Sometimes a farmer goes home
Well, I went back to Berkeley today. It seemed like it was time to see my hunnybunch, and to come home on a day when he was off of work. Also, there was a chance that I'd be having work tomorrow (Fri). Seems unlikely now.
We finally moved the monitor that Heather gave me into my room. Picture is better, but I need a lot more phone books to get it to a healthy height.
I also weeded my front yard for an hour. While I watched "my shows" I finished figuring out how much I earned and spent on my business last year. It's pretty bad.
Check out this nice
picture of Chris...
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.
report from the farm
Hey,
So my phone seems to be really fucked up. The battery dies at weird times, which tend to be when i am trying to use it.
We had a great day out at the farm. They are getting the area where the house is going to be ready- the soil there has to be like 90% compacted before the foundation can be poured, so we were using tractors and a "sheep foot" tractor thingie to level and compact that area. I also did some three hours of weeding. I got a sunburn on the small of my back from being bent over.
i feel like i am really learning how to do things around the farm, and being able to help out more. i had chris show me the compost pile, so while he and shelley were out working on the house (knocking down walls on the rooms that can't come with them), i was able to do things like take out the compost and pack up the dirty dishes. as the sun was going down, i went to the slough all by myself to turn off the generator that was running the pump. The water from the slough is being used to wet the ground where the house will be, cuz otherwise the soil is either too hard, or too fine, and it'd just "dust out"). This water is also being used to water the plants, since they don't have a pump or a storage tank for the well. The slough water seems to be leaving a white residue on the soil-- perhaps due to fertilizer or pesticides used on farms that are upriver.
It was really weird going alone to the slough. It was around sunset, so the nighttime bugs and animals were starting to come out. Every little noise would startle me when I least expected it to. And knowing that there was noone around for 1/2 a mile was pretty weird. Chris warned me of this a while ago, but this was the first time I experienced it. Weeding by myself was also weird- no radio, noone talking to me, just me, my thoughts, and the birds in the distance. well, there were workers on one of the farms next door, so you could hear the trucks from time to time....
When we got back to the apartment, I took stock of my sunburn while chris washed the dishes we'd used at the trailer over the last two days, and then we hit the hottubbie and the shower. they ate buffalo burgers and we all had fava beans and salad. and there was a veggie sausage/egg dish, too. we looked at http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2006/05/planet-of-slums.html, which has pictures of people with 10x10 rooms. my little shack that i want to build would be 10x12. i might have to get a shipping container to keep my crap in, too. $$$$
i just spent 45 minutes washing dishes, and now i'm going to get ready for bed.
picture of Chris...
