i'm back! after a week in the great wide open. i'm currently sitting in a cafe, this time with dave and cameron, in old town Eureka :)

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last weekend was f-u-n. post-blogging, nathan, amie, dave, cameron and i went to arts alive, a once-a-month arts festival in eureka which is lots like the art murmur in oakland. free wine and food, art, conversation and general good times. i was then introduced to the shanty, a eurekan bar with a spectacular ping pong table, ample tunes on the jukebox and plenty of beer. we shared several pitchers, played some vicious games of ping-pong, traded silly and embarrassing stories and made general fools of ourselves. it was a great way to get comfortable with my farm friends :) dave kindly shared with us his home near the intersection of home drive and home drive (i'm not kidding) in cutten that evening, all of us scrunching onto the few bits of bed that were to be had. in the morning, frighteningly, there was no toilet paper...not a good thing considering a few of us drank PBR the evening prior. needless to say, things got moving fast that morning and we were outta there in record time :) we stopped for breakfast at the chalet...for me, the highlight of the joint was the flavored coffee creamers they had! i'm addicted to those and hadn't had one in a few days, and i was just giddy to put those chemicals into my body again :) sadly, i'm not at all kidding!

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on sunday evening, cameron took me down to the river...the trinity river, that is. it happens to be a five-minute walk away from the farm through tomato fields and blackberry bushes-gone-rampant. i cannot wait until the wild blackberries are ripe...i've been looking thru the chez panisse desserts cookbook and lindsey shere has a recipe for wild blackberry curd...mmm! can you imagine - wild blackberry and lemon curd tartelets? with blackberries collected in our hands after an afternoon spent floating in the trinity river, hawks circling overhead and osprey diving into the water for their lunch?

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the river is...simply, breathtaking. we sat on its banks for an hour and a half just watching the flowing water and the life surrounding it. i collected a handful of tiny rocks...each one eith its own story to tell, cameron watched a snake slither slowly from the water into the trees, and daisy found a few good sticks to chew on. i can't wait to get down there and into the water...the flow is mildly rapid and trees and hills of green line the banks downriver as far as my eyes can see.

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as you can see, there is much occasion for reflection and appreciation of my surroundings up here. i find my breaths to be longer and deeper, my mind to be more focused in the present, and my needs to be less than anticipated, but more than fully met. lest you think that it's all fun and games on the farm, though, i'll tell you something...my first full week work here was pretty darn hard!

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when i say hard, though, i mean difficult in a deeply satisfying way. we have six people working on the farm now; last year at this time there were only two - grady and nathan. i cannot imagine how that worked. in fact, i've asked grady just that question and he answered easily and with a subtle grin, "it didn't." they were working extremely long days each day of the week, and they still had more work than they could handle. i can't say that i'm all that bummed to have missed out on that stage of life here at green fire!

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i am still working up to that grand post that's eloquent and descriptive and accurate...but for now, and especially since dave and cam look about ready to go, i'll convey the basics. a typical day starts at 7:00 am (waking earlier to brush teeth, pull on dirt-dusted pants or holey khaki cut-offs, and to boil water for coffee or tea). mondays and wednesdays and fridays are harvest days (markets are on tuesday, thursday and saturday), so those days have us pulling up lotsa veggies and washing and packing them...the other days are mainly task days where we take care of the *multitude* of other things that need to be taken care of on the farm. we usually work until about noon...whence we have lunch (each day, someone cooks...i've got tuesdays now! thanks, grady :)) and take a break, all in all, about a 2.5 hour rest...then we work again for about 3-5 hours in the afternoon/early evening. at night, we all make our own dinners, often cooking together, or sitting around and drinking wine or beer or listening to music. around nine or ten o'clock, our eyelids get a little heavy, and we all retire to our beds - grady and linda to their one-room cabin by the kiwi grove, nathan to his house on zikr field and cameron, amie and i to our three-bedroom cabin in the apple orchard.

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i've learned, thus far, how to harvest: zucchini and squash and pattypans (ya'll - appreciate all of these when you buy them from small farms (especially the organic ones)! they have the prickliest leaves and one gets what's termed a squash burn (read: itchy scrapes that flare up in pain) when you pick 'em), kale, chard, beets, carrots (what an amazing feeling to pull a big ole' carrot right outta the soil!), sugar snap peas (holy hell. these suckers are prolific on the farm thie year! sometimes we lose people in the peas and have to go in searching for them), basil (the smell, the smell!), dill (how fragile!), cilantro, mint (juleps, juleps, juleps...), garlic scapes and chervil; i've learned what it means (and i've actually done a lot of this, now, too) to cultivate and till and hoe and hill; i've helped to put up trellacing for long beans; we've planted tomato starts, peppers and beans; i got to cook and bake with ingredients *right* outta the soil and with eggs that were just laid...and so much more. grady, linda, nathan, amie and cameron are excellent teachers and i'm feeling more and more comfortable each day i'm here. i've asked to stay a bit longer...i'm not quite sure how long yet, but past the beginning of july, at least. there is so much to learn and do here - how can i leave??

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tomorrow is cameron's birthday party, and we've invited several close farm friends to come and help celebrate. nathan's dad is in town and they're going to catch some fish in the morning...so we plan to grill those up along with some freshly-harvested vegetables; i'm making a carrot cake with a maple cream cheese frosting; we'll have beer and wine and music, too...

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there are more pixx on flickr...have a look!

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"keep a fire burning in your eye, pay attention to the open sky.."