Bees, Blueberries & Blisters

Experiences beyond farming....

It has been another great week on the farm. The weeks are passing fast, yet so packed full it's weird when I bike out of the bubble and come into a world that sells blue organic corn chips, has curbside recycling and uses internet technology on a regular basis. Familiar things that seem odd and striking all of a sudden.

Though our days are full of farming (and specifically for me, propagation), soil lectures, farm chores and good food there are also other activities and workshops packed into an already overloaded day.

Thursday I joined a group of farmies as we got our hands sticky getting into some of our bee hives on the farm. It was exciting and amazing to pull out (surprisingly heavy) trays loaded with worker bees, brood, honey, worker and drone larva and wax. Actually quite cuddle looking creatures. More on that as the time goes on..

And the blueberries... they are in full harvest right now and let me tell you- there is NOTHING like a warm, plump blueberry right off the bush popped into a sweaty farm workers mouth. My past experience has taught me that organic blueberries are the size of frozen peas. Well it seems that done right they are easily the size of nickels and dimes!
I continue to find new gems amidst the obvious beauty on the farm. Tuesday I learned that a tree I've sat under a half dozen times is a Bing cherry tree. We climbed the branches to get at the ripe, juicy, red berries. Mulberry bushes are almost ready to drop. We have both purple and sweet white mulberries at our finger tips. I'm counting down the days until the bursting avocado trees are ripe and ready....

So the blisters... I actually don't have any, it just left a nice ring as I wrote the title. But what I DO have is some homemade salve we made Thursday night out of our own herbs and bees wax to prevent any blisters from forming and to help sooth my rough, dirty farm hands. Organic beeswax straight from our hives melted down with some homemade infused oils. It's amazingly simple really.

So- what else? I guess more on the food (because really- it's always about food, right?). The meals continue to be amazing. A couple nights ago the cooks splurged on outsourced goods. They bought some cheese, tomatoes and potatoes (common to some, but delicacies when you don't have them for a month or more...). Friday we were treated to an entire day of raw food. On the menu: raw granola, chia porridge, fresh berries and fruit, goji berry/walnut balls, persimmon smoothie & prickly pear juice for breakfast. Lunch: sushi with sunflower seed pate, sprouted lentils & mung beans, cabbage salad, flax seed crackers, locally harvested seaweed miso soup and dinner time gave us raw pizzas with salad and green goddess juice. The cooks really out did themselves for sure.

And as if I hadn't gardened in a while, I decided to join a group that volunteered this morning at the Homeless Garden Project in town. It's a project my friend Chrissi has been involved with in the past which helps support homeless/low income people with social justice issues while gardening and running a CSA. Fantastic program with beautiful gardens to boot. Not to mention I witnessed a guy catch a gopher with his bare hands to relocate him to the field across the street. Not the most common (dare I say effective) method of gopher management, but there you go for bleeding hearts Bill.
On that note- I think I'll call it a night and get some rest for another farm filled week.
Take good care- lots of love and many hugs.