Wednesday, July 11, 2007
I'm back from my week-long farm holiday – and what a holiday it was. I loved every bit of it, and I was sad to have to leave. I'm so in love with farming! I'm actually starting to reconsider whether I still want to do this bike trip down south, or just drop everything I'm doing and commit my life to farming. The latter option is now more tempting than ever.
See the latest pics:
I spent about a week at Everdale, and I had a great time. I loved all the interns, volunterns, and volunteers – particularly Braham, a 62-year-old volunteer of east Indian background. He spent a week at the farm, and seemed as impressed by the interns and other farm volunteers as we were by him. He wants to buy some farmland in the near future, and I expect he'll keep us in mind for the future.
2006 Everdale interns Jo and Jen visited for the weekend, and it was splendid. I got to witness the beginnings of the trebuchet project. Garrett constructed a 1/3-scale model one evening and launched rotten apples and bags of gravel to get a sense for what adjustments to the trebuchet affected distance and trajectory. The interns plan to have a trebuchet party when the full-size version is complete.
After my stay at Everdale I biked to Whole Circle farm, where Maggie greeted me with a glass of cold kombucha tea. This year Jeff, Leslie and Ali (all former Everdale interns) operate a CSA at Whole Circle independent of Maggie and Johann's meat, dairy, potato, grain, and dry legume operation. Their interns are Jon (whom you all know), Jared, and Amanda. I started off by helping roll in row cover from the squash plants, which looked incredible – not a trace of cucumber beetle, and they looked healthy and lush. It gets me thinking that Everdale should seriously consider making better use of row cover (which means they'll have to construct a decent spool dispenser/collector, because it's hell otherwise).
Dinner was fantastic, because it consisted mostly of Whole Circle pork that was more tender than any I'd ever tried to cook myself. I always find the cooking at Whole Circle to be incredibly, almost mystically good. (Must have something to do with the farm being biodynamic.)
I got up at 3am the next day to bike the long stretch back to Toronto. I left at 3:50am and got home at 8:45am, so it took about 5 hours. Whole Circle is closer than Guelph, and it's also downhill the way back, so that seems reasonable.
Now I'm back in smog-saturated Toronto (yes, smog! SMOG SMOG SMOG), and I wish I didn't have to be here. In fact, I don't, really. I have the option to walk away and start afresh if I really want to, and I think I just might. Soon.
See the latest pics:
 |
| Farm holiday, summer 2007 |
I spent about a week at Everdale, and I had a great time. I loved all the interns, volunterns, and volunteers – particularly Braham, a 62-year-old volunteer of east Indian background. He spent a week at the farm, and seemed as impressed by the interns and other farm volunteers as we were by him. He wants to buy some farmland in the near future, and I expect he'll keep us in mind for the future.
2006 Everdale interns Jo and Jen visited for the weekend, and it was splendid. I got to witness the beginnings of the trebuchet project. Garrett constructed a 1/3-scale model one evening and launched rotten apples and bags of gravel to get a sense for what adjustments to the trebuchet affected distance and trajectory. The interns plan to have a trebuchet party when the full-size version is complete.
After my stay at Everdale I biked to Whole Circle farm, where Maggie greeted me with a glass of cold kombucha tea. This year Jeff, Leslie and Ali (all former Everdale interns) operate a CSA at Whole Circle independent of Maggie and Johann's meat, dairy, potato, grain, and dry legume operation. Their interns are Jon (whom you all know), Jared, and Amanda. I started off by helping roll in row cover from the squash plants, which looked incredible – not a trace of cucumber beetle, and they looked healthy and lush. It gets me thinking that Everdale should seriously consider making better use of row cover (which means they'll have to construct a decent spool dispenser/collector, because it's hell otherwise).
Dinner was fantastic, because it consisted mostly of Whole Circle pork that was more tender than any I'd ever tried to cook myself. I always find the cooking at Whole Circle to be incredibly, almost mystically good. (Must have something to do with the farm being biodynamic.)
I got up at 3am the next day to bike the long stretch back to Toronto. I left at 3:50am and got home at 8:45am, so it took about 5 hours. Whole Circle is closer than Guelph, and it's also downhill the way back, so that seems reasonable.
Now I'm back in smog-saturated Toronto (yes, smog! SMOG SMOG SMOG), and I wish I didn't have to be here. In fact, I don't, really. I have the option to walk away and start afresh if I really want to, and I think I just might. Soon.
Labels: bike trip, everdale, farm, smog, whole circle
Comments:
Post a Comment
loft archives
