sunday night. yaaawn! an end to a long week and an eventful weekend...and it all starts again in nine hours! and to think that i thought that life on the farm would be leisurely :)

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today i did a few things i've been meaning to do since i got here: i shared music with my cabin mates, sketched the cherry trees, sifted through recipes for inspiration...and best of all, i got back on my bike! the gearing is still a little screwy, but it's ride-worthy. it felt so good to be on two wheels again! one really gets to know a place well when on a bike...all the things that fly past when in a car are more clear when pedaling past...i found the hoopa library, and i noticed lots of little side roads which seemed like interesting avenues to explore.

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this evening, amie, her sister laura who's visiting, cameron and i discovered that ray's grocery store is, driving, an "mmm bop!" away. mmm bop as in that terrible but catchy song by hanson. god only knows why i have that tune on my ipod, but i do, and it's damn funny. we got some fixin's for a junk-food dinner (yes! we do that here sometimes) of veggie burgers and chips and brought them home for a cabin-side picnic. we embellished the meal with farm-fresh stuff like lettuce and onions and it was delicious!! i got the baking itch earlier in the day and so we had chocolate cherry cupcakes for dessert. i'm not gloating, but the kids all loved them and i felt pretty damn proud. cocoa cupcakes with flecks of chocolate, filled with a cherry compote (using the cherries WE picked!), dolloped with vanilla buttercream and topped with a cherry and shaved chocolate. mmmmm! after dinner we showed the newest wwoof'er, jonathan, around and got sprayed by a skunk on the way home. wragh! but the sunset and the sliver of the moon high in the sky were too pretty to let that ruin our walk home :)

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this past week was a full one. a few days were pretty long, but there's such a sense of accomplishment after a hard day's work here. unlike most other times in my life, i don't find that i'm haibitually writing here in hoopa. i've resorted to making bulleted lists and jotting down keywords to record moments when i'm too fatigued to string my thoughts together...so, with those notes as my guide, this week, in a nutshell:

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i slept in not once, but twice! curse me. my alarm on my phone clearly isn't working and two times i've woken up at 6:59 instead of 6:30. granted, it's a short commute (a one minute walk, tops) to work so i can immediately throw on some clothes and run into the fields...but still. i've asked my cabinmates to knock on my door from now on to drag my aged butt outta bed :)

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on monday morning, i was out in the kale picking for the next day’s market. at 7:15, the greens are still covered with dew and our pants get wet from the knees on down. we’re bent over, fingers still warming up and toughening up after a night of rest. we don’t talk too much that early; most of us are still waking up: coughing, sniffling, bundled warmly, watching our breaths disappear into the chilly air as we pick the leaves. tuesday morning i chopped down tall stalks of dill, pruned small nests of thyme, and helped to hoe the second succession of squash and the eggplant. i cooked up peanut noodles and cabbage salad for lunch; in the afternoon we all went over to the biondinis and worked like mad. we zip tied all of the trellacing to the posts; we hoed the summer squash (these feel like the longest beds we’ve got on the farm); we planted peppers – dig, drop, cover, push, that’s it! fast! we didn’t get done until 8:00 that night and i was exhausted, but we made good progress.

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i wrote, after that day, "I’m really falling in love with the rural life. Living where I do now is amazing. The removal with sporadic inclusion. Proximity to nature. I love all the meaningful work that there is to do. I love the river. And the dynamism. And the connection with the land. And the people it draws and how it effects..."

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wednesday was a harvest day and we didn't really stop. i started picking chard with cameron, talking about relationships. then i picked chioggias with amy and we talked about dunkin donuts and sandwich shops in the midwest. then we picked peas, in solitude. it’s hard to talk through those tall rows of shoots...you can hear the others humming and sniffling, but it’s quite an effort sometimes to keep a conversation going, so we usually pick away in silence, sorting through the things on our minds. after that i helped nathan clean the squash, a task which i find to be really calming. the little pattypans and zephhyrs bob up and down in the cold water in the sink, waiting to be polished up all nice-like with clean white rags for the market :)

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the rest of the day was spent, for the most part, picking cherries and herbs. all in all we picked well over 180# of cherries; climbing in the ladders, reaching for the couplets and triplets of deep burgundy fruits which were hanging delicately off the woody branches, saving the cosmetically damaged cherries for ourselves or popping them into out mouths :) stomach aches from too many cherries. after that, i helped linda bunch basil…the smell of that herb is intoxicating. i made little bouquets out of it, twisting them together with a rubberband, then chopping all of their stems off evenly. i decided that if i ever do have occasion to marry, or carry a bouquet for some reason, i would like my bouquet to be made of herbs...i can't imagine anything better because then i can actually USE them afterwards :)

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in the evening, we pitted all the cosmetically challenged but edible cherries and ate a delicious pesto that linda made from our garlic and our basil. MMMM! i cracked open the cassis lambic that i bought last week and grady and cameron made floats out of blackberry ice cream, chocolate ice cream and lambic! like i said, we're not always super healthy here :)

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the weekend was extra special because my girls maddie and sam came to visit. i had such a great time. their stay was short (less than 24 hours), but we packed in the laughter and silliness and mild debauchery, like we always do :) we met in arcata yesterday morning, sam coming up from oakland and maddy down from portland, and we tooled around the city for a bit, stopping for lunch at a delicious spot called wildflower. the girls had their bikes with them, so they rode for a bit while i searched for a sketchbook and looked in vain for high-speed internet so that i could blog about the past week :)

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this weekend was the oyster festival in arcata, so the town square was packed with artisits and food purveyors and drunk folks; we took it all in until the police told us to dump out the drinks we brought from home...then it was clearly time to go :) we jumped in maddie's car and headed north to trinidad and patrick's point state park.

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maddie went to school at humboldt state near eureka, so she knew some great spots to show us. we got to some hiking an biking trails and she let me ride her lil' bike while she walked belah (her doggie), and it felt so damn good to be back on a bike! sammy and i rode through the redwoods, the sun warm on our faces and the wind rushing past and cooling us down. the experience of riding a bicycle is unparalleled...it's only been two and a half weeks since i was on a bike, but it feels like it has been forever!

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that evening we headed back to hoopa and i got to give them a little peek into life on the farm. we drank some ciders with cameron and talked...then the three of us moved into the great big tent under the cherry trees where we giggled ourselves to sleep on the brand new air mattresses that grady and linda bought for the tent. fancy camping, i tellya! the girls both left rather early the next morning, and i was sad to see them go...

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so, in a nutshell, life is busy and full and wonderful up here in hoopa :) stay tuned for further posts and check out the pixx on flickr!