A Day in the Life of a Green String Farm Intern

I've really enjoyed "day in the life" posts on other Peace Corps volunteers blogs, and I think I'll try to write several of them during my service.  Even though I'm not a volunteer yet, here's the first - a slice of my life here at Green String Farm in Petaluma where I'm interning until the end of May.  At the farm, I live in a house with 9 other interns.  The house is located a 5 minute walk away from the rest of the farm, where we work.

Sometime before 6:30 - Woken up by a friend asking if I want half of the swiss chard fritata she's making for breakfast.  Of course I do!

6:30 -  Went down to the kitchen, said a groggy "good morning" to the others who were up.  Waited for the aforementioned fritata to be ready.  There is a bottleneck at the stove.  Fritata is delayed.

7:00 - Time to start chores.  I and another intern water plants at the greenhouse near our house and apply compost tea to them.

7:10 - I stop back at the house to eat the fritata, now ready. Delicious!  Then it's off to water plants and apply compost tea at the larger greenhouse and say hello to the new, tiny baby goats.

8:00 - Wash onions, leeks, and beets that were harvested earlier to prepare them for the farm store.

10:00 - Milk Priscilla the cow and feed the milk to the adorable baby goats (pictures to come!)

10:30 - Transplant cabbage into a newly tilled patch of ground.  We worked in groups of three - one digging holes with a pickaxe, one dropping plants into the holes, and a third covering the plants up.  We're going to be doing a lot of transplanting now that things have warmed up!

12:00 - Back to the intern house for a delicious home-cooked lunch of whole wheat tortillas filled with quinoa, sauteed greens, and black beans (all cooked from scratch).

1:30-4:00 - lesson with Bob Canard, the farmer here at Green String.  We have lesson every day.  Today we talked about tillage management - how to farm efficiently while tilling the soil as little as possible, so as not to disturb the soil biology.  Yesterday, we learned how to sharpen and re-handle scythes, and how to use them to cut grass.  Always interesting topics!

4:00 - A quick trip to Whole Foods to get some needed supplies for dinner.  Then I and some other interns cooked marinated portabella mushroom sandwiches with smoked mozarella or havarti cheese, caramelized fennel, and a mustard aoli sauce.  Side dishes where a quinoa salad with oranges, jalapenos, and curry vinagrette and a beet salad (like potato salad with beets instead of potato).

8:30 - Finished with dinner and clean-up - time to relax and finally update this blog!




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