Weeks 1 and 2

• Cleaned the farmhouse top to bottom (with more than a little help from my friends).


• Introduced Charline, a lovely young woman from Quebec City, to the farm while the farmer was away.


• Fed and watered 35 chickens twice per day.


• Gathered eggs, then washed and packaged them for sale.


• Hollered at Gypsy, a sweet, old Golden Retriever, for stealing and eating eggs.


• Hollered at Gypsy for stealing into my room and eating my cat's food.


• Planted several flats of spinach, lettuces, and beets.


• Weeded carrots and beets, inadvertently weeding out some of the beets.


• Watered rows and flats in the greenhouse with a watering can because I didn't realize there was a hose.


• Planted 2 rows of onions alongside garlic that was already in the ground.


• Spread loads of mulch on said onions and garlic, 6 beds of strawberries, and a 15x30' area.


• Used a broadfork to aerate the soil in that area, then trenched 4 rows with a hoe and spread worm castings around, before planting sugar snap peas.


• Chased chickens off the new pea patch.


• Chased chickens off the onions, garlic and strawberries.


• Chased chickens out of the greenhouse.


• Chased chickens back into their own blasted yard.


• Severely cut back 2 enormous hedges of eleagnus.


• Pounded fence posts in for a new chicken area using this awesome crazy 18lb tool.


• Loaded oak logs on and off trailer for shiitake mushroom operation.


• Drove golf cart to and fro, with and without trailer.


• Harvested shiitake mushrooms.


• Helped lift 4 12-foot logs into place as part of terracing what will be the kitchen garden.


• Won a rooster-human standoff initiated by a foolhardy rooster.


• Cursed house-loving ladybugs and ants.


• Cooked a biryani so bad I could barely eat it.


• Played soccer with Charline in a pecan grove.


• Gazed in wonder at Venus, a Cheshire cat moon, Orion, the Big Dipper, and the Pleiades.


• Taken daily walks in the woods with Mozell, the cat who often acts like a dog.


• Slept like a baby every night.


• Loved every minute of my work.


• Missed my community and friends in Bed-Stuy.