das loft

It's 4am and I can't get to sleep. It's true I've been regularly staying up pretty late for the past while, but I felt pretty exhausted today, so I'm a little surprised I'm feeling so awake now. What the heck's keeping me awake then? Oh right, the cocaine...

Well, a paltry amount of it. I had coca tea for the first time today. Kate Mechan brought it back from South America. (Thank you Kate! Sorry you weren't here to partake.) Coca tea - it's nice stuff. Tastes a bit like green tea, but better. I didn't realize it would keep my mind so stimulated for hours afterwards. It actually feels quite a bit stronger than caffeine. Normally I can get to sleep if I drink coffee a few hours before I go to bed.

Is that thunder? Perfect.

I wonder now what cocaine must be like. I'm almost... curious. Though the method of taking it kind of disturbs me. And the effects is has on people disturb me even more. I think every sane person I know who's tried it isn't interested in trying it again. I should probably take a hint.

I've got to get some solid hours of sleep before I have to bike to the Everdale CSA dropoff tomorrow afternoon... I've already had a tall glass of warm milk, and that didn't work. I guess the only answer is to visually recite the alphabet again. I don't think I've ever actually made it past R whenever I've done that. (Thanks to Jon for the technique.)

Labels: cocaine, drugs, everdale, sleep

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:

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

Pictures from my week-long farm holiday thus far...

Farm holiday, summer 2007

I biked for about 7.5 hours Monday to get from Toronto to Guelph (including breaks). You should try it. It sounds daunting, but evidently it's not impossible. I'm sure you'll agree that it's very rewarding, and you'll feel great for doing it. I took the bike trailer (thank you again, auntie Ann) to carry all my gear.

First stop: Tarrah and Nathan's little farm at Ignatius, where Jon is also living. It's a very cozy place. Tarrah's raising Berkshire pigs, turkeys, and chickens, and they all look remarkably healthy and happy. She also did some double-digging in the spring and has some really healthy-looking vegetables growing biointensively.

Second stop: Everdale. It took me about two hours to bike from Guelph to Everdale. I was welcomed there by Angie, one of the interns this year. Stacey is here as an intern this year (she was a volunteer last year), and Carl is back for his summer "voluntern" position. Over the course of the first day I met the other interns: Joe, Cam, Garrett, Harris, and "voluntern" Joscelyn. It's definitely an older and male-heavy crowd this year - quite the opposite from last year.

Last night we had a steambath. Holy moly. That was really intense. Last weekend the interns built a steam sauna beside the strawbale cabins, including cold shower with a rock patio (Team Ambitious!). The steambath was a great experience. But I almost thought I was going to die. :)

This weekend the plan is to build a trebuchet (like a catapult). It will probably be used to launch rotten pumpkins down the hill, put hopefully other things as well. They were inspired by McCully Farm's trebuchet (McCully's is a popular Everdale field trip destination).

Labels: bike trailer, bike trip, everdale, farm

The interns + Carl - Kelly + Jo's friend Marc on Jo and Carl's going-away party at the end of August. It was fun.

Labels: everdale

So it's been over two months since I seriously posted to my blog. That's kind of too bad. It's hard to post regularly when I spend so little of my time alone. Blog posting is really a loner activity. So is e-mailing. Which also explains why I have been e-mailing so little. So much of my spare time is spent doing worthwhile things with other people, and there never seems to be a shortage of worthwhile things to do with them. So where's the incentive to post to my blog? The only reason I'm posting now is because nobody happens to be around this evening. Sorry, I'm afraid it's just the way it is now.

It's storming outside. The landscape is perfectly beautiful right now, with the colourful maples and sunflowers still abloom. We have 200 chicks in the new building, and two terribly discracting kittens there too. We picked thousands of winter squash today - butternut, acorn, delicata, kabocha, turban, buttercup, and spaghetti. We lifted hundreds of those heavy squash bins into the cube van, and lifted them again into the greenhouse. Luckily we had the help of about a dozen high school students who come regularly to Everdale for a co-op credit. They also sped up the harvest of beets and leeks for the CSA pick-up tomorrow. It was a very productive day. The gusty winds and warm sunshine were invigorating; the first time I worked shirtless in many weeks.

I'd really like to have a very easy way of posting photos to my blog. There are so many I've been wanting to post, but it's always such a hassle to do it. If I figure something out, I'll let you know.

Just over a month to go until the end of the internship...

Labels: everdale

Everdale Latesummer Evening

Yes... I will post again.

Labels: everdale

There's something about being a farm apprentice/farmer that I find very fulfilling. Part of it may be simply that I am working closely with nature while learning a lot about meeting one of our most basic needs, food, literally from the ground up. But it's more than that. I'm reading The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff, and in it she describes life in an indigenous community, the Yequana tribe, in South America. The Yequana have no word for "work". From their perspective, there is no difference between "work" and "leisure" - it's all one and the same activity. Here at Everdale, I too am having a harder time differentiating between "work" and "leisure". As an intern, I feel a sense of ownership of the place. I find that my motivation for doing "work" is not so much because someone told me to do it, but because I know it has to be done in order to ensure the community's - and thus my own - prosperity. So I find myself doing after-hours much of what many would consider to be "work". At a normal "job", you would normally count those hours as "overtime". Even here, interns are encouraged to keep track of whatever hours we work past the daily minimum (10) so they can be banked for "time off" another day. But for me, that seems kind of silly. It doesn't make much sense to me to count the hours I spend weeding or harvesting from the Biointensive garden in the evening as work. I did those things of my own accord because they had to be done, and it's fun.

Should it not be the goal of every person to find a way of making a living that makes a distinction between "work" and "leisure" meaningless?

Labels: everdale

I am responsible for this week's "Notes from the Farm" for the CSA newsletter! 150 words. Please forgive the cheesiness. Here goes:

This week we are happy to welcome two volunteers, Patrick and Nika, to our farm team! They have already been a great help in getting done those important tasks that often get put off for another week. We finished sowing most of our greens for fall harvest. In our field on Ninth Line, we blitz-weeded our winter squash, beets and carrots. Five of us suffered our first wasp stings of the season while weeding the compost pile there. Who knew a pile of manure could make such an attractive home for wasps? Luckily, our in-house herbal healer, Kelly, demonstrated how make a poultice from plantain leaves to dress our wounds. On Tuesday we finally made a significant dent organizing the basement of our new strawbale building (which, by the way, still needs a name, and suggestions are more than welcome - e-mail lynn@everdale.org!). Soon we will be able to use the shaded space beneath the building's rooftop garden for washing and bunching our Thursday harvests. On Wednesday we were treated to a welding workshop at Bows Bells sheep farm in Markdale. Les Richards has been welding for over 40 years, and he was an excellent teacher. With enough practice, we'll be mending everything from broken S-tines to table legs in no time!

Labels: everdale

It's the interns' 2-month anniversary today.


Alex and the EAT group - Erin high school students that work and learn at Everdale for a co-op credit


Jo, Jen and me showing off our wood stacking abilities


Album cover


First day plumbing


Greenhouse group shot


Alex and me finishing the animal shelter


Jo and Meg transplanting


Kelly hand-transplanting in the tomato patch


The Biointensive garden, stage 1


Lynn


Newborn kid


Jen making Jenface


Baby Tessa with baby goat


Talking about the Biointensive garden


Farmer Karen


Farmer Gavin


Silvie, one of the alpacas


Spreading compost on the zucchini-cucumber patch, early one morning

Labels: everdale

Wow. It's been almost a month! I'm so sorry I haven't been keeping you all up to date. I've just been consumed with other tasks.

Here's one brilliant piece of news: Two nights ago Ali, our goat, had two kids. We missed the first birth, but we were there to witness the second one. Like last year, she had another girl and boy. It went very smoothly (Lynn helped a bit with the second birth, but probably didn't have to), and the kids are predictably cute. Ali's a mom again, and she really acts like one. It's so sweet to see her transform from having that kind of bratty, selfish personality to having a loving and caring one. I guess all it takes is a kid or two.

We also got two alpacas a couple days ago, which are very funny to see if you haven't spent any time with alpacas before. They look a bit like small camels, but much furrier, with incredible hairdos, and without the humps. One is black and one is silver. They are very curious and seem to want to hang out with the sheep, who at the moment seem much less interested in hanging out with them. They chase after the sheep with a clownish gait. It's quite the hilarious sight. I highly recommend seeing the alpacas run.

We also got five pigs. They are now in competition with the chickens for "most vocal farm animal." We should be getting some donkeys and a cow in the near future as well. It's a party here! Many of our animals are living in the animal shelter that Alex and I put together (with the help of Gavin and all the other interns), and it seems to be standing up to the task (for now).

We planted about half an acre of tomatoes in two days. We planted many different varieties, including Lemon Boy, New Girl, Sun Sugar, and Green Zebra. I know from experience that the golden Sun Sugar cherry tomatoes are some of the sweetest ones in existence. Some of those are planted in the Biointensive garden as well. When planting tomato seedlings, it's important to ensure that they develop a strong root system. One way of doing this is by removing all the lower leaves from the stalk (leaving only a couple branches at the top) and planting them to a depth of at least half their height. The little hairs that you see on the stem will grow into roots once they are in contact with the soil.

The Biointensive garden is planted as well, except for the pole beans and strawberries. The Biointensive garden is 184 square feet, which is almost enough land to provide one person with enough vegetables to last them a year (once you have developed the skill to garden intensively enough). We will be growing eggplant, spinach, peas, beans, beets, carrots, onions, garlic, chives, tomatoes, parsley, basil, sunflowers, winter squash, summer squash, cucumbers, lettuce, radishes, corn, celery, cabbage, strawberries, and I hope I haven't missed anything. One section of the garden I unintentionally planted in a Sierpinski triangle fractal arrangement. I noticed yesterday that the critter that has been disturbing the soil in the garden each night is our adorable farm cat, Spike, who mistook the Biointensive garden for his litter box. So Jen and I took Meg's advice and sprinkled ground cayenne pepper over all the gardens. I have yet to check on it this morning to see if it did the trick to deter him.

We finally have many of our veggies planted in the fields, and most of them seem to be doing very well. The brassicas are a notable exception. It seems that flea beetles have gotten the better of many of them that weren't covered. However, we protected another bed of brassicas with row cover, and they look very happy.

There are many pictures, and they will be posted in due time.

Labels: everdale

Our first party in one of the strawbale cabins; Jen's pouring the margaritas


Jo playing guitar


Blurry Spike curled up


Biker Paul on his way to Elora


Biker Jen preparing to do the same


Picnic by Belwood Lake


Ducklings and Duck in Elora


Some falls in the Elora Gorge


Horizontal in the violets and dandylions


Flowing cedar roots, rocks and grasses on the side of the gorge


Morning


Kelly and Megan (Everdale interns) and Ali (Whole Circle intern) in the field at Ignatius


Rachel and Jo (in focus)


CRAFT team effort: planting onions


Jen and Kelly walking to the van


2006 Everdale Interns: Kelly, Megan, Alex, Jen, Jo and you-know-who

Labels: everdale

Hi boys and girls. It's been almost three weeks again. Sorry this keeps happening. I'm just so busy here, and having too much of a good time. The office is up on a hill, and scaling that hill just to post to my blog after a hard day's work just doesn't cut it for me. I'd much prefer to have a tasty, relaxing dinner and then have a beer with the gang by a bonfire. Surely you understand.

The weather here has been really nice. It was hot the first week, then it cooled down for a week or so, and gradually it's warmed up again. Today is our first day of real rain. Last night we worked extra late to cover some newly excavated slopes with straw and hay so that they didn't erode when it started to pour. We finished it by twilight. Gavin's very clued in with the weather. It did pour today, and the hay seems to have really preserved the shape of the slope.

Most of yesterday, however, was spent at the season's first CRAFT Day at Ignatius Farm, which is close to Guelph. (Everdale, Ignatius, Whole Circle, and a number of other regional farms are all members of CRAFT, a network of organic farms that have farming internships.) It was a nice change of scenery and fun to get to know the other CRAFT interns of 2006. Rachel was there (the Everdale intern from 2005, if you recall); she is an intern at Meeting Place farm this year. Conclusion of yesterday's field trip: The world of farming is huge and fascinating, and I have a lot to learn about it.

We interns have been very busy here, but enjoying virtually every minute of it. There has been a lot of greenhouse work this week: seeding, transplanting, mixing potting soil. On Monday I held a short talk about biointensive gardening for a group of high school students who've been spending time at Everdale. They were a great help. They fully weeded the gardens, harvested last year's parsnips and garlic, and raked them flat. They almost even double-dug them, but not really. We're going to have to do that ourselves properly before we sow our vegetables. We need the experience, anyway.

Last weekend Jen and I bicycled to Elora and camped in the Elora Gorge. It takes about 3 hours of riding on pretty flat terrain to get there, but we took breaks. Elora is a very pretty town, and the gorge is gorgeous (sorry, I couldn't resist). I'll post some pictures of our trip soon.

All the interns have been doing tractor work, just tilling the fields for now (using different disc-based and tine-based implements). We've also done lots of seed broadcasting (mostly clover and trefoil). We converted the Disaster Area to the Victory Flats (organized all the random junk that was lying around into neat piles, and threw out lots of stuff). We helped with Seedy Saturay a couple weeks ago, Everdale's first public event. Alex and I were the cooks (vegan chili & cornbread). And lots of other stuff has been happening, including building a livestock shelter, moving chickens around, leveling a porch, stacking wood, rock-picking, cooking lunches, and much more.

So that's about where I'm at. I'll post some pics now.

Labels: everdale

Hi everyone... I'm doing great after the first week of my internship here at Everdale. I really like the interns, and we managed to accomplish a lot the first week, despite the fact that there are only five of us right now. (The sixth should be coming today.) Originally there were going to be eight, but a couple of them dropped out at the last minute. But you never know when another one will join the crew.

We seeded lots of chard, peas, and green onions in the greenhouse (though we suspect rats are attacking the peas now), washed out possibly hundreds of plastic bins, learned how to drive the tractor with the disc plow, cleaned up the old chicken run, prepared the coop for new chickens (i.e., shoveled lots of chicken shit), spread clover and other seeds over one of the fields, and generally just enjoyed lots of good, hard work. It's only going to get crazier from here, I think.

Four of us celebrated Earth Day in the strawbale cabin last night with guitar playing and margueritas around the wood stove.

Tomorrow I'm planning to make a surprisingly full-featured lunch that will involve last year's squash, pork, baked beans, and surprises.

Labels: everdale