Day 2 on Amy's Farm (Wednesday, May 16th)

Today, we continued our epic adventure at Amy’s Farm. Even though Farmer Miguel was telling us just yesterday how he arrives to work before 6:30 AM each day, we knew that we would not be able to handle it and chose to rise and shine around 8 – which felt plenty early, trust me – and get to the farm around 9. Kimberly drove per usual, as the two of us chowed down on the breakfast we got from some random grocery store the day before: Mexican sweet bread (healthy, we know…)! “Leaf” (haha, yes, we really like using this pun) it to us to get lost – AGAIN – on our way to the farm. We remembered to use Jill’s trusty iPhone GPS like we did before and ultimately found our way to Amy’s farm, this time only about 15 minutes late (which compared to yesterday made us feel particularly punctual – yay us). We immediately found Farmer Randy, who was glad that he didn’t scare us off from yesterday, and waited for him to assign us our daily tasks. This time, we were transplanting tomatoes (which meant that flagging/marking the different varieties was going to be even more important today, since once grown it is hard to discern one type of tomato from another since from the outside they all tend to look pretty similar)! As Farmer Miguel and another volunteer, Ethan (I think?), set up the drip irrigation system, we were told to meet Farmer Randy at the farm’s greenhouse, after he went to retrieve some shovels for each of us. As we waited for Farmer Randy to meet us there, we passed by a chicken coop and a cage full of cute little bunnies and couldn’t resist giving them a quick snuggle! Once Farmer Randy arrived, we waved goodbye to the rabbits and then helped him carry a table that was chalk full of (might I mention, heavy) tomato flats – by carrying the entire table we would not have to make multiple trips to and from the gardens like we would have if we carried each flat individually. Carefully, with the table in tow, we made our way back to the field where Farmer Miguel (and the extra volunteer) were eagerly waiting for us J (Gah Miguel is so cute!). We eagerly handed Miguel the different tomato flats, and he evenly spaced thirteen seedlings out along each of the sixteen rows we were working to plant (meaning that we ultimately planted over 200 tomatoes in just a few hours). My job specifically was to mark each row with a flag corresponding to what kind tomato was in each row (There were Striped Roman, Dr. Wyches Yellow, Black Icicle, Pink Oxheart, etc…). While I did this, Kimberly and Jill began to plant the seedlings (which again, was just some typical planting – nothing too special). We finished ¾ of the field by noon, our lunchtime – aka our favorite part of the day. After our delicious and much deserved lunch at Subway (classy, we know), we returned to the farm with just enough time to explore a little before we got back to work (our lunch break is from 12 to 1). We meandered back to the petting zoo section of the farm, a favorite spot of the many school children who come to the farm on field trips, and made friends with two goats. Jill’s goat, which she named Cookie, was dark brown and very vocal. My goat, Betsy, (or was it a sheep….??) was mostly white except for several bald patches and looked kind of funny. Just when the goats were starting to really like us, Kimberly approached the pen (with a granola bar nonetheless) and became the favorite of all of the animals, which she swore was because of her wonderful personality and overwhelming beauty as opposed to the food in her hand (we’ll let her believe what she wants..). A chorus of “baas” quickly inspired Jill and me to imitate them (which we caught on video...oh god!) but Kimberly became embarrassed by us and darted off in the other direction so she wouldn’t be seen with us. After that fun, we saw a couple of dogs, some chicks and a cute little grey cat which we of course had to stop and pet. As we continued exploring, we saw even more animals that included a tan cow named Honey Bun, a calf named Lakota (which was scared of Jill..haha I don’t blame him!) and a mysterious cow with what looked to be something like little white bangs that followed Jill and me everywhere while also trying to lick us…strange. After our quick self-guided tour, we returned to the fields to continue planting tomatoes. We finished the rest of the field very quickly but of course did not escape without getting caked in even more mud (Kimberly’s formerly white shirt can definitely attest to this). After this, our next task included planting “Tomatillos” - commonly used in salsa (which of course reminded Jill og how much she’s been craving Mexican food – we might have to have Chipotle for dinner now…) - in a separate field since we had used up all of the space in the first field with all of the tomatoes we’d planted. Farmer Miguel then had us weed more (apparently it takes just around three days for pulled weeds to grow back again) after our tomatillo planting (but unfortunately without gloves this time….ouch!). We weeded several beds of carrots, radishes, beets, romaine Lettuce and kale.  And of course, our arch nemesis, Stinging Nettle, struck again! This time, all three of us got fell victim to its wrath as opposed to just Kristy. No matter how careful we were in trying to pull out the Stinging Nettle, it still found its way to our fingers, hands and forearms, creating little red bumps and causing a very unpleasant throbbing sensation. It got so overwhelming that I had to take frequent long breaks to try and soothe the pain (Farmer Randy suggested rubbing dirt on the sting, but no amount of dirt could soothe that burning pain fast enough!) Hearing my over-dramatic cry of pain, Farmer Miguel chuckled and had to come help me. He pulled the stinging nettle out with such ease and told me that he was used to the pain, something we all undoubtedly envied. Now tired and overheated (it was about 100 degrees out), we wrapped up our day by relaxing and chatting with Farmer Miguel and learned more about his life and what he does. He told us about his children (his son is a sophomore in college while his daughter is still in high school), how he learned English (Farmer Randy taught him just over six months ago while on the farm, explaining Miguel’s sometimes flawed English that he frequently apologized for – little does he know that we are not at all bothered by this but instead respect and admire him even more for this), and what he has to deal with on the fields (weeds, pests, etc). Much to his dismay, gophers and insects eat a large amount of the plants (especially the extremely leafy ones), leaving little left to harvest - one of the downsides to organic produce he said, is that they cannot use pesticides to repel the bugs. Even though being organic means added hardships in the farming process, the three of us felt that the lack of chemicals really end up making a difference in flavor - in return for our hard work, Farmer Miguel insisted that we take home some of the produce that the farm is growing (and who would say no to a fresh, juicy summer peach!). We willingly took several carrots, radishes, apricots and peaches, devouring them quickly, both because they were so delicious (without a doubt, these are the best we’ve ever had) and because we were so hungry after our long day of hard work. We can’t wait until tomorrow when we’ll hopefully get to take some more fruit home tomorrow – I literally can’t stop thinking about how yummy it was! We then returned home covered in mud, ignoring the stares and glares of the hotel staff (we decided to stay in a hotel up by the farm as opposed to driving back and forth each day – look at us, saving the environment, oh yeahhh), as we rushed towards the shower in our room. Back in the elevator, covered in dust from literally head to toe, we all agreed that we hope tomorrow we will get to work with some of the animals and maybe even milk a cow!!!

~Kristy and Jill (Go teamwork!)


P.S. We'll post some pictures of our adventures soon, so definitely look out for those!