June 8

No morning meeting
Weed cleaning not thorough

June 9

Intern edu session is not schedules at a regular time.

Finish weeding and need to call for next assignment.

Are doing nothing.

The income from member shares support the operation of the farm, including salaries and other overheads. The manager makes less than 15000 per year. Intern makes 500 per month.

Anything with seeds is fruit. Peas, cucumber, pumpkin...

Beans are planted after rain when the soil is crumble yet not chunk.

Plants are vulnerable when it is watered. So too much water is bad

Peas need to picked everyday. The plants will produce more.

June 8

Weeding

Snow peas like cold temperature so the weeds are fine because they create shades.

Garlic scapes: garlic forms cloves after the scapes are cut. The scape are two weeks per season.
Idea for cooking garlic scapes: stir fry with bacon for pasta.

Management
Differences in standards make text communication inefficient. The manager text jobs of the day. But the interns have different standards and so they weed thoroughly than needed. As a result, the beds was used for direct seeding which was not the original plan.

No water irigation and so water by hands. Will is broken and not fixed, at least two weeks.

The board do not do strategic planning.

Day 4: Hoeing and making beds

Today's task was to hoe a piece of land and make beds. The beds are for plants that can be seeded directly (alternative to go plant in small cases and in green house until grown to certain weeks). This is one physical demanding job and at the end of the day, I got five blisters (one of them is almost the size of a dime). Today was also my turn to go water the plants in the green house, feed the chicken, and move their houses.

So there are two chicken homes. Each is 2x2x2 meters wood made cubic. One home has five chicken, the other has nine chicken and a rooster. The homes need to be moved twice a day because they eat the worms and whatever on the ground. I have to give them fresh water and move the super heavy homes (pictures soon).

The piece of land that we make beds is covered by weeds. Some weeds are nasty such as thistles, a mile in a minute, and other random stuffs. Thistles have thorns and they have thick vines and root very deep. It was hard to dig them out. Not all of them are dug out and so I have to be very careful not to sit on one because they are "a pain in the butt."

The green house is very green (really green). It is very humid and hot to the extent that standing inside can make you sweat so bad that you feel like water is pouring on you. So watering for 15 or 20 minutes is like a trip to hell. And I have to visit the green house four times a day. Luckily, no green house for three days.

Nothing at the farm really works like they should. There are "tricks" to nearly every machines. The only reliable objects on the farm are human, thankfully.

P.S. One chick peaked me today. My colleague said she was kissing me.

P.S. 2, I have no muscles.

Day 2: Strawberry field

The day started early. I was up at 6:20, ate a bowl of cereal and ready to go. The first task was weeding the strawberry field. It was really bad because the field wasn't weeded for a month. A mile in a minute is a type of weed (something I learnt today).

After three hours of weeding, we got to pick strawberries. It was fun for two seconds, but after that it got a little depressing. This is the third batch of berries this season (third harvest) so there aren't that many left and most of them are bruised, ate by bugs, or rotted. A few of them were really big, like the size of pin-pon ball.

The just ripen berries are delicious. They are red and shinny. When you bit it, it is so sweet and juicy. Delicious. I had never tasted anything like that.

Our farm supported 600 people per week. Next Tuesday is the first pick-up. This is a community supported agriculture farm. The operation is people buy "shares" and they receive whatever harvested that week.

Tomorrow we will do more weeding.

Daily schedule:

7: ready to go.

11ish-2: lunch break

2-5ish: work

then free after that

PS. The chicken haven't been lying eggs and we are thinking of eating them.

Day 1: Arrival

At around 1:30pm, Wei drove me to the farm. I packed random stuff into the car because I didn't know what to bring.

I met my intern-mates around the house. My roommate showed me around the kitchen, laundry room, and our living room. Later we all went swimming at a reservoir 20 miles north. Then we went rope jumping.

Now I am sitting on the porch which was cleaned just today. Tomorrow I'll start my first day of work. I am excited and nervous.

This is going to be fun!