swimming in garlic

It seems impossible to me that a week is 7 days long.  It’s already Thursday night and it feels like yesterday was Monday.  The days are going by so quickly – I’ve never been in a situation like this!  In my past life, Mondays were this depressing dose of reality that I had to trudge through, counting down the days and the hours until it was Friday again.  But, here, I have no fear of Mondays, and by Sunday night I’m actually anticipating getting back out to the field.  

I can’t believe it is already mid-July (and that I’m still wearing my winter hat in the mornings!). This week marked the last time we will sow or plant out new crops aside from lettuce!  Everything else is planted and waiting to be harvested over the next 3 months.  (Also not included is: spinach, salad greens, carrots, radishes, and beets, which are all planted by Bill on his tractor).  

Today we harvested garlic that the crew last year planted.  We carted it all into the barn and layed it out to dry on tables.  Because Oregon is so wet, it will take awhile for it to dry out completely.  This means that our living space will eternally smell like stir-fry.  I guess there are worse smells...like the usual smell of chicken shit wafting over from the giant heap, also located in the barn. 



A sea of garlic!  Directly behind me, the pile of chicken manure. Directly to the right, the door to my room.  I literally have to shuffle sideways in order to get in there now!



This week I spent a lot of time in the packout (washing and packaging things for market and wholesale), something that up to this point, I’d been trying to avoid like my own death.  Mostly, I’ve used the ‘last-one-in-from-the-field’ tactic – which guarantees the 3 blank circles next to ‘packout’ will already have names in them.  Then, for awhile, I had this weird fungus on my ring finger and was automatically exempt from washing - a true blessing in disguise. See, for me, being in the packout is similar to being at market.  It really all comes down to the bleak reality that I just don’t quite have what it takes.  But last week I figured I needed to stop whining about it and get in there and do my part just like everyone else.  The first few times completely overwhelmed me – it was probably similar to what I look like in a grocery store – just standing, mouth slightly agape, with a blank, almost confused look on my face, trying to visualize what I need and how it all is supposed to go.  It was rough.  However, after getting some practice this week I think I have a better handle on the ‘flow’ and have definitely made progress recalling the correct procedures.  But it’s still a freakin’ process…



the packout



For three nights in a row, David Byrne, the barn cat, has showed up at dinnertime to our picnic table, with a half-dead bird.  It’s kind of impressive actually – catching a bird like that - though disturbing because he usually doesn’t kill it all the way and we have to watch the thing squirm and gasp for air.  It doesn’t exactly rouse an appetite.   A few weeks ago David ran into the living room with a live one in his mouth.  The bird got away for a few seconds, but David lept into the air and snatched it in his mouth -blood spattering on the coffee table- and pinned it to the floor!!!!!!  It was wild.  I’ve gotten used to stepping over all of the dead moles, rats, birds and snakes that the cats leave for us in the walkways every week.  The snakes are the worst though – dead or alive.  In the past two weeks it seems like they’re all coming out of their holes just to cross paths with me.  I’m almost to the point of paranoia whenever I walk near black plastic or tall grass.  I’ve always had this fear of snakes – which isn’t really a fear, but an aversion.  Basically, seeing one or thinking about one makes me cringe and feel like I need to violently shake my entire body clean.  Everyone is now aware that when they hear a little girls’ shriek from across the fields, they don’t need to come running, it’s just me somewhere, recovering from a snake sighting.    

On a completely different note, last weekend was the Country Fair – THE big deal of the year out here that has it’s roots in the counter-culture movement, Ken Kesey, and The Grateful Dead.  It’s a 3 day festival/medieval carnival held in 300 acres of woods.  The people of Eugene don’t hold back, that’s for sure, lol.  Lot’s of naked, gender bending, barefoot, dreadlocked, costumed, happy, people!



naked people 'showering' together to dance music.