The last three weeks have been good ones. I’d almost say that if I’m not posting to my blog, then something good must be going on!
My mom’s visit was a lot of fun. I didn’t write much about that, but it was really great to have her here. We went to the strawberry festival a lot, listened to some great live music, walked and talked and got too much sun. She helped around the farm a bit. And, mostly fed me well and was a great mother! I got spoiled, having someone here cooking all (or most) of my meals. Her being here made the week of me running the farm go a lot better.
The day my mom left we had a wwoofer scheduled to arrive at the farm. All I knew about Alissa was that she was an art teacher from Chicago. I can say now with a smile on my face that she was the most interesting and the most beautiful wwoofer ever! From the moment I saw her walking up the driveway, carrying her backpack, I was like “Wow.” We worked together, cooked a meal or two together, talked, watched a movie, and to me there was never a dull moment. We ended up hitting it off really well, and for lack of a better term, I’d say that I pretty much have fallen in love with her. Or at least I think about her every day and a lot of what I think about is when and how I’ll get to see her again! Alas, she was only here for a week, one great week! We hope to spend more time together some time in the near future. 
Other than two incredibly excellent women being in my life … the farm is going well. We’ve got chickens coming out our ears! The Cornish cross birds are out on pasture converting their feed to meat, and it’s amazing how good they are at it. A couple weeks ago we got 100 egg-laying chicks in the mail and they are growing fast too. We’ve had our two biggest weeks at the farmer’s market and have nothing but more great stuff to come. We harvested all of the garlic, and whoa - it is soooo good! I have no idea what kind boring white-skin garlic the grocery store usually sells, but the garlic we have is awesome. A few of the varieties I remember are Siberian, Silver Skin, Killarney, Italian Red. Onions are almost ready. There’s more ripe tomatoes every day. We harvested our first potatoes last week, a red variety called Huckleberry. Summer squash is growing like bonkers. I picked a bunch of raspberries and boysenberries (and ate a lot in the process :).
We’re caught up on weeding, for the most part, too. Which is an amazing feat. That’s not to say there aren’t a couple beds that have weeds almost as tall as I am … it’s just means the beds we care about are all tended and beautiful. Today I renovated the mobile egg-laying coup with new dividers. We’re hoping it helps the chickens break and eat less of their own eggs. Yes … the chickens know how good their eggs are and will eat them. I think the problem was they didn’t have their own private laying cube, just this open area that was easily shared by other crazy chickens. They would all be piled in this one spot for some reason, like 5 chickens on top of each other. Then the bottom one would get claustrophobic and want to get out, and crush an egg. They’d smell the yummieness and start eating away. This egg-eating would happen several times a day and we’d lose several eggs, probably more than we know. The next thing we have to figure out is how to keep a few rogue chickens from flying over the fence and laying eggs in random places. We’ve found a few caches where they make a cozy spot and lay, but it’s usually too late, after they’ve layed several eggs who knows how many days before.
The chickens, the animals, are definitely a big issue on the farm. I’ve personally went back and forth on the whole animal thing. I haven’t decided yet whether they’ll have a place on my farm yet. This week is a bad week for me to decide, anyway, as I’ve been fatigued and can’t quite seem to build up enough energy and momentum to really get going in a good way. I’m feeling a bit tired, really. Maybe it has something to do with not really having a day off for a few weeks. And, I know it’s got something to do with being on a total high with Alissa around, and then her being gone and 2000 miles away. Funny how that works!
I’m also riding my motorcycle a fair bit. And, now I’m almost completely official official. I took a Motorcycle Safety Foundation Intermediate Rider Course this past weekend in Bremerton. Essentially now I have this little card that I can take to the DoL and get my full motorcycle endorsement on my license. Also I think I can show it to Progressive and get a discount on insurance. The class was good, I’m glad I took it. That’s all I’ll say before I say something not nice about it.
Phew, well, so much for going to bed at 9. I’m tired and need some sleep. I’ve been woken up every morning by my alarm for the past two weeks. One of these days I’ll get caught up!
