Agotado

Exhausted over here. It’s day two. Woke up at 7AM to dress and oatmeal myself.

Made on the hefty stove. Note all the beautiful cast iron skillets.

And ate at the kitchen table

The berries are from the trees outside

Drizzled in some honey from a comb off the farm

It held me over from 7:30AM til noon no problem. More impressive that it was through four hours of squash harvesting. Oh, but first Winnie and I went to feed the chickens. They’re called silky chickens bc of their soft fur and they have blue skin. I held one! Slowly getting over my traumatizing events last year collecting eggs from chickens

They look like they’re wearing fuzzy socks

Ridiculous fur balls

Tom the turkey got fed too

Then we fed the bunny

This soft floppy muppety adorable bunny

Back to the squash. I harvested rows of squash while the girls started on cucumbers. I thought I was being smart as the cucumbers are prickly and I didn’t have gloves, but these mothers are just as bad. My arms are now covered in a red rash from pushing through the leaves. They were itching and burnt feeling while we were working, but Winnie told me to put on my jacket (duh) to cover my arms and the sensations slowly subsided.

You have to search through the leaves and get down to the center of the plant to cut the squash on the green tip there

A lot of damn squash in all different sizes. Ranging from too small, perfect, and too big. We collected the big ones anyway so Chris can give them to a food bank. Customers won’t get these in their shares bc the bigger the squash the seedier it is and less taste it has. Those two in the middle are perfect bc the bulging it does at the end means it’s matured passed that too skinny phase that first one is in.

We’d harvest for a while collecting them in buckets as we went. They’d then take the truck and move down the rows. Rafael would place the buckets on the conveyer belt sticking out there and they would reach Lisinda who stacks them on the truck

We entertained ourselves by playing Disney songs and singing along to Lisindas phone. That singing together bond thing in effect again.

Before we knew it it was time to pack up and head back for lunch. We hopped up on the truck bed to rest our sore legs and backs hitching a ride to the processing center

I’m looking at this picture realizing outside of lunch time, this was the only time we sat down all day

Watching the puppy muppets run around in the background

Lunch was cooked by Chris again and again was delicious. He sautéed everything in coconut oil. It looks meager, but it hit the spot. I’m not sure what was in the eggs on top there, but good stuff, no clue what was in the potatoes besides coconut oil and onions, but holy crap amazing and that little aubergine colored ball is part of a veggie patty made from beets and other veggies made by the farm café’s chef, Susan.

After lunch we headed back to the processing barn (where we sort, wash and store everything) to pack mesculin for farm share boxes. It was Winnie, Lisinda and I again and we stood stuffing bags with mesculin, talked about nothing and jammed out Winnie’s eclectic ipod while asking for translations of certain lyrics: “Llamame, tal ves (call me, maybe)!” No pictures of these exciting events, bc the next really exciting event was a blueberry break. Holler. We had a lull in things to do so grabbed a box of blueberries from the cooler and ate about a quart each while discussing what we had to do next.

Which happened to be filling pints of blueberries for the shares

Yum

The farmers stopped by with their kids who munched on the extra blueberries and supervised our packing

Winnie had to leave to watch the kids, while Lisinda and I started all of her shares for her drop off tomorrow morning. Each share (about 40 in total) got mesculin, squash, zucchini, cucumbers, arugula, parsley, rainbow chard, curly kale, carrots, eggs and three pints of blueberries. Not so damn bad. We finished that in about two hours and by 6PM my body was dying for quitting time and food.

One of the guys found a turtle hanging out in the barn. It was not a snapping turtle as I thought (bc it didn’t have red ears and the only turtle I know how to identify is a red ear slider and if it’s not that it must be a bad ass, could bite your finger off snapper). But it was a boxer turtle. It could close up completely. The farmer took it back to his kid.

After work I went with the apprentices to the grocery store. Got some bananas and pretzels while they shopped for groceries. They stay here until November. I don’t know if I could do that. I was dragging at this point, could have fallen asleep in the two minute car ride there, but I have a race in a couple weeks so ate a banana and was determined to go for a short run.

I made it to the beach and back, almost exactly a 30min run so I’m guessing it’s about 3 miles or so. I saw a ton of deer running through the woods. Tomorrow I may take my camera to take a picture of the water. There is a serious hill that slowed me down on the way back and now I’m rambling. After the run I made another random dinner with daikon, peas, zucchini, cucumber and an egg sautéed in coconut oil with salt, pepper, cayenne pepper and cinnamon.

After a 9 hours farm work day and a run I didn’t give a hoot how this tasted, I just wanted to feed my starving belly. And then filled it again with pretzels and almond butter.

There are 6 of us currently in the house tonight. It’s a much better atmosphere than I felt last night (still as smelly as it was last night). All hanging out making various dinners while Winnie plays DJ with youtube. Most people staying here can at least speak conversational Spanish which I’ve enjoyed listening to and trying to pick up what I can.

Last night the two housemates I met weren’t super chatty or friendly so the little imperfections of the house seemed a lot worse (ex: smelly couch, broken doors, ants everywhere), but all might be forgiven as one of them is sitting next to me right now plowing through a brand new box of Cap'N Crunch. He’s on his third bowl. It’s like a private viewing of man vs food. I love watching people eat a ton of food I don’t know why, but I do. I could watch it all day. If he finishes this whole box in one sitting I may propose. But I actually think I am too tired to stay tuned. Time for bed. Buenas noches.