A farmer's work is never done
Whew, it's been a busy couple of days.On Monday, we packed up a bunch of wood from the house that Shelley bought and brought it to the dump. The house was made of redwood, so she has been saving a ridiculously large amount of wood. There was also some stuff that just had to be thrown out. This was my first-ever visit to an active landfill. it was so amazing. hopefully my pictures came out.
On Tuesday, Herman showed me how to sharpen the scythe and use it. most of the use has to
do with maintenance of the blade- it has to be sharpened every 10 to 15
minutes! Also, you have to use just the right technique when you are
cutting the grain, or you miss a bunch of plants and waste a lot of
energy. it's a nice full-body workout. since i was being a farmer, i put
a blade of the dried grass into my mouth and nibbled on it for a few
minutes. when i got to the end, i tried chewing on the seeds (too hard).
After a bit, it felt like there was something in my throat- maybe some
part of the barley plant. i started coughing in that choking way, and
fluid was coming out of just about every orifice in my body. i kept
coughing for a long, long time. herman tried looking down my throat, and
poking at it with chopsticks. i joked that the only thing that would work
was deep throating someone's dick, but let's face it, herman's is probably
really dirty, and shelley needed chris to help her with demolition on the
house.
this might have all just been an allergic reaction to the dried grasses.
later in the day, i harvested onions, garlic, lots of lettuce, and some more fava beans.
today, i helped herman to shore up the walls of the new irrigation ditch. He used the tractor to dig it, but he doesn't have the right equipment for it to come out as perfect as he'd like (he needs a ditcher). We had to use shovels to dig dirt out of the ditch to fill in short parts of the outer walls. It was a lot of digging during the hottest and coolest parts of the day (~12:30 to 2, and around 8-9:15). We didn't finish the ditch-- we left the shovels where we'd been working so we'll know tomorrow. In the afternoon, we went to town to pick up his truck from the mechanic and return his rental truck. And we went to the store. I got (and drank) tons of juice. Tons. Then we went down to the house and helped to load up wood and stuff to bring to the land. I used a big magnet to pick up hundreds of nails that were on the ground (Shelley stepped on one last week, and was so lucky that it didn't get infected).
In the last two days, Shelley found out that her house can't be moved when she wants it to be. The electric company has to move the power lines out of the way as the house is being moved down the street, and they decided a week in advance of the scheduled date that they can't do it then. Also, they are going to charge her some weird $3000 tax. I told her that she should go in there and tell them that they had an oral agreement (they never sent her a contract, but she did get 2 from the phone company), and if that doesn't work, she should cry (I would cry, and it'd be for real, but she claims that she's not much of a crier). I mean, this house is her dream, and it's so close to being closer to a reality. Except that she ran out of money, so the foundation isn't even getting built yet...but that's another story.
I've been getting into the pool with Chris before we go into the hottub. Tonight we met a nice kitty at the tub. She seemed to be trying to drink out of both the pool and the hottub, but then again, she could have been interested in the way that the water was moving. She was so cute! And she let us pet her with our warm hottub hands.
posted by mahtin @ 1:59 AM
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