Farming at Last

Well I am here, though I'm not sure where 'here' is exactly.  Somewhere near McMinville, OR.  You know you are in the middle of nowhere when your closest reference point is called McMinville.  Kate (our hostess) picked us up on Monday and brought us here.  The farm is delightful.  We are staying in a comfortable room. We had some tea and scones, then watered some plants.  Dinner and off to bed  Utterly civilized.

Tuesday morning we rolled out of bed around 7am, helped out with some household chores (fed the dog, cats and chickens), had a little breakfast and got to work.  It started out easy enough.  We helped out in the nursery, where we pruned all the plants.  Tedious and time consuming, but not so draining.  We had a nice lunch.

Civilization ended around 3pm.  We got down to the real farming.  Weeding, sowing and planting a bed.  Spending a couple of hours on your knees pulling thorny plants out of the ground, then digging up the ground, shoveling loads of compost, all while the sun is baking you to a crisp makes it rather difficult to find a silver lining.  After finishing off my liter of water I went inside to refill it.  I drank a whole liter, then filled it again to take outside.  I have never sweated so much in my life (until the next day).  It was absolutely draining.  At about 6:30pm we called it a day in the garden.  Then all that was left to do was water the plants and prepare dinner.  Yesterday was pretty much a copy of Tuesday.

I couldn't believe how exhausted I was.  Its been too long since I've spent my whole day doing physical work.  I am hoping that it will only take a couple of weeks before a days work doesn't leave me whimpering for my bed.  I can't imagine what type of wreck I'd be in if we didn't have normal accommodations (many wwoofing farms offer a tee pee or 'make your own' sleeping accommodations).

As physically exhausting as its been, it has been emotionally uplifting.  For the first time in my life I feel that what I'm doing is rewarding on more then one level.  I'm getting the physical benefit (though its hard to view it as such right now), the monetary benefit, and the communal benefit.  Its true that room and board (thats what you get for 20 hours of work a week while wwoofing) is not the same as earning a paycheck.  But I do feel that I am earning my way.  And to be part of a process that produces basic staples in people's lives is edifying.  For some reason, I never got that vibe selling diamonds.

Most important for me is the radical change in lifestyle.  I'm going to save that for another post though.  Eva and I are taking Saturday and Sunday off.  We are planning to hitchike to the Pacific Coast and hike/camp for two days.  Should be a lot of fun (and material).