Week Five and Six: High Note
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 chances of ruining my ability to brag about my tractor skills. Remember that Seinfeld episode where George decides to leave every conversation on a high note wherein he runs out of the room after he'd made a good joke? That was pretty much my strategy with this tractor situation... until I got caught. It finally came out that I had no more than a days experience on the tractor. My fellow interns spent the rest of the week finding me when there was tractor work to be done. The hardest part of learning to operate this giant orange machine is the whole clutch mystery. While trying to take hay to the goats I managed to stall the tractor a dozen times, even the goats were getting annoyed.
The farm owners, Will and Kent, are threatening to leave and force the interns to run the farm for a week. Well, it's really more of a planned vacation but it sure feels threatening. To prepare, Will is teaching me the process of hatching out baby chicks, a chore only he usually does. Chicks take 21 days to hatch out. On Friday we "candle" the 19 day old eggs and move them from the incubator to the hatcher, Sunday they hatch, and Monday they get shipped out to chick buyers. We don't actually use candles anymore to "candle" the eggs, it's a super bright flashlight that penetrates the egg and allows us to get an idea of whether or not there is a live chick inside the egg. When candling you are usually looking for a dark bottom and a light top with a clear distinguishable line between them. This tells us that a chick is scrunched in the bottom of the egg and the top is an air sack. If there's no chick the whole egg will light up like a globe. It's important to candle eggs before they go into the hatcher to make sure bacteria ridden eggs don't go in with heathly eggs. An egg full of bacteria could explode in the hatcher all over your newborn baby chicks, gross. The lighter the shell the more you can see - the white eggs are by far the most fun to candle, often you can see the tiny little chicken trying to squirm around inside. It's not very farmy of me but I was so excited the first time I saw a chick moving around in the egg I squealed.
Opening up the hatcher and seeing a couple hundred adorable fuzz balls is the best way to start your morning. They are all waddling around trying out their new legs, chirping, pecking, falling over... the cuteness is seriously overwhelming. The chicks are counted and separated by breed so we can accurately fill all the chick orders. Then the tiny little guys and gals are boxed up and shipped! The last thing a chick does before hatching is absorb the yolk, this allows them to go 72 hours without eating. I am still amazed by this.
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 chances of ruining my ability to brag about my tractor skills. Remember that Seinfeld episode where George decides to leave every conversation on a high note wherein he runs out of the room after he'd made a good joke? That was pretty much my strategy with this tractor situation... until I got caught. It finally came out that I had no more than a days experience on the tractor. My fellow interns spent the rest of the week finding me when there was tractor work to be done. The hardest part of learning to operate this giant orange machine is the whole clutch mystery. While trying to take hay to the goats I managed to stall the tractor a dozen times, even the goats were getting annoyed.
The farm owners, Will and Kent, are threatening to leave and force the interns to run the farm for a week. Well, it's really more of a planned vacation but it sure feels threatening. To prepare, Will is teaching me the process of hatching out baby chicks, a chore only he usually does. Chicks take 21 days to hatch out. On Friday we "candle" the 19 day old eggs and move them from the incubator to the hatcher, Sunday they hatch, and Monday they get shipped out to chick buyers. We don't actually use candles anymore to "candle" the eggs, it's a super bright flashlight that penetrates the egg and allows us to get an idea of whether or not there is a live chick inside the egg. When candling you are usually looking for a dark bottom and a light top with a clear distinguishable line between them. This tells us that a chick is scrunched in the bottom of the egg and the top is an air sack. If there's no chick the whole egg will light up like a globe. It's important to candle eggs before they go into the hatcher to make sure bacteria ridden eggs don't go in with heathly eggs. An egg full of bacteria could explode in the hatcher all over your newborn baby chicks, gross. The lighter the shell the more you can see - the white eggs are by far the most fun to candle, often you can see the tiny little chicken trying to squirm around inside. It's not very farmy of me but I was so excited the first time I saw a chick moving around in the egg I squealed.
Opening up the hatcher and seeing a couple hundred adorable fuzz balls is the best way to start your morning. They are all waddling around trying out their new legs, chirping, pecking, falling over... the cuteness is seriously overwhelming. The chicks are counted and separated by breed so we can accurately fill all the chick orders. Then the tiny little guys and gals are boxed up and shipped! The last thing a chick does before hatching is absorb the yolk, this allows them to go 72 hours without eating. I am still amazed by this.
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