Day 4

To fill everyone in, there are two other interns here besides me: Alex, the 20 year old from Massachusetts and Joe, the 30-year-old architecture student. Right now Alex has two friends, Caitlin and Brian, who are here visiting for ten days. Caitlin is a senior at Barnard this year and the two of us have grown pretty close in this short span of time. It will be strange to see her go since I will then be left in the midst of a boy-dominated world but maybe I will see her next year in New York if she decides to stay there. It’s really fun to work with her because we have a lot in common so we have a good time sharing stories and experiences while we get our work done. Because today was a slow day we spent most of the day cleaning together.

The two boys haven’t done the best job at keeping everything clean since Rachel left so when we arrived the kitchen was pretty revolting (to say the least). Mostly we scrubbed surfaces and tackled the giant chaos of mason jars into a somewhat manageable system. For lunch we provided dessert by baking two batches of mouth-watering chocolate chip cookies. After lunch we took on the even more daunting project of going through the walk in freezer in the crew kitchen. Because this was the freezer that was used for the Hoes Down Harvest Festival back in October, most of the food in there was moldy and complètement dégoutant. Needless to say, it was quite the accomplishment: Dru even gave us five gold stars on our imaginary chore charts. Haha. Though in my humble opinion, we should have gotten more like a lifetime of gold stars.

Apart from the stale bagels, old yogurt, coagulated olive oil, moldy cheese, bucket full of rotting olives, old tahini sauce and nasty ketchup, the most exciting part of the day was without a doubt the cow getaway. In the midst of our cleaning, Cailtin and I were crossing the yard to hose some dirty buckets off when all of a sudden Ushi, Betty and Mapache came tearing into vision. In hot pursuit, Dru came running behind shouting at us to catch them. I jumped at Ushi the calf, who was the only one with a lead rope on and handed her away to be taken back to her pen. With two cows still left to capture, Caitlin, Hallie and I set off down the driveway behind Mapache and her calf. Then seeing that they weren’t going in the desired direction, Paul quickly jumped in the Kubota to herd them toward the pens. Gaining an advantage, Hallie and I then grabbed at Mapache in hopes that Betty would follow her. We struggled against the force of the full-grown cow but Paul confidently took her from us and began to lead her away. With one swift movement though Mapache knocked him on his back and not wanting to let go, he was dragged through the grass. Hallie caught up and took her back, successfully leading her in to the pen with a bucket of grain. Betty followed her mother soon after with just a little coaxing. Moral of the story: now I know I will be very careful the next time I decide to take one of the calves on a walk!

 

P.S. I’m starting to lose track of the days, today I was baffled multiple times by the fact that tomorrow is already Friday…