Olives

This morning Hallie told me the story about being bit in the crotch by a crazy Mongolian guard dog that was living with a band of traveling gypsies that once stopped by the farm. Today she and I lived through a market that was almost as surreal as the story she had so recently recounted...

Having forgotten it was Friday Hallie, Alex and I all scrambled to put together our weekly marketita for the local neighbors. With the vegetables just freshly laid out on the table, we sat down to take a few breaths of air before being bombarded by a very unexpected crowd of visitors. First a few of the usuals came by but they were soon forgotten when a mysterious market truck pulled up the driveway followed by a big cloud of dust.

All eyes turned as the truck lumbered in and then parked itself right in the middle of our yard. We watched as three unlikely characters stepped out of the cab and were surprised when they immediately set off yakking away about the motherlode of olives they had stowed away in their large truck. The most talkative of the three was an eccentric old french lady who rambled on and on about her husband's wonderful olives and their small goat herd. Next in eccentricity, her son (who closely resembled Aldous Snow, http://wedofunny.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/russell-brand.jpg), a strange parisian with lots of tattoos and eye make-up chimed in by rattling off all the nutritional qualities that the raw olives provided to the digestive system. His girlfriend (I assume) was a shy but edgy young girl with a short blond bob who simply stood and nodded the whole time.

While all this was going on, Hallie and I pretty much stood there dumbfounded while they stuffed olives in our mouths and talked to us about enzymes and the olive curing process. When they finally left we looked at each other and screamed "traveling olive gypsies!"

A warm day

The light is just at that perfect tipping point, there's still enough light to see but the bats are starting to come out and shadows begin to stealthily swallow the orchard around us. The heat of the day is still in the air and on our faces. A circle of hay bales surrounds a roaring campfire which sparks dangerously close to Rawley's fiddling elbow. I'm surrounded by kids and while they do their twists and flips I dosey doe to the music and inhale the elation that the kids seem to give off.

Clear signs

You know you live on a farm when...

I'm filling out my physical therapy questionnaire, it asks me what goals I would like to achieve at the end of my rehab listing examples like "play golf". I fill in, "I want to be able to milk a cow with two hands".

Holidays

April first is taken very seriously here. On thursday the pranks started at 6:30am with a call from Amon saying that Andrew hadn't shown up with the market truck and he was worried something had happened to him. Panicked and still half asleep Dru then dialed Andrew who kept it going by saying he had blown a tire on the 505 until he and Amon finally burst out laughing.

To pay back their prank we then spent our entire lunch hour plotting ways to get Andrew when he got back from the market. Among the best ideas was our plan to steal Andrew's truck. We would drive down to San Rafael with the spare key and drive the truck home while Andrew was in his meeting. As an after thought we decided it would be extra fun to leave behind one of those red and yellow Fisher Price toy trucks in its place and maybe even spray it with fish emulsion for a special touch. Next we decided it would be more clever to call ahead to the weigh station and have the CHP pull him aside for possessing a stolen vehicle. Unfortunately none of our plans really developed themselves except for a half-hearted attempt at scaring Andrew by placing a pigs' head from the butcher in the front seat of his car.