Rest of this week

Thursday June 18th

Took a while to fall asleep last night, can certainly feel it today.

Decided to abandon wheat winnowing again today and opted for...WEED WHACKING! YES!! Now, many of you know that I have an intense love for power tools. Years of Workcamp experiences have allowed me to appreciate mechanized tools in all their glory. Now, I had never weed whacked before, but I figured it was like lawn mowing, only it took longer. Note that I haven't exactly mowed a lawn since I was 12, and note that I am sort of left handed, which means I am, like, 50% more likely to die from a power tool (because they discriminate, vast majority are only made for righties. Uf.) I did some WHACKING around the Nic house and garden, as well as around some trees. But my favorite part was cleaning the ditch up. In the ditch, around the sides of the ditch, just everywhere. I was only supposed to go where a lawnmower is unable to go, but I sort of got carried away. I loved seeing a weed and then, BAM!, knockin it down and watch it lay waste to the hot sun. I admit, several times I yelled, "YES!" when I whacked a huge weed. I think this love comes from an innate love of destroying things. Don't we all just want to destroy things sometimes? Farmies kept asking me if I was tired. No way! What a blast. Gave me a nice "dirt tan" too. Managed to wear my bandana over my face, as that prevented the dirties from flinging up there. I was very, very filthy afterwards.

When I do chores like that, chores that can be strenuous because you are operating machinery, I think "Wow, this would be a GREAT time to work on my ambidexterity." Does anyone else ever think that? Like, this is THE TIME, right NOW, do or die. As I keep using my right hand, I realize how much less efficient it is than my left hand. When I was milking yesterday, it did this whole arthritis bit where it started cramping and I could feel the bones pushing against each other. Stupid hand.

Tomorrow I am cooking! Gonna cook pizza and already made some oatmeal peanut butter cookies for dessert. Thank goodness Amy is helping me...it's so much more fun to have someone else in there with you. Making the dough from scratch.

True story: I have never used a bread machine before. We never made bread when I was younger, it was never a "cute idea" or a "fun activity." We just bought it. I don't think I knew what a bread machine was or how to make homemade bread until I took Food Science at BU. Anyways, I wanted to make pizza dough in the bread machine. Directions said to just put all the ingredients in there, select "dough," and let her rip. So, I did just that. An hour an a half later, after the buzzer dinged, the mixture looked the same...the flour, salt, yeast, none of it had baked. Amy gave me a hug and said "Did you put it in the pan first?" Wait, what "pan" are you talking about? Anyways, HUGE mess, gross. I am not angry, just wishing that I didn't have to stay up late to cook dough! A learning experience, that's for sure!

Fed the goats again today. Honestly, I am really scared of the couple of "big goats" that are in there near the kids. One of them head butts the other one and it just made me nervousy. I was wearing flip flops too, so that didn't didn't ease my anxiety. I didn't want them to step on my bum toenail (which fell off last week!). I felt like the flies were breeding in the dairy barn. It has now become an official farm sport to see who can obliterate the most flies at one time. Brandon is quite good at it!

Just found out that I have an interview w/ Americorps on Monday next week...I am SO excited slash nervous slash anxious. You betcha I'll post the results here.

Wednesday June 17th
As I typed "17th," I was thinking in my head "Holy cow! June has flown by!" Then I realize that I should probably change that statement to "June has sweated by!" Haha.

This morning I worked in the garden, gettin' my hoe action on, gettin' rid of those darn weeds. I decided not to winnow the wheat again, as I discovered I had too much energy in the afternoon/mornings from sitting around and not moving. FYI, we don't use pesticides to get rid of weeds, but occassionally we use minimal amounts of pesticides IF the pests get too bad. One of them is an insecticide for a certain type of caterpillar, which destroys their digestive tract when consumed. Suckers.

Afternooon milking with the dairy gots. Did I tell y'mention that I had a stress dream about milking? I think that I am getting ever so slightly better at it, so hopefully we won't repeat that dream again. Lucas turned on "All Things Considered" on NPR, which made the time go by so much faster. There was an excerpt about a girl texting champion...she won $50,000. Woah. I read about her in the paper. She texts 400-470 texts per day. Ridic-ulous.

After my afternoon milking session, I fed the kid goats in the early evening. They love love love the milk replacement stuff we give them, which smells like sugar cookies. It's like a liquid Krispy Kreme donut (see previous post for KK reference) for goats. Very addictive. Brandon showed me how to do it, so it was much easier with his guidance. We filled two buckets with milk replacer and water, then put these little "nipples" on the outside of the bucket, which flows to the inside. Then you go into the kid pen, and they go CRAZY, you sort of kick and shove a bit until you can set it down. It's pretty hysterical.

Had a good meeting with Matt regarding CSA veggies for Campus Kitchen in the fall. That meeting got me really excited for graduation, made me want to just get out of school and put more CK stuff into action!

This was my first "full day" of work. Usually I don't have that many chores to do all in one day, but today I did. After my shower and a quick dinner, I sort of zonked for about an hour, then read for an hour, then went to sleep. Makes me feel like a weenie, as the interns do so much more work than I do everyday. Much respect!