Vision Fulfilled

I came out west on this wwoofing adventure without actually knowing what it would entail.  I had thoughts of farming, meeting people that will challenge me, and changing my lifestyle.  My first two wwoofing experiences were steps in a direction I want to take my life.  I learned a lot in my time at those places.  But I didn't feel an emotional connection to my actions.  But then I made my way down to southern Oregon and found what I was looking for.  Experience thy name is Myrlte Glen Farm.

I figured this would be a new type of experience before I even got here.  They have Llamas.  Not for food or wool; just because.

So we show up last Saturday and are greeted by Mykael, the 'intern coordinator.'  Dave (the owner) isn't around, so Mykael gives us the grand tour.  During the tour we start to meet some of the others on the 'homestead.'  There are three guys living here for the time being; Mykael (intern coordinator/working on mysterious project X) who lives in the house, James (musician, photographer, other misc. talents) who lives in the recording studio/yoga and workout room, and Baka (random 'get shit done' guy) who lives in the barn over the goats.  I still don't know what Baka's real name is, but Baka is 'village idiot' in chinese and 'gross thing' in Czech.  There are also wwoofers; Laura (lives in a tent) and Daniel (lives in the tree house). This already has the makings for an epic experience.  We also got to meet Oops the dog (daughter of a 17 year old mom, hence the name).

We got here on the weekend, while the boss was away, so we played.  After a lunch of leftovers most of us went down to the creek that runs through the property.  We hoofed it for about a mile until we reached a waterfall with a great swimming hole.  Came back and relaxed with some more leftovers for dinner (the night before we got here, Baka made a monstrous pot of beans that had to be worked down).  Daniel is a great guitar player and Laura has an amazing voice (she's a good guitarist/banjoist as well).  Sunday was similarly relaxing.

By Monday we were ready for real life on the farm.  I woke up at six and joined Daniel for his daily task of goat milking.  I decided to spend several days with him to get the goats comfortable with me (and vice versa) before doing it on my own.  I tried it myself this morning, with no success.  Laura takes care of breakfast every morning.  So after the goat milking, we had a nice breakfast where Mykael gets the list of tasks for the day.  At eight we head out to the garden/pasture/orchard to do whatever tasks we are given.  We generally work until lunch (except the one person who takes on lunch for that day, who heads in an hour earlier to get it done).  Lunch, and all meals, are announced by a bell.  We break from 1-3:30 then head back out till around six thirty.  One person gets dinner ready and we all sit down to eat around 6:45.  After dinner we relax a bit and some of us head to the hot tub.

Meals are an affair here.  There are a couple of vegetarians and one vegan, so we try to make vegetarian food.  We also utilize a solar oven as much as we can for our cooking.  About 80% of what we eat comes from the garden.  Its amazing how much you can make on your own.  All the greens, beans and corn come from the garden, eggs from the chicken (and chicken from the chicken now and then), milk, cheese and yogurt from the goats and fruits from the berry patches and orchards.  It really is a challenge to cook like that.  We have basic herbs and spices (grown here and dried), and other then flour, vinegars and oils we are on our own.  The first meal I cooked here, I made curried lentils with broccoli, collard greens and okra.  In my life I may have used those ingredients no more then once each.  The next day we added flour and water to the leftovers, ground em up, and made burgers out of them.

The people are amazing here.  Viola, another wwoofer, joined us a couple of days after we arrived.  I feel like each person is different and challenges my perceptions in different ways.  I have been thinking today that five years ago, I would have talked with these people for five minutes and thought they were crazy people.  It makes me so much happier that I have broken from the insular communities I spent the first 25 years of my life in.  To be able to listen to so many different perspectives on life and not hear them from an 'enlightened' stance that forces me to be dismissive, is great.  I still have to working on be less dismissive and judgmental, but I am moving in the right direction.  I feel like I will develop serious relationships with several of the people here before I leave.  I won't be talking with Eva saying "what were those peoples names in southern Oregon?" in a year from now.

 I haven't put a finger on what this place really is yet.  It's part farm, part homestead, part intentional community.  This is similar to a good couchsurfing experience.  There are times you surf/host with someone and there isn't that connection that you hope to happen. Then there is the one time that after 20 minutes, you realize that you aren't surfing; you've just found a home for the time you are surfing.  I feel more at home here then I have in years.

I'm going to stick around here for a couple of weeks.  They are putting on Llamapalooza, a music festival, on August 14/15.  I am amped up for that.  I'll probably help clean up the day after then head south to northern Cali.  I have more to write about, but I will hold off.  The last two days have been a momentous time in my life.  I need to dwell on my feelings before posting it.