The farm!

Hellooo! We have lots of pictures and lots of updates. The last 6 days have been an absurd but awesome roller coaster.  

We got really lucky our first night - there was a community party that happened to be happening on Zoe's property and our whole farm crew was going! It was a fun night, seeing Zoe was the highlight of the night and has definitely been the highlight of our time here so far. She is so fun and infinitely wise and welcoming. We enjoyed live music and tasty food and Zoe introduced us to lots of people.  It was a great introduction to Boonville. 

It turned out that Wednesday and Thursday were both days off which was nice in one sense because we were able to spend a lot of time orienting ourselves, settling in, and hanging out with Zoe but we were antsy and anxious to get going. 

The farm is going through a lot of changes right now. Some other woofers just left unexpectedly and the schedule is in transition as well so we're certainly here at an eventful and exciting time for the farm. 

Our first two full days of work have been fantastic and the sort of thing we were hoping for and looking forward to. Tim, the farm manager, is a great and knowledgeable dude and has been taking the time to teach us a lot of  cool stuff.

 Farm things we've learned:

 - How to open and close the chicken coops 

- How to feed them and collect eggs

- Feeding the pigs

- milking the goats (way harder than you'd think, it's a dominance game... Mess is a natural. I'm getting much better but, in moments of weakness, have let Princessa kick the milk over twice)

-emptying the composting toilet when it gets full (hooray!)

- The two of us are in charge of constructing a new composting area- it's satisfying work and has a lot of interesting science and strategy behind it

- lots of different types of harvesting, planting, and weeding including of chard, collard greens kale, beets, tomatoes and more

-bunching lavender

- playing with all the wonderful farm pets (including amazing doggies named Griffin and Shadow)

We're getting worked into the schedule which involves being in charge of staff meals, chicken duty, milking, dishes, etc. The two other wwoofers, Rowan and Delaney, are really awesome, and we've spent a lot of time working with them and getting to know them.

We're sunkissed and POOPED at the end of the day - fast asleep by 930- but we've also found time to go to the Anderson valley brewing company (twice,) watch MN football at the one bar in town, explore the coast with Zoe, go on a few beautiful runs through enormous redwood groves, jump in some rivers, eat goat cheese and bacon crepes, and much more. 

 We also installed the hang board Boca gave us so we can get ripped doing crimpy pull ups in our spare time!

Last night Zoe had some friends visiting and we got an invite to their Friendsgiving dinner - we volunteered to be in charge of dessert, so we spent much of yesterday harvesting apples from the farm and tediously making pie crusts.  It was our first attempt at pie making, but they turned out wonderfully! We even made a gluten free pie for Tim. It was a wonderful time and we loved hanging out with Zoe and her friends.

 So far Boonville has been an adventure in every sense the word. It's a very small place, so we see people we know all the time and everybody is incredibly friendly. Things we're looking forward to: running the farm tomorrow (literally we're the only ones working tomorrow!,) and potentially moving into a trailer on the farms property!

We've also been taking some initiative to plan some activities for the party/fundraiser our farm is hosting next week. More to come regarding that!