Today was Tuesday, which is supposed to be a day off. But Ellie offered to drive me to the airport in Portland, Maine on Friday (our half day) so we worked a half day today so that she can have all Friday off. We want to head to Portland early to check out the city a little before she drops me off at the airport.

We started the day by picking tomatoes. Then Harold pulled me off a little early to have me move the empty seedling trays into the basement. When I walked back down to field two, Dil was working on getting the seeder setup. I have been yearning to see how the seeder works, so I asked if I could watch and thankfully they said yes.

The seeder is a device that evenly spreads the seeds underneath it as it is pushed. It has two treads, the rear of which has a belt that moves a rod in the center. The center contains small seed compartments over a rod with small holes. There are also adjustable brushes over the holes. In order to calibrate the seeder to the desired seed size, one first needs to adjust the rod (there are different sized holes based on seed size. Then, the small brushes need to be adjusted to accommodate the seed size, and how many seeds can go through at once. Because we were planting spinach, the seeder was adjusted to the third hole since spinach seeds are quite large. We also only adjusted and filled every other tray because spinach can grow to be quite large so the plants needs more space.

Once the seeder was set up, dil took notes on the location she was planting, the date,exactly how she set up the seeder, the soil amendments and the weather. This information is later used to determine why a crop worked or failed. She then did a dry run over the area she was going to plant to make sure the seeder was set up correctly, and to make sure that she wasn’t going to hit any rocks or snag on the bed lines. She then filled it with the seeds and went on her way!

I then hoed until lunch.

Aizhan, Ellie, Angela and I had the rest of the day off, so we decided to go to Farmington so get coffee and watch a movie. Angela road a bicycle and the rest of us went by car. We went to Java Joe’s at 3pm and chatted in the coffee shop until movie time. We went to the matinee, 4:15pm showing of Ghostbusters; it was only $4!?!? The movie was great, and it was good that it didn’t take itself seriously. The four of us walked over to Reny’s only to discover that it closes at 6pm on weekdays. As Angela were preparing to ride home, Ellie and Aizhan expressed their concern over the stormy looking sky; and Angela assured us that she could just hitchhike or figure it out. With a concerned look on her face, Aizhan explain “anything could happen in Maine”. Eventually we left, and assured ourselves that if it started raining, Ellie could just drive down the road and pick Angela up.

As planned, we got home late for dinner and had burritos waiting for us. The the House Mother and I then went to my room and discussed a personality test I had taken. She had done training years ago in this field and now did these tests to help wwoofers figure themselves out (since that’s the reason many wwoofers wwoof.) Nothing about the test was surprising but it was still very insightful about how I interact with the world and what I can do to improve my interactions. That conversation was exhausting (in a good way) so I went to bed soon after.