Oh yeah … we went farmin’ !
So, this Saturday Katja (sv Imagine) took another one off her hat and arranged for a visit to the Wild Willow Farm and Education Center. This property is located south of San Diego, almost at the border with Mexico, and is dedicated to the development of sustainable farming. Every Saturday they open to the public and accept volunteer work. Each group signs in, and is assigned a task.
It was another one of those beautiful Southern California days, warm and sunny, and we all signed up for it.
We were assigned to clean up a bunch of fava beans which had just been harvested:
While the ants were busy tending to their daily work …
… so did we with our fava, Debra (s/v Coastal Drifter) and Katja (s/v Imagine) leading the way:
I got a little distracted with the natural beauty around us …
Luckily, the group was highly concentrated at their tasks, and soon we were done with the fava:
Then, the farm staff let us take what was left of the fava plants to feed the goats:
We all had a good time, including (and especially) the goats:
But Paulo was up for more. After playing with the goats and quenching his thirst, he told us he wanted to work with “real” farm tools … “something like a shovel“, he said
We encouraged him to express his interest to the farm staff, and sooner than we could expect, he’d gotten us some shovelin’:
Our next task was then to take cartloads of compost to apply to 4 rows of soil that was being prepared to receive some new produce:
The medal of the day goes to Debra, who farmed with gusto, inspiring all of us with her drive – here, placing the irrigation hoses back in place after we had covered the 4 rows of soil with compost:
At the end of all that, Paulo was one happily tired child:
While there, the staff served us a light lunch, of course prepared with ingredients as fresh as it can get. One of the best salads I’ve ever had. After that, the girls catch fresh strawberries for desert – doesn’t get any better.
Quite a day it was. We had fun, did good exercise, ate healthy, and had a meaningful experience. Both Paulo and Raquel had been expressing a growing interest on farming, which I believe might have originated from the game Minecraft. So, it was really cool for them to see the real thing. Both were really happy, and are already asking to go back the next weekend 🙂
(*): Side story – in order to get the title for this post, I googled “what does the Goat say”, to see if there was any established form of capturing their “speech”, like Moooo for caws. It turns out there isn’t … some people will say it is “Baaaa”, other “Meeeeeeeeh”, and there was even a “Meh-he-he-he”, so I came up with my own interpretation. But was was really interesting on this process, is that I found this incredibly hilarious thread on a forum. If you have some time to spare, check it out.
Have a nice Sunday !