen of one nest, that they  will import a queen from another nest. Then he went on to say that scientists have actually done carbon dating on some seeds found in really big colonies, and for those of you that don't know, carbon dating is the technology used by paleontologists or archaeologists to find out how old bones or fossils are, and its very accurate. Anyways, the carbon dating results on some nests indicates that there are seed shells in nests that are 25,000 years old!!! Which means that in some places there has been an army ant colony in the same spot, for 25,000 years!! I thought all that was fascinating! Sorry for those of you who did not! :)

Oh and in case anyone was wondering, this is the view from my porter poddy around sunset!

Well its about 7:45 and I suppose I'll head to bed now, since i have been up for almost 15 hours already!

Day 2: Just another day on the farm!

Rising at 5:30 was not quite as easy today as it was yesterday, but that's okay, I still have a while to adjust! Plus I see the value of getting up early to beat the mid day heat.

Today's morning chores went much much faster today, we were done around 6:50! compared to 9:15 yesterday. But that's because yesterday Tina was at farmers market and so Jim had to milk the goats. But today she did that, while Jim and I split the chores we did together yesterday, which means he and I finished twice as fast! I also got to drive to 4-wheeler by my self today, it was fun, but the hardest part about it, aside from the left front wheel being smaller than the right front wheel causing it to veer left, is that I'm pulling a trailer with 300 pounds of water behind me which means I'm not allowed to gun it and go fast!

While I was cooking breakfast this morning I went out to get my bowl from yesterday's oatmeal that I left outside by the hose to soak over night. I came back this morning and there were chew marks (see below picture) all around the rim of my bowl.. and its a metal bowl.. but I guess I should have expected that. Oh also I'm having fresh goat milk with breakfast this morning. :) Yum.

Morning harvest was a much better experience today than yesterday! For starters I was well hydrated and had a lighter colored shirt on. But also I was harvesting corn rather than things on the ground, for most of the time, I did spend about 45 minutes harvesting more tomatoes. As I was talking to Tina today and telling her how this harvest was going much better for me she agreed about how hard they can be for non-locals, she is from Canada, Jim however was born and raised here. She also said one of the biggest mistakes new interns make is trying to keep up with Jim! I thought that was pretty funny, and of course, it also made me want to be the one intern who does keep up with him! I think I did pretty well with it today.

Lunch was a nice break, it comes around noon and gets us out of the heat for an hour or so, but then going back out it rough because the heat has increased so much while on break. But its all good, if things get too hot, I'm allowed to jump in the swimming pool!

Post lunch work was a nice break from harvesting, I was doing prep work for tomorrows Farmers Market which entailed sorting out good beans from bad beans, good tomatoes from bad ones, so on and so forth, but  what was interesting was that while I was sorting the beans I found a long dark hair, which neither I, Jim, nor Tina have. So it had to be from some previous intern, I'm not sure why I think that this was worth mentioning but for some reason I was just interested by the idea of me sorting through some beans that someone else a couple months ago picked, and now they have nothing to do with this farm, in the same way that I had zero connection to this place two days ago, but now I feel very much a part of it! I guess it isn't really the hair that interested me, but rather the concept of what goes on here, free labor comes in for 3 month shifts and then leaves. All the while Tina, Jim  and the kids are carrying on with there day to day lives! Okay, enough on that topic, it is probably only interesting to me.

Evening chores went well, I did them all by myself! Arnold the male turkey still gets aggressive with me, I have to fend him off with my boot!

I just love this goat, she climbs on everything:

I got my CSA share of food today, as part of my payment. In it was some tomatoes, basil, Armenian cucumbers, lemon cucumbers, three types of squashes, corn, okra, eggs, goats milk, and some green beans! I harvested a lot of all that over these last 2 days, so I was literally eating the fruits of my labor, I think it made it all taste better.

Tonight was the first dinner that I was on my own, so I decided to pull out all the stops! I made pasta! Yumm!

For my pasta I cut up some squashes, tomatoes, and okra, as well as slicing some corn off the cob. I have never had okra before so I wasn't sure what normal protocol is with it, but it wasn't to bad raw.

Then I added it to the pasta, and poured on some sauce!

And to cap off the lovely dinner I ate it on my back stoop that looks out at the cows and mountain ranges, it was beautiful! Dinner ended up being pretty delicious, I think it has more to do with the truth behind the ancient proverb, "hunger is the best cook" rather than my culinary skills, either way though, I was happy to end the day with a fully, happy belly.

And this is me washing my dishes, still on my back stoop, but over looking the North east pasture and mountains instead of the south east pasture. Looks like the mountains got washed out of this picture though.

As I was heading inside I had to get this picture, I knew it wouldn't nearly do the moon justice, but I wanted to share a fraction of the beauty anyways. But the real view was incredible. Maybe I should invest in a better camera.

It's about 7:15 pm right now, but I suppose I'll start heading to bed, I have to be up around 4:45 am tomorrow to help Tina get the trailer and truck loaded up with all the stuff for the Farmers Market!

Day 1: Intro to Jim, and daily chores.

Today started at 5:30 and amazingly enough it was not hard at all to get up, maybe because the first thing that I saw when I stumbled outside to have my morning urination was this...

By the way I should mention now that I'm allowed to wiz where ever I want whenever I want during the work day, how awesome is that? I have always wanted that kind of freedom.. :)

Today being the first day, I will attempt to include everything that happened in my daily schedule:

Morning chores are fun! They consist of feeding and watering the chicks, goats, cats, and the old dog cristo. Then Jim, the kids, and I got into the golf cart to feed the turkeys, 2 sows (Pricilla and Penelope), dozen piglets, and Boris the boar, as well as Asher and Shawnee the two great Pyrenees brothers that guard all the live stock. Then we went out to move the EggMobiles and feed and water the broiler chickens, laying hens, and thanksgiving turkey's. To do that Jim drove the Quad bike with a trailer and a water tank on back as modeled by my friend "mister goat",

while I followed in the golf cart with the feed. Because of the rain from yesterday and the fact that two of the roofs are broken a puddle of water formed on the tarp and needed to be shoved off. The method for doing this is to crawl on all fours into the chicken coop, with all the chickens and then when you are under the puddle stand up as fast as you can to launch the water off the sides of the tarp, and then all the hens run around and freak out, it was pretty funny. After moving the egg mobiles we dropped the kids at the house, they were tired, and proceeded to water Boris and the dogs, sows, piglets etc. Then we took our breakfast break, it was about 9:15 and we started work again at 10.

Before lunch chores consisted of harvesting produce out of the garden, it was haaard work! It consisted of crawling up and down several rows of tomatoes for 90 minutes on my hands and knees. As I neared the end of harvesting I realized I was on all fours with my nose in the dirt in the exact spot that I found and slayed the rattle snake the day before, its blood was still staining the dirt. Yikes! I would like to mention now that I typically don't like to kill snakes, but this was a rattler and it was in a common traffic area, I don't have enough skill to relocate it, aaaaannnd there is a 4 year old and 5 year old who love to run around bare foot all the time. All that being said, when Tina asked me to kill it, I didn't really think twice, but I did try to give it a quick send off. After harvesting I drove the golf cart out to the mobile chicken coops to collect eggs but was unsuccessful because there were about 5 hens crammed into the most popular laying box and I didn't know how to get them out, I'll have to ask Jim about that after lunch. Then after the failed egg collection, I went to check the irrigation burms (a burm is just a mound of dirt built to keep water from crossing it). The whole pasture area is rotationally flooded, which means that there is a level zone of land slightly lower than the zone to its left and slightly higher than the zone to its right, so if you were on the far side of the pasture looking back towards the barn you would see a slight terraced effect to the pasture. This is so that one zone at a time can be flooded all day which causes the water to seep deep down into the soil in just that one zone, which causes the roots of the grass to follow it deep into the earth, and deep roots are better for stopping erosion, accumulating nutrients, and tapping into deeper water, its quite a clever way of watering. All the water for irrigation comes from a deep well which is fed by a shallow aquifer. There is some debate about how sustainable shallow aquifers are, but when I asked Tina about it she said, "who really knows what goes on at 750 ft under ground." Fair enough.


After lunch chores was more harvesting, yay! My hands feel all stung from rooting through tons of tomato plants, squash, cucumber, okra etc. all the ones that have the little pokey things all over their stems. Lucky for me I'm in Arizona where there is plenty of Aloe Vera plants, maggie (the 5 year old) picked me some, I think its helping.


After the post-lunch harvest, I napped. ZZZzzzzzzz......


After the nap it was time for evening chores with Tina, pretty much the same as morning chores, plus or minus a few things. This time though, I brought my camera so you guys can start matching some names with faces.

 Drum roll please!! Ba-da- da- da....

Meet! Hershey! The billy goat! He will try and mount you through the fence!

This is Dixie and Missy both milking goats, and 4 young goats that always hang around with them! They get to roam around freely to forage during the day.

and here we have arnold and a few of his lady friends, He will chase you if he thinks you are making a pass at one of his women, which apparently in his beady little eyes, I am always making passes!

Here is the beautiful and illustrious, Penelope, and Priscilla! They like there tummy's rubbed while they eat! (about 250 lbs each)

This is Asher, brother of Shawnee, he is a great Pyrenees, a natural guard dog! what a sweet face!

 This is Asher's flock of piglets he guards! He is always with them!

Here is Shawnee, Asher's little brother, and he is guarding Boris, the boar!

Solo shot of Boris, with a storm rolling in behind him (its the rainy season right now)! Today when I bent over to pour the feed in to his trough, he charged between my legs from behind to get to it and almost knocked me over! He is about 350 to 400 pounds, that's a big boy!

 '
Piglets with Asher in the back feeding! And more storm clouds. That barn in the distance is where I stay!

I lovvve this mare, I need to learn her name, but these two horses don't actually belong to Jim and Tina, they are just keeping them for a friend. But I was excited to meet them today!

 That's the end of the more personable animals here! Some that I didn't photograph are all the baby chicks and the laying hens, as well as the thanksgiving turkey's and of course the half dozen barn cats that can't be touched..


I just really like this bumper sticker:

We ended the day with a hot dog roast over an open mesquite wood fire! It was delicious! I had 4.

My day ended with a nice rinse off with the hose and some dawn dish soap in the outdoor chicken butcher area (don't worry its not gunna be used for a while).

Arrival Day

Wow, what a journey! Getting here was easy enough, and I was greeted at the airport by Tina and her two lovely children, Maggie (5) and Calum (4). I have yet to meet Jim, the husband and head honcho, but I'm looking forward to it, Tina tells me he  grew up with a big native american influence!

The day started out hot, but quickly enough turned to an amazingly refreshing stormy afternoon! A side note about the picture is that the white refrigerator looking thing is actually my porter poddy for the next 3 months :) I have always wanted a personal portable bathroom!

It was an interesting first day, they had already found an illegal immigrant sleeping in the barn before they picked me up, they said that type of thing is not unusual. As for me, on my tour of the garden with Tina I spotted a rattlesnake and chopped its head off with a machete for Tina, funny thing is she had told me 20 minutes earlier that she hadn't seen a rattler in her 2 years on the farm... and I saw one in my first couple hours! Other than that I got to meet most of the animals on the farm, no pictures today, but I'll be sure to take some good ones over the course of my time here.

I settled in quite nicely to my cozy little bunk room, it is an old tack shed in the barn, so the goats are about 6 feet away from me! Here are a couple of shots of my office, bed, and kitchen/food pantry.

 I need to be up around 5:30 tomorrow so I suppose that's all I'll write tonight.