Well made it through the first day of work alive. The pictures I posted last night were from yesterdays wanderings so I hope you enjoyed them. I will talk about Wednesday even though today is Thursday since I was too tired to do it last night. I woke up super early to the sounds of dogs barking and many many birdcalls. My phone said it was 630am so I laid there for little bit then got up wondering how late people slept in. I wandered outside and the only person I saw was Charlie, the old naturalist that also lives here on the farm year round. I went out and walked through all of the plots seeing what all I may have missed on my quick tour the night before. Lots of different things going on in different places around here. Went all the way to the back of the prop (totals ab 2.7 acres) and looked out over the cliff that serves as the property line. Watched a woodpecker for a minute before he moved on and was drawn to a little hummingbird flitting between flowers by his little chirpy, almost constant call. It was still grey at this point and I was wondering if it was just going to be an overcast day. Then I looked up at the mountain and saw that the sun was just about to burst from behind it. I looked down at my watch to see what time it was and realized that my phone had been an hour early. I was only just now becoming 6am. Oops. Well, I was already up and about so I grabbed a tangerine from a tree and snacked on it while i kept walking through the gardens. When the sun broke over the mountain it immediately lit up all the trees in the grove and it looked like full daytime. As I approached the house, 2 of the little mutts started following me, so I went around the front of the house and we sat on the porch and just enjoyed the rest of the sunrise. The third little dog soon joined us and I had to take turns petting them or I would get a nudge from the one who was being left out. Eventually people started trickling into the kitchen and I kind of just stood back and watched what happens in the morning. It is pretty much every man for himself so there were about 3 things happening at once everywhere in the kitchen. Roman (the french boy) was experimenting with banana smoothies while his girlfriend Claire made pancakes for them to take on their hike for the day. Yung (from south korea) was making eggs with onions and garlic and attempting to make coffee on the stove. Chris (scottish) started soaking some bread to make (and burn eventually) french bread while others just wandered in and out looking for coffee or some combination of food to eat. I was forced to try about 3 different experimental smoothies before the morning was over (nothing to bold, since Roman thought you only put banana and ice in them origionally.) After breakfast several people left to take a hike to a nearby waterfall while the rest of us went out to get started on our assigned chores. I wandered out in my sweatshirt bc on the front porch there is a good breeze and i was chilly. As soon as I got to the garden I had to strip down from the suns heat and went back in to apply sunblock before I regretted it.
I started my day by rescuing a volunteer tomato plant that had sprung up in the stick pile and was a bit bogged down. I used some nearby bamboo poles to prop up as much of it as I could wrestle out from under the sticks and help it grow out of instead of into the pile. There is a picture of that glorious masterpiece in my first gallery I believe. Next, I found some clippers and trimmed off the blooms from some "weeds" in the "keyhole garden". They are left bc they are pretty in the center, but trying to encourage them not to spread. Then I spent the rest of the afternoon edging a pepper bed toward the back of the farm. Lunch was a group affair with spaghetti (with some of my weeds in it, yum) and salad and potatoes. Then back to the pepper bed to rake up what I had edged before lunch and continue around the back side. As I was doing this I kept hearing crashing noises and what I thought was the call of a bird. When no people arrived on the hill (from the hike i thought) I realized it was probably the monkeys that were supposed to stop by on occasion. You can imagine my delight when it was! 20 or so little capuchin monkeys were jumping from tree to tree and stealing fruit from the neighbors trees. They sat up in the giant guanacasta tree and peeled and ate the fruit before moving on. I probably watched them (and was watched in return) for about 20min while they went back and forth between trees and properties. A couple times they crossed right over my head! There were lots of little ones as well, and it was really cute to see them clinging to their moms backs for the big jumps.
It seemed that dinner was to be on me, since everyone else had had recent turns, so I got online and looked up some ways to prepare banana flower as it had been a topic of discussion the night before. All of the recipes required things that we did not have in our sparse kitchen so I just read how to prepare the flowers then decided to cook them in with some other things and hope for the best. Maddie (from mass.) helped me with the tedious chore of peeling apart all the petals and destemming the little blooms. It turned my hands and fingernails an awful shade of brown. There was much experimentation and in the end it was decided that the little flowers, however popular they may be in India, are way too bitter to be enjoyed with potatoes and squash. The few further experiments Maddie did were a bit more successful but we decided it was only because they were hidden more and more by other flavors. We did get a bit of whitefish from Robert (owner) and Claire helped me fry that up along with some leftovers and Yungs bread and we managed to feed all 10 people. The banana flowers will probably not be attempted again. That was the dish hardly anyone touched lol
