Days 50-51 (8/14-15/12): Back on the Farm

Madison, me, and Caroline (trying to) striking a pose.

Me, Shelby, and Kelly after our cabin activity at Camp Varisty.  

 I left the farm on Friday, August 3 in a 9-seater airplane (smallest plane and airport I've ever seen).  I was heading to Virginia for several days to visit with friends from home and to be a counselor at a running camp.  Camp Varsity was full of craziness, per the usual: doin' the dew, date night for table dress-up theme, fried and packaged camp food (seriously, yum), Parlor Rugby, Lip Syncs (One Thing by One Direction), CaMp DaNcE, and too much more to list.  CV is a high school running camp in the mountains of Madison, VA that I've gone to for 6 years now.  Even as a second-year counselor, I got to stay in the same cabin as my high school girl's cross country team.  I'd like to thank the campers and my fellow staff for an amazingly exciting yet sentimental week at camp.  I'm counting down the days until next year.  I also had an amazing time catching up with friends from high school and home.  After braving the 'wilderness' at camp, I got to go to the movie theatre (Prometheus was awesome), buy a dress (thrift stores rock), and drink diet coke (it's been too long), all luxuries for me.  I'd like to thank Georgia and her sisters, Hannah and Lydia, and the Rose family for hosting me in Richmond - they give so much!

I returned on the evening of Monday, August 13 on the same 9-seater plane with the same Australian pilot.  Sage and Mary were there to greet me with open arms and a fresh peach (the taste and texture were divine).  The family is at Maine Fiddle Camp this week, with Mary and Sage coming home during the day, so Kenya and Gil weren't home when I returned.  However, it was lovely to see Jillian and Annie again.  It felt as if nothing had changed.  Little had except the farm had its final and concrete appraisal (the price was set for the easement), the corn had doubled in height, and Piccalilli had been slaughtered since it had attacked Sage (please note that more elaborate reasoning was considered in this decision).   Yesterday, the 14th, I tended to regular chores of watering the lower hoop house, harvesting squash and cucumbers, hoe-weeding field 4, and feeding the animals in the evening.  I was less productive than I wished in the hoe-weeding because I felt fatigued.  I've been feeling sick from something I probably picked up from Caroline (she was feeling feverish on Saturday) and from lack of sleep.  Nestor is staying out in the pasture at night time because his stall is being used for storing extra shavings right now.  Until all the extra bedding shavings are used, we will switch Nestor into Ginger's stall for the days that Ginger and Ladybug go out to the pasture.  Mary had me spray the herb garden's kale plants for fleas.  We use an organic spray made from chrysanthemum.  This spray kills bugs on contact and stays traced on the plant for up to 2 hours.  It's not something one should go out of their way to inhale, but it's rather unharmful for humans.  This is the first time all summer that I've used spray on plants - our produce is 100% organic with arguably no chemicals.  Before returning to Fiddle Camp for the night, Mary and Sage joined us for dinner: kale and tomato salad, eggplant parmesan, and peach and blackberry pie with crumble and whipped cream - what a feast!

I spent much of today in the shop.  I fed the animals, cleaned their stalls (Red, the steer, insisted on lying down and made it extremely difficult to clean his stall), and put Nestor into Ginger's stall and Ginger and Ladybug into the pasture.  I watched the shop all day and made batches of chocolate chip cookies for the shop and blueberry bread for market.  When Mary returned for the day, I canned haricot vert beans .  I clipped the stems off of a bucket of beans and jammed them as much as I could into mason jars, sprinkling in 2-3 tbsp of canning & baking salt  and filling each with boiling water.  The jars are placed in a special canning pot that is filled with 3/4 boiling water and 1/4 vinegar (to prevent staining the pot).  The special canning pot is heated to seal the mason jars for preservation.  Mary also had me make 'tussy mussy's'.  Think of London in the industrial revolution with waste in its streets.  Women would have fragrant bouquets of flowers called Tussy Mussy's slid up their sleeves so they could smell the perfume easily.  Mary had me harvest dry flower (aka straw flowers) and a couple of other flowers that dry nicely.  I cut the stems short, wrapped the bouquets tightly, and artistically hung the bouquets from the farmstand ceiling by hay bale twine at varying heights from the ceiling.  I thought this was a creative way of using space and putting the bouquets on display for sale while they dry.  

Haricot Vert Beans: long and thin 'fancy' string beans