My Library or Yours?

I am now a card-carrying member of the West Bend public library system! This makes me perhaps a little over-happy.

Saturday I decked myself out in my biking finest and biked into West Bend—a distance I was told was five miles but turned out to be over nine, with a severe headwind—and visited the library for the first time. It’s a beautiful library, two stories, with LOTS of BOOKS! Very exciting. I went to the information desk to see about getting a card, and I was apparently cute and pathetic enough that they gave me a card without proper proof of address (“but I don’t get any bills, and I’m only here for seven months!”) I spent some time wandering the stacks, seriously considering handing The Thief to the little girl browsing near the Megan Whalen Turner section and telling her to “just read it, it will change your life,” but decided not to, checked out two books and continued on my biking adventure.

I stopped at the candy store and bought some chocolate (I forgot to take any food with me and I needed some power to get home. Totally justified.) I spent some time trying to find a place that sold milk that wasn’t full of shit but couldn’t find any, so I decided, in a fit of environmental and health responsibility, to forgo the milk. Organic, while it has been preferable for me for a long time, has recently become a almost a requirement. I think it’s the company I’m keeping. After valiantly resisting Walgreen’s milk I biked back to Wellspring. One would think that a headwind in one direction would entail a tail wind in the other. One would be wrong.

Once back I read for pretty much the rest of the day, and then took a walk in the evening—a 20-mile bike ride wasn’t enough exercise, apparently. Tomorrow I think I will walk over to Riveredge, the huge preserve that is near Wellspring, and take a very long wandery walk. It is so fantastic to have weekends where I can really relax and have time and energy to do more than homework and sleep. The thought “I could be in school right now” passes through my head with startling regularity.

As for the past week, we’ve gotten a bit busier. On Saturday I attended the second Home Garden class that Kelly teaches. We learned about soil, compost, and fertility. I was really surprised by how fascinating I found all of it, considering that I’ve never really been interested in science at all. Maybe it’s because I can see how knowing these things are important to my life, but I want to learn more. Compost is so intriguing.

Monday we made a paste out of manure, clay, and water and painted it on the apple trees as a barrier against insects and fungus. I think I’ve painted too many houses, because I was a bit too finicky in how evenly I painted. Then we transplanted Brassicas into the field. Tuesday we potted up tomatoes and eggplants, seeded basil, weeded rhubarb, and I drew a map of the north field.

Wednesday we transplanted Swiss chard, Chinese cabbage and pok choi. We put row cover over everything, but it blew off and almost all of it got eaten. I have purposely not gone up to look at it, in an attempt to keep my mood up. Thursday we seeded about a million watermelons, melons and cucumbers. After work, we interns drove to the beach in Port Washington, being bad farmers on the way by stopping at Culvers for dinner, (Heath had never been there. Totally justified.) We took a long walk down the beach, and seeing a trickle of water coming from a “river valley” in the bluff, we of course HAD to find out where the water was coming from, so we climbed up. I had only brought slip-on shoes that I didn’t feel like getting muddy, so I climbed it barefoot. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and it didn’t hurt until later that night, when the balls of my feet swelled up and I could barely walk. Freaking out about having to work the next day, I iced them, and they ended up feeling just fine. And now my feet are really tough, so ha! My shoes have been giving me blisters lately, so maybe it was even a really good idea. Regardless of the state of my feet, it was a great climb, beautiful view, and it was loads of fun to squelch through a load of mud with bare feet.

Friday we became Double Digging Devils in the hoophouse, digging the dirt twice and loosening the subsoil to make deep, luscious, chocolate sponge cake raised beds. I decided to give up on being a vegetable farmer (“who likes vegetables?”) and instead to be a chocolate sponge cake farmer. A much wiser business plan. That brings me up to today, as far as events go.

In other news, I discovered something very important about myself this week.

I would rather do more work, more slowly, by hand, than screw around with machinery.

Sure, transplanting seedlings one at a time, by hand, takes a long time. A tractor could do the job much faster. But if the tractor breaks, I don’t have a freakin clue how to fix it. We fiddled with the bed-shaping implement on the tractor for a while this week, and I realized several things.

I realized that tractors and implements are big and heavy. Farmers end up doing a lot of physically hard work just trying to move or fix them, adjust them, or get the danged implement attached to the danged tractor. I am small, and while I am pretty strong I don’t have what it takes to force the metal into submission, and I am leery of squashing my fingers or some other vital piece of myself, which makes me cautious.

I realized that I don’t like working with things that I can’t see how they work. If it breaks, I want to be able to see “this goes to this and turns this and ah! This part right here is broken!” With a tractor or other machine, if you don’t have a knowledge of engines and what-all, there is nothing you can do. I’ve always known that I don’t like electronics or machines, but I always thought it was because I didn’t care about them enough to learn how they worked. I have now realized that I don’t just not care, I actively dislike working with them. I dislike things that are frustrating, that I don’t understand. I cannot even fully explain how or why I find working with machines so frustrating.

I like to work smoothly, to find a rhythm and get lost in it. I would rather use a hand scythe and work without problems then to use a lawn mower that besides being loud and smelly requires gas, servicing, and may break down. I would rather learn bike mechanics than car mechanics. I would rather knead my bread than depend on a bread machine. I would rather have daily chores feeding horses than own a tractor.

This is not to say that I am going to become an old-order Mennonite or anything—at least, probably not—but it has been really eye opening for me to realize the full extent of my dislike of machinery. I can now add to my list of reasons to reduce the mechanization of my life: environmental and societal sustainability, slowing life down, quieting life down, living simply, and now, a strong personal preference.

A will admit to a great fondness for my car. In its defense, it is fourteen years old, in great shape, gets forty miles per gallon, cost only $900, and when the frame rusts through in a few years, that will be that. Also, as a farmer, I will likely own a tractor someday to do those jobs that a person can’t. However, it has been really good, I think, to recognize this about myself, and to begin planning for a very low-tech future, where I do believe I will be happier for the lack of mechanical frustration.

Cooking:
My mom’s granola recipe is currently in the oven!
Made a Jerusalem Artichoke soup for my group meal on Thursday. It was delicious, if I do say so myself.

Reading:
Everything from last week. I have problems committing to one book, so I never finish anything.
“Radical Homemakers” by Shannon Hayes, about the movement of people who are getting out of the competitive consumer culture and returning to making a living from their homes.
“A Plain Life” by Scott Savage. I got it out of the library today (did I mention that I have a LIBRARY CARD?) and read most of the rest of it already.
I have also been reading some stuff about Biodynamics, and I think I am gaining a better understanding of it. Biodynamics will require its very own entry sometime, I think.

Creating:
Um, does finally putting photos on facebook count? http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=164143&id=506559583&l=2241fefe33
I have been writing a lot this week, both journaling and other writing. I’ve always wanted to write young adult fiction, mostly because I loved reading so much when I was young, and I recently decided to say “screw originality and skill, just write something I would have wanted to read,” so I’ve started writing what I am calling a short story. Getting caught up on political history, unfortunately.