Officially One Month In

Friday marked the four week mark for my internship at Grant Farms. My hands are feeling better, but I am officially an old lady and have bought ice packs for my forearms and wrist braces to sleep in to keep my hands straight and from falling asleep at night! This week definitely brought warmer temperatures also, with Friday sending us into the weekend with a high of 87º and more than a few sunburns to tend to. This week was dominated by maintaining the rhubarb fields, which entails whacking the flowering heads off the stalks machete style. The farm devotes 23 acres to rhubarb, so this was a fairly large task for us, and the second time around! Other activities this week included fixing more drip line, picking up garbage out of a field we are preparing for planting, loading and planting potatoes, taking deliveries of onions and green and red leaf lettuce, and picking spinach for our chickens. 


I also had the opportunity to drive around a bit with our boss and learn some pretty rad farm info, about what organic farming entails, pesticides, and good land stewardship. I am going to be compiling this info and more as the season progresses on my other blog, The Granedde Mini Farmer, and I'd love it if you'd like to check that out also. It will probably be a little more notey and dry, so as you wish! Here are this week's photos of the day!

Apr 30

From left to right: Megan, Tania, Justin and Ken in the Pie Three Rhubarb Field.
This field seems epic in scale at eight acres, with massive rhubarb plants we
had to wade though, jungle style, as we worked. I think this photo is
reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz in some way!

May 1

Me and Elena Tuesday morning in our matching striped farming shirts in front of the
Lilac bushes. Mine was two dollars, but she has me beat; hers was free.

May 2

Jacob, Justin and Lucia on the cart, harvesting spinach for the chickens. We filled
the three white bins on the wooden cart in about an hour.

May 3

Ken and Justin in the Demo Garden getting orders to go hoe the garlic field, featuring
Blanco, the farm cat, operating the rototiller.

May 4

Lucia's birthday was Saturday, on Cinco de Mayo. We celebrated a little during our
lunch break on Friday with birthday cake (gluten free and vegan, of course!).

Bonus Foto(s) of the Week

View from a small after lunch nap Justin and I took under the Peacock Tree.

Me and Lucia up to our necks in rhubarb on Friday. Okay, okay, not literally,
we were sitting down. But still- we had just cut this field on Monday!!

Looking forward to what May has to bring- I have a feeling it's a lot more bending over and planting, and probably at this point it's only going to get hotter. For a redhead, I surprisingly have a pretty good tan going already, though if my eyebrows could get any whiter, they'd probably be invisible (?)... Anyway, as always, thanks for following my daily account of our farm life!

XO,

Val