A lot has been going on this week. By the time 9pm rolls around every night, usually I crawl into bed and write a blog entry or watch a tv show, but this week I've been fighting off a cold, so even though my days haven't been too physically demanding, I'm beat at night.
Sunday
I finally went ice fishing - that's one thing to check off the bucket list. I took Gil and Sage to one of the iced over ponds in Belgrade. Gil and I used his automatic auger, that was practically the size of him, to drill 5 holes in the ice that were about 30m apart in a circle. Gil set up ice fishing traps in each hole, attaching shiners as bait. Gil told me that shiners used to be all over the Belgrade ponds, but since the invasion of pike in the waters, all the shiners have been eaten, so they're now effective bait. Gil caught 6 pickerel and one pike. Pickerel are indigenous to these waters, so Gil always returned them.
Monday
The main chore of today was painting the kitchen ceiling. I have very little experience with paint in my life, let alone painting upside down while balancing on a rickety ladder or a slippery counter. My first coat was too thin, but the second coat that I did on Wednesday came out mighty fine.
For the latter part of the day, I drove Rachel to Pemaquid, the ocean spot that the family vacations at every summer. Rachel doesn't have her license, so she's not able to leave easily on her days off. Mary thought it'd be nice to drive out to the ocean, seeing as Rachel is from the Midwest. I love driving and I enjoy spending one-on-one time with another apprentice.
Tuesday
Last summer we had 3 sheep on the farm: sugar, star, and socks. Now we have a few more. Both Sugar and Star were pregnant when I arrived last week and on Tuesday morning, Star went into labor. This was the first full live birth I've ever seen. Rachel noticed and quickly called Mary, and we all rushed over to the barn. It was crazy seeing Star lay there with her stomach lurching with TWIN lambs inside - it reminded me of the movie Alien. It was beautiful to see Star give birth to her little baby lambs, first a big strong girl and then a weaker boy. It started snowing really hard that day and it was just the most happy experience of life. We took turns throughout the day sitting in the barn with the lambs, making sure that the meak boy was eating enough since the stronger girl was able to hold her own. While Sage and I were with them, we noticed that Star sometimes would walk away whenever we tried to get the boy to eat or she would kick him away with her leg. We were worried that Star was rejecting the boy since he was a 'runt.' That night we watched the movie, The Story of the Weeping Camel, which ironically involved a camel giving birth and rejecting her calf.
Wednesday
The baby boy lamb grew had grown stronger over night, and although he was still smaller than his sister, he was much more able to get food for himself and Star had become more agreeable. Today was Gil's 13th birthday (Abigail will be turning 13 in April too!), so the family was out all day running errands and going fishing at Pemaquid for Gil. Rachel made the most delicious maple cake for Gil's birthday in a bundt pan with maple frosting on top and maple syrup drizzled over it all - yum. Rachel and I ate dinner while watching War Horse, another film involving animal rearing. We had tea and cake when the family got home that night - Gil got pet crabs for his birthday.
Thursday
This morning as I was getting ready to go running, I saw Rachel go out to the barn like she usually does early in the morning, then I heard Mary get a phone call and her asking whether "he" was stiff. I knew the boy lamb had died. Mary brought him inside, still limp, and left him wrapped up on the dinner table all morning (a little disturbing, I thought). He was stiff within a 1/2 hour, so he must have died right before Rachel found him. Mary's only thought is that Star laid on him, suffocating him, either by accident or on purpose - apparently this is a common way for lambs to die.
To cheer Sage up, I took her to the Bangor Discovery Children's Museum. Bangor is the northern-most 'big' city in Maine. Katie, one of the apprentices from last summer, is from here. Sage and I had a blast looking all over the museum. It made me miss the Science Museum of Virginia and the Children's Museum of Richmond from my own childhood. Sage and I sang "Old MacDonald" almost all the way home (that's at least 45 min of singing) and my voice was shot. I actually skyped with Katie and Jillian, my co-apprentices from last summer, on Thursday night,and sounded like a man since my voice was so dry.
Friday
Today was Farmer's Market day - yay! Mary's friend, Eli, was putting a staricase in the barn today while Gil, Sage, Rachel, and I were at market. We loaded up the car (it's certainly on its last legs) with enough goods for 2 markets. We traveled East and I dropped Gil and Rachel off at the Augusta Farmer's Market. Sage and I continued South, got lost in Brunswick, and then eventually found our way to the Topsham Farmer's Market. This was a surprisingly large and diverse market for one held in the winter. There were many meats, baked goods, breads, skins, veggies (hard to grown in the winter!), knitted goods, and even mushrooms being sold. We've been growing plenty of spinach and a little bit of lettuce in our hoop house this winter, so at market we were selling spinach, chicken pot pies, turkey vegetable soup, jams, pickled goods, relishes, breads, pies, and honey. Our honey is raw and unfiltered, so it has bits of pollen in it which is I learned is good for those who suffer from seasonal allergies since the exposure lessens the severity of the allergy. The bread man across from me played songs on his guitar, I befriended the mushroom lady whose table was behind me, and Sage and her friend from market shared their rocky road and creme puff with me. Good day... made better when we got home and it was pizza night that we ate while we watched The Walton's.
Saturday
Today I painted the floor in the farmstand kitchen. Mary wast old she needs to do this to keep up with health regulations. I had to clear out the entire kitchen, jack up the stove on wood blocks, and scrape and vacuum the entire floor clean before I navigated my way around the kitchen floor, painting it yellow and making sure not to paint myself into a corner so that I couldn't get out without walking on the apint. It was a success, but a painful process for a detail-oriented person like myself since I couldn't get every piece of dirt off of the cement floor that hasn't been washed in years.
Mary is NOT the most computer savvy person, so I'm impressed with all that she's done with the website and her newsletters considering this. She has been having me do many of the jobs this week that Kenya would normally do. This means computer jobs. Mary has had me create lists for summer food orders to keep the kitchen stocked with enough food and healthy food for her family and the apprentices. This meant I had to go through the Associated Buyer's catalog and pick out foods that I'd want as an apprentice, and then create a checklist of foods for Mary to pick up every week at the farmer's market (dairy and breads) and at the grocery store. Mary also had me create a sign-in chart the 20 weeks of her CSA shares this year with all of her customers' names.
Much of my time this week was spent trying to figure out Mary's newsletter dilemma. Mary sends out a monthly newsletter to almost 200 people, but everyone can see everyone else's email in doing this. It has taken me hours contacting a man at a newsletter company and designing a newsletter template, nothing pleasing for both me and Mary, so I finally asked my tech-savvy friend, Cole, and he recommended a site called Mailchimp. FINALLY - it's the answer to all that I need.
More projects I have are uploading songs onto an iPod that Mary has adopted from a past apprentice who lost her iPod in the manure pile and no longer needs it. This might sound simple, but I haven't used an iPod in years and I have only a slight idea on how to get free songs from online. Lastly, Mary is having me write a proposal for a grant from WWOOF to build a wash-station for the veggies in the summer.
Arguably the most exciting thing this week is that I'm running again - pain-free, tingling-free, and although I'm very out of shape, I can't wait to get back to track practice and be an in-season athlete again. It feels so right!
