Home Groan: My Adventures in Agriculture

Our senior intern finished up his internship and left last week which means we have a brand new intern starting this week. I was assigned the task of training him to do 'the rounds'. "But wait, no, I'm still learning, I can't train someone yet - shouldn't I be certified or something?!"  I didn't get far in my protest. While training I thought about all my past bosses and tried to channel their good energy - "OK McK be clear, be patient, be direct... ".  My internal pep talk was going OK until I realized I was talking to myself more than I was the new intern I was supposed to be training. Somewhere between explaining proper coop moving patterns and channeling positive vibes we had a small incident with the gator (see below for "gator" definition) where the chain, which is attached to the gator and used to pull the coops, got wrapped around the back wheel while it was still hooked to the coop. It was a total mess and took us the b...

Since most of my fifth week was spent driving back to TN I'm combining week five and six. In celebration of the first day of fall I came back from TN to find the polytunnel covered in plastic. It went from being an outdoor garden surrounded by a metal skeleton to a toasty warm indoor greenhouse.  We ripped up the tomato plants, dumped compost, raked new beds, and then seeded our fall crops.  As much as I love and already miss tomatoes I was really tired of picking hundreds... HUNDREDS every Friday.  Hello and welcome lettuce, spinach, and kale! I have skillfully avoided tractor work since I had my first tractor tutorial on day one.  My first and only tractor experience had gone great - no one got hurt, no property was damaged, and I didn't completely embarrass myself.  I even felt comfortable telling people I could drive a tractor, sort of.   I was really hoping to hold on to this positive memory, trying out the tractor again would only increase my chan...

An average day:  Our work day starts at 7:30 a.m. and ends anywhere between 4:30 p.m. and  6:30 p.m.  There's a white dry-erase board hanging in the barn where all the chores are listed. The chores are typically either garden (weeding, spreading compost, seeding, watering, etc.) or animal (feeding, tending to medical needs, moving to a new pasture, etc.) or farm maintenance (fence mending, mowing, coop fixing, etc.)  Someone is assigned to "the rounds" (feeding all the animals) and everyone else works off the white board.  Dinner is at 6:30 p.m.; everyone has an assigned night to cook, mine is Monday.  Post-dinner chores can range anywhere from closing a chicken coop (quick) to moving a pregnant pig into a shelter so she doesn't give birth somewhere crazy, like the pig wallow (more elaborate). This week we moved pregnant pigs and sleeping chickens,  closed coops, fed runt piglets, and had to convince a dog to jump over an electric fence into the next p...