Beginning of a Beautiful Summer

Bring on the dirty knees, the work boots, hats and leather gloves, for I am a farm intern again. Even better, I am a second year intern, and so am growing in farm cred.

For the next six months I will be living and working at an organic orchard in Minnesota, where I will be learning to grow apples, apricots, cherries, plums, peaches, grapes, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, hops, various vegetables for our own table and for markets, raising pigs, chickens and geese, and pressing cider and making jams, jellies and sauces in a certified kitchen. The farm has 45 acres in production, making it the largest fully organic orchard in the state.

I arrived here in the middle of the week and have worked with the crew three days, weeding and planting strawberries, hauling wood that is being cleared along a new fence line, and helping with various other tasks. So far the work is hard, but no harder than I expected, and it feels really good to be out on a farm again. Compared to last year, we take so many breaks here. We take an hour for lunch in addition to a morning and afternoon break, where we all come in, drink some water and get a snack. I feel like I’m living in the lap of luxury here. Yep, weeding, wood-hauling luxury.

These photos simply cannot convey the vastness or the beauty of the place I am lucky enough to be spending my summer. Every time I pause for a moment while working I look up and am surrounded by gorgeous bluffs and a great expanse of sky. I feel on top of the world, and yet firmly rooted in the earth.

I am one of six interns, the newest and the youngest, and I am sharing a room with the only other girl. When I first heard I would have a roommate I was less than pleased. But what I had forgotten, in the two years since I had a college roommate, is that I actually really like having a roommate. I like having another person in my home base. I also find that it regulates my sleeping patterns, to know that I can’t stay up past my farmer bedtime because it would disturb someone else. My roommate is just a few years older than me, and she hails from Ecuador. She is working really hard to learn English, and since I really want to learn Spanish, this arrangement is beneficial to us both. All day she asks me questions and I teach her new words and phrases, and every time I teach her an English word I learn a Spanish one. Yesterday she was asking me about slang, and we worked on “hang out,” “sweet,” “kick’s ass,” and when she dropped her pitchfork while cleaning the chicken coop she learned “smooth.” Whenever she wants to be sure to remember something, she taps her forehead, as if she could force the words to stay there. I am having a lot of fun, and if I apply myself I think I could improve my Spanish significantly. (By the way, if anyone has any Spanish textbooks and would like to loan them to me, I would be happy to give you my address. :D) Our days so far have ended with us both lying in our beds with our Spanish-English dictionaries going over everything we learned that day.

We all live together in an old farmhouse. My room is so 60s, it’s like someone set out to create the most 60ish room possible. The carpet is an orange and brown floral pattern, the curtains are orange and green vinyl, the walls are covered in faux wood paneling, and I have this swanky olive green disco-ball-wannabe lamp. The ceiling fan is so powerful I am frequently afraid the ceiling is going to lift off. The water has is so high in iron that it looks like someone was murdered in our bathtub. The only downside to this farm so far is that I have different…standards of cleanliness than those around me. I readily admit to a touch of OCD, and I am finding that I have to simply not think about it too much. This house is very damp, and obsessing over the mold could easily send me bonkers. I’m considering acquiring a tent and sleeping outside once it gets warmer. I at least need to invest in a quality dehumidifier.

Since I have only been here four days, I don’t have a lot more to share right now, but I do have one small housekeeping note: Comments! Comments are lovely. I know that I always feel self-conscious commenting on other people’s blogs, saying something inane like “Wow, that’s interesting, thanks for posting,” but really, as a blogger that’s all I want. I love knowing that people are reading, and I would like to know if there’s anything you are interested in that you want to hear more about. I am happy to oblige. But please, please, SIGN your comments. It really freaks me out when I get a response from someone and I don’t even know if I know them. Doing both these things would make me ever so happy.

Thanks for reading! I will have a more interesting update to share soon. Strawberry season is coming on fast, and I hope soon to make you all wild with envy when I tell of my strawberry eating exploits.

Peace to all,

Alison