Life as Apprentice

5:45am
Wake up. Do not hit snooze. Lie in bed and contemplate if it is really necessary to get out of the sleeping bag in order to get up. Yelp as I put on my bra which is like ice. Jump around while pulling on my pants which are also like ice. Stumble out to the drop-toilet while gazing at a fire-orange sky.

6:15am
Chores. The sheep are the loudest and easiest to feed: three cups of grain and a bale and a quarter of second-cut hay. Soaked grain, corn, and food scraps for the pigs. Three-fourths bucket of grain for the chicks, plus fresh water. Half a small bucket of grain and fresh water for the laying chickens outside, and check for eggs. A bale of first-cut hay (which is less tasty than second-cut, believe it or not) for the cows, to supplement the new grass outside. After feeding the animals, check the seedlings in the greenhouse and turn on the small fan.

7:00am
Breakfast. Pancakes, scrambled tofu, oatmeal, and scones are popular.
Did I mention that four days a week I get three hot meals a day cooked for me? Wonders never cease. Monday through Thursday I sit down to three delicious hot meals, and on Friday I take an hour of work time before every meal to cook for the community, which is made up of myself and the three other apprentices, Rachel, Patrick, and Melissa, as well as Don (the farmer), Bridget (now a full-time mother and also a social worker), and their delightful two-year-old daughter Gabriela.

7:45am
Hear from Don what needs to be done today. Take a field walk to observe the entire farm. Begin work.

10:30am
Morning tea break. Apple with peanut butter has been a big hit.

10:45-1:00pm
More work.

1:00pm
Lunch. (Did I mention it's cooked already?) Cauliflower cheese soup, marinated tempeh strips with a nutritional yeast gravy, or sweet potato pancakes, to name a few.

2:30-5:30pm
More work.

5:30pm
Feed the animals, final greenhouse check to turn off the small fan and make sure the water pump is turned off disconnected from the hose.

6:00pm
Dinner. Calzones with garlic bread, chick-pea curry with nan, or quiche, usually with Johnny Cash or Rafi Radio in the background.

What is work? Recently we've been prepping a lot of 200' vegetable beds for seeding and transplanting. Lots of work with hand tools: three-tining (for drainage), five-tining (to break up the soil), and raking (to smooth the beds). It was a happy day last Thursday when I figured out that standing up straighter and holding the rake at a sharper angle put significantly less strain on my lower back. (Let's also say I'm entirely grateful to Marisa, my yoga yogi from the Sitar Center.)

Things we've done besides tilling the soil: covering the raspberry patch with woodchips and row cover (it keeps the plants a bit warmer and moves the harvest up a few weeks); seeding tomatoes, eggplant, snapdragons, and lettuce; cleaning the electric fences so we can safely bring the sheep out to pasture; tagging and elastrating (castrating) the new lambs, moving the chickens to the orchard (complete with portable electric fencing and trailors for laying eggs); seeding parts of the field with winter rye as a cover crop; transplanting lettuce from the greenhouse flats into the beautifully prepped beds; cleaning up broken glass from a fallen greenhouse window pane; flameweeding the carrots.

Usually after dinner I have about enough energy to take a shower, record the events of the day in my farm journal, and read a few pages in The Soul of Soil.

My new bedtime: 9:30pm.

Life is good.