Here we are...

...at the Blackbird Cafe, on Sunday morning, as is my wont. Not a whole lot to report this week. We've been busy, but I don't expect anything about that to change until, oh, about November. This week we got the rest of the display garden raked into beds, and began planting more alliums: onions, shallots, and leeks. We planted another session of herbs and lettuces: parsley, dill, arugula, and cilantro. We did another bed each of wheat and flax. We got the winter squash into the ground, although we still have another hundred hills to plant, and got some land cleared to plant pumpkins yesterday, which was something of an adventure.

We, Ruth and I, cleared an overgrown weed patch, trucked in compost, tilled the earth, built mounds, covered the whole lot in black plastic, and put the gourds in the ground. In other words, we spent the day doing that which farmers do. Transforming wilderness into something else, something productive. It was a satisfying experience, but tiring. The tilling part of the morning, was especially exciting. I'll post some pictures next time, but for now, if you can imagine a berm, four feet tall, and twenty five or thirty feet long, with gently sloping sides, covered in thistles, you'll have some idea of what we had to contend with. I got to invent a new sport, which I've been referring to as eXtreme tilling, whereby you till at a steep up and down angle, pushing a piece of heavy machinery around on a berm, much like a snowboarder in a halfpipe. Tiring, but fun in a perverse sort of way, too.

I've been doing a lot of baking lately. Having another pair of hands on the farm is such a relief for all of us, and I'm only too happy to keep them supplied with a steady stream of bread and cookies. It's amazing what an extra pair of people is allowing us to accomplish. On Tuesday we all gathered in my trailer for pizza and beer, and it was really awesome to be able to cook for the people whom I'll be spending so much of my time with over the next few months. We even made a desert pizza to finish off the evening. I'll try and get some pictures of people, so you can put faces to names, but I feel weird asking people to pose. I broke my bike the other day; I had a little wipeout, but finally got a new chain installed today, and so will probably take a ride rather than go for a hike, but my plans may change depending on the weather, which hasn't quite settled as much as Kelly would like.

On Friday Maggie gave me the training guide used by a nearby teaching farm, and I've been rapidly devouring it ever since. It's absolutely fascinating to read about the radically differing theories about how best to grow, and I'm learning a lot. I haven't been able to do as much reading as I'd like since I've arrived, but I'm finding it easier to get into a textbook than the fiction I've been plodding through lately. It's funny how our tastes change as we age, no?

I noticed that Matt left me a comment on a post from a few weeks ago. Hey there, little man. How are you? I love you and your sisters, and miss you all, too. In answer to your question, Lake Crescent is about half an hour, maybe forty minutes away from the farm, but there are other forests even closer. The nearest entrance to the Olympic National Forest is only twenty minutes away, and has a plethora of trails for me to explore. That banana slug was huge, six or seven inches long, and a disturbing shade of yellow, not bright like an banana skin, but more of a pastel shade, reminiscent of the color of the banana itself. I'm hope you guys are doing well and enjoying your summer vacation. I'm enjoying myself, but I can promise you, that this is no vacation.

I know this is going to come as a surprise, but I have no pictures to share. My camera died, and I haven't gotten new batteries yet, but I'll do that this afternoon, and I'll update this with some pics from the last week. Until then I wish you all the best, but I've got to be going, though this is Somebody's Sabbath(tm), I have things to do, and no time to rest, which is just fine by me. I love you all, and hope you're well, and look forward to seeing you in the relatively near future. I can't believe I've been here for almost two months already. Astonishing.