herro sockeye

i'm generally not big on "holidays". they feel forced and like they just don't apply to me somehow. of course, this time of year it's thanksgiving.
now, we couldn't just have a normal thanksgiving supper at the farm, because of the salmon run. the farm was awarded the security and maintenance contract for this year's "Salute", so we work in 24 hour shifts ensuring that two people are on site at all times.
it was decided (not by me, i was just nay-saying and grumbling about thanksgiving the whole time) that we go celebrate and have the big supper out at the provincial park. friends and family of the farm convened (many of whom were already at the salmon run working the parking or concessioning); 24 people and 3 dogs ate chicken, or tofurkey, and fixins by candlelight while sitting on the forest floor. i underestimated this group of people, the forest, and myself i guess. it was a great harvest party and i thoroughly enjoyed thanksgiving for once.

here is a video i found of one of the many many many visitors to the salmon run. luckily, he doesn't just film the salmon, but all the areas of the park that we clean as part of the maintenance contract. if only he would have filmed the porta-potties...

"making the earth say beans instead of grass"

the big project these days is BEANS. pickin' 'em, dryin' 'em... talkin' 'bout 'em... today we worked on the favas. i'm super amazed at the high return on these things. last year they planted an ice cream bucket worth of beans and we have (trying to estimate... guh.. um..) ALOT more than an ice cream bucket worth. according to the internet fava beans are known for bad germination, but that probably means more like unevenly germinated pods, and weirdly shaped ones, rather than quantity. not too sure about that... or anything really, but it's going to be great to observe this same process next year (plant a few and get a lot, like magic! or alchemy?).

i've been reading a bit more than usual, which is still not a WHOLE lot. i'm reading walden finally and i really enjoy it. here is a quote which i came across a few nights ago and find very relevant to golden ears farm:

If a man has faith, he will coöperate with equal faith everywhere; if he has not faith, he will continue to live like the rest of the world, whatever company he is joined to. To coöperate in the highest as well as the lowest sense, means to get our living together.

a bunch of us went ice skating last night and it was fantastic. it whetted my appetite for playing hockey again, so i'm working on that.

full on farm talk

such a fantastic day. it seems like a good one to blog about.
we woke up to the rooster cockadoodling SO loud right beside our tent. we have set up our tent in the orchard that is shared with the chicken coop. i just discovered today that i can lock the chickens in their coop AND i got ear plugs today, so i'm hyped for tomorrow morning. anyways, he wakes us up early, like around 4! but we stay in bed until 7ish. there were also the ducks making funny heavy breathing noises outside our tent this morning; funny.
so we get up around 7, have a piece of toast, and head out to the field to pick strawberries. i got like 4 buckets by breakfast which is at about 8:30.
after that, me and paul and 4 other wwoofers transition over to our special project; building the straw bale house, with the guidance of 2 experts in this type of construction who have come to the farm for this project. everybody else goes back out picking more strawberries.
we start with a meeting and just talk about the day's work and how we are feeling and we do some stretches. today was a big day for the project; we started mixing the cob, which is clay, sand and a bit of straw. we also had to make what are called "dead men", which are Ts made out of scrap wood and nails. they sit on the foundation and the floor plate will be screwed into them eventually. we are going to cover them with the cob mixture, to separate the foundation (which is made of rocks) from the next level of the house (which will be made of straw bales).
alright so, i got to make some of these dead men, and i loved it. so hilarious. i think these blocks of wood with rusty nails poking out everywhere are so adorable!! i while i was doing this everybody else was mixing the cob. the best way to mix it, is to dance on it, specifically to do the twist. it was a hilarious construction site.




after lunch i joined in with the dance party, which went until around 6:30. we had a meeting to wrap up, where we were again reminded about listening to your body and remembering good posture while working. we did a bit of stretching then everyone working on the house ran down to the river, which is right across the road from the farm and got all cold/wet. then we ran back to the sauna and got hot/sweaty. then baccck to the river to get cleanish/wet/cold. then the dinner bell rang, so we hit up some nutloaf, salad, rice, strawberries, raspberries, cherries, AND pie. yrmmm.

then i wrote this blog post and my neck hurts from sitting in the tent and typing. its 8:30 now - my feet feel very pumiced, my body tired, and my self content.

alrightttttt

it's sunday, 9:30 a.m.
we got as far as the nellie's in kensington before an equipment malfunction (fucking water bottle holder!) and a double back.
all spare the dirty details but the last few days have been pretty intense with packing and moving and getting out of my place and trying to decide what to bring, and finishing all the projects needed for the trip. ok, the one detail i will include is that i have been waiting on paul.
awe've ridden like 10 blocks in the westerly direction before we stopped for breakfast and got a chance to actually talk and think in a neutral setting about some of the stuff we have packed. he ended up going back to our friends' place where we are storing stuff (our homebase for the last 2 days) to grab his messenger bag and hopefully ditch some other shit. i was dreading making another "goodbye" a false one by going back and facing our hosts again, so i stayed back and decided to blog.

kind of a shaky start so far. paul's handmade panniers and cheap-ish aluminum rack are slightly worrisome. we're far far behind schedule. it's supposed to rain tonight. i can't wait to experience putting kms behind us though.

so so so...

today we made a decision! we are leaving on april 20th!

been riding the sojourn, trying to break 'er in. it's fucking sweet! so many gears, which get more and more amazing as i slowly learn how to utilize them more and more.

been planning and thinking about our gear and budget a lot, although we still have a LOT to do, including calling some wwoof hosts and asking if we can stay on their farms! whhhhhich i am going to start as soon as i finish this blog post. paul is working on making some panniers out of leather. yea... ambitious. need to switch this desktop computer for a laptop we can take with us. plus a gazillion other things i won't bother typing out, because i already have some serious "TO DO" lists going.

alright, that's it for now. to the PHONE! wish me luck - calling people is pretty much my least favorite activity.

a little league of their own mighty giant ducks... um.. sandlot!

i was sitting on a milk crate in the very back of the kitchen at good earth today, eating a tuna sandwich, when this courier i've never met or seen before came all the way into the back and asked "are you kelsey?"
"yes...?"
"i heard you might be interested in playing girls' bike polo."
"yea... maybe"
"we play tuesdays and saturdays, you should come."



i didn't ask why HE was inviting me to GIRLS polo and instead thought about how much it felt like a set-up from a movie. like the rag-tag protaga-team has to recruit similarly rag-tag outsiders who do things like work at shitty jobs, eat tuna sandwiches and hide their amazing talent.

mind-numbed.

holy shit. i just spent over an hour going through a box of all the notes i collected during my time in junior high & high school. i've been meaning to look through it for a while and select a few gems to keep, but it had been pretty daunting. my head is spinning with a zillion inside jokes, long forgotten tifs, and relentless crushes. everybody was SO crazy.

i found a letter i wrote "to myself" dated June 19, 1998. here's a few funny lines:

"i am in 8C this year. i played ringette in dewberry this year. i have a lot of friends although i don't see why, i am just a big dork"
"i spend a lot of time on time on the internet, a great deal of it spent researching marilyn manson. this band perplexes me, to my parents discouragement. me and my parents aren't getting along right now"

"i have no idea what my occupational goals are but i'm pretty sure it will have something to do with language arts (english). i enjoy tv and i think my job might have something to do with advertisement (like tv commercials). although i enjoy tv i know it is mostly crap. it's people telling you how to act, think, what to buy and what you need to be what they want you to be."

well, i'm over marilyn manson and i don't play ringette anymore, but everything else is pretty much still the same.



in other news, me and my parents aren't getting along right now. haha. seriously though. i called them yesterday to ask about storage of some of my stuff while i am riding my bike from farm to farm across the country. they are having trouble with this concept. oh well.

thankfully it's not still 1998. thankfully i am an adult. thankfully none of my friends are still jesus-freaks.

polo

i finally got to use the polo mallet we made in the summer!

paul is presenting me with a crazy supper! i must go! there are mini eggs on the plate! okbye!

a stitch in time...

do you have certain dangerous or intense situations that you enact in your head and try to imagine what you would actually do if the situation entered the realm of reality?? well, as i've tried to imagine so many times, today my chain broke as i was headed down centre street. "so this is what it would be like. it's actually happening. wow".
luckily for me, it was at 4:30 am and there were no cars around me! and also my chain somehow folded up in such a way while staying attached to the frame, that it acted as an emergency brake scraping on the pavement enough to slow me down. i imagine that sparks were flying, but there were no witnesses to corroborate this.
i hobby-horsed down to the bottom of the hill using my shoe on the back tire to slow down this time.

lesson learned: keep your chain in good shape, use the "chain checker" tool once in a while.



what else... finished hermosa's bike a few days ago and she took me and paul out for deeeeelicious sushi as a thank you yesterday. i need to get a picture of this thing, it's a bright green "jr 5" apollo. it's so small! it has 24" wheels! it fits her perfectly though; i'm so happy it worked out.

ahh, looks like lots of people updated their blogs in the past few days, time for some readin'!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

getting nervous and hyped!!!!
i have started emailing farms trying to put together some kind of schedule for our wwoofing trip. even within alberta so many look amazing and interesting, but they just aren't on the route :( just working this out my head right now, i guess it'll end up being like 15 farms (about 4 months, one week at each farm, maybe more maybe less at some, maybe we should go to shambala!!).

yup... life is pretty great, good routine (here's the current one: go to work, go to bike shop, meet paul at bike shop, invite whichever friend we run into to come for supper with us, smoke doobies, come home, sync my ipod full of podcasts for tomorrow & fall asleep).

focus: save money, tie up loose ends (bank shit, storage), hang outs.