So today I met Katie, the other intern who lives off the farm. Jimmy was still gone visiting his parents, so it gave me some time to work with and get to know her one on one, which is good since she's staying all through September.
Today was very different. I woke up at 7:45 and went out to feed the chickens and open the greenhouse, Kai raised the high tunnels today though (yay!). Feeding the chickens in the morning is a wonderful job. I'm not entirely sure why… I mean, the chicken house is extremely smelly, but the chickens themselves are just lovely to be around. It's like, when I would wake up in the morning for school the only thing I had to look forward to was, well, going to school. And that made waking up more daunting. But now I get to look forward to hanging out with the chickens! And that makes waking up pretty okay.
So I've found that the schedule of the day is generally:
Wake up b/t 7 and 8, put on the clothes you wore yesterday, and go out to do morning chores.
Once chores are done, go inside, have some breakfast and a cup of coffee
Ask what there is to do today, since a new list is made up every day. And then go do that thing.
Eat lunch b/t 12 and 3. And it's either something super yummy made by Jen, or just some leftovers. But we all eat together, and the food is always earned. You earn your appetite here. There's also not a microwave, which i've found to be perfectly fine. I didn't even notice until I tried making oatmeal one morning…this is when i realized I had to find the pots for the stove.
Go back out and continue working on the stuff to do.
Katie goes home around 5, and I usually take a break.
Around 6:30 or 7, do evening chores (close high tunnels, close greenhouse, feed chickens).
Chill out, get into evening clothes, do whatever (knit, blog, read, play with sebastian) and wait for dinner, pretty much always something made by Jen. And always yummy. And if it's a good day we eat out on the deck with a great view of the mountains and the cats and 4 kittens and Cordelia, the pug. It's a family affair.
And then, go to bed.
Something I really like about being here is that we eat all our meals together (besides breakfast), and it's always a fun occasion. I laugh more here than I have anywhere else, I believe. I think that laughter is the ultimate language in this household., and it's great.
So on this day, I learned how to gather and put away agerbond (a mesh-type material that covers a row and helps to keep pests out. The bad thing about it is that it's out of sight, out of mind, and that's why Edgars weeds got so crazy).
Weeding with four people is unbelievably fast in comparison to one person. We finished weeding Edgar by lunch.
BTW, they named all of their rows different names. It was a manifestation of cabin fever, according to Jen, caused by the winter blues.
I learned about the processing station, which is where we take everything we harvest to clean it, weigh it, and record how many lbs were brought in from the field.
I also learned where the majority of the things in the kitchen are, which is something you wouldn't think you'd have to learn-but when you move into somebody else's house, it's a big deal.
Oh yeah! And Once Katie left around 5, Jen said I could just break until evening chores, but then Kai called me out to put in the new fridge shelving. He said it would be easy. Ahah!
Here's the fridge, with the shelving.
It was just a metal shelving thing, not made for the fridge, so I had to install it into the fridge itself, which was difficult because there's a piece of metal separating the two sides of the fridge, and the shelves were the entire width of the fridge…ok, so it's hard to explain. But I'll show you some pictures and guarantee that it was a frustrating task. Rewarding when done! But frustrating. And of course, I was embarrassed to ask anyone for help, because Kai said it should be easy! So I assumed I was just not looking at it the right way, and continued on-trying different ways to put it in, glad that no one was watching me, and finally, after many attempts, figured out a way that I could actually get it in, but it was still really difficult, and I ended up needing four hands to do it anyway. So Kai and I finished putting it in after a good hour or so, and to my great relief, it seems to work perfectly.
HAZZAH!
So that's that for day 3.
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