Harvest Fest, 2009: A Novel

Well the Harvest Festival last weekend was a rousing success! Mostly. I mean, it was, but the weather on Saturday kept our attendance numbers way down, unfortunately. With a 100% chance of rain, we were pretty much sitting in a cloud all day. But the weather Sunday was absolutely BEAUTIFUL and we had tons of people come out. Look!

There was a hay maze in the livestock barn, hay rides out to the garden and back, lots of children's activities in the garden, a farm stand and pumpkin patch, more kids games and things in the education barn, plus folks out in the Global Village talking about their sites, and doing an activity in each one.

I spent Saturday in Guatemala making coffee. And when I say "making coffee," I mean starting with a fire and unroasted beans. Handily enough, the house in Guatemala has a wood burning stove (which I was excited to get to use), so the rain didn't bother it much. It actually ended up being quite warm and cozy after a while. There was a troop of Girl Scouts that came and helped out all weekend, so I had a couple of them there with me, plus three adults (in the morning) who were fun to talk to. Two of them were a married couple who had spent a lot of time in the Peace Corps, so I felt under pressure to make a good fire, and I am happy to say that I did, and did so with one match. Rock! So after the fire got going and got the stovetop heating, we put some unroasted beans onto a skillet-like thing called a comal and stirred them around with a wooden spoon until they got dark and started to smell like coffee.

Depending on how hot the fire and the stove were, that took anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes. Then the roasted beans were put on a stone called a metate and ground up as fine as we could get them. This depended a lot on how patient we were feeling and how much we took turns.

Then the grounds were put into a coffee pot on a stove and we waited for it to percolate. I don't think I ever had the patience to wait until it actually boiled. Jen, the girl who was there on Sunday, waited a full hour at one point for it to boil. So, being impatient, whenever I felt like it, I could pour up a cup and drink it!

The resulting coffee was pretty light in color, pretty weak in flavor, and had bits of the grounds in it, but otherwise it was actually pretty tasty. And I'm not being sarcastic. It tasted like the beans were not too far from green-ness. And then Jen did it all again on Sunday.

Also, I hope you noted the "Guatemalan" outfit. Each site has a bin with clothes and stuff in it for use during big events. Let me show you some more!

Sam was in Thailand on Saturday pounding and winnowing rice. His foot is on the handle of a big rice pounder (the other end of which you can see in the other picture) which breaks the husk away from the kernel of rice.

Then, once the husks are broken up, you put it all in a basket and toss it in the air. The heavy rice falls back down into the basket while the lighter chaff blows away.

Meanwhile, Jen was in Peru on Saturday wearing this outfit:

Jason, in the middle doesn't like playing dress up. Abby was in Peru on Sunday, threshing amaranth. We'd harvested a bunch and hung it up to dry, then she rubbed pieces between her hands, letting it all fall into a pot. She then poured that pot into another pot, letting the wind blow away the chaff, much like rice.

Jason was in Tibet on Saturday but I didn't get his picture. He wasn't dressed up anyway. Sam was there Sunday, grinding barley with a barley grinder and making tea. His jacket pretty much amazes me. Especially the fake leopard fur.

Nic was in Ghana both days, making fufu. Fufu is made by mashing plantains and casava roots together and cooking them. Nic had the biggest mortar and pestle I've ever seen in my life.

Ivy was in Appalachia both days, roasting pumpkin seeds. They were amazingly delicious. I almost couldn't stop eating them.

And here she is, looking American.

Susan was in Kenya on Sunday, playing games that Abby (who has lived in Kenya and was there on Saturday) taught us.

And I was in Poland on Sunday. (Susan was there Saturday.) There is a woman from Poland who lives nearby, and she and her daughter usually come to festivals at the farm and bring a lot of stuff. She was wonderful to have there, talking to folks. There were also a couple of spinners there on Saturday, but I didn't get down to see them. But here are the inside and outside of my Polish house.

Next to the house, too, we had a draught horse hooked up to a grain grinder. It was pretty cool.

Meanwhile, on the other part of the farm, there were farmy things happening! We had a farm stand both days. Here are Sarah, Ben, and Emily on Saturday.

They had different vegetable varieties out, plus POTATO STAMPERS!!!!! That I helped make!!!!!

There was a much sunnier farm stand on Sunday.

Sarah worked the pumpkin patch, Maggie ran kids' games, and Emily was in charge of the "Plant a Bean!" table, at which people could plant a bean to take home with them. It was aptly named.

There was a hay ride.

And, even more exciting, there was a hay maze! Y'all remember those giant wagons we stacked hay in and pulled the giant blue tarp over? Yeah, we took them completely apart. But for a MAZE! And after the wagons were empty, the walls still weren't tall enough (they were all five bales high!), so we kept loading up truckloads from other barns. We worked on it for days.

And we ended up with this!

It's seriously the best hay maze I've ever seen. Did I tell you we all kept making wrong turns in it even while we were building it? Yeah, it was effective. But what made it super awesome was the presence of animals! Smaller animals like rabbits, guinea pigs, and chickens were in smaller cages that were actually part of the walls, and then there were pens for baby goats and sheep built in, too. I think they spent the whole weekend trying to eat their way out.

And last, but certainly not least, as part of the Harvest Festival this year, the farm celebrated its 25th birthday! Shon, the farm's head dude, made a speech and led us in a rousing chorus of "Happy Birthday" both days, then we got to eat delicious cake!

Liz Jo and Ben (who dressed alike, coincidentally) were super excited.

THE END!

We're having a Harvest Festival!

Sorry I haven't said much lately, guys and gals. The farm has been in high gear for a couple of weeks to get ready for our Harvest Festival! The Harvest Festival is tomorrow and Sunday. Even now, I'm upstairs in the barn helping the garden crew make signs and potato stampers. Well, the stampers are finished. We made every letter of the alphabet, plus an exclamation mark, a heart, and a star. They're adorable. And the potatoes they're made of were harvested just this evening. By me! And some other folks. About half of them are red potatoes and the other half are purple potatoes. Purple potatoes, by the way, are fantastic. The first step to making stampers was (obviously) to wash the dirt off. And I knew the potatoes were purple, but while scrubbing them under the water, as that layer of dirt came off, they looked like jewels. Amethysts, perhaps. They're SO PURPLE!

So there will be potato stampers at the Harvest Fest, along with lots of other stuff. There are lots of garden games, plus a pumpkin patch and farm stand for our vegetables. Also, several evenings this week were devoted to making a hay maze in the barn where the goats usually are. (They have been put in a pasture for the weekend.) The maze is going to be super cute. There will be animals in it and everything. And even though we'd made it and should have known our way around, we kept making wrong turns while working on it. That's how you know it's a good maze: When those who built it can't find their way out. It's labyrinthian.

Plus, us education folks will be out in the Global Village. One of us will be in each site and we'll be doing activities for each country. I am in Peru tomorrow and we will be threshing amaranth. And I am in Guatemala on Sunday where we will roast and grind and make and drink coffee. And if I can swing it, I am hoping to switch with someone and spend some time in Poland where a local spinning club will have set up shop. Spinning as in yarn. I'm trying to get myself adopted by them.

So, anyway, we have an early day tomorrow and I'm pretty much completely exhausted from today. This also may be the latest I have stayed up since arriving here. But getting ready for things like festivals is fun, so I am having a good time. The only damper is that there is a 100% chance of rain from 11 to 5 tomorrow, which are pretty much the exact hours of our fair. Oops. But Sunday should totally rock! Now, we must finish laminating and gluing things so we can sleep! Goodnight!

Comments

Also, by the way, I've been loving your comments! Keep them coming! I'm sorry if I haven't responded to all of them yet. But, relatedly, if you comment anonymously, please sign your name if you wouldn't mind. I love the comments, and I love them even more when I know who said what. Thanks everybody!

First groups!

Sorry it's been such a long time since I've updated. Last week I had my first groups, and I've spent my days off this week (Tuesday ad Wednesday) napping, grocery storing, (finally) finishing Harry Potter 6, and cooking for the folks who are working. (I made, by the way, a savory sweet potato pie involving curry powder, coconut milk, and sauteed onions, to go with Ivy's pumpkin soup and blueberry muffins.) But here is a run down of my groups so far.

Last Wednesday I had my first tour. It was a group of 16 nine graders and one chaperone participating in the "Humans and Habitats" program. They arrived, I introduced things briefly, then we watched a video about what Heifer Project does around the world. After the video, we went on a tour of the farm, beginning with the garden and barns, and culminating in a tour of the Global Village. After the tour, we prepared and ate lunch at one of the GV sites. This group got to eat in Thailand. They had a little trouble getting the fires started, but once they did, the food prep went fairly smoothly. Here is the Thailand house:

It is made of bamboo and is representative of homes in the Akha region of northern Thailand. The meal consists of rice boiled in one pot, separately sauteed kale (a leafy green we harvest out of the Thai garden), and two separately made sauces. The first sauce involves toasting sesame seeds, then grinding them into a paste in a mortar and pestle with raw onions and garlic, salt, and vegetable boillon. The other has you roast a tomato (also harvested) then grind that with more onion and garlic, and a couple of (harvested) hot peppers. To serve, everyone gets a bowl of rice, then puts kale and the sauce(s) on top. Here is a picture of fellow-volunteer Maggie when we made this meal during training (and didn't keep everything separate).

It's pretty delicious. After the meal, we sat and talked about what they just ate and the process by which is came to be and how they would feel if they ate like that every day. Then they cleaned up and we headed back to a classroom to do one more activity and then they left.

Thursday I didn't have a group, so I spent all day weeding the completely-out-of-control garden in Peru.

It's terraced, and the rock walls separating the levels have weeds growing up through them, which is difficult, but mostly it's really satisfying to pull out a whole section of garden. This garden grows potatoes, carrots, spinach, nasturtiums (edible flowers), quinoa, and amaranth, and you can finally see that stuff! It was rather buried by the jungle. I guess during the summer they're just so busy with groups that no one has time to weed.

But, speaking of groups, I had another arrive on Friday afternoon. They also saw the video, then we went on a tour of the farm minus the Global Village. After that, we ate dinner cooked by the kitchen together in the dining room, which was delicious, of course. Then we did an activity, then they went to bed in the platform tents. The next day, we got up, they did chores with us, we did a couple of activities inside, then we went and had lunch in a GV site. This time I was in Tibet. The meal there is tsampa. Tsampa is ground barley (which they get to grind themselves), cooked in whole milk (or yak's milk if we were completely authentic) with a whole stick of butter melted through and a bunch of sugar added. There is also a pot of green tea involved. The tsampa ends up tasting like really sweet, slightly chewy oatmeal. Here is the home in Tibet, by the way. It is a yurt.

Then we talked, cleaned, and then did our tour of the Global Village. When it was over, they got a break, then we got back together to tell them what was going to happen that night. They actually slept out in the Global Village. They chose numbers out of basket, each of which had been predetermined to correspond with a GV site. There ended up being five "families" in five sites. The lottery also chose which member of each family was "pregnant" (with a water balloon held under they shirt all night), which was injured (either wearing a glove preventing them from using that hand, or with a dowel behind one knee preventing them from bending that leg), and which was the head of the household (meaning they were the only literate one and the only one able to handle the money). So they went to their respective sites and we gave them dishes and things, but no food. The food had to be purchased at a market. Each head of house got the equivalent of a day's wages in their country's currency and then had to come buy food from me and Nic, who were not above haggling and making deals. Then we left them, they made their own dinner, and spent the night in their country. (We gave them all oatmeal for breakfast, by the way.) The next day they cleaned up, helped with chores (still with their babies and handicaps), then we all got together to talk about their experience and debrief with them a little. Then they left.

That's about all, but here are picture of the rest of the Global Village sites. This is Guatemala. It's was built by Habitat for Humanity in the same way they build houses in Central America.

There are goats, chickens, and rabbits behind the house. And this is Colonias, the area along the border between Mexico and the United States.

This is Poland.

And this is Ghana. You can sort of see Evander the ram looking between the fence.

Ghana and Poland are still being worked on, but they are both almost finished. I also didn't take a picture of Appalachia, but I will. I hope this update finds you all well, and I hope you talk to you all again soon!

Sort-of First Day

Today is the first days that groups are here. It feels a little strange to me, though. Here is why:

a.) We have had the farm to ourselves for two weeks and now all of a sudden there are a lot of other people wandering everywhere. I realize the whole reason we're here is to communicate about the farm to people, but it's like a bunch of random people just showed up at your house.

b.) We've all been together for two weeks with hardly a moment apart. It feels strange to be working more independently now.

c.) It feels weird, also, because everyone else is working and I am not. I was off Saturday and Sunday like the rest of the education team, but they're trying to get us in a more routine schedule for days off and mine will be Mondays and Tuesdays for now. So I get a four day weekend. Weird. So everyone else was nervous last night about their first day of groups and I still don't have to do anything until Wednesday.

d.) Relatedly, staying in, I miss all the farm drama. For instance, Henry the goat keeps escaping and I keep missing the excitement.

I guess that's all for now. Unless you want to see a picture of how brussel sprouts grow. Who knew?

Critters Part One

I know I promised Global Village pictures, but I wanted to show you some more of the critters that live here with me. I should also probably say right up top here that I am not a livestock expert in any way, shape, or form, and everything I know about these animals I've learned in the past couple weeks. So if I get anything terribly wrong, I'm sorry! Mostly, you should not listen to me and just get overwhelmed by cuteness instead.

Baby chicks you already know, but they're so dern cute, here's another shot.

The goats mostly hang out in this swanky barn with a world class view.

But everyday we take them out to a pasture or wooded area to eat. Whereas cows are grazers, which means they graze on grass, goats are browsers, which means they browse around and eat other stuff, too, like leaves. Poison ivy is apparently one of their favorite foods. Here are some gals browsing.

And this is an alpaca. Pretty much all I want to do is hang out with them. And then steal their fleece.

And speaking of animal hair, check out Clementine! She is a Scottish Highland cow. I think she looks like a part-Muppet cow.

And here are Stephanie and Rufus having some amazingly cute Mama/Baby time.

This, by the way, is the view off the porch of our house. The cows graze rotationally, which means they graze in one spot for a few days, then get moved to the next patch of pasture. That way they never graze one section down entirely, and by the time they make the whole loop the grass has regrown, helped, of course, by the cow poop dropped all over fertilizing the ground. Another reason to move them around, relatedly, is to get them away from all that poop they dropped, therefore keeping them healthy. Rotational grazing helps us stay sustainable. So, anyway, they are currently hanging out right outside our porch. It makes for good spying on Molly and Rufus, who have definitely become BFFs. Here's the view.

There is one cow, though, who is not in the pasture yet. His name is I.M.O.U. Imou. Sounds like Imoo. Imou is a few weeks old, but his mama died soon after he was born. She got mastitis, which is an infection cows can get in their udders. So Imou lives in the barn with the goats and gets a bottle three times a day. He has a lot of goat friends and really loves his bottle. Hi name, by the way, stands for I'm My Own Uncle because his mother was unintentionally bred with his brother. Remember when we were all surprised by Rufus? Because the bull was in with the cows one day and nobody realized anything had happened? Yeah. IMOU! He is a Randall Lineback, of which there are only about 200 of left in the world. They were first bred here in New England and are one of the few breeds that work for milk and meat and draft power. There is a push to increase their numbers, and Overlook is helping. Anyway, here's the cutie pie.

And last, but certainly not least, is Pudge, the sort-of farm dog. He actually belongs to Donna, the livestock lady, but he is here with her every day. He pretty much runs the place and gets whatever he wants, as you may be able to tell.

So those are some of the animals we have here at the farm. Be on the lookout for Critters Part Two!