Day 39-43: Farm life :)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Bull getting frisky:

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

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

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



Goodnight everyone!

Day 34-38: Day off!

The last couple of days were fun, but hard! I have begun to notice some more shifts that show my month of experience is starting to pay off. Firstly, the other morning the goats got out of there pen before I was ready to let them out, and instead of chasing them around like I used to do. I was able to properly command Cristos and I got him to round them up for me! It was a cool moment! Another exciting thing about my month of being here is the progress I see in my hands. Let me start by telling a story from Jim. He was working on a ranch when he was about my age. The rancher he worked for was a really hard core, tough old dude, and although Jim never complained to him, his co-workers did. They would complain about how the fencing they were putting up was to splintery and rough on there hands and wanted the old rancher to buy them some leather gloves. His response was, "Leather costs, money, you can grow more skin for free." and that was the end of it! Jim told me this story after he had bought me some gloves, and although he bought me them, I still have gotten much tougher hands because I don't use the gloves a much as I could. While I was working with some really splintery wood I got about 4 or 5 splinters which are actually still in my hands right now but they are shallow enough that I don't feel them thanks to all the tough skin I have developed since I have been here.

On Thursday I was off the farm all day with Jim and the kids. We had to go to the butcher and packing house to pick up the steer that Tina dropped off. While we were their, Jim was in the trailer organizing the freezers and putting the beef in them while I shuttled to beef to him from the big freezer. While Jim was in the trailer the butcher came around the corner and gave me a weird look. "Umm, can I help you?" If I had been paying attention I would have been able to tell by her tone that she thought I was up to trouble. "Sorry, what?" I didn't hear her that well at first. She was wearing a revolver on her hip and pulled her jacket up over it to make sure I got a good look at it and repeated,  "I said, can  I help you!?" I caught on to her accusatory tone this time and realized she thought I was robbing her or something, she obviously didn't know who I was. I wasn't sure of what to do, I had never been threatened by a female butcher with a gun before, "Uhh, Jim?" I called into the trailer, he came forward and poked his head out. "OH my gosh, haha, you scared me, I didn't recognize your helper, I thought I was being robbed!" She patted her gun re assuringly, "Good thing I'm always armed though." She smiled at me. I found out later from Jim that she is the only female butcher to complete her butchering school or whatever it's called, in the state of Arizona.

I ended up working the majority of the market myself Thursday night which was interesting! It shows a lot of trust on Jim's part which I think is a good thing!

Today was my day off, but, since Tina is in Canada right now, Guy had to go with Jim to market, so Jim could watch the kids, same reason I went with him to market last night! So I was all alone at the farm which meant I had to do chores in the morning. While doing chores I was listening to music and singing at the top of my lungs again like I did around day 5 of being here when I was on the farm all alone. It was a good morning of cruising in the Golf cart and singing to the animals all of my favorite songs. When I was watering the turkeys, a song by Temper Trap came on and their lead singer has a pretty high voice, so to keep up with him, I switched to my falsetto range. I guess the turkey's didn't like it because they started gobbling and making a whole bunch of racket when I was singing. I stopped at first and looked at them, they got quiet and looked right back, then I started singing again, and they started making a bunch of noise again! It was pretty funny!

After chores I was feeling lazy after yesterday's easy day of driving around, and today being my day off, so I went for a run, and ended up doing an 8 mile run, which is twice as far as I have ever run in my life! I just set off in the beginning of the run telling myself I would go till I got tired and then turn around. But I just didn't really get tired. I turned around eventually because I realized I was very dehydrated, all I had, had to drink since 8 o'clock the night before was a small cup of coffee. So I turned around and headed home, it was cool not really getting tired!

That's all for now!

Day 33: Windy Day!

I beat my alarm this morning but didn't feel like starting chores with out Guy, so I laid awake in bed for about 20 minutes watching the window go from black to a dark shade of blueish gray. By the time I was up, around 5:30 the sky was still a deep blue and I could still make out a few stars. The sun was up, but still behind the mountains so there was ambient morning light coming out of the the east. It was a very chilly morning, and I got to wear one of my favorite sweaters. I have been here for over a month now I still am amazed by the natural beauty around me. Each period of the day brings with it new things to love! In the mornings its cool crisp air and sunrises, in the hot heat of the day it's bright blue expansive skies, with clear mountains in the distance and the occasional breeze that reminds you fall is coming. Then in the evening it is a perfect temperature and the sunsets are always gorgeous.

Breakfast was as delicious as yesterday, and very peaceful. Guy and I are able to pass hours talking about fun subjects, but are just as capable to not say a word for over an hour and not feel awkward. He is a good roommate because he understands that I love my solitude and he enjoys his just as much! .

From 8:30 to twelve I was weeding in the garden, it was a good block of solitude to just work hard and think. While weeding the saying about a banker doesn't need to know what every type of counterfiet money looks like, just what one real dollar looks like. Same when for me, as long as something didn't look like lettuce or spinach, I pulled it. It was strange though, as I was weeding, My mind got freed up and I just tried keeping it fairly blank and let thoughts come to me, rather than trying to think about something. What came to me was an odd collection of moments out of my childhood. Things I haven't thought about since they happened, but I obviously still remember. One example is when I started crying during the movie "The Never ending story" when the main character's horse gets pulled into quicksand and the protagonist can't save him. I have no idea why that memory decided to surface today, but it did!

We broke for lunch right as the wind was picking up and had another good hour of each of us doing our own thing. I researched tents and backpacks for my time in Thailand, while he read a book!

The afternoon was incredibly windy! The day averaged 15-20 miles an hour pretty constantly, and then peak around 30 probably. If I didn't have both feet planted during those gusts, it would have knocked me over!

After lunch we were in the garden pulling old corn stalks, trellising beans and pruning back squash plants. It was a full afternoon of work. We worked non stop till about 4, right as we sat down for a rest outside the tepee, Jim pulled around the corner in the truck. Guy and I both were amused at how the timing of things like that always seem to work out. After 3 and a half hours of solid work, the boss comes around the corner when we had literally been sitting for not even 30 seconds.

We had a little work left to finish up before chores and we decided to just blitz it and get it done! Chores went by in regular fashion, and then the chicken round up at sundown.

I got an email today that said my WWOOF.com account has expired today,  which means it was exactly 1 year today that I started my search for an organic farm to work at! It's kind of a cool feeling to look back and see the progress I have made in a year!

Well, it's been a month of non-stop posting, and thus far everything I have written I felt would be of some level of interest to people, as well as an enjoyable process for me! I feel though that the subject matter is starting to be repetitiveness, even though each day is still very fun and fresh for me. That being said, I will be decreasing the frequency of my posts, and really only capture the coolest of the cool happenings!

Day 32: Farm life :)

Believe it or not, I got used to sleeping on the futon, I actually miss it. Being up on the bunk isn't that bad, except it's to big. I feel like I'm sprawled over a king size bed, but it's just a twin. Compared to the to two foot and a half foot width of the futon though, it feels king size. I am much more aware of myself moving around at night, and I always wake up huddled against the wall. Not to mention climbing down that 10 foot ladder at 5:30am, that its a whole other adventure!

Guy and I both woke had set alarms for 5:30 but we both kept "snoozing" them until around 5:50, it was a bit of a late night last night. We did chores as usual. I'm still showing Guy the ropes, he is picking it up pretty quick though! When moving chicken tractors Jim came out and we split up the laying hens into two seperate pens so that they'll stop plucking eachothers feathers out. This batch of laying hens weren't brood mates as chicks so they never really got a chance to establish a pecking order. We also through a young rooster in each pen in hopes that they help bring about some order in the cages. Although Jim doesn't have too much hope for the young roosters, "What'll most likely happen is the old hens won't take well to a new young rooster and they'll just beat is ass." So stay tuned for more news on the fate of the two roosters!

After chores we took breakfast, I finally got some granola and yogurt which is nice because I was getting tired of oatmeal! The other good thing about the granola is there is no cooking necessary, and not a huge clean up either. I also through some pomegranate in the mixture, it was really tasty!

After breakfast Guy and I both mucked out the goat stalls for about three hours, as well as doing some clean up around the barn, running stuff to the "Bone Pile and other miscellanous tasks!

After Lunch we were in the garden for some harvesting work untill 3:30 when we had a mandatory Yoga session with Tina! It was a lot of fun, and actually good yoga since Tina is an actual teacher! It was me, Jim and Guy in a line with her at the front instructing us, it was a hard 90 minutes and afterwards we were late for chores (Which I just did in my Yoga outfit of spandex and nothing else), and we still had some harvesting to do. The work day didn't really end until 6:45 ish.

Guy and I worked out and showered, and then started cooking dinner. I handled the sauce, while Guy  made coffee and rice. We get all the reject produce that customers don't want, and then Tina and Jim don't want. So interns are one tier above the pigs on the order of food hand-me downs. I chopped up a bunch of tomatoes
for the base of the sauce, then I threw in some onions and garlic, sea salt, and a bell pepper. When the sauce was done we fried up some okra and eggplant which was delish because it all went over top the rice!

It's gets really hot in our room with the stove going, so I was sweating pretty profusely while cooking! That's always an interesting thing when you sweat right after showering. We also have about 50 flies in our room!

I tried going to bed earlier tonight but it looks like I'm just going to have to get used to going a little later!

Day 31: Relaxing day off!

Today was a good day off, a nice restful day off of sleeping and eating, as well as a little celebrating. I slept late, till 7 am, then I cooked up my breakfast of eggs and pancakes, when I was sufficiently full I went  back to bed. It is such a nice feeling to lay around and do nothing for the first time in few weeks.

I did some educational reading, some creative writing, as well as a little drawing, here is the end result:

I drew until I smelled smoke. I went to check it out and remembered that it was Maggie's Big party! It was a lot of fun, good food, fun people and lots of throwing little kids in the pool!

When it was time for cake, Tina brought me, Guy, and Jim some pieces. "Oh, thanks Tina!" said Guy.

"Thanks sweetie." said Jim.

"Thanks sweetie." said I. and then, WHACK!

Jim happened to be holding a coiled lasso in his hand and used it to whack me! But he was laughing as he did, it was a well timed joke I think.

Tina said, "That's thank you Ma'am to you mister!" also laughing. I have gotten pretty close with both of them which is fun

After the party and everything Guy and I did chores, he is still learning the ropes otherwise I would have been in the room continuing to relax! After rounding up the chickens Tina came by to work out a days off schedule for us so that I could begin the process of raising money for Thailand. Also it is worth mentioning that I talked to Sundog today at the party and I am hopefully be going out to his place in Arivaca, the near by artist's community and spend a day off or two learning some primitive living skills like hunting or trapping which would be really cool!

Today was really my last relaxing day off from here on out I think, for the rest of the time here I will either be doing work for other people to raise money or having enriching days at Sundog's place.

It's been a short couple of post's these last two days but things have gotten busier with Guy here, but it's fun having a roommate besides Stubs! Hopefully as our routine smooths out and things get back on schedule with the normal work weeks I'll be able to get back into a better routine with my posting!

Some updates on the workings of the farm:

-Asher has killed a couple of the chickens in their with him so we moved him from the piglet/chicken pasture to the two sows pasture.

-Tina put a down payment on a milk cow yesterday, so we will be getting a milk cow on Wednesday which means she will be milked twice a day, which means Guy and I will be milking her.

-The turnips Jim and I planted a couple weeks ago will be ready for harvest by this Saturday

-The Summer CSA share ends next week and we start the Fall season


That's all for now!

Day 30: Guy's Arrival!

This morning started early again, I keep waking up before my alarm goes off and just end up starting chores. It was unusually warm out, and there were thick clouds everywhere. While I was moving the chicken tractors, one of the Laying Hens was dead. So I had to carry her to the edge of the property and chuck her in the woods.

I have been slowly feeling a change in my mind, that is to say, the way my mind operates when I'm not actively engaging it. Since most of my chores don't require intense thinking, my mind is allowed to wander, this is part of why farming is perfect for me, because I love to let my mind wander. I think that most people do like to let their mind wander but find it difficult to find times where it's allowed to wander. I find my mind regressing, and I mean that in the best possible way! I have found that my mind is starting to be more childlike, more creative and imaginative.

For breakfast I had more raw eggs and a pomegranate! Here is a picture of the pomegranate that I picked apart!

I realized something about my life today, part of why I am so happy here. For so long I remember telling my dad that I just wanted to focus on the basics of life! You know, the key components that we absolutley require to stay alive, water, sleep and food! I would tell my dad, "Those things are the building blocks of healthy lifestyle, yet into day's busy life I feel like all get shunted to the back burner because I'm always focusing on some other commitments I have." I finally realized today that I am focusing on the basics and it feel so good!

Guy arrived around 11 it was fun to see him! I gave him the tour of the farm and we saw a horned toad along the way!

then we settled in a little in our room. It's going to be pretty tight quarters in this room. After we settled in we went back to work preparing for tommorow's market. It was a busy day, and a late dinner.

Day 29: Sun, sweat, music, and flies!!

I woke up early this morning and couldn't go back to sleep so I just decided to get a jump  start on chores. It was dark and pretty cold outside. My fingers were numb by the end of chores! I finished everything up by 7 and told Jim that I was going to take some time to clean up my area and make space for Guy because he gets here tomorrow morning!

For breakfast I have been having eggs with my oatmeal to try and ward off my hunger for longer than an hour. Eggs however are a pain to clean and I have been trying to figure out the best way to cook eggs so that they are the least stuck to the pan at the end of cooking, I got so tired of scrubbing egg off of my pans that today I decided to eat them raw! It wasn't that bad once I committed mentally to doing it! So breakfast today was oatmeal, goat's milk and three raw eggs. It worked like a charm too, zero clean up, less time eating, more time working, and no hunger pains till about 11!

Part of the cleaning I did in preparation for Guy's arrival was laundry, which means I had to wear the old Carhartts that I came here with, normally I use the smaller waste size ones that I found here. My old ones were sooo big on me though, and I also had to cut a new notch in my belt just to keep them on my hips!

After my breakfast, I had more planting and mulching to do. I worked non stop for about 4 hours and finished off the planting project! It felt good to cross it off my list! It was another scorcher today until about 1 or 1:30 when a breeze picked up, but up until then I was sweating profusely. Planting is strenuous in a whole other way than other farm labor. A good metaphor is that the regular farm labor I'm used to is more like weightlifting, where as harvesting and planting is more like yoga. You are often in weird positions, holding "poses" for as long as it takes to get all the seeds in the ground, moving slowly but still breathing hard and sweating! It's really good for me, helping to balance me out I think. I learned another lesson today while I was planting, it was a lesson surrendering to uncontrollable situations, as well as focusing on my mission. Although I should say that its more that I experience these lessons, because most of this stuff is all things I have heard or been told but it's not until I experience them that I really take it to heart. This experience was brought about by flies. I thought that normally flies don't like direct sunlight but for whatever reason they were out in droves today while I was planting. There were about six at any given time circling my face, landing on it, crawling around my nose and lips. If I swatted they all just buzzed off for about 1 second and then landed again, I realized quickly that swatting at them was not helping at all, and that it had slowed my pace of planting down to about zero. So I took a second to reinvent the sensation of flies on my face, instead of finding it highly irritating I pretended that it was really rather pleasant and that it was a form of "face therapy" that some people pay hundreds of dollars for, and I was getting it for free, that I should be so lucky to have these flies all over my face. That did the trick, they didn't leave, it wasn't one of those things where I made my peace with them, and then they left me alone. They stuck around for about 2 hours until it really heated up outside. But that was 2 hours worth of experiential lesson learning in my book! :)

As I was planting Frank and Lloyd, those two brothers I mentioned a couple days ago passed the garden in their truck and honked like they always do! They are super friendly guys. I'm reminded of a story about them that Tina told me a couple days ago. They had left the house at one point during the evening and gone out to do errands, and when they got back they found out they had been broken into. Then they found their bull mastiff and he had a bunch of jean denim stuck in his teeth! He obviously got a chunk of the intruders leg or something. They were really confused about the whole thing but figured it was some illegal immigrant because that type of thing is quite common. It wasn't until later when they heard on the news that the juvenile  detention  center had, had a big break out of boys from their premises, and that facility is only a few miles from where we are.  I can't imagine breaking out of a detention center, breaking into someones home, and then getting attacked by a huge dog. Anyhow, I thought that was just an interesting comment on the area that I am living in, its fairly normal thing for break-ins and what not. 


Around 1 I broke for lunch after I finished with all the planting for the day. I spent the first twenty minutes of my lunch break just enjoying the breeze flowing through my back stoop. I still had music going from work it was my pump up playlist from spring Rugby back in college, so the whole time I was planting I was having flashbacks to my rugby days! But I shut it off for my break and just sat and listened to my environment. The birds were chirping, the barn flies were buzzing, the chickens were scratching in the dirt, the cicadas were rattling out there summer song.  It was an incredibly peaceful moment. I really enjoyed just doing nothing for a little while, usually I'm either eating (or some task relate to eating like cooking or doing dishes) or working. Which I love! I love being constantly active and working hard for something I am passionate about. But it was really nice to take a twenty minute break from work and quiet my mind. Soon though my mind was racing again, it usually is, this time I was thinking about the evolution of language and how whole cultures made up of millions of people agree that the letters "c-h-i-c-k-e-n" are the representation of an animal. Then someone observed the way chickens scratch in the earth for food, and noticed the markings it left were similar to someone's hand writing that they had seen, then they probably made an off hand comment to someone else about how "that guy's hand writing looks like chicken scratch." and then the phrase of "chicken scratch", in reference to handwriting, was born. Now, how ever many years after the birth of that phrase, people commonly say, "I can't read your chicken scratch" and the meaning of it is generally understood by most people. Even though they two subjects were originally completely unrelated! Humans really are strange!


Oh and here is a couple shots of drip irrigation lines at work:

Each wet spot in the dirt represents a hole in the tape where water very slowly seeps out. Those spots above represent about half an hour of dripping, we leave the water on for about 2 hours per bed until all the  circles of water expand and eventually the whole bed is wet. 

After lunch I went to find Jim and he said to go box up some of the Garlic that was hanging in the hay barn and that I could have the rest of the afternoon off until chores! It was really nice of him and I initially asked if he was sure that there wasn't anything to be done, and he said well there is always stuff to be done, but that you also need to learn when take a break. So I took a break.. for about an hour, then it was time for chores! :) 


Chores passed by in normal fashion, except that when I checked the chicks one was dead, so I disposed of it the same way Jim had, by giving it a little birdy cremation in the burn barrel. Except, before I burned it, I pulled it's head off, I wanted to see what it was like because Jim said it was really easy. It was super easy, it was weird though, as soon as it's head was in my left and its body in my right, it just looked like a broken toy or stuffed animal. It was a pretty surreal five seconds as I stared at it. The chicken round up was easy enough and I continued my nightly routine of playing with Asher, but tonight I also decided to give Shawnee some love because I often see him trying to play with Boris, but Boris isn't at pretending to be a puppy, which makes sense considering he is a 350 lb boar who just eats and sleeps.

As I went outside to turn of the barn lights, I noticed these bats roosting up in the corner!

I wonder if they have been there every night for the last month, but I just now am noticing them.

One other aspect of preparing for Guy was moving my bed off the futon, and up onto the actual bunk beds. So tonight will be my first experience on the real beds! Hopefully it goes well!