First week on the farm

Chickens!!!

I had a great first week on the farm. Main activities/highlights:

Wednesday

• Repotted tons of little seedlings into bigger pots. Probably way too meticulously.
• Collected a few eggs! The chickens are wonderful and so entertaining. And their eggs are beautiful - deep orange yolks and mutli-colored shells - white ones, brown ones, light teal ones, even pink ones.
• Ate Susan's delicious chili, ground beef and all (kind of a big deal - I can only think of one other time I've eaten ground beef).
• Learned how to do chores. Twice a day, feed the cows grain and hay, give them water, and scoop out any cowpies from the loafing shed. Scatter corn for the chickens (both the ones that hang out in the coop at the "wild" chickens that don't), feed them, give them water, and collect eggs.
• Visited Don and Betsy's farm. They raise sheep for meat. I got to meet week-old lamb triplets and hold one. Betsy gave us some chocolate cake to take home. 
• Met all the animals. The cows: LaFonda and Jitter. The multitude of unnamed chickens. The cranky goose and cute ducks. The dogs: Zinnie and Cocoa. The cats: Orange, Poet, and Weasel. Loved them all immediately.

If you zoom in you might be able to see the cows way back there in the center and the goose and ducks off to the left a bit.

Thursday

• Worked with a WWOOFer named Justin to dig a trench in the greenhouse to bury some more fencing. Some really, really cute little bunnies were eating the pea shoots and pansies before they could grow. We also dug up some volunteer cilantro and potted it up to sell as transplants (we'll see how they do - cilantro gets mad when you disturb its roots).
• Went to see the shop where Susan sells her antiques. Met some of her friends there, along with a super adorable tea cup chihuahua named Chickpea.
• Mixed and formed 36 loaves of sourdough bread (18 white and 18 whole wheat) - this kept us working until around 11 p.m.!

Zinnie, who loves to be a stinker and steal eggs out of the chicken coop.

Friday

• Baked chocolate chip cookies (accidentally used bread flour - they'll be better next week, I promise!) and black-bottom cupcakes and made maple rice krispie bars. Helped Susan with walnut beer bread, savory turnovers (with swiss chard, onions, pepitas, walnuts, and balsamic vinegar), and fruit tarts (she made beautiful mango roses!).
• Shoveled hot coals out of the wood-fired oven (lots and lots of ash in my hair). Ate delicious pizza made in the oven before the bread (even had some asparagus from the garden). Then baked all the bread once the oven cooled down to around 500° F. Up until 11:30 p.m.! (I'm such a wimp about sleep - very, very used to going to bed around 10 p.m. and getting eight hours of sleep.)

Cocoa, who is pretty mellow and really appreciated it when I gave her a bit of my pizza.

Saturday

• Got up at 6 a.m. and made it to the farmers market in Rochester just before 7 a.m. Set up with Roger and spent the morning selling delicious things and meeting a lot of their friends and fans of the farm. We sold out!
• Drove home, exhausted. 

Me at the market. Susan posted this on Squash Blossom Farm's Facebook page to entice folks to come out and buy something delicious. I love the idea of using a cabinet like this to display everything.

There is an endless amount of work to do. I often feel overwhelmed about all the undone housework at home, but add outbuildings and plants and animals and the chores increase exponentially. I mean, I knew there would be a lot of work to do, but I was surprised by the limitlessness of activity. I tend to spend a lot of my time and energy researching and planning out how to do things, but the sheer volume of things to do on a farm will necessitate a shift to prioritize action over thought, which should be good for me.

I could totally start Cookie Lou for real. I'm already thinking that next year I'll work on a farm the early part of the week, bake all day on Friday, and sell at the Saint Paul Farmers Market on Saturday.

Cohabitation is interesting. I've never really lived with anyone who isn't family or a partner. I really, really hope I'm not annoying them.

I realized after the second day that my four days on the farm are going to feel like one long, weird, awesome day. It was exhausting and wonderful, and I'm excited to do it all again in two days.