So long for now

Well my farming summer has finally ended; Friday was my last day at Meadowstone and I took the bus and train to DC Saturday. Even though it got cold at the end I'm glad I stayed as long as I did; seeing the beginning of a New England fall was amazing. In a way it would have been nice to stay until the end of the markets, but I do not know how much longer I could have lasted. According to weather.com, tomorrow's high for Washington, DC is 72°F. Bethlehem's is 52°F. No thanks.



I'll definitely miss it though; I liked everyone there, I loved the work, being around crops and animals, abundant fresh food. Plus, New England is pretty.

I'm going home to Tucson for a few months, which will be...interesting. I am actually looking forward to it a little, I haven't been there since Christmas, and it will be nice to stop traveling for a while and be somewhere that feels like home (though I am sure that feeling will change once I'm there!). I'll be working for my mamma at Antigone Books during the holiday season. A bit different than farming but still it should be cool.

In the meantime I'm making plans for Ireland in the spring. I heard back from a farm there a couple weeks ago:

Dear Sarah.

We appreciate you planning a wwoof assignment so far in advance. And since you are the first applicant for the next year we gladly accept. You obviously dont mind the cold since you have been already in Donegal. It is a bit milder here in West connemara.We live about 1 1/2 hour away from Galway in Cleggan near Clifden.

!!!!!
They grow soft fruit and herbs and veggies for local restaurants and I think one farmer's market. I am so excited. Hopefully I'll be able to go to more than just one but it is a start.

Baby chicks #2

Even though we collect eggs twice a day, and check for them in odd places like the pig trailer, one of the layer hens sneakily hid 10 eggs somewhere and managed to sit on them for two weeks without us finding out. As a result we have baby chicks! They are so adorable. She must be one proud mama hen, being the only one with babies.

Bobby

This is Bobby, the billy goat, in an old trailer which is his home. It's old but in pretty good shape.


This is the trailer after two weeks of Bobby. Pretty frequently we can hear him butting his head into it, and he's done it so much that the walls have come apart from the floor and half collapsed. It was going to be his winter home, but who knows if it will even last that long? He's pretty even tempered most of the time, (except when he's trying to steal the pigs' food) but he can be fucking crazy.

Meadowstone Farm

Monday night I took the bus to Littleton, NH to start my third farm of the summer. On the way there I passed with a sign that said "Real Food!" I'm not sure what it means that a diner has to advertise that it serves "real" food... (shitty picture I know, but it was from a bus)

Anyway, so so far it is pretty fuckin' awesome: this is what I was looking for when I signed up for WWOOF. They run a CSA and a farm stand, and go to farmer's markets on the weekends, which is cool cause I had wanted to get experience with a for-profit farm. They have chickens, 4 day old chicks, piglets, and goats, which are all incredibly adorable animals, I cannot get enough. The pigs zoom away every time you start to get close to them, but the goats are really friendly and come up to the fence and let you pet them. I managed to get a picture when they were distracted by food

!!!! There are probably 70 of them

The only downside is multiple roosters who start making noise at 4:30 am.
There is also a cute farm boy and everyone else seems pretty cool, so I'm excited. Last night after work I wondered around the farm with one of the workers, taking pictures and eating blue berries and raspberries. It's a good start to the month.

White River Junction

I had today off so I decided to take a bike ride to White River Junction, a small town in Vermont where the Amtrak stopped on the way here. I thought it had a cool name, and it looked cute driving through so I've been meaning to go explore it at some point. It was around 17 miles there and back, it was a pretty good ride except part of it was on the highway through another city with no shoulder or bike lane, so it was a little scary, though I suppose not too much worse than DC sometimes. It felt really good getting back. I wondered around the town a little then got something to eat in this cute cafe by the railroad station before heading back.

Turner's cafe

At one point I walked past three 17 or18 year old girls. One whistled at me as I went by, and when I looked back yelled "syke!" I was not quite expecting that. Otherwise nothing too interesting happened, but it was pretty, and right by the river and railroads, both things I quite like.