Hey folks. I'm back....well, sort of. I've tried over the last couple of months to update my blog regularly but my days start early and end late....with a lot packed in between the beginning and end and most nights it's like I would go into a little bitty farmer coma which made it pretty hard to write. Thank you to all who have asked, written, emailed, called, wondered and pondered about where I am and what I am doing. This has been a crazy and wonderful learning adventure and I do want to share it with you all!I've been in farm school two months now. It has been fun, hard, rewarding, overwhelming, intense, smelly, gratifying, dirty, joyful, hilarious, cold, hot, delicious, tiring, weird, invigorating, scary, wild, and worthwhile. My day starts around 5:45am in the usual way- making lunch for Mac & Annie and cooking breakfast. Daily chores start at 7am with our first "class" starting at 9am, the last class ends at 4:30 pm which is when our afternoon chores begin. "Class" can be any number of things from an inside class on soil to farm work to a field trip to another farm. Chores are divided up between the 10 students working in pairs. Care for Pride the milk cow, our 2 Belgian work horses, Ruby Star & April, our beef herd, our sheep flock and our coop full of chickens are all on the chore rotation as well as cleaning the farmhouse (built in the mid 1700's). The students also take turns cooking lunch & baking bread during the week. We have had intensive classes in chainsawing, power tools, driving draft horses, harvesting and washing veggies, tractor driving, cheese making, tree identification and soil health. We have framed a goat barn at the home of one of our staff members and have also been building an enormous new greenhouse for our use in next season's planting. We have visited a slaughterhouse and witnessed pigs being killed and cows being skinned and gutted. As the weather turns colder, we have tucked the farm in for the winter season....planting garlic, mulching beds, preserving food, stacking hay, moving animals to the barn, taking soil samples and spreading manure & compost on beds.
Life here is good. I'm standing in the line with a neon arrow pointing to farm life...Ma, Pa, Sal the mule, the prairie & the plow...where is that dotted line? There is a simplicity to the work that I am doing that is profoundly rewarding. It feels important....meaningful....fulfilling in a real way. I think we spend alot of our time creating a pace of life that is out of sync with the rhythm of the Earth...I'm happy to have taken the time to slow down and listen to the pulse of the Land....it's as though I've spent my whole life falling through the air, flailing and helpless and I've finally come to rest in Mother Nature's arms. She says, "What took you so long?" "I got diverted by TJ Maxx along the way but I'm here now," I reply.
