Week 2

The week isn't even over and I already feel like so much more has happened in comparison to last week. The past two days at the farm have been full of a ton of different things and I still have one more day left to work this week! Wednesday was definitely my favorite day so far because we happened to see a bunch of cute baby animals. There was a tiny birds nest in one of the greenhouses that we were working in and there was a bunch of baby birds in it! The nest itself was really small and the baby birds were so tiny! They barely have any feather fluff and were packed into the little nest. It was kind of hard to tell how many were in the nest but they kept opening their mouths and moving around, it was a really cool thing to get to see. That same day we got to feed a baby cow as well. The farm has cows and one of them died when she had a baby so Juvencio (one of the heads of La Finquita del Buho) had to rescue the newly born calf and take him in his car to their farm and he has to bottle feed the calf powdered milk that he buys at the store. So, at the end of working on Wednesday, he let Tulip and I feed the baby cow. 

I think that both of these experiences have been really special and something that I really would not get to see if I wasn't doing this project. It has made me appreciate the opportunity to do this even more because I feel like I am getting more than just the experience of learning how farming works. I am also learning about what other aspects farm life is like. Juvencio said that there are always a ton of baby birds nests around this time of year and he likes to see them (he even showed us a picture that he took of the beautiful eggs that were in the nest before they hatched a few days before), but he also doesn't really because the grown birds eat his lettuce. I know that this is a small thing but I just thought it was cool to learn about something that I wouldn't have ever considered or known about. 

Yesterday was a much different day than Wednesday. The weather was not sunny and beautiful like it was on Wednesday. It was ever changing rain, clouds, a peak of sun, and extreme wind. As I was driving to the farm in the morning it was pouring but the weather was not too wet during the day, in fact it was sunny for part of it. However, when we were planting leeks the wind was crazy. Planting leeks is pretty interesting. They are really small starts and a lot of times when we are panting thing with smaller starts, we put a coupe of the starts together. But for leeks you plant each sprout individually and you have to push them really deep into the ground. So one person takes a giant stake and makes holes in the dirt so that when you plant the leeks it is easier to get them deep. We were doing this in some pretty dry and dusty dirt and as the wind blew it would blow up a bunch of dust and get in your eyes. To be honest, this one probably they worst time I have had during my senior project so far. We were planting four massive rows of leeks and each row contained three smaller rows, and it was pretty cold and extremely windy. After we did it I felt pretty worn out but I also felt  lot of accomplishment. In a way I almost felt proud that I got through it if that makes sense in some weird way.

Getting the experience of being able to work on a farm is helping me to understand what it is like to have this as one's actual job. Planting the leeks and seeing the baby birds and feeding the baby cow were just minor parts of it, but I do think that they have helped me understand that there are hard parts and fun parts and parts that you will like or think are tedious or maybe satisfying. And I mean I know that this is how pretty much everything in life is, but just getting to actually experience it and see what these different parts are, helps me to understand it more and have deeper appreciation for people who do it every day and it helping me to understand what really goes into such an important part of the food system. 

bird eggs

hatched baby birds

feeding the baby cow