Settling into a rhythm here. Mondays through Thursdays we usually start around 7:30 or 8 am. Every morning begins with watering all the potted plants and seeds, feeding the chickens, and cleaning the chicken coop. (Like having eggs? Gotta clean chicken poop.) Roughly 4-5 hours of work in the morning, a lunch break between 12:30 – 3:30 pm, then another 2-3 hours of work in the afternoon. At 6 pm we feed the dogs, which involves chaining four of them lest they fight and bite each other’s necks off. I’m usually tuckered out by 8 or 9 pm!

Fridays and Saturdays are a bit different and start earlier around 6:30 or 7 am. Friday is spent harvesting in the early morning before it gets too hot, then cleaning, sorting, weighing, and packing all the vegetables for next day’s farmers’ market. Saturday we pack everything into the van at 7 am, sell at the market from 9 am – 12 pm, do grocery shopping for the week while in town, and then finish with resorting all the unsold veggies.

Sunday we rest, like god.

On a really good weekend, we made about $300 at the Saturday market. Such a measly amount compared to all our sweat and labor in a week! With four of us here the work gets done much easier and faster. When no volunteers come, Dada manages the whole farm on his own. I can’t even imagine the amount of work that takes! Being a small farmer in the US really is as hard as they say.

Some of the cool things we’ve been doing:

Harvesting! Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes…and some beans

Harvesting kale

At the farmers’ market with Dada

Riding in tractors with dogs

Dada leading the way

Digging trucks out of ditches

Building solar water heaters

Happy about potential hot showers!

Gathering good soil from the mountains

Stomping on soil

Done! A tractor filled with awesome soil for our beds

Planting garbanzo seeds

Little Garbanzo seedlings popping up