My Final Night

I’m up pretty late for my farming days! It’s hard for me to sleep. I’m trying to take in every last inch of this farm and this house and the sounds of the night. I realized, after sitting out on the steps leading up to door from the outside to my room, that I have hardly spent any time looking at the stars here. I’ve spent a night here and there. But, most of the time, I’m in bed around 9, sleeping by ten thirty. It’s like someone spilled a salt shaker all over the night sky. Trying to remember how quiet it is here for when I’m sitting on the crowded smelly subway with my arms aching and sore loaded with shopping bags for whatever show I’m working on, and I need to meditate and remember what else there is in this world.

I leave tomorrow, and I’m not really sure what to say here tonight. I think I’ll probably need a few days to adjust to regular life. I’m nervous for the country to city transition that is going to happen over the next few days. I guess for now, I will end with this poem by Howard Moss:

 

“New Hampshire”

1

When the loons cry,

The night seems blacker,

The water deeper.

 

Across the shore:

An eyelash-charcoal

Fringe of pine trees.

 

2

The lake reflects

Indefinite pewter,

 

And intermittent thunder

Lets us know

 

The gods are arriving,

One valley over.

 

3

After the long

Melancholy of the fall,

One longs for the crisp

Brass shout of winter—

 

The blaze of firewood,

The window’s spill

Of parlor lamplight

Across the snow.

 

4

Flaring like a match

Dropped in a dry patch,

One sunset tells

The spectrum’s story.

 

See the last hunter’s

Flashlight dim

As he hurries home

To his lighted window.

Week 7 and part of Week 8

God, I’ve been real awful about updating, haven’t I? So, pig roast was Saturday. My friend Ryan came up to visit for the weekend. We all had to make a dish to bring and I made my mom’s potato and string bean salad. I ate some of Alice. It was weird, you know how specific people have specific smells – and they are not necessarily good or bad smells? Well, animals are kind of like that. And Alice had her own smell too, and I felt like I could taste it when I ate her. Benny the guy who was throwing the party had a little band there and the biggest bonfire mountain I have ever seen. But, it started to rain when they tried to light it and no bonfire 😦 We tossed a bit, I got pretty drunk, and then I had to go back to the farm early to tuck in the birds. Well, right in the middle of barn chores its started DOWN POURING STORMING LIKE CRAZY on Ryan and I. Not to mention it was BLACK out. So, we tried to wait it out in the barn to see if it’d lighten up before going down to close the tractor chickens. Then, we met up with two friends who just moved to Keene for grad school at a bar in Keene. The next day we tried picking blueberries but they were basically no good anymore. Ate breakfast, watched a whole lot of Sopranos, played pickup ultimate in Keene, ate delicious food for dinner at a restaurant in Keene after ultimate. Tried to watch the meteor shower Sunday night (it was too cloudy Saturday night). But, didn’t stay up late enough. Next morning was CSA – so Ryan helped us out with harvesting and getting the baskets ready before leaving. I sent him with one of Jeanny’s Jams – the strawberry one. So good, especially in yogurt. Monday I also pressure washed some skin off the top of my hand. That’s a way to seriously maim someone. I wonder if I’ll have a scar?

It rained off and on (stormed off and on) for the next few days, which was awesome because I had been waiting for storms all summer long. My new camera came in. So, I’ve been taking a bunch of photos. I had a skype meeting with the community garden committee I’m on back home. It was GREAT, we are making such awesome progress. I also skyped with Sara. I came up with a great idea for a documentary play. I also decided that fight choreographers are not allowed to be American. We have no sword fighting in our blood, we were cowboys.

On the farm, we did tons and tons of canning last week. Tomatoes, salsa, beans, beets. So, that was cool.

I also felt fall last week. It’s coming. I can smell it and feel it in the gusts of wind and the angle of the sun.

 

M&M described the sun’s warmth in the most beautiful way ever “it feels like a big hug.” Saturday, we went to the Chesterfield Corn Roast and then left early to go on an adventure to get ice cream. It was a lot of fun hanging out with M&M. I’m gonna miss that kid when I’m gone. For our last week here we decided to stay in our favorite positions. So, I get to be store manager two weeks in a row. I made the most DELICIOUS braised lamb shoulder chops for dinner tonight. I served them with a butter and leeks quinoa, and sauteed collards with garlic. Last night I made shepherd’s pie for the first time, and ate it for the first time! AHHH. So tasty. Thursday we are processing 22 more chickens. Actually 23, because Jorge the rooster is going too. He’s been attacking people. Then Saturday my parents come up and Sunday I go home!

I got offered a job designing a show for the undergrad theatre department at NYU. Emailed my mentor/college costume design teacher to ask her about what she thought about it. God, talking to her is just so refreshing. I also came across an email she wrote to me in 2009 at the end of the semester when I was having some problems designing the goods in a Greek play I was designing.

I’ll leave you with that.

Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 10:55 PM
To: EVANS, ERICA
Subject: one more thing to think about

Dear Erica,

I have some thoughts on the issue of faith that we have discussed today-Some of these thoughts may very well be on your mind already-
Faith is NOT Religion-
Faith is NOT the belief in God-

whether it is one God or many Gods-
Faith to me, a lot of times, is what gets me up and out of bed in the morning-
what makes you look forward to the day-
sometimes it is what I see around me in people-
the qualities/beauty in humanity that I am blown away by,
that I aspire to,
that I wish we didn’t forget so easily…
So think of the Gods in these terms-
the quality and essence of Apollo-not just the chauvinistic side, but also the protector side, like a parent or a big brother-
the quality and essence of Athena-her sense of justice, her honesty.
the quality and essence of Hermes-the transportational/transformational side, the guide through the journey- he is patron of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them-
Think about these essences,
or think about our desire and need for these transformational forces in our lives,
or how these forces are/have always been within us,
how sometimes we didn’t know they were there all along-
I hope these are helpful-
But MAKE SURE YOU GO HIKING WITH SOMETHING DELICIOUS AND LOOK AT THE SKY AND SMELL THE AIR!!!
Best,
Anita

————-

She totally gets me.

Day 40 – Week 6 – “Edible – good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.”

Today, I am full of so many feelings. I didn’t have the greatest sleep last night because I keep having these dreams that I would miss butchering Alice (one of our pigs), which we had planned to do this morning for a neighbor’s pig roast tomorrow. So, I just kept waking up every half hour and running out into the kitchen to see if anyone was up.

One of the neighbor’s has a huge pig roast party every year and we are providing the pig. It was between Alice, Tweedle Dee, and Tweedle Dum, and Alice was the one to get in the doghouse first. Since my camera is broken I didn’t take photos other than what I could with my cell phone, but one of the other interns got everything on video with her ipad. I won’t post any of it here, but please, be forewarned: I will go into detail about how it went down.

We set up the scalding station last night, which, like the chickens loosens the hair so it an be scraped off. Richard set up a pulley system so we could hang her up also. This morning, Jeanny, Richard, Sarah, little Rachel and Erica, and I all went down to the barn, and Richard used a gun to stun Alice in the head first, and a knife to puncture into the throat. All in all, it went down quickly, silently, and much more smoothly than any of us expected. Mind you, this was the first time they’ve done this here. Then, we let her bleed out and proceeded to scald her and scrape off the hair. The first layer of skin comes off with the hair. We used knives to do it. It reminded me of a man’s hot shave with the knife.

Then, came the evisceration. For pig roasts you keep the head on. Jeanny did the eviscerating. She’s great with a knife. A long cut from the butthole to the puncture at the throat without cutting too deep and getting the entrails. There are a series off cuts to make, including separating the pelvis.

Then, you make sure to keep the butthole intact because the spit goes through there, but you have to tie off the large intestine connected to it right on the inside so no poop comes out into the cavity and you can cut away the rest of the intestine (we call the large intestine the poop rope, because that’s basically what it is). When Jeanny tied off the the poop rope some poop came out of Alice’s butt, and we used some bleach and water to clean it up. Then basically, the entrails just fall right out. It’s amazing how after having eviscerated a chicken I can easily identify the different organs in the pig,which is more than I can say for the biology class i took in high school.

After that it was just a matter of washing her off and then putting her in a bucket of ice and water until the neighbor came by for her.

We ate breakfast quickly and then we still had to harvest and get the CSA baskets ready by 11.

Unlike butchering chickens which as I’ve said before are soulless little dinosaurs, I privately shed some tears after the entire event went down. Not because what I think we did was wrong, or inhumane. Alice lived a wonderful life with the best food, space to run around, and love and attention. There is something about the act of butchering an animal that feels holy. Sacred. The respectful silence of the killing. Scrubbing and washing her in the scald tub with clean hot water.  Removing her hair by hand with knives, it feels ritualistic. Carefully making incisions that humans before us have made for centuries to prepare her for feeding a hundred hungry people. I am so full of awe and wonder that just like that – we have food. From pig to pork. Suddenly, food. To sustain us, help children grow, help heal the body of the sick, get you through your day. I feel like I know the deepest meaning of thanks giving. I am so thankful for Alice’s life.

By the time we finished breakfast we had only 2 hours to do the entire harvest and prep all the CSA baskets. It was overcast, but I was grateful for the cloud cover. I have had enough sun beating down on me for this week. We had 16 or 17 different vegetables in this weeks basket plus herbs. The full share has been weighing in at about 50 lbs of produce. ORGANIC produce. That’s well over a hundred dollars at the grocery store. Our baskets today were beautiful and full of color. Bright lights swiss chard, beets, kale, collards, butternut squash,zucchini, crook neck squash, yellow straight squash, peas, yellow purple and green string beans, onions, leeks, sungold tomatoes, big fat red tomatoes, rosy red heirloom tomatoes, romaine lettuce, black seeded simpson lettuce, peppers, basil, cilantro. Unbelievable. With my own hands, I am feeding people. I have been responsible for the food on the plates of people I don’t really even know. The food pantry depends on us for fresh produce every Saturday and I am helping to feed those families.  The thought of all this brings me to near tears. When did farming start to feel like such holy work?

Someone at Jeanny’s work has not been able to put food on the table for her family. When Jeanny found this out, she went into work the next day with a basket of food from our farm for her. This woman’s children didn’t have to go to bed hungry that night because of the efforts we have all put in on this farm. I am overwhelmed by the emotion this all brings me.

People should write letters to farmers thanking them for what they do, just like people write to soldiers. Farmers are keeping people ALIVE. How cool is that?

About two-thirds of the way into filling today’s CSA baskets. Even more went into them than you see here! First basket on the left is the full share, to the right are half shares.

 

Last Friday (8/3) CSA full share basket weighing in at 51 lbs. You can’t even see everything that’s in there under all the leafy greens and carrots on top. We had to tie twine around the baskets to help hold it all in and not everything fit on the shelves of the cold room!

Day 33 – Powdery Mildew

CSA Baskets from last week.

Yesterday was better than two days ago in terms of getting work done. Deep south got watered, squash got pyganic sprayed on it. I sprayed copper on all the tomato plants, we harvested, and ripped out half the snap peas because of what I think is even scarier than squash bugs – powdery mildew. Half our snap peas were dead or dying because they were covered in powdery mildew. Powdery mildew is an airborne disease, a fungus. It doesn’t need water to spread, in fact some sources say to use water to help get rid of it by spraying it on the foliage to wash the spores away. You can spray a fungicide (so I sprayed the copper fungicide on the rest of the peas which didn’t have the mildew as badly). Then, it turned out that the squash also had powdery mildew. I swear I saw it spreading before my very eyes. It’s awful. Entire plants dead nearly overnight. This shit spreads so fast! Today right after CSA harvest we are going out there with trash bags and pulling every powdery mildew squash plant. Today and tomorrow are my last days as garden manager for another few weeks!!! Thank god. Yesterday Denise picked up her parents from the airport so I made dinner for her. We had 3 roast chickens cooked vertical with cans up their butts filled with blueberries, sugar, salt, and white wine. HOLY SHIT. I’m never cooking a whole chicken horizontally again. Perfectly and golden. We also had string beans and baked potatoes. Then, Marion made blueberry pies. A gluten free one with a bean flour crust and a regular one. I had 2 slices. WOW. I was in such a food coma last night. Then, right before I went to sleep I got news that one of my closest friends is supposed to be moving to Portland, OR while I’m here in New Hampshire and I won’t get to see him. His brother told me, and I’m so devastated. I had been looking forward to this friend visiting with his girlfriend but a week or so ago found out they weren’t coming anymore because they are going on a roadtrip to Colorado for Burning Man. Now I find out that right after Burning Man he’s moving to Portland. I’m so upset about not seeing him. It makes me wish I were home even more.

Days 27 through 32

Well, I think it’s been a full week since I actually updated. I have no real excuse other than I’ve just been so busy with other things that updating this blog as a priority fell to the bottom of the list.  So, last week, on Day 26 the new intern arrived. Her name is Maddalena but we’ve nicknamed her M&M. She’s only 19 but I think she seems really thoughtful and mature for her age. She’s from California but goes to school at Mt. Holyoke.  Also, she’s a golfer, so Richard has a golf buddy now!

Days 27 and 28 were mostly about organizing blueberry festival stuff, making fliers, updating the calendar on the website, sending out the town crier email (which looked BEAUTIFUL). In addition to those things, Jeanny and I had a conversation maybe on Thursday? I can’t really remember, but it was about what my plans are once I leave here. We had this whole long conversation about how I can apply my strengths and skills in costume design to local foods. Production management skills, budgeting, working with people, etc. It’s interesting because the conclusion of the conversation directed by Jeanny was almost exactly like a conversation I had with Steph months ago about the kind of job I’d like to have that I think I’d be good at. Getting paid to connect small farmers with their consumers and/or clients, organizing events for farms, and things like that. While we were having this conversation I went to this website where people post jobs for food jobs and I found 2 positions at a company looking for someone in the NY/NJ/CT area and the job descriptions sound very much like what I would want to do. So, what has been taking up my time, or rather, bumped updating this blog to the bottom of the list is creating my resume. It’s the first time I’m making a REAL resume (aka not for the entertainment industry) and it’s so difficult. It has been taking me forever even after Jeanny and I sat down for an hour on Friday and went through the position at the company, their website, my skills, and stuff. Friday night we had a farm meeting over dinner. For dessert we took these roasted beets we had, scooped out the middle, filled them with goat cheese, topped them with crushed walnuts and honey. So good. But, I’ve eaten so many beets I’m kinda over them for awhile. Saturday morning I spent working on blueberry festival stuff, and the afternoon was resume (didn’t get very far).

Day 28 (Saturday) night my brother’s friend from NJ and his girlfriend met up with me at a bar in Keene. They are both going to grad school up here and were up for the weekend looking for an apartment. They stopped by the farm on Sunday afternoon and told me they had found a place and will be moving in the day before the blueberry festival! Obviously, I invited them and looks like they’ll be coming. It rained Sunday afternoon so I didn’t go to ultimate. But, Sunday morning I did crossfit with Stephanie (the girl half of the paleo couple in the garage). I did well, and my time was good and I felt fine throughout the workout. But I passed out when I got in the house. My hearing got all muffled and went away, then my eyesight got blurry, I felt nauseous, I started to sweat a lot, and I passed out. Steph was about to give me CPR and she went to open my mouth and I bit her! Then, I woke up and she was putting an ice pack on me. Turns out, I hadn’t eaten enough. I watched some Sopranos, then caught some of the Yankees/Red Sox game on TV and snuggled with Ginger on the couch.

Day 30 (Monday) was the beginning of my turn as garden manager (my least favorite position). Since I last was garden manager we’ve figured out a system for watering the gardens, but since it rained on Monday I didn’t need to do any watering. It was a CSA morning so we made up the baskets. I’ve got some photos from the Friday CSA that one of the other interns took that I will post up because these were the most diverse and biggest baskets thus far this season. SO BEAUTIFUL. I swear the full share had about 30 lbs. of food in it. CRAZY.

Tuesday Day 31 in the morning, at breakfast we find out that the police picked up Ginger and we’re never seeing her again or getting her back. It was a terrible way to start my day. Ginger is still learning boundaries and sometimes wanders off down the street. But, she’s a REALLY friendly dog. Apparently, some of the neighbors got together and called the cops and the next time they found her out and about they took her. I don’t know why it upset me so much, maybe because we never got to say goodbye to her. She went back to the animal rescue and some other family owns her now. The rest of my day was just awful for a variety of reasons. I got so overwhelmed after lunch I just had a breakdown and started crying and the girls told me to go call someone from home and take a nap. It was the first time since I’ve been here that I just wished I were at home. I called my mom and cried and talked for awhile then fell asleep for 4 hours! Between Ginger, and being garden manager and not knowing what to do with the water, and thinking about my friend’s dad who’s in the hospital, and feeling stressed over getting this resume done, and trying to get all the Blueberry Festival stuff done, and being unable to move my arms with any degree of motion because of how sore I was (and still am) from crossfit and trying to figure out what my priorities are throughout all this I just lost it.

Yesterday morning I woke up feeling a little bit better. Stephanie the paleo girl couple who created the watering system walked me through everything so I would feel better about it. Then, we got to work in the garden and good lord. It was so frustrating. We didn’t get nearly enough done, and again the day was overwhelming. The only good thing about yesterday was the dinner and bananagrams. Denise and I made pork chops with a lemon thyme, salt, and pepper rub – seared in a pan with some onions then baked in the oven. Then, we sauteed onions, raisins, apple pie filling that Jeanny jarred last year, collard greens, and walnuts together. Deglazed the pork chop pan with some white wine, and poured the sauce all over the chops. Made quinoa  so that M&M (she’s a vegetarian – but interested in reading my favorite book! “The Vegetarian Myth” by Lierre Keith!) had something to eat other than the apple mixture. Denise made custard for dessert and then we played Bananagrams. I’ve been winning at Bananagrams lately. I’m 3 for 4. Not too bad. Denise’s parents come today and they’re staying until Monday morning when they all drive back to Nebraska together.

Anyway, today is gonna suck too most likely. Pyganic on the entire squash field to combat this awful squash bug problem, and then harvesting more potatoes. Also, I’m nearly out of work clothes I desperately need to do laundry. I’ve had to try and not stress myself out over my resume. I’ll get to it when I get to it and hope that the position isn’t filled. I really want the job but I just don’t know how to prioritize that with my garden manager responsibilities right now. I also need to get on some stuff for blueberry festival and I just feel like garden manager is TOO much responsibility for an intern.

Anyway, I need to look up what this stuff is on the snap pea leaves. It might be powdery mildew. Also, my camera is definitely broken and I’m super pissed. Any recommendations for a good point and shoot?

I’ll leave you with: Sugar slept in my bed last night and just kept farting. Cat farts are gross. And I miss Ginger.

Creepy mannequin from the vintage/antique store in Brattleboro.

Day 27-Day 30 JUST WAIT

Ah, been really preoccupied these last 3 or 4 days with blueberry festival stuff and some other paperwork. I promise I’ll update late tonight or tomorrow morning for real.

 

BEGINNING OF WEEK 5! (Also, I’m leaving a week earlier than I anticipated because my parents have to move my sister into college the original weekend I was going to come home. So, I’ll be home August 26th!)

Day 25 and 26 – Holy Hangover, Batman!

Ugh. What a headache I’ve got this morning. Yesterday, we woke up and I cooked breakfast for everyone. Then, did a bunch of paperwork. After lunch, we had a pyganic spraying squash bug party out in the south field. All hands on deck. It only took us just under 2 hours, but it’s so exhausting. Good news is our squash plants though plagued with some bugs are unbelievably healthy and we’ve got TONS of squash growing.

Sarah and I decided we wanted to go out after dinner for a drink. Put on some real clothes and get off the farm. So, we got dressed up-ish and first went to Brattleboro because there was this cute microbrew bar I wanted to check out. Well, we got there and holy hell, Brat is DEAD and empty. At least on weeknights. So, we got back in the car and drove to Keene to go to this bar Katie had told us about that she said was cool. Finding a cool bar here has been difficult. We parked on Main in front of this other bar that I went to the other night with Steph and we start walking down Main to try and find this bar. Well, we walked up and down Main and it was nowhere to be found. Finally, we decided to poke our heads down this alley, and way out in the back of the building was the bar we were looking for and there were PEOPLE there! It’s probably where we’ll end up going from now on. Wednesday night is Irish night so all Irish beers and drinks are cheaper. We had some Jameson. Met THREE math teachers there. Weird. Played some music on the music machine. Then, we went to the bar we parked in front of because some of the folks at the first bar told us there’d be karaoke there and Sarah loves karaoke. We walked over with a bunch of people, and one of them said they were going to sing 4 Non Blondes “What’s Up.” I LOVE that song, and may have joined a random stranger in singing it. We got to the bar and ordered gin and tonics. Better than last time I was there. Ran into one of the practicum students who works on the farm from Keene State there which was funny. Karaoke night was interesting. I drank a lot. We got back to the farm a little before 1 and I crawled right into bed. All in all, it was an amusing and entertaining night. And now I’ve got a hangover headache pounding in my head and just want to eat salty, greasy food.

Today though huge thunderstorm will be passing through and there are electrical outages up and down the coast. So, we’re preparing for that by hauling up the generator to the store and making sure it works. Jeanny is teaching us how to can beets today. Yesterday we pulled all the beets from row 1 in the North field and Sarah and I cut the tops and tails and cleaned them and soaked them in water overnight. It’s a good day for canning if it’s going to be storming. I’M SO EXCITED FOR THE STORM!

I made a ham steak for breakfast today with a sliced apples cooked in butter, brown sugar, whole grain dijon mustard, and thyme. We also had scrambled eggs and leftover potato and string bean salad from yesterdays dinner. Ham steaks are delicious. I’m getting so spoiled here with high quality food. I’ve also been consistently surprising myself with good cooking, but I think it’s hard to cook something badly when you’re working with the best ingredients. Anyway, I’m spending the morning organizing more blueberry festival stuff.

EVERYONE SHOULD COME! AUGUST 12TH!

 

Also, I’m really pissed because I think my camera is broken and I just fucking bought a $40.00 computer cord for it from Sony so I could upload my photos to my computer. So, I haven’t been taking photos for 2 days. Here’s a sunset photo from a few nights ago.

 

Sunset and the driveway to our farm.

Day 24 – Continued

So, plans changed. We realized that not everyone was here for the squash party and we really need all hands on deck for that. Postponed it until tomorrow afternoon. It will be better then anyway, sunnier out. Squash bugs like the sun, and it is a little overcast today. In fact, we just came inside because it smells like rain and right now there is thunder.

I forgot to mention the most exciting part of my day thus far in my earlier post. I received MAIL today! Every week I try to write friends and family back home a little card or note. A friend of mine wrote back and SURPRISE! She has the same veggie and fruit stationary that I do. It’s so exciting to get mail. I will spend the next hour or so doing paperwork that I have on my list to get done for store manager, and then finishing up dinner, and then dinner, and then finishing the last 20 pages of this play I will most likely be designing. I might take a trip to Keene to run some errands. We’ll see. I’d rather be laying in bed today like this:

Fatty being lazy.

Days 22, 23, and 24 Post lunch

Stephanie came to visit this past weekend. It was fun. On Sunday we woke up and picked blueberries and walked around Brattleboro. Saw this magical woman while we were at a stoplight:

Then, back to the farm, and then to Keene for some Ultimate pickup. This week’s turnout was MUCH better than last weeks and I met some cool new people. Stephanie started to learn how to play and jumped in on a few points! So that was very exciting. Then, we came home, showered and went back into Keene to get Mexican food and margaritas before she had to leave.

This week I am store manager so in addition to being responsible for the farm store and farm stand, I am responsible for cooking meals for everyone and keeping the kitchen/mud room tidy and neat. So yesterday morning for breakfast I made scrambled eggs with diced onions and peppers, sauteed kale with garlic, oil, and chunks of taylor ham (Stephanie brought me some!), and toast. Lunch was leftover homemade pizza, Jeanny’s hommus, a large spread of raw cut veggies (tomatoes, snap peas, carrots, broccoli, cucumbers, etc), hard boiled eggs, and other leftovers. For dinner, I made roasted potatoes with rosemary and olive oil, blanched string beans and snap peas with garlic, s&p, and almonds. For the entree, I sauteed diced onions and peppers in oil with zucchini, eggplant, and tomatoes, added 2 pounds of ground pork sausage meat, 1 lb of ground pork, tomato paste, red wine, and seasonings and let it simmer for a long time. It smelled DELICIOUS. Everyone loved dinner and there enough leftovers for lunch today.

This morning for breakfast I made a kale and scallion frittata, leftover roasted potatoes with rosemary, and BACON. Our  smoked meats finally came in from our last set of pigs. SO TASTY! For dinner we’re going to have pulled pork. I’ve had 2 pork shoulders in the crock pot all day, and collard greens, and beets. Probably leftover blanched snaps peas/beans because we’ve just got tons of it.

Fatty keeps coming into my room around 4 in the morning and annoying the shit out of me. I could keep my door closed but I like having airflow. Yesterday I went out to the farmstand to put everything away and saw Sugar rolling around in a pile of dried out grass clippings. So I laid down about 15 feet from her on my back just because it looked like a good time. Sugar came over to me and curled up on my chest while I lay there under the sun setting and it was so relaxing. But, then Ginger came over and chased Sugar away.

In about five minutes we’re having a squash party out in the south field. Not as fun as it sounds. We’re spraying pyganic again but a stronger solution because we were doing it too weak, and in a different method on the plants. It’s going to take a couple hours. UGH.

I’m working on planning the Blueberry Festival and some other things for the farm. Keeping pretty busy.

Straight from the Blueberry Forest

Day 21 – Best Friend Comes Visit!

YAY! So, yesterday (Saturday) we woke up to do barn chores then got to nap afterwards because we were up late with the films on the farm Friday night. I tried napping but my nap quality was poor so I caught up on some other things, and finished watching an episode of Sopranos. I think I’m about to start Season 3. Anyway, then I did some work in the garden. We had planned on making pizza (both regular and paleo options) for dinner so I was going to make ricotta. Realized we had no heavy cream and off I went to Brattleboro to buy some heavy cream. Spent a couple hours making cheese. Then, went out and did more weeding all the while anxiously waiting for Stephanie to get here! After some weeding I went inside and cleaned our downstairs bathroom because it was getting dirty. Then I took a shower and BAM! Steph was here.

She helped me with evening barn chores, and then we had dinner. The paleo pizza crust is made with cauliflower, cheese, eggs, and some spices and was DELICIOUS. My favorite pizza had sausage meat and beets on it. While we were eating a gigantic Vietnamese family came and asked to buy two of our ducks…live. We had 6 ducks (4 white and 2 brown) and they wanted the brown ones. So, Sarah and I put our shoes on and went to catch some ducks. We had never sold live ducks here on the farm before so we weren’t quite sure how to hand them over, but they asked us to tie the feet together. They were super friendly and loved our farm and will definitely be back.

After dinner, Steph and I finished up barn chores and then went into Keene to get a drink. Keene is such a weird place. Bars close at 12:45/1ish and I still have yet to find a place that makes a good gin and tonic. We walked around Main Street for a bit then settled on this one sports bar. Walked in and realized OH NO WE’RE IN RED SOX COUNTRY!!! Red Sox on every televesion!!! We only had one drink each then went home because we were EXHAUSTED.

Yesterday when I went to collect eggs around noon I went to push one of the hens out of the box she was sitting in so  I could collect the eggs in there, and when she stood up PLOP out came an egg. I have never in my life seen an egg come out of a chicken’s body that up close and personal at eye level before. It was pretty weird? Cool? Anyway, here she is:

Hen whose privacy I invaded.