Events of Week 2

I'm finally starting to feel really at home on the farm. I'm getting into the groove of farm life. The hard work plus the slow pace suit me well. I'm also getting in better farming shape. My muscles were so sore the first week, but it's getting better. I'm also starting to feel like the other interns are becoming like family. It already makes me sad to think about us all going our separate ways.

This week, I started to really enjoy the quality of the food I get at the farm. The best thing I've discovered is fresh cow milk. While my farm doesn't have any milking cows, a nearby farm has two cows and they get 8 gallons of milk a day. They can't sell the milk because they aren't accredited, so they give a lot of the milk away. We get milk from them and make butter out of the cream and then use the milk. It is so good, I can't even think about drinking milk from the store. Another thing that's been ruined for me is strawberries. Eating strawberries straight off the vine makes strawberries from the cooler taste like nothing. I'm sure I'll just continue to have experiences like this.

Another new adventure I had this week was cow wrangling. When I first came to the farm, they had two cows, Carmela and Rojo (mom and son). The original intent was to milk Carmela after she had Rojo, but she has huge horns and she's really skittish, so no one was ever brave enough to try milking her. Because Carmela and Rojo pretty much just took up space on the farm, Keith decided to sell them to a guy who lives just down the road. One afternoon, he came out with a trailer and we all had to wrangle the cows into the trailer. We lured them with kale and had the guide them toward the trailer. It took a couple tries, but it went pretty well.

This week was also my first time preparing the CSA. I had to pick everything out and make sure everything was ready to go. Then, Mark and I drove into town to deliver the CSA. This week, everyone got a chicken, honey, spelt, 2 dozen eggs, a head of lettuce and two pints of strawberries. My dad is a CSA member, but since he's out of town right now, he donated his CSA to the interns. We've really enjoyed the delicious food.

I also worked at Saturday market this week. It was so fun to be in town and to see all the different types of people. It was a good market day because we completely sold out of strawberries.

This week, I also began to grow very fond of bluegrass music. Everyone on the farm listens to bluegrass, and I'm starting to catch on too.