Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Goats are gonna get you!
Every night I look outside to see if I can see San Francisco. I use binoculars to weasel my way through the fog. There is a beautiful porch that overlooks Napa Valley and on a clear day you can see across the land to the Golden Gate Bridge. I find myself checking a few times a day to make sure that I am not missing anything.
The first real day on the job was rough... There is a routine that I still don’t quite get but it entails 16 hay stacks of alfalfa that I have to throw of a 15 ft fence at 7 in the morning. After the goats are let free to graze and all the chickens are happy we go back inside and make ourselves breakfast. Now, if you know my morning eating habits, a breakfast sandwich is the cat’s meow in my book. Imagine this, I enter the kitchen to find fresh baked bread waiting on the table, eggs that have just been collected from the chicken coup and goat cheese made the night before...awaiting my anxious touch. This is the freshest most wonderful breakfast sandwich ever! Yummm...
I am going to highlight some of my most interesting jobs. Yes my watering of the apple orchard for 3 hours a day is interesting, but there is more than that in a day’s work. I have officially worked a real “shit job”. Literally. There is a huge manure compost pile that is inside of a barricade of 30 cinderblocks. My job is to flip the poop, while taking these 20lb. blocks and rebuilding it so the freshly flipped pile o’ poo will be barraced nicely. This took me two hours and was the most intense job...Flippin poo ain’t easy ladies and gentleman. You gotta stick a pitchfork into it hoist it over and then make sure that the new cinderblock walls that you are building do not fall over.
My most thrilling job I have is to collect huge rocks all over the land, put them in a wheel barrel and push to wherever they need to go and build what is called a carrine. A carrine is this 4ft tall wire basket thing that is filled with rocks and used to hold the fences together...blah blah blah, long story short, about a ton (seriously a ton) of rocks fits in one of these wire basket things, which meeeeans, I collected a ton of bricks and hoisted the whole ton into this thing....This is some hard work.
One thing I have learned this week is that I have a slight fear of goats and it has everything to do with a psychic. So when I was 19 or 20 I saw a psychic and she said that I was going to be kicked by a horse...well what if she meant goat!! Seriously, what if I get kicked or rammed by one of these goats?? This is something that I need to get over.
Aside from feeding the goats and chickens, I also help milk the goats. This is pretty cool because this is where that goood goat cheese comes from! My job is to distract the goats while they are being milked. I throw in handful after handful of goat junk food, which is just corn. The first time I did this I was really nervous because if the goat gets bored while being milked it will start bucking...Again back to the psychic, I do not want to get kicked!! So I was shoveling corn into these goats’ mouths.
Twice a week I cook for everyone. My first meal was rigatoni with basil, yellow and green squash, tomatoes, black olives, garlic and olive oil...All but olives came from the garden! It was delicious!! Friday night was not so great...I attempted to make this zucchini pizza...We have plethora of zucchini that is growing in the garden so this seemed like a great idea at the time...wrong. I must have done something wrong, I don’t know, but it was more like a quiche goop. Yuck gross... no me gusto.
I am trying to get used to farm life. We have no TV, rare opportunities of internet, horrible phone service, the town is a 20 min drive away...and I have no car. But I have to say, I am ok with that. Lately I have been finding myself too dependent on all these things. It kind of becomes creepy when I am checking email, face book, celebrity gossip 40 times a day on my iphone. I just need a good ol’ detox from all that. Here I am.
The first real day on the job was rough... There is a routine that I still don’t quite get but it entails 16 hay stacks of alfalfa that I have to throw of a 15 ft fence at 7 in the morning. After the goats are let free to graze and all the chickens are happy we go back inside and make ourselves breakfast. Now, if you know my morning eating habits, a breakfast sandwich is the cat’s meow in my book. Imagine this, I enter the kitchen to find fresh baked bread waiting on the table, eggs that have just been collected from the chicken coup and goat cheese made the night before...awaiting my anxious touch. This is the freshest most wonderful breakfast sandwich ever! Yummm...
I am going to highlight some of my most interesting jobs. Yes my watering of the apple orchard for 3 hours a day is interesting, but there is more than that in a day’s work. I have officially worked a real “shit job”. Literally. There is a huge manure compost pile that is inside of a barricade of 30 cinderblocks. My job is to flip the poop, while taking these 20lb. blocks and rebuilding it so the freshly flipped pile o’ poo will be barraced nicely. This took me two hours and was the most intense job...Flippin poo ain’t easy ladies and gentleman. You gotta stick a pitchfork into it hoist it over and then make sure that the new cinderblock walls that you are building do not fall over.
My most thrilling job I have is to collect huge rocks all over the land, put them in a wheel barrel and push to wherever they need to go and build what is called a carrine. A carrine is this 4ft tall wire basket thing that is filled with rocks and used to hold the fences together...blah blah blah, long story short, about a ton (seriously a ton) of rocks fits in one of these wire basket things, which meeeeans, I collected a ton of bricks and hoisted the whole ton into this thing....This is some hard work.
One thing I have learned this week is that I have a slight fear of goats and it has everything to do with a psychic. So when I was 19 or 20 I saw a psychic and she said that I was going to be kicked by a horse...well what if she meant goat!! Seriously, what if I get kicked or rammed by one of these goats?? This is something that I need to get over.
Aside from feeding the goats and chickens, I also help milk the goats. This is pretty cool because this is where that goood goat cheese comes from! My job is to distract the goats while they are being milked. I throw in handful after handful of goat junk food, which is just corn. The first time I did this I was really nervous because if the goat gets bored while being milked it will start bucking...Again back to the psychic, I do not want to get kicked!! So I was shoveling corn into these goats’ mouths.
Twice a week I cook for everyone. My first meal was rigatoni with basil, yellow and green squash, tomatoes, black olives, garlic and olive oil...All but olives came from the garden! It was delicious!! Friday night was not so great...I attempted to make this zucchini pizza...We have plethora of zucchini that is growing in the garden so this seemed like a great idea at the time...wrong. I must have done something wrong, I don’t know, but it was more like a quiche goop. Yuck gross... no me gusto.
I am trying to get used to farm life. We have no TV, rare opportunities of internet, horrible phone service, the town is a 20 min drive away...and I have no car. But I have to say, I am ok with that. Lately I have been finding myself too dependent on all these things. It kind of becomes creepy when I am checking email, face book, celebrity gossip 40 times a day on my iphone. I just need a good ol’ detox from all that. Here I am.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Monday, August 2, 2010
This is all very interesting.
A farm...yes this is what is happening right now. Atlas Peak farms is going to be my home for the month of august. I have to tell you I am nervous as hell. I want to say that I have no idea what I am doing but that is not entirely true. I mean the waking up at 7 to feed chickens and ilk goats followed by harvesting of fruits and vegetables is something that is completely foreign to me, and quite frankly.... frightening. I do know that this experience I am about to embark on is going to add a little shine to my life. I am lucky to be able to take on this opportunity that’s for sure!
Ok so the deal is this, I am going to be working on farm...specifically a goat farm, located just outside of Napa Valley, Ca. Atlas Peak Farms I am going to be making different types of goats milk cheeses, jams bread all that good stuff.
My mom and I went on a mission to find appropriate farm attire...ok so here is the thing, I have no idea what that really entails, so this day was littered with some interesting conversations... me "these are the ugliest boots i have ever put on my feet." Mom, "You're just going to be walking through goat and chicken poo." Ahhh yes I have always waited for these words to be spoken to me.
I have different fantasies of how farm life will be...I am standing on a hill overlooking a surrounding vineyard, throwing the chicken feed that is in my wicker basket on the ground for baby chicks to follow, wind blowing through my hair, little squirrels nibbling at the food by my feet, smiling..,, Scenario 2: in a chicken coup, attempting to feed the animals, all the while being chased by crazed chickens and getting pecked in the back of the leg... and me, being the, let's be real, not one with nature gal, attempting to avoid stepping in chicken shit...Screaming.
I am just so excited to learn some new things...I really am...I love food...I love what goes into making a dish...I love the stories behind a recipe...I love the feeling when someone likes my food...I love to see the passion behind the person who has created a meal for me. Not it is time to see where it all begins
Day 1, August 1, 2010
What to say about this day... Well my fellow wwoofer and I decided to do a little exploring. We chose to walk down the main road from the farm. Apparently this road is a huge bicycle route. Bikers were whipping by us at speeds that were faster than most cars. As they would come down the road you would hear them scream “Pedestrian” Whooooosh, fly by us.
Soon an ATV with an old dude came riding by us, spraying pesticide off the side of the road, “you kids just come back from Milliken falls?” Falls? What falls? It was getting really hot so the idea of flowing water made our mouths salivate. This is when a wave of regret just came over this old guys face. He just let the cat out of the bag. He goes on to explain to us that kids go down to these so-called falls and litter the ground with empty beer bottles and cigarette butts and he has to go down there to clean them all up. We of course asked right away...how do you get there??
“Well you gotta walk back up the hill two addresses, then you’ll see a do not trespass sign...Well ya tresspass...and there is a path that leads you there.” The whole time he is telling us this, he has this enormous laughter like “Aw shit I can’t believe I am telling these kids where this is, now they are going to screw the whole thing up....oooh wellll.”
So we walk to this no trespassing sign, enter, and we begin our hike. We’re walking and we’re walking...see some fox poop here...coyote poop there (which is white because of all the bones that they eat), and come across rocks that look like an area where water does flow free...if there was any water in sight...So we keep saying “that guy didn’t know what he was talking about,” but we decide to keep going further.
Becky (fellow wwoofer) is leading the way...at this point we have given up on any falls. She suggested we just keep walking so we did. As we were walking we came across the most amazing cliff overlooking a deep valley with such a wide almost infinite landscape. We sat on the edge of the cliff and ate an orange that we had picked back at the farm. So we continue walking, and I have to say, I have never hiked on a path like this...At times it felt like were scaling the side of a huge mountain. I was pretty freaked out...but didn’t say anything...
All of a sudden about 20 min into walking, we heard something that both sounded like water or the wind blowing through the pines...we kept walking, down steep rocks, sliding on our butts and there it was... beautiful waterfalls, and big pools of water. I have never just come across something like this...at least in California. I mean this just exists; no one was around, it felt like we had discovered it for the first time.
Well, we did what any other person would do. Took off our cloths and jumped on in! Hopefully there were no creepy lurkers...The water was freezing, but so damn refreshing.... We climbed back after a little while, got a ride up the hill by our neighbor Doug, and I laid on my bed, passed out.
Doug and his brother Dane live on a house on the property, so after dinner Becky and I drank Budweiser, listened to country music and played pool. Let me just say this, Dane is a professional arm wrestler...yes this is true...he had just gotten back from a tournament on Venice Beach. They are some interesting characters and I am sure we will hear some great stories form them in the coming weeks.
Day 1 complete...tomorrow August 2, is going to be my first day on the job...fingers crossed.
Ok so the deal is this, I am going to be working on farm...specifically a goat farm, located just outside of Napa Valley, Ca. Atlas Peak Farms I am going to be making different types of goats milk cheeses, jams bread all that good stuff.
My mom and I went on a mission to find appropriate farm attire...ok so here is the thing, I have no idea what that really entails, so this day was littered with some interesting conversations... me "these are the ugliest boots i have ever put on my feet." Mom, "You're just going to be walking through goat and chicken poo." Ahhh yes I have always waited for these words to be spoken to me.
I have different fantasies of how farm life will be...I am standing on a hill overlooking a surrounding vineyard, throwing the chicken feed that is in my wicker basket on the ground for baby chicks to follow, wind blowing through my hair, little squirrels nibbling at the food by my feet, smiling..,, Scenario 2: in a chicken coup, attempting to feed the animals, all the while being chased by crazed chickens and getting pecked in the back of the leg... and me, being the, let's be real, not one with nature gal, attempting to avoid stepping in chicken shit...Screaming.
I am just so excited to learn some new things...I really am...I love food...I love what goes into making a dish...I love the stories behind a recipe...I love the feeling when someone likes my food...I love to see the passion behind the person who has created a meal for me. Not it is time to see where it all begins
Day 1, August 1, 2010
What to say about this day... Well my fellow wwoofer and I decided to do a little exploring. We chose to walk down the main road from the farm. Apparently this road is a huge bicycle route. Bikers were whipping by us at speeds that were faster than most cars. As they would come down the road you would hear them scream “Pedestrian” Whooooosh, fly by us.
Soon an ATV with an old dude came riding by us, spraying pesticide off the side of the road, “you kids just come back from Milliken falls?” Falls? What falls? It was getting really hot so the idea of flowing water made our mouths salivate. This is when a wave of regret just came over this old guys face. He just let the cat out of the bag. He goes on to explain to us that kids go down to these so-called falls and litter the ground with empty beer bottles and cigarette butts and he has to go down there to clean them all up. We of course asked right away...how do you get there??
“Well you gotta walk back up the hill two addresses, then you’ll see a do not trespass sign...Well ya tresspass...and there is a path that leads you there.” The whole time he is telling us this, he has this enormous laughter like “Aw shit I can’t believe I am telling these kids where this is, now they are going to screw the whole thing up....oooh wellll.”
So we walk to this no trespassing sign, enter, and we begin our hike. We’re walking and we’re walking...see some fox poop here...coyote poop there (which is white because of all the bones that they eat), and come across rocks that look like an area where water does flow free...if there was any water in sight...So we keep saying “that guy didn’t know what he was talking about,” but we decide to keep going further.
Becky (fellow wwoofer) is leading the way...at this point we have given up on any falls. She suggested we just keep walking so we did. As we were walking we came across the most amazing cliff overlooking a deep valley with such a wide almost infinite landscape. We sat on the edge of the cliff and ate an orange that we had picked back at the farm. So we continue walking, and I have to say, I have never hiked on a path like this...At times it felt like were scaling the side of a huge mountain. I was pretty freaked out...but didn’t say anything...
All of a sudden about 20 min into walking, we heard something that both sounded like water or the wind blowing through the pines...we kept walking, down steep rocks, sliding on our butts and there it was... beautiful waterfalls, and big pools of water. I have never just come across something like this...at least in California. I mean this just exists; no one was around, it felt like we had discovered it for the first time.
Well, we did what any other person would do. Took off our cloths and jumped on in! Hopefully there were no creepy lurkers...The water was freezing, but so damn refreshing.... We climbed back after a little while, got a ride up the hill by our neighbor Doug, and I laid on my bed, passed out.
Doug and his brother Dane live on a house on the property, so after dinner Becky and I drank Budweiser, listened to country music and played pool. Let me just say this, Dane is a professional arm wrestler...yes this is true...he had just gotten back from a tournament on Venice Beach. They are some interesting characters and I am sure we will hear some great stories form them in the coming weeks.
Day 1 complete...tomorrow August 2, is going to be my first day on the job...fingers crossed.
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