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.

Big Creatures

Today I worked quite a bit in the garden. We've got all kinds of great fruits, vegetables, and berries. We have apple trees, raspberry bushes, leeks, purple bell peppers, many varieties of bulbous blistering red and purple heirloom tomatoes, eggplants... together, Nic and I picked about 8 pints of raspberries and a peck of green beans, yellow beans, and purple beans. Most of the meals in the cafeteria are made with ingredients directly from the farm, including meat, eggs, milk, and produce.

I also rode on the back of a tractor. But that's not the point of this post. The point is that I found a huge caterpillar outside of our house. We have this same variety in Arkansas, but they are much smaller. Check it out!

Here it is with my hand for scale...

And here it is on its own. It trashed around a bit, nibbled on my fingers, and attached itself to my bedsheets. I think it was really afraid I was going to eat it. Sorry, bug. Didn't mean to scare you.

Settling in

Nic and I are currently on day 2 of our work at Overlook Farm. Yesterday, we learned the animals at the farm, did some feeding chores, and learned how to milk the goats! On our first day, we were already milking. It felt great! At the end of the day some of the girls that live in our house took us around Rutland and to a grocery store. A cool girl that works here named Farmer Jo dropped off a bag of produce which contained a zucchini about a foot and a half long. I think I will try to cook it soon. Here's the food situation: Breakfast we are on our own for, but typically the cafeteria overcooks for lunch and dinner, so we get the leftovers from the cooking. It's awesome stuff. Last night, I had grilled cheese, vegetable stew, and kale + mashed potatoes. Sometimes there are communal dinners, sometimes not.
Today Nic and I worked in the global village kitchen. The global village here is quite a bit different, with regions such as Colonias (small Mexican colonies in Texas) and Poland represented. After we got done in the global village kitchen, we went to work in the huge garden, where we met the awesome gardener and spent some time working with her. The gardener loves to make food from scratch, which is great- she is a bread baker and was a vegan as well, so she knows alot about substitutions in baking, which I always had trouble with as a vegetarian that preferred not to cook with milk. The more people we meet the more excited I get. I also got my name tag today.
The work is a good, exhausting, dirty type of work. We don't get our staff shirts until Monday, but I can handle that- in the meantime, my clothes are browner than they were before. Nic ended up taking a short nap during lunch, and I know for sure I am going to sleep well tonight.
And we did finally get our writing addresses, so if you want to write to either Nic or I, drop me an email/facebook message and I will send you our address. Here are some of the pictures I promised last post!


This is our house, Camel Lot, and the big rock that is in front of it.

This is the big red chicken house. Notice all the different varieties of chickens there are in this field. There is also a winter-chicken named Snowball that is covered in fuzz, even his feet. It's pretty cute.

The beautiful ferns that surround the farm and fill up the woods.

This is from the inside of a hut made of vines that is located in the Global Village.

And here is a picture from the outside of the same hut.
Well, that's it for now. Take care all!

Arriving at Heifer, etc

Hello all! Nic and I have arrived safely, albeit late, in Massachusetts at Overlook farm! It is gorgeous here. We arrived extra late, at 2:00 AM, and didn't get to take a tour or anything until this morning. We slept pretty late, and then several people that lived in the house met us and took us around. We are staying in a place called Camelot/Camel Lot, haha, because there is a lot in the back with a camel in it. A guy named Al picked us up and told us all about the farm, etc. I have only been here twelve hours and I already smell like a farm girl. It's pretty amazing how quick you pick up the smell of animal. The focus really is on farming and agriculture, and it is radically different from Perryville. They do not eat the rabbit, but they do have the kids move the animals from pen to pen, feed the goats/chickens, do milking, take care of rabbits, etc. They do not have a week long global village event, but instead, a two day global village with a wide variety of houses. Here are some pictures of my husband petting animals.
Pig

Goat

Red Calf

Iamou the Inbred Baby Bull. Iamou= I am my own uncle.
Well, we have our first round of chores in about fifteen minutes so I do not have time to upload any more pictures. I took quite a few and will be putting them on this blog periodically. It's so gorgeous up here. There are ferns everywhere, tons of very friendly animals that are used to the attention of people, and great folks. Our home is beautiful and wood on the outside, I will put a picture of it later. We are actually the first of the fall volunteers to arrive, but we will be starting work anyway. I am happy and excited right now!

Habits that used to be worthwhile

I find myself quite often coming to the realization that I am, in fact, grown up, and that time, in fact, is going faster and that, in fact, my metabolism is slowing, and that, in fact, the future that I had been planning for is here, and it isn’t exactly what I thought it would be. I spent many years planning for the so-called future without really realizing that the future would instead be a culmination of many presents, and that if I spent all of my free time planning, instead of developing some skill or talent, I would learn only to plan. And what I have I discovered? I’m good at planning. And that there isn’t any thing wrong with being idle.

Every once in a while it will hit me that I’ve become a full fledged creature of the habits I had, and not the habits I intended to have. I haven’t quite gotten in to the habit of finishing things, and the habit of being relaxed I’ve avoided entirely. What an interesting thing to realize. I hereby plan to spend less time planning, and more time chilling. It’s all too easy to get caught up in organizing abstract things. I need to waste more time, or learn to waste time in a way that contributes to my value/worth/interest as a human being. I’m getting there.

In the meantime, I was sitting a table of people during my last couple of days at Future Builders and a discussion of clothing/style came to be. Many of the people liked the 80s, liked the 50s and 70s, and hated the 1990s. Grunge. Tommy Hilfiger. Plaid. Flat tennis shoes, Swatch watches, Nirvana t-shirts, off-brand cigarettes. Diablo, Warhammer, Magic the Gathering, and anime. Delia*s. AIR shop. And the consensus? Everyone in that room with the exception of myself and one other person hated the 90s. My initial response was to hide my Flik-Flak watch.

I had a Pop-sickle t-shirt, a yellow web belt, and lime green Tommy shoes back in the day. I had red pleather pants and white leopard print jeans. I wasn’t stylish, but I wasn’t too out of touch, either. I enjoyed 90s style, and still do, but it’s toned down. I’ve become practical. I’ve grown up. I've started wearing dresses.

Update

Today I had work at a Boys and Girls club close to Nic and I's old house. We did a group presentation and it lasted about an hour. Fairly typical. It went pretty well. Future Builders is ordering some more tests so that we will be able to resume testing soon.
Nic and I also confirmed that we will be going to work at Heifer Ranch in the fall! We will be in Rutland, MA, working as educators. We will also be getting up early in the morning to milk cows and feed chickens. In addition, we will have to invest in some water/snow proof workboots upon arrival... =) We will be there from August 25th until December 17th.
Yay!

Good and bad things

Unfortunately, Nic and I were deferred from the Peace Corps for three months because Nic was recently injured. This means that we will not be going to Benin, and because there are not very many departures in the winter, we will likely not be going to any country with the Peace Corps until the spring. Initially, I suffered a lot of grieving and heartache. I was not at all happy about the fact that I would be idling. I am not the type of person that handles the waiting game very well; I like to have my future events relatively structured and planned. I like knowing that I will have a job in two months, etc. However, Nic and I decided that we should open our ears and eyes to jobs that we can dedicate ourselves to for several months.
In the meantime, I am working for Future Builders, Inc, a non-profit organization that does HIV/AIDS outreach. The group functions largely on grants, and actually, our focus groups right now for HIV/AIDS testing/counseling is the homeless and youth. As a huge perk, we Future Builder volunteers were trained by the Health Department to be certified HIV testers/counselors. We're certified, and have little certificates that we can show off in the event that we would need to, or someone doubts our words. Right now, though, these certificates are at Future Builders. One of the best things about the job is getting to talk to people; people have some incredible, smart, cool, quirky, painful, sad, and angering stories to tell about their lives. It is amazing how strong some people are.
And, after Future Builders, Nic and I would like to go to Heifer Ranch. We have applied for Education positions and right now are going through the formalities. We are waiting on some forms that we have to fax back in so that we can get a background check, and then there is some stuff we have to sign, and, finally, we need to buy plane tickets. I get paid on Thursday/Friday, and, if ticket prices stay close to the same to what they are, that check should cover my ticket and at least part of Nic's. We'll see. I hate worrying about money, but I spend a lot of time doing it. It seems hopeful and exciting. I am not going to get too excited just yet about the Heifer job, because I fell in love with Benin and then was not able to go. I am going to wait until I've got the confirmation in writing and on the phone that we're good to go, and until we have the plane tickets in our hands and our bags packed, before I truly get excited.
But believe me, when I get excited about this, I plan on jumping for joy. I am going to learn so much.
And! We will be there during harvest season!