Greetings to you from a warmer nook of California. It still seems to boggle my mind that it is firstly January, and secondly that the weather feels more like an early fall day. Winter what?
Farm life continues to truck on. Now with only 6 weeks left to the program, I find myself wondering where the time has gone? What will the second half of this internship look like?
Our daily routine is more or less set, us little interns wake up, eat our hearty breakfast and brave the early morning frost. I've been on chicken chores for the past two weeks, which entails an early morning harvest of green leafy num nums for the creatures. With a frosty morning, and frozen plants, this has led to frozen fingers on more than one occasion. Nothing like a warm rising sun to help defrost the ole digits! By 10am, frost and being cold is as far from one's mind as could be, as the layers are shed while digging into the mornings work. What has been on the plate as of late? Painting the exterior of the restrooms, hoeing garlic, hoeing weeds, harvesting vegetables galore, pruning apple trees to name a few, all the while sneaking samples of cheese from the farm store!
In class, we have been focusing on pruning, and spent an entire week, discussing, watching, and finally getting to prune a few trees ourselves. The rule of thumb? Practice only makes you more knowledgable, you can never over prune a tree, (however if you prune too much the chances that you'll get any fruit become less and less), and keep your fingers away from the saw. Apparently, I wanted a little extra practice and went for my finger. Nothing to be worried about, but hopefully trees aren't as sensitive to pain as humans are.
An exciting discovery was made earlier last week. As I went to check on my little carrot patch, I noticed that there were four little green rows where I had planted peas over a month ago. To my delight and surprise, after giving up all hope that these peas would grow, there they were at last, all reaching upwards to greet the sunshine and world above. What is it about seeing something sprout up and grow bring such joy into my heart?
As interns, we are asked to create and see through a project of our choice (a personal project) that gives back to Green String in some way. Everyone has been abuzz recently, talking and planning out what they will do for their project. For me, I decided to build a spice rack for the intern house. The idea came rather quickly, as our kitchen is the most popular place in the house, but also the most disorganized and relatively useless set up. Imagine this if you will. On the opposite side of room from where the stove and counter are, along the floor, sits all our grains, flour and cooking foods. Near the stove, stands this sturdy tall shelf, which houses a disarray of jars filled with herbs and spices. This shelf would be better served to house all the food containers bringing them closer to the cooking area. Then, creating a better system that would allow anyone who cooks to not only better access the ingredients, herbs and spiced they need. Our teacher Bob Cannard, has been teaching us how to use various power tools and saws in the woodshop, and have put together the plans for a basic shelf that will hold all our jars of spices and herbs. This evening, I began my project. With all the boards now cut and marked for the shelf grooves, it will soon be time to assemble the beast and get it into the kitchen! My first independent woodworking project- I'm excited to construct it and see how it will turn out.
This week, also comes the lesson that I have been dreading. Harvesting a chicken. Actually, according to Bob, we'll be harvesting not one, but three. This will be my first experience watching an animal be killed. I've already been privy to watching the depluming of both a rooster and duck, but to see something go from alive to very much not, will be something else. I'm sure I will have a thought or too once the lesson is over. Gulp!
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