Life on an organic farm is… hot, sweaty, dirty and intense when bailing hay…..

So the dreaded act of farming, the one that I had been warned about by at least 5 men upon saying that I was working on a farm, two being my grandfathers, finally arrived yesterday. Bailing the first part of the first cut of hay left us in nothing but sweat, with hay sticking to that sweat and a yearning desire to emerge our bodies into the pond. Ellyn and I loaded the hay from the wagons onto the conveyer belt to the barn, as Richard and his brother brought them in from the fields, and the Eric’s piled them up in the barn. It was the first day that finally felt like summer weather. The weather when cutting up fields for bailing, and the transition to the barn must be as idealist as possible, and boy did we feel it. Ellyn and I were sweating up a storm outside, but got a laugh when Eric the intern emerged from the sweltering hot barn with his t-shirt drenched in sweat after the first load. A workout it was, and after we finished the first of the 11 wagon filled with hay, equaling 1,600 bails for the 11 wagons, I downed Gatorade like it was the last thing I’d ever be able to drink. It didn’t take me long to regret my intake as I could feel it in my stomach, and never wish to drink that stuff ever again. Gotta love that high fructose corn syrup.... As the cows blissfully grassed away in the field from 1 to 7 yesterday, we began the grueling processes of making sure they have enough hay to eat throughout the winter; and they say humans are the higher species. The three of us interns jumped in the pond in our nasty clothes when we finished up, and I must say, it was probably one of the most refreshing experiences I’ve ever had in my life. :)

Today, the sun beat down on us, but once again, the cool water of the pond felt perfect as it washed away our grotesque bodies, and made the day’s work worth it. As the weather changes, we find ourselves switching from jeans and boots to shorts and sneakers, leaving the dirt to attractively stick to the sweat on the backs of our legs as we weed in the fields, where every minute it seems, you break to find a inch of clean space on your arm to wipe the sweat off your upper lip.

It’s as far a life from glamorous as you could imagine, but we’re supplying Upstate Vermonters with clean, healthy, fresh produce and beef from the most content cows around, making these intense days all the more worthwhile when the work is complete. Today, as I dried off from my swim, by laying down and reading about Micheal J. Fox's life on the grass, our chicken friend came up right next to me, but quickly jumped back a couple feet when I looked up from my book. I continued to read as clothes blew dry above me on the line in the breeze, could hear Maddie and Calvin laughing in their water buckets, and hear Heart (our calf) mooing in the background, and couldn't help but thinking that apart from the work, this truely is pretty close to paradise.