Saturday, May 22, 2010

WEEK 2: Home and garden a-making we will go

This week the weather turned unseasonably hot. Interns took turns working with Chris (the boss) on construction of new intern housing: Andrea is happy in the silo, but David needs to get out of the farm house and Megan or Jocelyn may want to move out of the delapidated trailer...We are proud of our hole digging, post erecting, frame building, and floor laying so far!

In the fields, meanwhile, the rest of the crew was busy sewing (peas, potatoes, more greens), hoeing (the asparagus patch re-civilized), and mulching, anxiously watching for seeds to sprout ... carrots, spinach, where are you? We turned compost and manure, and seeded red clover into the oats and barley.

On this rainy Saturday, Jocelyn is back at the bread-making, Meghan is experimenting with a new yogourt recipe (we are ever grateful to Trish for her milk), and David and Andrea are visiting H-town to take care of some urban/internet business.

Outside of work, the highlight of the week for us interns was the trip to Websters waterfalls. Beautiful, busy, and sooooo refreshing after a sweaty day in the cow dung heap! On other nights, we find ourselves divided along running/biking lines. David and Meghan like to explore the trails with nothing but two feet and a heartbeat, while Jocelyn and Andrea prefer to fly by wheel (or in some cases painstakingly pedal the slow Dundas-Copetown uphill on a barely fixed-up farm bike). The migrating songbirds and spring ephemerals in the surrounding farm and woodlands reward us.


Technical term of the week: Post-emergent blind harrowing (raking the red clover into the young established oats and barley)

Lessons learned this week: The flea beetle is ruthless; you can never have too much row cover; measure 10 times before burying/cutting/nailing.

The farm family is great, the food is amazing, the work is hard but rewarding. Growing veggies, growing better/wiser/healthier people, and growing the sustainable food movement... Noel Tendrick speaks to my University blues and farming groove in his eco-action poem http://www.nopepperspray.org/noelpoem.htm... RESISTANCE IS FERTILE!
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