Sunday, July 18, 2010

Home alone. AHHHH!! (relive movie scene)

Daniel and Molly decided to go to the beach for a vacation leaving Bettina and I in charge of the farm (Luke and Emily are camping and won't be back until Monday evening). AHHHH!!! So... guess who's going to be surprised/angry when the farm is in disarray and we're drinking wine and eating junk? You guessed it.

Our Frey-farm-takeover started this morning, because Daniel and Molly had to prepare for the trip. We got up early for a.m. chores. Morning chores involve the following duties (ha ha ha I said duty :)
-Releasing the chickens from the henhouse (pretty sure it's so they don't get eaten by big birds)
-Feeding/watering the hens, goats, cows, the no-name cat, and Loki (the dog)
-Milking Buttercup the cow
-Milking the six "milkable" goats

Now let me tell you a story about milking goats... So, as you may or may not have guessed, I am NOT an expert goat milker. However, I try to go with the flow of things and be helpful. Betti is in charge of that department. So... this morning we milked the cow successfully (compared to yesterday - crazy nonsense). On to the goat milking with the confidence of an experienced farmer. Well, news flash to anyone about to milk a goat (or any animal in that case), they like to kick... A LOT... when they run out of the grain that keeps them occupied. I bet you can guess what happened... Yep. The goats "usually" know right where to go and when, but after milking three of the six goats, goat #4 and goat #5 came clambering out of the pen together and things went haywire. Goat #5 decided it was going to try and go for the corn/grain in an old trash can. I attempted to grab the collar and wrangle it around, but one of its horned got caught underneath my bra and I was freaked out that I was going to be gored to death on a small farm in the middle of podunk hippie northern California. I'm not sure which one of us knocked over the jar with the milk of three goats in it, but in the chaos who really knows? I'm pretty sure Betti and Daniel thought it was me (I did forget to put the top on the jar). Ha ha ha I don't care. No one should drink the gross milk of a goat. Passive protest.

The rest of the day was pretty unexciting. Betti and I ate a poor man's lunch - she had bread, peanut butter, and rhubarb; I had granola and a kiwi. Then we decided to leave the farm (gasp!) and go to the co-op in Ukiah (a city that's 15 minutes away with a Kohl's!!!). At the co-op, we bought fruit, chocolate, ice cream. You know, the essentials. Emily's going to go grocery shopping when they get back from camping so right now things are a little limited. Co-op super expensive and all organic. It's no Meijer Thrifty Acres, I'll say that. When we got back, we decided to do some free-styling organic baking/cooking. I tinkered with the oatmeal raisin/chocolate chip cookies and Betti worked on the roast chicken while we listened to a mix of Swiss/Spanish/indie music and drank wine from the vineyard. Felt pretty homespun.

Another wwoofer comes tomorrow. She has been working on the farm for a while during her breaks from college. She only comes in the morning. Maybe she can help us wrangle the goats. Or maybe I can just sit out and "observe." :)

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