Day 28: Planting

Waking up was hard this morning, as it is getting cooler (in the mornings, its still 100 during the day) and the sun is coming up later, it's starting to feel like hibernation time! Although the hardest part really is just those first moves of getting out of bed, and resisting the temptation to sink down even further in my sleeping bag. Just like when I hose myself off, the hardest part is starting! This morning chores were not average! It was one of those days where all the things that you don't normally have to do, fall on the same day. I had to refill three different feed tubs from the main sources, which take about 45 minutes because I'm bucketing it out of the 1 ton bags into the 45 gallon trashcans on the back of the golf cart. Then I had to go get feeders and waterers for the new chicks that just got here this morning.

The same feeders and water tubs that I put in storage 3 days ago. Two of the chicks that arrived today were dead on delivery and a third was sick so Jim popped it's little head off and through them in the burn barrel which is right by my room. It's just a 50 gallon oil drum that gets filled with debris sticks and random bits of cardboard until it's full and then we burn it. There was a lot of mesquite wood in there though so when we were burning the dead chicks its smelled like mesquite roasted chicken! Yum! Also Jim had just picked up a new 1 ton bag of feed so I help him unload that from the truck, I was just a spotter though:

Today was also the day that all the pigs mud wallows needed refilling! which adds a good 40 minutes on to my watering of everyone! By the time chores were over it was about 9 o'clock, which is a good hour over what it usually takes. Oh, and while I was feeding the chickens in the pasture, I was startled by two fighter jets that was screaming right over head! It was not only startling but it made me realize that when hawks fly over head of the chickens, it probably incites the same reaction out of them that the fighter jets did in me! Granted this isn't a war zone, if it was I wouldn't have just been startled, but essentially those fighter jets are like birds of prey for humans.

Lunch break was a welcome relief, I ate lots of Tina's homemade pickles, Tina encouraged me to just stay inside till the heat of the day passed, she said the planting could wait, but I knew Jim would be out there planting in heat if he were here. He went to Tuscon for some stuff, and then he is working the market tonight. So I was back out there planting in the heat around 2. I was reminded today though of how I'm working in a desert climate, the hot dry winds were cracking my lips, and I couldn't get enough water in me. And then by 7 it started cooling off again! It's so extreme here. Before Jim left for Tuscon he showed me a trick for keeping my tools cool which is to lean them up against something or stick them in the ground if you can. It minimizes the amount of direct sun on them while letting them radiate heat out wards. Where as laying flat on the ground they get maximum solar exposure, can't radiate heat out, and in fact take in even more heat from the ground! His solution was common sense, but I guess not common enough for me to think of it. Perhaps there should be classifications of "common sense" like "desert conditions, common sense" or "arctic conditions, common sense etc.

After lunch I soaked my head and the top part of shirt to try and give my body a break from all the sweat it was generating, the water acted as a sort of artificial sweat that still accomplished evaporation cooling which is one of the purposes of sweat in controlling our body temperature. My plan work for about 30 minutes, then my shirt was dry, and I was sweating again!

The afternoon passed much in the same way as the morning, lot's of planting. Here's a shot of all the stuff Jim and I planted about two weeks ago

Today gave me another glimpse at the toils of a real farmer who plants everything by hand versus massive machinery. I continued to work on planting from 2 till about 4 when Tina came out to the garden and wanted me to help her harvest, we harvested till 5 when I broke off to do chores, this is Cristo's "happy/I want food face"

I came back to the garden at 6 to help Tina keep harvesting we finished about 7, just as it was getting dark.

The sun set and moon lined up tonight, here's a picture, it's not super great quality but it gives you a glimpse of the beauty, your imagination can fill in the rest!

I still had to corral the chickens but that was easy tonight because it was so dark by the time I went out, most of them were in there.

Guy sent me a message today saying he has boarded his bus and is en route to me! He will be on the bus from now until Saturday morning!

My shower was under the stars and moon which was nice and peaceful. Today was about a 14 hour day if you include my quick meal times and even still about 13 hour day if you don't include meal times. I'm just now getting to my dinner and it's 7:45! I'm going to choke down this ground beef and hopefully be asleep by 8, Goodnight!

Day 27: Organic Vs. Commercial

During chores this morning the Pigs were so greedy that when I start pouring the feed into their buckets they move their face into the stream of falling grain and effectively knock 1/2 their feed into the grass rather than their bucket.. Greedy pigs. They also broke the part of the ramp that hooks onto the Egg-Mobile for the chickens, so now we just have it propped up under the trap the door, but the pigs knock it over 5 times a day. In a sense I guess they make up for it by providing a step up for the chickens. Many times I saw chickens hopping on the the pigs back and then into their door.

After breakfast I worked in the garden on rigging some drip tape irrigation for the new beds we have built. I always wondered why everyone doesn't do drip tape irrigation because it is so effective and wastes the least amount of water possible. I found out today the reason not everyone does it, is because it is a lot of work to set up! It would be much easier to just set up a sprinkler, but much less effective, and much more wasteful. When I finished the three beds that we had enough tape for, I moved on to mulching around the plants that Jim had just pruned waaaay back. We got hit with some sort of fungus in our squash, and cucumber patch, but since we are a sustainable organic farm, it meant someone had to go in and hand pick out all the affected leaves by hand, which was Jim. And after that someone, Me, had to go in with mulch that I had screened and carefully spread it around each plant of which there were about 50, and hand rake away all the deadfall and weeds surrounding the plants. Then I had to go back around the mulch, which was to help give a nutrient boost to the stressed plants, and spread straw around and slightly over them to shade them and help with water retention. I'm not sure how long Jim spent pruning, I would hazard a guess at 2-3 hours, and I know I spend a good 4 hours on the whole project on it. I detail out the extensive work it took, not to complain or gain sympathy, but to draw a clear distinction between what makes the food we grow so good, healthy and slightly more expensive, and the food that is commercially produced cheap and unhealthy. They would have dusted that whole area with some sort of fungicide that most likely has detrimental affects on the surrounding environment  not to mention the carbon emissions they would have sent out in the process, because you know they aren't in there hand weeding and pruning crops large enough to feed america. Not only that, but a random act of nature like that fungicide set us back a whole work day, which is something that we really can't afford to have happen on a regular basis. This experience has given me so much respect for what farmers have to deal with, and compete against.
During my lunch break I found out there is High Fructose Corn Syrup in the Apple Sauce I have been enjoying so much over the last couple days.. I was bummed out :(

Oh and I saw two good bits of wildlife today, I saw a millipede when I was screening compost and a garter snake while I was picking beans.

After the mulching, weeding, strawing project, I had to harvest some veggies, and the quickly do chores. During chores some Hawks passed over the field of chickens and all the chicks went scurrying under the Egg-Mobile. At least I know they are aware.

My work day has been pushed back and hour due to the Egg-Mobile because we wait for dusk to start corralling the chicken so it is easier to round them up because they are already more inclined to go inside. But because of that it means I finish chores and then have to wait an hour and go round them all up. After I finished rounding them up I played with Asher and the pigs like I was another dog. I got down on all fours and started wrestling with Asher which was soo much fun! I have always wanted a huge dog I could rough house with, but the only dog my family has ever had was a stray schnoodle that found us and was definitely not rough housing material. But Asher could dish it as well as take it! I would charge at him and knock him over with my head against his body and he would be under me gnawing (lightly) on my head and hands, and then I would let him up and he would leap at me and I would run, as best I could on all fours, away from him. We played like that for about 15 minutes! The pigs all circled around us and watch and would scatter to the four winds if our rough housing ever got to close to them, and then they would slowly circle back up. I think they just liked being part of the fun.

Because my work day has been pushed back it means my shower comes even later and during a chillier part of the evening. So the last couple days have started doing little mini work outs right before my showers to get all hot and sweaty so that the cold water feels some what refreshing rather than shockingly cold. Also the work out gets my core temperature up so it can heat back up faster after the shower. I have mainly just been doing pull ups and chin ups because there is a convenient bar right in the shower area. It is more evidence of how beneficial farm work is for me compared to normal working out, because even at the peak of my weight room work outs, I could only ever do 2-3 strict pull ups. But my first time trying here I did about 7 and a half! For some people that is probably easy, but progress is progress and going from 2-3 to 7-8 with out training is good enough for me!

I just realized I haven't been doing pictures in these last couple posts, I'll be sure to take some good ones tomorrow!

My friend Guy comes in a few days! How exciting!

Day 26: Surprise!

I woke up this morning and thought to my self, "man, I could really use a day off." because my last day off I was in the city applying for a new passport and then doing a market with Tina, and the Day off before that was when I startedworking on the Egg-Mobile. I said to myself, "My next day off I'm going to sleep in and do nothing and eat and read.. cut my self some slack." as I dragged myself off the broken futon and starting putting on my pants and boots. I started doing chores as normal, and around the very end of them, Tina came out and told me that today was supposed to be my day off! I was surprised, and kind of sad I didn't get to sleep in. We kept talking for a little bit and told her needed to go to the post office to mail out a check to Christian, the man I'll be working for in Thailand. She said she was going into town today and that I was welcome to come. She said it was a hip part of town where lots of kids my age hang out. So I agreed to go along for the ride!

She had a meeting to go to concerning the Non-Profit she started, so I walked around 4th Avenue for about 90 minutes while her meeting was going but I'd had enough after that. In those 90 minutes I bought some food at a co-op that had organic food, and I went to a couple book stores. It was in this time that I realized I had a different definition, perhaps a youthful definition of what "hip" is. When she said it would be hip, I was envisioning an arcade of some sort with maybe go-karts and batting cages, places like that. But I guess now a day's 19 year olds are supposed to think that cafe's and tattoo parlors are hip. It's okay though I had my copy of Lord of the Rings in my bag, so I just read it for a while. But I was fun and interesting to walk around the "hip" area for a little while, I just think I can only take that stuff in small doses.

When Tina's meeting was over she offered for me to keep wandering around the  city if I wanted, or to go to her Advanced Anusare Yoga class with her. I opted for the advance yoga class, even though I knew it was probably going to be way over my head. My only previous experience was when I went to one of my Mom's bikram Yoga classes with her, which is 90 minutes of being in a 100 degree room doing lot's of different poses and transitions. It was very hard! This style, Anusare, was much slower, and more focus on the spiritual side of things. We even "Ohmed" at the beginning and end of the class and were listening to sanscrit musics, it was all new to me, but overall pretty peaceful. As well as being more spiritual than my past Yoga experience this style was much more strength oriented or at least today's particular class was strength oriented, Tina says it varies. Anyhow, I did a lot better than I thought I would, and there were somethings that I did my first try that other people in the class couldn't do. I think my wrestling background came into play again, the teacher was impressed by me and asked, me many times if I was sure I hadn't done this before! There were some pretty far out poses though, that I never would have done if I hadn't been walked through it.  For example, there was one where we had to bend at the waste, with our feet more than shoulder width apart, then we had to plant our hands as far behind our heels as we possibly could with our fingers facing forwards. then we slowly squatted down until eventually the back of our knees were resting on our triceps. It sounds weird I know, and then if we could, we had to cross our ankles, so all of our weight was on our arms it was pretty crazy. It was a fun, but hard 90 minutes! After Yoga we did some more errands because when you live an hour out of town, if you ever go into town you make the most of the trip. While we were in Home depot I made Tina Push me around while I rode on the cart for a little bit, that was fun! :)

One of our errands was right outside the farm, in Amado at the local feed and supply store. The store is run by these two born and raised Arizonan brothers. They are actually our neighbors, they are extremely nice guys and have two houses on the property next to ours and each live in their own house and work the farm together! I thought it was just a really cool example of brotherhood, because according to Jim they have been extremely closes ever since they were young boys.

We got home around 4:30 and on the drive home I was thinking about how I would really like some new music to be listening too because some of my songs are getting stale if you know what I mean. About 15 minutes later I found a set of 7 discs in the glove box and it was a playlist that Tina's friend had made for her, and it was titled "A way out of Music Monotony"  and on it were some artists that I know and love, how cool is that! Ask and ye shall receive...

When I got home I started burning the discs to my computer so I can transfer them to my iPod, and then I whipped up some more Rice and Beans with fish! Yum!

So today ended up not being the restful day off that I was hoping for, but it was still fun and exciting which is also good! I suppose I'll try for a restful day off next week! I still have yet to shower in the house, even though the evenings are getting progressively colder, because once I make the initial "plunge" of pointing the hose at my torso, it just gets easier from there! So it's been almost a month since I have had a real shower, but it's okay, the hose is the new normal!


I will be turning in now because I never actually got my sleep in this morning, although I did a fair amount of napping in the car on the way home from yoga, as well as some drooling according to Tina, but I think she was kidding because I'm normally not a drooler, and I didn't have any spots on my shirt. Anyhow, goodnight everyone!

Day 25: A day of lessons

As I was reading my book this morning during my breakfast, I read this book and I thought it was worth sharing, it is just a little reminder on magic that happens around us each day that can sometimes be taken for granted. 

Excerpt from, Infinite Possibilities, by Mike Dooley called "Somewhere in Paradise Right Now":

It's easy to take ourselves an our incredible world for granted. So begin by noticing the magic everywhere, in your own back yard and splashed around the world. Right now, at this very second, no matter what time of day it is, somewhere in the world thundering waves are crashing at sunrise on the sparkling white sands of a tropical beach. You can almost hear them if you try. And at this very moment, there are dolphins leaping into the air, beavers building dams, and eagles soaring just beneath the sun. Somewhere right now, there's lava running down a mountainside, a new island is rising from the sea, and snow is falling silently on a countryside. Somewhere else right now, two strangers are meeting after an unpredictable yet not so accidental sequence of events, and a wonderful adventure is about to begin for both. Somewhere else, someone is healing from a horrible disease that he was told he could not survive. And right now, very possibly in your own town, someone is realizing that she's finally created enough wealth to never have to worry about money for the rest of her life, while others are laughing hysterically with friends- so hard that it feels like their sides are splitting. And as you read this very sentence, somewhere a newborn baby is filling its lungs for the first time, and the very same love that's beating its tiny little heard is beating yours, sent from a Universe that adores you, that claims you as it's own precious child, and that yearns for your every happiness. 

-Mike Dooley-

Reading that, while eating my famous fish, rice and bean burritos, was a great way to start the day. After breakfast, I was time for me to do some field work on the Egg-Mobile. Jim decided in needed a trap door for the chickens to go in and out of so that the pigs don't go in and eat all the grain. He drove over to the trailer with the tractor's bucket loaded with tools, and cords and a gas powered generator. 

I got right to work and was finished by around 12. While I was working Asher made some moves for a couple of the chickens so I got my chance to tackle him, I didn't bite him though. Not that I relish the opportunity to tackle dogs, but I like having the experience so that I know if I need to in the future I can discipline other 80 pound puppies! Also while I was working, if I ever dropped a screw, a chicken would steal it off the ground and run off with it! It happened very fast the first time, I was so shocked I didn't even make a move for the screw. But the second and third time I was trying to grab it, and they still got it. 

Here is the completed door. It may not look like 3 hours of work but it was. I had to screw in some trim boards, cut out the chicken wire, attach the hinges to the top trim board, and then attach the door to the hinges, and then make a latch for keeping it open, and one for keeping it closed. 

I am reminded at times like this that although it is a great accomplishment for me to have completed this, a skilled handy man, or woman, could have whipped that trap door out in under an hour probably. Someone like my dad, Granddad, or Jim, but for me, the majority of the time spent on it, was thinking through things that are second nature to accomplished craftsmen. Another big part of my time is spent correcting my own mistakes. I often feel that if someone ever wanted some information out of a carpenter or a construction worker, and wanted to subject them to psychological torture, they could put them in room of tv's that had a live feed of me slugging my way for 3 hours through a project that would take them no time at all. But I am not discouraged in the slightest, I know that this is just a learning curve and that I am having to make up for lost time that I never really had the opportunity to do this stuff during my school years. I know that I can be an accomplished handy man someday, but for now, I am learning all of the little tricks of the trade the hard way. 

I was going back to my barn, after dropping the tractor off by the hay barn, and I heard some distressed bleating from across the farm. I jogged over to check it out and sure enough, Stellaluna, the little brown goat who likes to climb everything and who also got her neck wrapped up in the old electric fencing, had poked her head through a hole in the barbed wire fencer, and then couldn't get it out. Her horns were effectively functioining as the barbs on a grappling hook and she was stuck real good. I went up to her, more cautious then last time because I didn't want her to freak out and lacerate her neck on the barbed wire surrounding her. So I walked over to the other goats, casually and pretended I was ignoring Stellaluna. Then I slowly backed up to her, and sprung on her, clenching her body between my thy's to immobilize her, somewhat, and grabbing her head so she wouldn't swing it around going berserk and cutting her self. She still went a little berserk and ended up cutting herself just a little, and after maybe a minute of my efforts to immobilize her, she either got tired or realized I wasn't trying to hurt her. It still took me a good 5 minutes to extricate her from the fence because she wasn't letting me get head into the right position to get her horns clear of the wires above her. Finally I got her free and then she, and all the other goats took off! 

After a good lunch break where I had my turkey sandwich on some of the french bakers bread that Tina scored me yesterday I was off to the garden to learn some good lessons. The first thing I learned was from Tina, and she taught me the difference between straw and hay, I had never realized that they were two separate things, but they are! The reason I was working with straw for the first time was because I was mulching the beds Jim has been building over the last couple of days. That task taught me my second lesson. When mulching the beds, my first few minutes I felt that there were plenty of other farm things I would rather be doing, like driving the tractor, or building something, or even fighting Hershey, but here I was spreading out straw. But then I realized that I was going to have to do this task whether I was particularly gung-ho about it or not. So I decided to get gung-ho!! I starting thinking about it, and trying to find ways to enjoy it and what ended up working for me was to put what I was doing into a larger picture. I wasn't just sprinkling straw over dirt. I was helping to nurture and care for the little baby plants that were going to be brave and try growing under the hot Arizona sun and that any bit of help I could give them in their early stages would help a a lot. Not only was I helping the plants out, but I was protecting Jim and Tina's livelihood, this is there sole source of income is these little underground germinating seeds, and that anything I could do for these plants was going to help Jim and Tina feed themselves, there kids and the community. It would be selfish of me to not give my all to this task and help these plants by giving the soil they are growing in more water retention and eventually more nutrients once the straw broke down. It would be selfish if I thought, well shoot, this isn't as cool as ripping around the farm on the tractor, I'm just going to quickly dash through this task so I can get on to something else. Once I was in that mindset, not only was the spreading of straw easy and quick, but I felt really good about the work I had done. 

The next lesson I learned was from Jim. I asked him what causes thunder, because I had always wondered about it and either forgotten it if I ever learned it, or just never learned. He said something along the lines of when the lightening strikes it leaves a void or a vacuum where the bolt was because it so hot that it essentially vaporizes any molecules in it's path, and then when the bolt strike is over, the surrounding air slams back together and causes that loud bang. I'm not sure if that's entirely accurate, but it was a good enough answer for me! Perhaps, though, one of my readers has some more knowledge on the subject and knows what I just said to be false, if so, please tell me! 

I asked Jim a couple other questions like what causes lightening and what wind is, although I actually did have some prior knowledge of wind being the movement of air from high to low pressure, but he was able to open that concept up a lot more for me. I asked him how he knows so much because rarely do I ask him something and he says I don't know. I did stump him though with a question about the waxing phases of the moon. He said that he just gets all his information as he goes, and that he has a really good memory. He never  finished high school and didn't go to college, but he is one of the most knowledgeable people I know. 

All that talk about Thunder and Lightening and science got me to thinking, when I was harvesting the round zucchinis. I started thinking about if Jim hadn't told me the answer, and if in fact we didn't have science or any of the knowledge about the natural world. I realized that Deifying nature the way most indigenous cultures did, was in a sense, the logical thing to do. They had no weather balloons or ways of gathering meticulous data, and the classifications that we break down all living organism's into now a days, is something that we invented. They had there own order to the natural world, and their own way of thinking about it. And I stood there and looked up at a massive storm cloud flickering with lightening every 10 seconds it was easy to see myself creating a godlike persona for that element of nature. We called it crazy once upon a time, and thought it was sacrilegious and paganism. Yet it was we humans who invented religion for there to be any "sac-ing" of. :)  get it? Sacrilegious? In all seriousness though, on the scientific side of things I think it is quite hypocritical of us to call indigenous folks crazy for inventing different gods, when we were inventing the names of species and seperating them into Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Specie, that we made up!! Who say's that's the appropriate way to look at nature and deifying magnificent thunder clouds and sunsets is the bogus way of looking at nature. Ultimately I guess this is all just me realizing what it was about Biology in school that torqued me the wrong way. I just didn't like how in modern science we classify and analyze everything to the most minute detail. And how a common convention among scientists who, "discover" new species are allowed to name it whatever they want (most name it after themselves). Then again, there are somethings that fascinate me about nature that I'm glad science explains, like what causes thunder for example. I guess, as with most things in life it's about balance. 

The final lesson I learned in the garden today was from the Yard-Long bean plants, although it was really more of a re-affirmation of a concept already known to me, but still worth re-visiting. As I was combing up and down the row of beans, looking for a long stringing green bean, a midst a tangle of long and green stringy plant stalks, I started realizing that the more times I shifted my perspective, whether it was looking higher or lower, from one side or the other, the more beans I found and I one case, I was looking deep in the heart of the row and it wasn't until I pulled back to move on that I spotted about 5 beans right at my feet that I had missed because my perspective was too close. The lesson that this, solidified in my mind was that a fresh perspective never hurts, and that sometimes when you are searching for something and can't seem to find it, maybe you are too close to the situation and need to step back a little. 

That is one of my favorite parts about being here on the farm is that I learn tons everyday and sometimes it's in the form of me picking Jim's expansive brain, and sometimes inspiration hit's me like a lightening bolt, and some times it's just me, going through my daily chores like harvesting beans or corralling the goats, but I am always learning something and feel more and more enlightened with each passing day!

I have yet to make, or rather, re-heat dinner, and it's already 7:30, I'll be signing off now! Goodnight everybody, or good morning depending on when you read this! 

Day 24: The culmination of a long week!

Today was a long and successful day! It was a good note to end a long week on! I can't believe it was the beginning of this  week that I was working on the Egg-Mobile, it already feels like a long time ago. As I said yesterday, the work day ended in the dark and today began in the dark. It is really an interesting feeling to be up and active before the sun rises, we were just pulling out of the farm as the first couple rays peaked the mountains in the east! Needless to say, it was gorgeous!

Once we arrived at the market it was the usual routine of unloading and shuttling everything to our corner of the market, where we set up our tents and spread out our produce. We settled in and I bought a muffin from the French Bakers, and then some crepes from the crepe ladies for Tina and I she got the basil, tomato, goat cheese crepe, and I got the Farm fresh scrambled eggs, cherrywood smoked bacon, tomatoes and cheddar cheese. It was basically a breakfast burrito in a really good tortilla. Then later I bought another blueberry muffin from the French folks. 


 It was a pleasant market, many interesting people! One of the top contenders for my favorite people of the day was a man who was walking around with a cat in a basket stroller, and then a dog, that was smaller than his cat, in one arm. Both pets were bejeweled and bedazzled with bows and colorful collars. It was a funny start to the day. My other favorite person, pet combo was a little girl and her dog Lily. I was just listening to Tina talk with some CSA members during a lull in the waves of customers when out of the corner of my ear I hear, "Lily! No, stop! Come back!" followed by the soft jingling of a belled collar headed my way. I turned to look and saw a super cute puppy about the length of my outstretched palm and the width of chipotle burrito with not enough rice and beans in it! It ran under our tent into our stand and right at me, veered right and started to head for under the table cloth. At this point my newly developed "animal on the loose" reflexes kicked in and I scooped her up! The little girl rounded the corner and saw her tiny puppy in my arms and her eyes got real big, I'm not sure if she thought I was going to be mad or what but she looked frightened, "Thanks.." she murmured, as I handed Lily over to her, and ran off. On the subject of the "Animal on the loose" reflexes, I should specify there are different types of animal that I have developed a reflex for and each have their own catching method, with little creatures like chickens or puppies, you must be very fast and quick as though you are just trying to karate chop it, but then at the last second slow your hand speed down so you don't break any brittle bones,  where as with billy goats (Hershey) on the loose you have to punch them in and then slowly back them up into there pen. And for the female goats you must run them down until they seek the refuge of there pen to escape the "big bad intern" as Tina and Jim call me, but only ever in reference to my goat catching. Just because one time they were by the pool watching the kids swim when they heard 30 minutes of my heavy, booted footfalls sprinting around in circles and the constant bleating of goats! But I digress, the point is there are different types of styles for catching "animals on the loose" and for this puppy, I used the fast yet delicate approach!

At one point Tina and I were discussing my upcoming travels to Thailand, I was picking her brain because she went traveling to Ecuador when she was 17 or 18, I asked if she had a plan before she went, she said, "Nope, I just showed up, and I paid for it in some respects, but I was young and it was all part of the adventure for me." I asked what she meant by she paid for it, and she said that she didn't always have places to sleep and that she has slept in many unimaginable places like park benches, train stations, and janitors closets. I was amazed! Anyhow, we got on the topic of how I would be needing a nice big back back to travel with and she said that she has one that she used for Ecuador. I asked if I could have it and she said, "No, it wouldn't fit you, it's meant for a woman's back, like a smaller back than yours", I jokingly replied, "I dunno Tina, I can have a pretty small back if I try hard enough!" She laughed and said, "Ben, the only thing small about your is your ego!" I smiled and thanked her for the compliment, but I guess I am actually in violation of that compliment right now and tooting my own horn by telling that story in the first place, so that's all I will say on that. We continued to talk and she said that Jim might have a backpack I could use but that even that one might be to small, fingers crossed that it isn't!

The last noteworthy person of the day was a nice lady who was the opposite of the "95 cent lady" from last week, the one who was a stickler for her change. Today's 95 cent lady was nice though! When I told her the cost of her onions was 95 cents, she said, "Here's a dollar keep the change sweetie." Such a more pleasant way to handle the situation.  I found out some news as to why the lady last wee was so cranky  from Tina. It turns out she is a lesbian and just doesnt like men in general, or at least she doesn't like Jim and I and we were the only ones at market last week, this week however she was chatting Tina up quite a bit.

The rest of the market passed by in a regular fashion, and around 12 we packed up and headed for home. The tour of the farm was still going on untill about 6 so we wanted to get back to relieve Jim for a little while as well as try and sell more produce and meat. It went well we sold an additional $200 dollars of produce on top of the $750-ish that we made at the market.

I broke off from the home farm stand to rest for a little bit on Tinas orders, not by choice, doesn't mean I didnt appreciate the mandatory rest though. I recooped for about 40 minutes before starting chores. During chores I had people watching me bring the goats in from the pasture and I was praying that the goats would behave and accept my bribery of grain with out me having to chase them into their pens. They obliged me and corralled up fairly smoothly. After goats, I had to  feed the hogs and dogs, and now the new chickens in the pig pasture. Jim actually opened the Egg-Mobile up today after only 1 day of mental relocation for the chicks. I was surprised because he said ideally you do it for 2 weeks. But none of them seemed to be heading back to their old coop so I guess it worked out alright. While I was resting in my room apparently, Jim and Tina spotted Asher in the Egg-Mobile and ran over to remedy the situation. As Tina tells it, Jim threw Asher out of the trailer and then they both jump on him, pinned him and started biting him everywhere that they could, on the neck, ears, cheeks, etc. they let him up and started to scold, and he went for the chickens again, so they pinned him again and repeated the process, essentially establishing themselves as Alphas, and declaring the chickens as under of their protection. After the second time, Asher got the message. I was bummed that I missed out on the excitement and didn't get to gnaw on Asher a little bit, but I guess I can't be there for everything. Asher is a really good boy though, he just needed to be shown that eating chickens is not allowed. He is still a puppy, albeit a biiig puppy. Tina said that they probably scared off a few of the Tourist's who watched both farmers pin their dog and start biting it, and that it wouldn't have looked any better if a third, larger person joined in on the disciplinary fiesta. 


During and after chores I noticed that 3 weeks here is starting to manifest change in my physique. My pants are all falling off me, even the pair that I found here when I got here, and they are a smaller waist than I usually wear. And my shirts are all much baggier on my then when I got here.  Tina also told me to start eating more protein because she doesn't want her "pack mule wasting away to nothing" which is a backwards compliment I guess! :)  


After chores we waited for the sun to go down a little more, so the chickens would be more inclined to go back into the trailer, at least that was the theory, and then we went out to corral them all. They weren't that willing, and it took about 25 minutes to round them all back up, and often, when we would get some herded into the trailer and then leave to go heard others, the ones we had just herded would hop back out! Eventually we got them all though, as with many things on the farm it just took a little persistence! 


My work day ended at this point, but Jim had to drive back into Tucson to go to that benefit dinner that we supplied the beef and chicken for! Poor guy probably won't get home till 10!


That's all for now! 

Day 23: Tractor Happy!

We had to cross the dirt road that bisects the pasture that the chicken tractors are on which meant pulling them about 4 times as far, it was a quite a good work out! After chores Jim said meet me at the tractor for another lesson, and I lit up inside! He gave me another run through of how everything works and then I got to drive it. I was working all day cleaning out goat pens so I had to go in, rake all the manure and straw up, shovel it into the wheel barrow, dump the wheel barrow in the bucket of the tractor, and once the bucket was full I would drive it to the other side of the farm where the compost is. It was a lot of sweaty dusty work so by the end of the day I was covered in a thick layer of dust. I ended up having to where a white doctors mask thing-a-ma-bob to keep the dust out of my throat. I worked on the pens from about 9 till 2 with a brief lunch break. I also took a short 5 minute Farmers Nap in the bucket of the tractor once I had filled it with trash bags. Not the gross kind of trash bags with food and rotting scraps in them. They were primarily full of empty feed bags, and scrap tarping and soft things of that sort, so they were the inviting, come nap on my sort of trash bags. :)

At one point Stubbs kept trying to sneak in to the feed room where I was sweeping out the chicks old pen and I kept telling him to scram but he kept inching in a little further, the way cats do, and finally I decided I was going to have to go move him. I started to step over the retaining wall that kept the chicks in  brooder 1 and then didn't raise my back foot high enough so it tripped me a little bit, I had the shovel in my hands so I slammed it down in front of me to catch myself, like it was a walking stick, but of course it made a loud clang. Poor Stubbs though got frightened by my sudden movement and then the loud metallic bang, and tried turning around so fast that he bonked his little cat noggin on the door and it made a decent sounding collision! He barely stopped though and just tore out of there as soon as he had his wits about him. I was laughing because the sound of cat skull on wooden door was funny, but I also felt bad for accidentally scaring him. 

We made up later though because he actually came to join me on during my Farmers Nap for a Cat Nap of his own. 

When I was cruising around on the tractor today, I was hit with a metaphor for the way Jim teaches.

I realized that I felt exponentially more capable and knowledgeable about the workings of the farm and things like that, and I attribute that largely to Jim's teaching style. Whether he is aware of it or not, Jim teaches in a very sustainable way. In permaculture we learned that true sustainability takes the majority of the work on the front end of a project, whether it's the planning phase or implementation phase and it can often seem like more work than it's worth, but if all goes according to plan, then later on when whatever it was that you were having to nurture takes root, than ideally it should be on it's own two feet and not further input from you. This is what sustainability is all about, it's opposite would be perhaps Big Ag, where they start off things with a short cut, and rather than re mediating soil or taking the proper steps to help the earth heal, they just inject it with synthetic fossil fuel based fertilizer. This is a quick fix but it will need to happen over and over again, there is no life in the soil, it is essentially a sterile growing platform that is the middle man between the growing crop and the injections that crop is dependent on. Now Jim took the time early on to meticulously explain things to me, showing me where tools go, how to tie certain knots, which gears on the drill are best for certain jobs. He put in a lot of effort in my first couple weeks, but he was building up some deep rich living soil that I can now grow in sustainably. This metaphor is all just a way to say that I appreciate the way Jim took his time in teaching me, and he also get to reap the benefits of being able to give me fairly brief instructions on a task and know that it is being done well. The Egg-Mobile is a perfect example of that, the whole time I was building it, he was giving minor inputs here and there, specifying what he wanted done, and then I was left alone to do it! It's a great way to teach and a great way to learn! 

After I finished with cleaning the goat pens, which was all preparation for tomorrows farm tour, I went over to help Tina with preparation for the Market tomorrow which she and I will be working while Jim hosts the tour. Later tomorrow night they have a dinner function that they have to go to. I likened this weekend to 8th or 9th week of a term in college where all the due dates some how seem to end up on the same day! She laughed and agreed.

When I ran back to my barn area I to grab something for Tina I pass a pair of shorts on the ground with one little Colm sized cowboy boot still threaded through the leg of the shorts, and then the other boot a couple feet ahead, it was clear that Colm, for whatever reason, had stripped while on the go! It was a comical site. He often drives around his little plastic John Deer tractor in just underpants, boots and a cowboy hat. 

We all worked on preparing for market till about 5, when I broke off to do chores, and Tina broke off to take the kids swimming and cook dinner. I finished chores and then met Jim back at the work shop and kept working till about 7:15. It was dark by the time we finished working and it'll be dark tomorrow for a good hour while I am working because we are rising early to make it to market. They weren't kidding in the application when they said "sometimes we work till after dark, and are up before the sun." It just some how works out that those days and nights always go back to back.  It's about 8:15 right now I haven't showered or anything because I had dinner again with the family. Tina said it was because we worked late, but I am still kind of hungry because there wasn't quite enough spaghetti to fill me up, and I haven't showered and still smell like Diesel. All that being said, I bid you all a fond farewell until tomorrow night when I will hopefully be regaling you with wonderful stories of my time at the market! Oh and the reason today's post is called tractor happy, is because Jim said that I had the "Tractor Happy" look in my eye today.

Day 22: A day of celebration!!

The reason today was a day of celebration is because I finished the Egg-Mobile! And it is Maggie's birthday! she is 6!!

I worked on chores till about 9 today which is later than normal, but it was time to scrub out every ones water container which takes about an additional hour to do! It's amazing the amount of filth that can build up in a communal pig water trough. When chores were done, I had my oat meal and then it was off to the trailer! Today was about putting a tarp roll on the gate of the Egg-Mobile so that in bad weather we can shut it. I also tacked on another piece of plywood up top to seal that off.

 We also built a ramp for the chickens to get in and out of and that was about it. By 1 o'clock I had successfully turned an old livestock trailer in to a Mobile chicken coop! I celebrated the completion by actually taking lunch break and eating a pound of ground beef, some green beans and an apple.  Here's a shot of it's first few feet being mobile:

Once completed, our first order of business was to of course fill it with chickens. This means we had to catch 100 chickens by hand! Luckily they were in a fairly small pen, and Jim is a good chicken catcher. He would catch three at a time usually, but sometimes 5 at a time then he would walk over to the gate and pass them to me one at a time, I would give one to Colm, one to Maggie, and take the rest myself. Then, I walked to the trailer and popped them into their new home! Colm and Maggie cooed over every single chick they had, "Aww look how cute this one is..." "This one is really scared..." "Colm make yours kiss mine!" it was all stuff of that sort! Maggie dropped her on a couple occasions which meant I had to chase it down where it had open space to run from me or hide behind wheel barrows, but it's okay, I needed a good jog! Once the trailer was full of them, we pulled it out into the middle of the piglet pasture and un-hitched. as we were leaving Asher came up and started sniffing around the gate. Jim went down on one knee and grabbed Asher by the snout and made him look him in the eyes. "Asher, these are new members of the family, they are for guarding, notttt eating! Okay, you guard them, not eat them! Copy that?" I'm not sure what Asher would have said if he could speak English, maybe something along the lines of, "Okay, but what if I just wanna chew on them a little, is that cool?" Who knows though, I am no dog whisperer. I asked Jim how we will know if he eats one, because 99 looks a lot like 100 if you know what I mean, then I followed up by saying, I guess we can just check his teeth for feathers everyday! Jim laughed and said that's a good idea. We were debating just parking the trailer next to the pig pen, but then if anything was snooping around it, Asher wouldn't have been able to do anything but bark because he is in the pen with the pigs. Here is a picture of the Egg-Mobile in its new location!

We won't really know what Asher will do for another week because like I said we have to relocate the chickens mentally, now that we have moved them physically otherwise they would just run back to their old coop. So they are staying locked in the trailer until they realize it's their new home.

After that it was pretty much the end of they day, I started to clean out goat pens but Jim told me to just do chores and then be ready for dinner. I ate with the family tonight and help celebrate Maggie's Birthday! I took a card, well a note written on lined paper, and I included a stick figure drawing of her as a town girl with purse, and then I also wrapped a rock with some crystals on it that I found. I didn't wrap it originally, but then I remembered half the fun of getting presents is opening them. so I balled it up in some more lined paper. I think it got the job done. Dinner was homemade pizza by Tina! it was delish! And dessert was peanut butter chocolate ice cream cake! I had 7 pieces of pizza and my cake and the rest of Colm's piece. When the dinner was over the kids went to play with Maggie's new polly pocket dolls and Jim, Tina and I had some lovely post dinner conversation. We mainly talked about weird dreams we have all been having lately, and then Tina started cleaning up and Jim and I had a one on one talk about lucid dreaming. Which is just the kind of dreams that people have when you are conscious in the dream and get to choose to do things like fly or stuff like that. Jim was giving me some helpful tips on how to achieve this, because I myself haven't experienced it except for maybe when I was a little kid. Then Jim started telling me about his solo camping trips that he used to take when he was my age and younger. He lived in a tent for a long time because he dropped out of high school when he was 17 to travel. His story's always amaze me!