A Week Of Many Firsts

Hokay. So before dishing out the juicy details of my sweaty existence this past week, let me start by introducing my home for the next 6 months. Ladies and Gentleman, I present to you, "The Red Dale:"

Some notes on this cozy little beast: inside is actually quite comfortable, albeit small. On one end of the trailer is a kitchen table with a bench on either side, and each bench opens up to storage space below. There's also additional storage above the table, which are built above 3 spacious windows that overlook the beautiful and alluring Bridger Range - notttt a bad view at all. On the other end of the trailor is a full-size bed (I'll admit the mattress is a biiiit springy, but otherwise, it's decent...thankfully I'm only 5'10'' because it's only about 6ft in length). 
There is storage space above another set of windows along the wall of the bed that looks out the back of the trailer; and along one of the side walls is a small closet (I'm shocked that I was able to fit anything in there! My socks are definitely being stored under the bed...along with a few other things). And then, on the other side wall is the kitchen, which is actually pretty functional. There's a stove-top with three burners and a small oven (powered by an external propane tank), a sink, and lots of cupboard space...however, I have no running water or electricity, nor do I have a refrigerator (although there's a space for a small one below the sink area, however it's been turned into dry-food storage since there's no way to power it). 
Thankfully, I'm not the first to call the Red Dale home, so I was given a few tips for creatively finding ways to work through such modern-day "inconveniences:" we dug a hole beneath the trailer where the sink pipe drains, and I have a 7gallon jug of water that sits outside my front door; I use this to refill a one-gallon container that sits on my counter, and WHAA-LA! I have a way to wash dishes in my sink! Now, as for the electricity, I'm still pondering that shortcoming....but for the meantime, an excellent 3G connection paired with cordless external speakers has provided me with daily listening pleasure to NPR (while sipping my morning coffee, of course), while candles and a re-chargeable LED lantern allow me to stay up until all hours of the night doing whatever night owls like to do. 

Alright, so now that formal living space introductions have been provided, let us reminisce on some of the good, better and best moments of my first week working and living at GVB. 

Monday began with a quick tour of the property. Then, I headed into the smallest of the farm's three greenhouses to help Sarah, one of our part-time workers, with a bunch of seeding. Specifically, we were starting three types of kale, three types of cabbage and two types of brussel sprouts. This took all morning and most of the afternoon (we were making the soil, too - a mixture of 6 different ingredients!) - but thankfully, we re-energized with a delicious lunch made by Matt: a white bean soup with a bacon(fat)/olive oil drizzle, blue maize grilled polenta, and grilled elk loin. Yeah. Talk about a first impression. I can (and will!) definitely get used to that! Lunches are actually communal Mon-Thurs, where each day someone different cooks. With the amount of people we have working here, that means everyone prepares lunch for all once every other week (my "day" is Thursday and I rotate with Katie, one of the other interns)...not bad. I'm super pumped for all the delicious, fresh, home-cooked (and grown) meals I'll get to enjoy over the next several months! But anyway, back to the work day. As mentioned, I continued to seed lots and lots of little brassicas into 72-hole flats with Sarah before finishing the day transplanting Leeks from the other "starter" greenhouse (where they were planted several months earlier) into the fields with Jacy, Neal (the farm's assistant grower - he was an intern last season), and Dean (an intern like me). Many hands make light work!


Tuesday brought lessons in a few more new things, namely moving our third (and biggest) greenhouse from one spot out in the fields to another...a feat I never knew possible until then, as I'd always assumed greenhouses were stationary...bah...the things I'm already learning! 
After sliding the greenhouse forward its entire length, it was on to building a trelace for six rows of peas, which took considerable strength and stamina to pound rod-iron posts into the ground (reminding me of my youth corps days, when I had a corps member defy the PPE code, not wear his helmet, and have the medal post-pounder whack him smack dab in the middle of his forehead, requiring a trip to the ER for stitches...nice one). Chicken wire was then run along the posts for the pea plants to eventually climb. Neato! Also, thank goodness for earplugs.

Wednesdays are typically "weeding" days, so following along with that theme, it was off to the herb garden to do some hoeing and hand-weeding (did you know grass is actually a WEED? booger...grass is annoying on a farm!). Once the weeding was under-control (truly a losing battle in the long-run), it was on to transplanting existing Sage, Thyme and Oregano plants from an old section of the herb garden to a new area - i.e. taking a shovel to the plants, digging them out of the ground, preserving as much of the roots/rootball as possible, and then replanting and watering them in their new rows. Yes. I am cheap labor. And yes. My finger tips were quite sore and raw from hours of digging in the dirt, pulling weeds and preserving root systems. Ahhh, the joys of farming. Did I mention it was also unseasonably warm on Wednesday, with temps topping out at a balmy (for the mountains) 85 degrees. Atta way, global warming. 

Thursday brought some definite changes - namely the forty plus degree temperature drop that began with light rain when I woke up, and which transitioned to full-on, legitimately fluffy snowflakes by mid-morning. No joke.
About two inches managed to stick AND accumulate by lunch. Ridiculous. Thankfully, we spent the morning inside the second greenhouse doing MORE weeding (somehow, "weeding thursday" just doesn't have the same ring to it as wednesday...hmmm). But we were grateful to be indoors and out of the cold. 
Sadly, the fluctuating temps throughout the week had taken its toll on our tomato and cucumber plants, despite being in a temperature-regulated greenhouse (for whatever reason the heater didn't kick on one of the nights it dipped near freezing and subsequently wiped them all out). So we pulled all of the nuked-cucs and re-transplanted a succession, and then pruned all of the tomato plants down to essentially just their stalks in hopes that new shoots will sprout and their roots will hold (a faster method than re-planting baby seedlings, as long as they re-generate, of course). 
By afternoon, however, it was back outdoors, as the sun reappeared melting the snow and blessing me and Katie with the opportunity to clean out the chicken coop - a chore that only happens about twice a year. Awesome. So we raked out a bunch of chicken shit and transported it to the compost pile. Literally. With a handkerchief wrapped around my nose and mouth, pitchfork in hand, and a tractor out the door to haul the nastiness, I took a moment to reflect on days past when I used to play soccer and our coach would call us chicken shits for something nominal...totally. not. the. same. But for some weird reason, it brought a smirk to my face. 

That wasn't the last of my humbling for the day, though, as I was up for bat with goat milking that night - my first ever experience. Yee-haw. All in all, it wasn't too bad. We have two goats here, Cookie and Muffin. Cookie is a doll...she's super sweet and loves being petted and milked - likely because of the food she gets to munch on. She just hops right up into the milking station, hardly ever kicks, and has a pretty consistently strong stream. Muffin, on the other hand, is a doozie...and that's putting it nicely (the first words out of Matt's mouth when he was talking me through it was, "Quite frankly, Muffin's a bitch"). Grrrrreat.



He went on to tell me that she kicks and butts like crrrazy - which is why there's a half-hitch loop of twine that you automatically slip her foot in to help minimize this as much as possible (she's been known to knock over the whole milking station, prized milk and all). To make matters worse, one of her teets is literally 3x the size of the other one, making it hard to get a good grip on either of them...and her stream tends to be minuscule compared to that of Cookie's. She also gave birth to triplets (as opposed to the twins that Cookie birthed earlier this year), which means she's producing more milk.... 

Awesome. Bring. It. On.
Somehow I managed. Phew. An hour or so later, it's back to the house where the milk is strained through a special strainer, with half being bottled and kept for the five baby goats and "Lamby" (our single baby lamb), and the other half going to the milker of the day, a jar of glittering satisfaction to be used atop granola, in coffee, whatever other dishes one might choose to cook, and soon to be had, cheese and yogurt making lessons. 

Yummm! The milker is also responsible for "egg-hunting" in the chicken coop, keeping these gems for herself as well. Don't mind if I do! 
Friday finally arrived and not without a few aches and pains...particularly in my milking hand since I don't quite have the most efficient technique down just yet...but Graham,Dalton and the rest of my Steamboat climbing crew beware: I'm convinced that all the forthcoming milking I'll be doing this summer is going to strengthen my hands and forearms like no other climbing exercise...and I'm gonna give you all a run for your money the next time we climb together! (Ahhh, a girl can hope, at least!). 
But I had to brush the soreness aside because we still had one more day of work to get done until the freedom of the weekend arrived. We started things off with a quick lesson on harvest technique, and then got to snipping about 15lbs of baby kale for a few restaurant orders. Typically, Monday's and Thursday's are our "harvest" days, but since it's early in the season and we aren't too busy with other things, Matt and Jacy stay flexible with the needs of these accounts. Thus, we snipped away. After harvesting, it was just a smattering of odd jobs that kept us busy the rest of the day (more herb-transplanting, row-cover organization, etc). YAY! I MADE IT THROUGH MY FIRST WEEK AS A FARMER-IN-TRAINING!!! :) And as a reward, I treated myself to the new frozen-yogurt establishment....a serve-yourself ...with a dizzying array of 16 different fro-yo flavors and 60 (yes, 60!) different toppings to choose from. My concoction: blueberry, chocolate and cheesecake yogurts topped off with cheesecake bits, brownie bits, and drizzled in blackberry juice. Heaven in my mouth. And a great way to end the week - but I better not get used to that indulgence too often!