I’m here! The reason I quit school has finally begun. I am at Wellspring CSA, where I will be living and working for the next seven months. So far everything is just fantastic—granted I haven’t started working yet. :D

I got here late Friday afternoon. I picked a room—I got the one with the cool door that is original to when the building was a horse barn. It still has a top and bottom that swing separately, so I can stand in my doorway like a drive-thru and ask “want fries with that?”—and moved all my stuff in. As I was moving in I met my fellow interns, Neil, who is making his way into the farming world from computer engineering, and Heath, who has interned on a farm up north for a year already. They are both a good deal older than I am with the experience and knowledge to go with it, and I have been enjoying their company a lot. We have been doing a lot of cooking together, and I have the feeling I will be eating very well this year. For lunch on Saturday Heath made Quinoa, which I had never had before, and I loved it. For dinner I made a German Potato soup that my cooking Guru Carola taught me to make, and I adapted her bread recipe to use whole wheat flour, since we didn’t have and white, and made rolls. Thank you Carola, they were delicious! This afternoon, Heath taught me to make Kimchi. One of the purple onions turned my thumb purple. It was all very exciting. We will be eating lunch communally every day, with one person taking an hour off to cook. We found out that Kelly, the education coordinator, is allergic to gluten, and Neil is allergic to legumes, peanuts, and peas. This left me and Heath staring at each other wondering what are we going to EAT? So if you have any easy, fast, seasonal, gluten-and-legume-free dishes, please let me know!

Yesterday morning there was a garden class taught by Kelly that the interns get to attend for free. We talked about garden planning and then built a cold frame. I went for a walk in the afternoon—Wellspring is right on the Milwaukee river and is next to a huge preserve—and it was just gorgeous. Today was even nicer, the kind of day where you shed layers as you walk. I headed out for another walk and ran into Heath planting radishes, arugula and peas in the intern garden, and helped him. It felt so good to get my hands dirty again, like coming home at the end of a long day. Both of us kept commenting on how lucky we were to be here, and what a great career choice we had made. We then took a walk down by the river and climbed a tree out over the water. Sitting back on the bank, we stayed still and quiet for a long time. Our stillness was rewarded when a weasel passed not five feet in front of us without seeing us, and crept into its nest under the tree we had just climbed. A hawk took off from a tree right above us, and I could hear its wings beating. I felt that my whole life was worth it just for that half hour by the river.

And for tonight…it’s five o’clock and I have no plans. We are out in the country, close to a tiny town and about seven miles from a town of any size. We don’t have access to TV, and there is no internet in the intern barn. I admit, I love it. I feel more centered without the computer to turn to in every down moment, and I feel more inclined to do things like cook, bake, read and knit when there is nothing else to do. We’ll see if I’m singing the same tune in a couple months. Heath is also a knitter—he makes all his own socks—and we are both learning to use a drop spindle to spin our own yarn. I have a feeling we will be persuading Neil to join our fiber cult one of these days. I’ve never taught anyone to knit before, and I’m rather excited at the prospect.

One of the best parts about being here so far has been getting to be with people who share my interests and passions. While I like my friends and school and at home, I just can’t talk with the same fervor about cabbage with them. Here, food and farming are staples or our conversation, and there is so much I can learn just by talking to people. And I haven’t made a single movie reference or quote, (well, I have, once, but I passed it off as my own and no one noticed,) nor have I really wanted to. There is so much else to talk about that is so much more interesting.

So far, it seems that I could not have wished for a more perfect situation. Usually when I am in a new situation I will get little warning signs, an “uh-oh” feeling of something that is not completely right or that could turn bad. In the two days I have been here, I have not felt that at all. The living conditions are great, the location is beautiful, the farm managers are nice, and Neil, Heath and I have already agreed that we will get along and not be like some interns who fight and bicker all season. :D I feel like I am exactly where I need to be right now, and I am filled with excitement about life in general.

Tomorrow we will start the week off with a meeting to work out details of how everything will run and take a tour so we know where everything is, and then we will start working.

Thanks for reading!
Be blessed in your endeavors,
Alison