Manure!

Yes, folks. This is what I'm doing with my Penn education.

We spent an afternoon at a neighboring farm spreading compost from his oxen (enormous creatures! not at all what Oregon Trail prepared me for. these would never drown in a river) in exchange for all the blueberries we can eat come this summer.

America!

How pastoral: sitting around after a long day of harvest eating apple pie (you'll have to turn your head but it's decorated like Hobbes). The real story? We made pie early in the evening when we still had energy and baked in it in the bread oven. By 8:30 we were all exhausted, laying on the couches and wondering how much longer we had to stay up. Five minutes post-pie and we're crawling into bed, ready for chores in the morning.

Tacos!

Tacos! For lunch!

We're in the middle of our gloomy last harvest day. There's nothing quite like hacking cabbage stems apart in a 70 degree downpour in late October. Sadly today is Nate, our head grower's, last harvest before he leaves us for a new farm near Amherst. We're making the best of it by cleaning out the lower barn all afternoon and having lots of fun in the mud.

Friday Night Lights

After one weekend spent in Athol, I was prepared for the lack of nightlife and another evening spent on the farm. Luckily, inspiration struck in the form of the Athol High School football game. Go Red Raiders! We pulled out a win against the Red Hawks (hometown unclear) and didn't win the 50/50 raffle while drinking hot apple cider. Can't wait for the next home game!

Clutch

Dear Clutch,

Guess which one is an acceptable place to sleep.

My bed:

The chair downstairs where no one ever sits:

Sincerely,

The folks whose room you've taken over because their door doesn't latch

PS: if you were Hobbes or Pippin we wouldn't care.

PPS: please keep your dead mice habit outdoors.

Our Own Starbucks

Emily, Kiyoshi and I woke up early to be ready to start milking at 6:30 this morning. After bringing Pride, our dairy cow, in from the field, we set to work. Milking is incredibly difficult to do quickly when we have little to no experience so it take us over an hour between getting everything set up and finishing. During that time, we were hankering for a pre-breakfast coffee so I popped into the house for two mugs. What better than filling the rest of the cup with steaming warm milk? We found out that if you add enough quick enough, it froths at the top and tastes better than anything a coffee shop could make. We're getting rather spoiled with our fresh milk supply. We even had a chicken come in to supervise.

Newport!

Theo and I just got back yesterday from a very successful weekend in Newport. Reasons for the success? 1) amazing Philly beer 2) PR in a 5K 3) seeing friends from Philly 4) the pork. The weekend got docked some points since Levi was not in attendance.

We started the weekend with Sarah and my 5K which was great, followed by a day wandering around Newport, a dinner of braised pork and vegetables from the farm and Jamie-Lee and Aaron's half marathon the next morning. And when I write Jamie-Lee and Aaron, I really mean Jamie-Lee and Duff-Man.