Tag Archives: Harvesting

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It’s a Monk’s Life

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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.
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First Days at the Peach Farm

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“It’s nice today, only 90 degrees.” Welcome to farming in the California desert!

I arrived at the Ananda Marga Organic Peach Farm on Tuesday. Although it’s called a peach farm there aren’t any peaches in season right now, so we’ve been working with many vegetables. It’s been very enjoyable so far. Dada runs the farm and has been teaching us so many interesting things, from how to help seeds germinate to making delicious Indian corn bread. There are two other volunteers here from Taiwan, so there’s also a lot of Chinese-speaking going on. Randomly pleasant surprise.

The living quarters are rustic, and the work is hard. Even with several breaks throughout the day, I’m still ready for bed by about 9 pm. We spent most of the last two days building raised beds. I’m now steps closer to becoming an expert wood worker.

Cutting wood with Ann and Richard

Assembling the beds

Collecting chicken wire for the raised beds — rough work!

There are six dogs on the farm. They help guard the land and also provide great entertainment.

Meet Will. He follows us around everywhere. Most of the time it’s endearing, unless he’s panting in your face while you’re using the power saw.

Today is our big harvest day. We were up at 6:30 am collecting tomatoes, kale, arugula, beans, basil, and chard. Tomorrow we head to the farmers’ market!

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First Taste of Our CSA

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Nothing beats tasting the fruits of your labor, quite literally. Beautiful little strawberries are coming out now in our community garden. Yesterday in between a morning of basking in the sun and an approaching afternoon thunderstorm, I picked one to try. SO DELICIOUS! Warm and sweet and juicy and ah… I never want to eat a store-bought strawberry again!