Our First Days of Farm Life

Foxhollow Farm! It is absolutely nothing like we expected, but I'm having a fantastic time being worked to the point of constant muscle ache and hanging out with organic-loving hippies. Although it was pouring down rain our first two days here and our time here got off to a little bit of an awkward start with food and sleeping arrangements, things are great and we're gearing up for an awesome month of farm life. It feels so good to be outside and active every day (now that it doesn't rain 24/7)!

Andrew and I are pretty much exclusively working in Foxhollow's Market Garden, which produces a gazillion different kinds of vegetables. We planted 1,000 pounds of potatoes yesterday (which will yield 5,000 pounds of produce) and about a billion onion and parsley plants today. On the one hand, being here at this time of year is awesome because there is so much to be done-- on the other hand, there are only a few crops that are ready to eat! (But people try everything. At our bonfire-potluck on Saturday night, one girl brought tiny flank steak bites topped with VIOLETS! And one of the interns casually consumed a live worm while we were transplanting onions this morning.) Still, we are often rewarded with fantastically tenter asparagus as well as loads of spinach and lettuce and other greeeeeeens from the garden.

I haven't taken many pictures yet, but here are a few to keep you entertained and informed for the time being.

Andrew and my humble abode for the month:

And on Sunday, one of the interns taught me how to make sauerkraut (it's made with collards from the garden instead of cabbage...but it was all going to waste! I think it will turn out great anyway...it will have fermented for juuuust long enough when Andrew and I get ready to leave for Arlington). Here's Lou

We started with three buckets of chopped collards and, after a few hours of pressing and twisting, ended up with half a bucket of sauerkraut!

Lou, the sauerkraut expert :

My bucket:

All the sauerkraut we made! Now we wait for it to ferment--you can leave it for 1-6 months.

In short: living on a farm. Keeping busy, sweaty, and SO tired. Learning lots of stuff! Being outside! As different as it is from what Andrew and I were anticipating, it will definitely be a valuable experience for both of us :).