Hey ya'll! My computer ended up getting completely destroyed by this virus, so I have lost everything...all of my files, music, photos..long story short, I haven't used my computer in a few days because everything is erased..it really sucks! I have taken a few pictures to put up here, but I've been so nervous about putting them back on my computer...oi, vey. I think I got the virus from the network here, but I am not sure...either way around, sorry for the lack of posts.

This weekend is the long-awaited Harvest festival. To prepare, I have been working on my garden hella alot in the Appalachia site along side fellow volunteers Jason, Maggie, and Nic, who have been extremely helpful. The garden and site look great, and I will post pictures up here in a few days when it is all decked out in Harvest festival apparel. My garden looks wonderful, and the entire site is pretty clean. I will be doing pumpkin seed roasting in Appalachia and eventually Fufu making in the Ghana site.

Nic and I have really come to love it here. The fall is gorgeous, and I have been pressing the prettiest maple leaves that I have found to mail out to a couple of friends and family members. I have never seen such a slow, gorgeous transition from green to red.

Nic and I have contacted Peace Corps and his medical deferment has been lifted; we have decided that we would like to stay here during the spring season while we wait to be placed. I am interested in a Farmer Chef position. As a Farmer Chef, I would be a part time chef and a part time farmer/gardener. I will learn about organic cooking, canning, and various methods of food prep, and also learn about large-scale gardening. The prospect of staying through the spring is extremely exciting. I can't wait until things are a bit more concrete.

Quote for the day about Heifer: "Only poor people work here," from a student that apparently wasn't getting the Heifer message. This statement is completely false- people from all types of incomes, backgrounds, and places work at Heifer. Oh well. Can't win em all.

It's been a while since I have updated due to massive computer problems. I've been very frustrated the past few days because I have not been able to listen to any of my music. I grow afraid for our future historians. On my little laptop, I have seven plus years worth of papers, articles, photographs, essays, poems, and journal entries. I have been saving digital copies of my own writing that it is meaningful, ranging from intros to short stories and slam poems. My writing in paper-bound journals has slowed significantly in the past few years, and when my SLR was stolen, my photography switched to fully digital. Now, I find myself on the brink of losing all of this if I don't figure something out. I initially rid the computer of this virus that it's caught, but it has seeded itself in my laptop and is reproducing like dwarf rabbits in the spring. I can't open the computer in safe mode, and have a hard time opening exe files, can't get to the command prompt, or use the task manager. Oi, vey.
It has inspired me to do several things: write in my paper journal FIRST. Sure, it takes longer to write everything out by hand, but it will take a fire to destroy my reflections (not a computer program). I bought a new SLR and I plan to take more film photos. Film photography is quickly growing outdated, but bitmaps and gifs have already grown outdated, and I don't imagine jpegs are much further behind. Also, I have a new-found since of understanding for record collectors. Most of my life i have tried to minimize my personal possessions, but now I wish I had made an exception for records. Even when a record is scratched or bent it will at least still try to play. Records maintain a sense of weight, presence, and permanence that CDs and MP3s simply do not. All it takes is one malicious jerk to destroy my entire (digital) music collection, or one accidental fingernail scratch to ruin my favorite CD.
In short, eugh. I need to become myself at 15 again, i.e., an eccentric Luddite who left a paper trail for herself to follow back home in the event that a bit of malicious behavior threw her off course. 20th century, here I come.

This link is from the At War blog at the New York Times news website. Although the article itself is pretty brief, just knowing that these small comfort items are available in surreal form to soldiers in Afghanistan brightens my day a little bit. Check it out. On that note, I recently finished The Things They Carried, and it was incredible. I really appreciated the writing style. I also enjoyed the way each of the stories wound circles around each other, and that any kernel of truth, if there even was one, was morphed into another kernel of untruth by the next segment of the text. Fantastic quick and emotional read. I've also started Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver, who wrote The Poisonwood Bible.

Boston

Well, ya'll, it's blog update time again, and this time I am backtracking to that time that several volunteers went to Boston together. And I think I shall tell the story in photos.



To get to Boston, we went with the train. Here is Sam waxing at the train station.


This is the first picture I took when we got off of the train. My favorite thing about Boston is how it is an incredible combination of super old and crazy new architecture.




This red brick building was sandwiched between two snazzy new skyscrapers. It had an intense feel to it, like it was the lone building that had a landlord who wouldn't sell out, or the only place in the middle of downtown that was legally acquired through squatting. Check out the faces that appear wheat pasted across the top of the brick before the rows of windows.



Arthur is hiding in this picture.


This is an awesome dragon sculpture that was build into a set of stairs.


Everyone had this gleeful beer hunting look at the brewery that we went to visit, the Harpoon brewery.

See?


There were quite a few giant lobsters outside of restaurants in Boston.


All of this beer at the Harpoon brewery was being wasted. This was all trash. WHAT-A-WASTE.


This was a quote from a memorial sidewalk that I really enjoyed.


This building was epic. Look at how tiny the people are and how huge the building is. The memorial sidewalk was surrounding this area.


Another example of the many fine lobster statues in front of the many restaurants in Boston.


In short, the trip was fantastic. Boston is a great city.

Today the weather was supposed to be a washout. Today, the weather IS a washout! It's freezing, grey, and rainy. What a trip. We are doing our colonias meal today. Colonias is my favorite site and I really look forward to the meal, although the weather is most definitely not ideal in any way. Also, some coals got on my boots during a fire and burned a few holes in my waterproof boots. They are currently patched with duct tape, but now I do not have a single pair of waterproof shoes. I am going to start wearing bags around my feet.

It is our last day of training today. Yay!

Great days

Hey ya'll! The past few days have been GREAT but busy. I am going to write a few scattered thoughts here and bring them all together over the next few days. I have a lot of things to talk about which I'm pretty excited about. Here they go:

1) We had a huge potluck dinner where everyone made a ton of great food. Later, we had a crepe night. I am going to post pics of the potluck, and ramble excitedly about the crepes. Unfortunately, I did not photograph the crepe event.

2) We have a new calf that was born just sometime monday night. It is a shaggy red little bull that has long back legs, way too long for the cow itself. It's a gorgeous calf.

3) A group of several volunteers went to Boston and explored a bit of the beer culture. Pics of this!

4) We've continued training. I gave my first tour yesterday as part of training with a fellow volunteer. I think it went pretty well, but I am a bit worried that I talked too much. A huge part of the tour is listening; I need to work on listening and asking better open ended questions. I'll get it!

5) And, the most exciting of all, we've moved the goats in to an amazing place on the farm where they are basically eating out all of the brush. It sounds boring, but these goats eat so much brush that they are completely exhausted at night. And the brush gets eaten like crazy mad. They are going to be there for several days, and I am going to post before and after pics once they are done in the area. But here are some other pics in the meantime.



This is an adorable fellow volunteer shredding the carrots for what turned out to be fantastic vegan carrot muffins, baked especially for the communal dinner by a veg volunteer with good tastes. I had them for breakfast the next day and they were still good then.



I made a potato bake for the communal dinner and this was the before picture. Notice the purple potatoes from the ranch!


Sam and Nic teamed up to make fantastic quiches.



This is the girl that made the vegan muffins. Look at all those muffins! She filled that tray plus an industrial sized tray.



This is a cute frog on the farm that I took a picture of. The frog was about the size of a quarter. This picture is for my grandma!


Alright, the next post is going to be all pics from Boston. BUT! This is a cupcake with an armadillo on it that I found in Boston for my mom.

Global Village and Training

Hello all! The past few days have been incredibly busy and interesting. First, Nic and I did our overnight experience in the Global Village. I stayed in Tibet and Nic stayed in Peru. Instead of being assigned/given our food and trading amongst each other to eat, like the Global Village experience in Perryville, we are given money and then go to market to buy products. As migratory people, of course, us Tibetans did not get too much to eat. Basically, we had some black beans and less than a handful of rice. Our dinner consisted of bean water, basically. It was incredibly bland. I ended up spending the whole night just with those of us that ended in Tibet. We set up two fires and spent several hours storytelling, listening, and talking. Everyone crashed out around midnight, but during the middle of the night, our big fire went out. I was freezing, so instead of just sleeping outside (where I had started) I ended up sleeping inside the yurt. I was the lone in-yurt sleeper, but it was pretty alright. The moon was full, the sky clear (I saw two shooting stars), and the grass was tall, wet, and soft. I awoke to rooster's crowing. In a funny twist of some kind of fate, Nic and I were both pregnant. My baby's name was Monteque. I don't know the details of Nic's GV experience, so I can't write about it here, but he had a great time. Overall, I think my GV experience was interesting.

We have also started haying here at the farm. The farm makes all of its own hay. They cut it, let it dry for several days, then all of us volunteers go out for the baling and stacking. I am not sure how many bales we did yesterday, but around 180 was the estimate we were given. It's amazing how heavy bales of hay get when you are constantly lifting, moving, throwing, and pushing them for an extended period of time. After the process of baling and "barning," I was so insanely itchy and sneezey. It was the first time in my life I think I actually had real hay fever.

I have also learned quite a bit about the livestock here and the farm itself. I asked Stephen's question about where our camel is from, and as it turns out, Abu is from a petting zoo. He simply got too big for the zoo that he came from so he came here. There used to be a camel, Jasmine, that was actually the offspring of the Perryville camels, but it has passed away. Now, we only have the petting zoo camel Abu.

In addition, I have learned that Overlook itself is a public water system. They are registered with the state and everything. All of our water comes from our own wells, and it is not chlorinated and does not contain any chemicals. It is pure clean natural water that is minimally processed. It tastes delicious, and really different from Arkansas water. I feel lucky. The farm is completely independent in terms of it's meat production, water, eggs, vegetables, and has its own sewer system. The place also has some composting toilets.

Nic and I went to trivia night at the local tavern and had a blast. Our boss loves trivia, and so we are all getting pumped and going out to represent the trivia team/s. Hard questions, though. I think Nathan and Noah would be amazing at this particular type of trivia because the clues are songs, and usually the name of the song/band name/lyrics will help you figure out the answer to the trivia question. If one is a music buff, one can get most of the trivia questions correct or close.

So here are some pictures!




There was a pretty awful ice storm here a while back so there is damage all over the farm from the storm. This is a picture of some of the damage, but I think it looks pretty cool.



Here's a photo of a gorgeous stranger sitting on the wooden back porch of my house. The house I live in is pretty awesome.




This is the inside of the animal barn. It's harvesting time, and the gardeners have been busy harvesting garlic and onions. Here are some of the garlic cloves hanging in the barn to dry. The smell is intense. The heads of garlic are huge and the garlic itself is a beautiful pearly yellow-white. Everything that the farm grows is completely organic.

Oops! Earlier today, I updated without including some very important and exciting events that occurred on the farm. First off, today we ran the goats- which basically meant that we all lined up in a column and ran and screamed so that the goats ran within the confines of the human column we created. It was pretty exciting. A few goats got out of the column and led the rest of the goats off track, but we got them all in the pen eventually. The second event was the inter-personal chicken catching contest, where I decided that it was my goal to catch one of these friggen chickens that constantly roam free around the Global Village even though they aren't supposed to. I went out during a break time and chased them around, but every time I got close to one, I got these gruesome images of myself being attacked by the entire mob of chickens. Thanks alot, Legend of Zelda. I'll never catch a chicken at this rate. I need a counselor!

Training

Hey ya'll! All of the new volunteers arrived and we have finally begun training, which feels great. Nic and I have done every chore, which ranges from cute things like giving the guinea pigs new water to intimidating things like throwing bales of hay to ugly muddy water buffaloes. I've been getting pretty familiar with the Global Village and the farm itself. We've continued to get some produce from the Heifer gardens, which rocks, and yesterday I made pizza dough with Heifer eggs. Before that, I baked a chocolate cake with Heifer milk. The point of this is that we are provided with fresh raw milk from goats and cows and fresh eggs as long as they are available. This is a great benefit that myself and several others are very excited about.

There are a great number of volunteers here that enjoy cooking and do-it-yourself type stuff, and the group of volunteers as a whole seems to get along really well. We've organized one communal meal a week, potluck style, and Thursday nights are trivia nights. Boy, how I wish Noah R. was here. That guy is a trivia master. Our team would win every single time. Either way around, I feel great about everyone here and feel privileged to be on the ranch right now.

One of my fellow volunteers has a friend that left for Benin in July, and she was apparently called at the last minute and frantically dragged into the program. I wonder if she replaced one of us?

In the meantime, here are some new photos from the farm.




There are two miniature goats that run wild on the farm and have taught all of the other small goats how to escape from the barn. Here is one of the two escape artists and a trainee. One of the barns is in the background.




This is a photo of our local beer. As it turns out, beer is extremely fricken expensive. Even though we can buy beer on Sundays, it isn't exactly worth the prices. Beer is much more reasonably priced back home. Either way around, this stuff is pretty good.




The farm dog, Pudge, in some fields behind the garden.



This is a fellow volunteer walking our prized camel, Abu. You just get out a leash and walk him like you would a dog. Another fellow volunteer predicts fistfights for the privilege of walking the Camel. Funny thought.








Fellow volunteer Sam took these two pictures of the stone walls that are in the woods behind the farm.