Babies abound!

Yesterday began with Erin, Alix, and I looking forward to the day ahead. Erin and Alix got to feed the animals and I was given the task of gathering potatoes.

John instructed me on the proper way to gather the potatoes. Until this point I knew you pop a potato in the ground but had no idea what happened after that. Magic and it appears at the store!

Apparently the baby potatoes are called "new potatoes" and they are white. It is when they are left in the ground longer that they become brown. There is a large bush type thing on top. I found this lovely image on the internet as the pictures I was trying to take with muddy fingers were not demonstrating the concept.

First you pull away all of the weeds followed by grasping the plant as close to the ground as possible and pulling it out of the ground. These plants are heavy! If you are lucky most of the potatoes will come out and you pull them off the roots. Not lucky=digging in the ground with your fingers to get them out. The ground at this level is quite compact and my fingers fatigued quite quickly.

John left a large fork for me to use with the instructions "Do not stab my potatoes." That put the fear into me and the fork remained unused. I have decided that gathering potatoes is great for upper extremity exercise. After gathering two wheelbarrows worth of potatoes, rinsing them and putting them in plastic crates it was time for lunch.

Whilst I was burning some serious calories with my potato dance (I am thinking of making a farmwork exercise video) Erin and Alix were weeding onions. I glanced across the field and saw them standing in one place gesticulating. While we all have our individual weeding dances this was a dance unbeknown to me. I wandered over and discovered that they had found a baby hare! It was so cute! There is a video of it and pictures on facebook. Erin thought she stepped on it and it was cowering under the weeds by the onions. We pondered what to do with it for about ten minutes ( I vacillated between circle of life and lets raise it to be a pet arguments). We didn't know if we should tell John about it because we thought that he would shoot it. (:

Erin fetched a bucket and put it in it with her jacket over it and we decided we would confer over what to do with it at lunch. Once lunchtime arrived Stanley the Bunny (my name, Alix wanted to call him fluffy but with her french accent it sounds like floofy) apparently was not injured as he had hopped out of the bucket. Problem solved!

During the weekends we are responsible for preparing our own lunch. Yesterday the menu consisted of leftover vegetable hodgepodge from the night before (chard, zucchini, onions, garlic, carrots, & broccoli), a vegetable pot pie from the store downstairs and brownies for dessert. Over our meal we conferred about how happy we were that he had made his escape and was off living a happy bunny life.

When we returned to the field there was Stanley! We decided to see if he was still in the same spot when we were done working at 4 and then we would decided what to do. The general consensus was not to tell John, aka shoot the bunny.

As I was weeding I pulled up a clump of grass, and lo and behold it was Stanley's sister, Gertrude! (just made that name up as I typed) Now we had no idea what to do. Alix decided that they missed each other and needed to be reunited so she requested that I reunite them as I was the only one with gloves. Thus I carried Gertrude over to Stanley (mind you large amounts of time have been spent on these bunnies!) and reunited them. Bunny reaction was nil. Yet we sang "Reunited cause it feels so good" and went back to work.

Last night for dinner Alix made crepes that were AMAZING. We put butter, sugar, and cinnamon on them. I was in heaven. We invited John & Laura up for crepes and they enjoyed them as well.
Me: "John what would happen if you saw a baby hare in the vegetable fields?"
John: "I would shoot it."

Not to worry he was kidding! Apparently hares are protected by law as their populations have been dwindling so they would not have done anything. Laura informed us that hares typically sit in the bushes, they do not burrow. They were quite amused by our master plan of saving the hares.

I am sure I am going to get some comments on this about how I have used
"hare" and "bunny" interchangeably and I am sure there is a difference, but when it is so cute and small and cuddly how can you not call it a bunny?

Last night after dinner we headed out to the local pub for karaoke. After a 45 minute walk we were surprised to see that the pub was not lively. There were 5 other people in it. 2 bartenders, and three elderly local gentlemen drinking whiskey.

We stayed at the pub for a bit and then decided to go to another pub about 7 miles away that was supposed to be hoppin. Upon entry it was packed! They had a great cover band playing everything from Van Morrison to Snow Patrol (both locals) to Oasis. After enjoying a pint there we headed back to the original pub to see if the crowd had increased.

There was a large group of local farmers there trying to convince us to go to a "Young Farmers Party" next weekend in a town north of us. We shall see about that! These young farmers were amazed that we were volunteering on the farm here and told us that they would put us to work on their farms and actually pay us. (:

I told them I only work on organic farms and was met with organic is rubbish and they can't taste the antibiotics in meat! I let that argument die. After that they found out that I am a vegetarian and the looks on their faces was almost as if I cut off my ears in front of them. I was then peppered with questions such as "How do you survive, and Do you at least eat pork?"

This morning I relayed the conversation to Laura.
Me: "They acted like I was so exotic, have they never met a vegetarian?"
Laura: "No we usually shoot them around here." - said with a smile
Me: "I heard that they were protected by law." (:

Today we met our newest WWoofer, Jorg from Germany. Jorg is a giant. Literally the man is 6"5. He is staying in the building next door and comes to our apartment to use the kitchen and eat with us. If you have seen my pictures on flickr you will have seen that the kitchen is tiny! He has to bend to enter the doorways!

He is coming here for 3 months to practice his english. Not sure if he knows what he has gotten himself into. He showed up for his first day of farmwork in a button down shirt. We talked him out of wearing tennis shoes in the fields and into a pair of rubber boots.

The morning was spent finishing weeding the onions, I am so in love with the smell of them when you weed them. It is beckoning of dishes to be made, meals to be savored.

For lunch today I had another vegetable pot pie and a pita sandwich made of goat Camembert, balsamic vinaigrette, lettuce, tomatoes, and onions. It was sooooo good!

After lunch Alix and Erin got to gather and shuck peas while Jorg and I weeded carrots. These carrots were a lot larger than the ones we weeded the other day so the task was a bit more enjoyable. As enjoyable as it can be weeding in the Ireland rain!

John gave us a demo at the beginning.
John: You grab it from here and pull.
Me: What happens if I grab a carrot? Can I replant it?
John: No, you wipe it off and eat it. These are the sweetest carrots you will ever have.

Thus when I pulled out the carrots I wiped them off on my pants and WOW they are so good! it is really interesting the difference between outside grown and polytunnel grown as well. These carrots pretty much put all other carrots to shame. I ate a lot of dirt today. And I loved it! Laura said I was eating a lot of bacteria. I said my stomach will kill it! Can you believe it, Jessica the germ-phobe is eating dirt and loving every minute of it!

Tonight Erin made us a lovely meal of organic pasta with a puttanesca sauce of eggplant, zucchinic, peppers, garlic, onions, cherry tomatoes, oregano, thyme, basil, olives, and olive oil. It was so good. She also made roasted potatoes with rosemary & olive oil. Homemade banana bread with fresh raspberries was our dessert. During the meal we had 3 pound chuck . While it doesn't roll off your tongue like 3 buck chuck, it tasted HORRIBLE. Like fruit juice! We have decided tomorrow after work we will go for a bike ride and pick up better wine.

From baby hares to baby potatoes it has been an interesting couple of days!