I feel like I have cheated in some way, seeing how I have been here for 4 days but only worked 2. In the grand scheme, that won’t matter.

On Wednesday, I woke up headache free! What a relief. Unfortunately, my allergies were stronger than ever. The Farm Mother gave me some recommendation that I hope work. She gave me these homeopathic tablets that help her with her allergies, and some local honey, which I know does the trick well.

Because the weather forecast included rain and lightning storms, we were tasked with pruning the tomato plants in greenhouse. This meant we would take the lowest 3-5 branches and pull them off by snapping them up, and then down. They would usually come free easily, but sometimes the branches were over saturated because of the rain and would prove difficult to remove. We almost finished greenhouse 2 when we were called in for a break, and lunch. After lunch, we finished in that greenhouse and moved to greenhouse 3. By about 3:15pm, we had finished that greenhouse. Unfortunately, my wrist had also become sore from all the repetitive motion.

We found The Head Farmer, who then joined us in the task of pulling up a bed of lettuce that had become bitter and would not be sold. That was an easy task, but it was impressive how dirty I became. We had a good conversation about language, the public school system, an insurance. this conversation gave me insight as to how the Head Farmer sees the world.

We headed inside, and I rushed up to take a shower. The Farm Mother was going to make mozzarella cheese and had offered to show us how to stretch it. We sliced up the drained curds into 1/4 inch pieces and add boiling hot water to that it was fully submerged. After a 3 minute soak, we used two paddles to stretch the cheese together by moving it inward and upward. Unfortunately, the curds had waited too long in the hot kitchen before this process and were not stretching. The Farm Mother explained that this sometimes happened, and that the chickens would have a yummy treat.

So Ellie and I went out to the chickens and fed them the cheesy mess. The older chickens were so excited for the treat. Conversely, the younger chickens do not yet understand that the presence of a human usually means that they get food, so they were more shy. It was acutally a lot of fun to seed these little guys.

After dinner, all 4 of us wwoofer sat around in Ellie and J’s room and chatted until bedtime.