Angel's Farm Reflection 22

Angel Arias                        Silk Tree Farm                        6/6/13

Some things that we talked about were my time there, my ending time, and what the last day might look like. My exhibition is next Tuesday, so I won’t be there that day, and since pretty soon we’re going to be having a lot of things going on in my advisory, next Thursday will be my last day there. My advisor was also coming to the farm today to go over the RWL (real world learning) rubric with us, later in the day. After the things that usually go on in the mornings, like watering the fodder system, and straightening out what we were going to do for the day, we headed out and Cathy started trimming the goats’ hooves. I’d never seen this happen, so I wasn’t sure how it was going to and what was going to happen. Basically, using the milk stand, she stood them up, grabs one of their legs, and with a pair of hand-cutters, started trimming the edges of their individual hooves. It took a little while, since we were doing it individually, and especially since some of the goats were more cooperative than others. As an example, when they were standing up there, some of them would get upset and start kicking out because they were uncomfortable, but once they were feeling better, they stopped. After we were done with that, the greenhouse tomatoes were watered by Cathy while I grabbed some hay to cover the potatoes with. We started to pile it onto them like usual, and I’ll just take this time to say that the potatoes are doing very well. Of all the things that are growing, this is one of the things I am most proud of. I also used a hoe for the first time today, and I already had a vague understanding of how to use, but I was refreshed on how to do so before actually using it. In the back garden behind the goat pen is where I was weeding, I’d go down a between a row of vegetables, taking care not to run over any innocuous plants, until I was done with the row. I’d also get a bit distracted with grass, since grass is generally looked at as a weed at the farm. What I really mean by that is, anything that is growing that is not what you’re trying to grow, including grass, is a weed. I started tearing up chunks from the ground, until I realized that it was a futile effort and more grass is going to grow everywhere no matter how hard I weed. During the day, Cathy told me about how she was going to process at least some of the chickens on Thursday, and how she wasn’t sure about how she could work it out so I could be there on a processing day. I’d told her beforehand that I would greatly appreciate being able to be there on a processing day, because I really wanted to be able to experience it. It seems like a very important task on the farm, to me, at least. Nonetheless, she said that we could start getting the processing materials ready for the next day. That consisted of cleaning several bins with a hose and scrubbing them clean with a hand-scrubber. When all that was done, we headed inside, and before very long my advisor was there. We went over the rubric together, talked about and discussed what we thought I would get for scores, and then we were pretty much done with it. I gave my advisor a tour of the farm, and, since my advisor was coming, she was also driving me back, so I wasn’t taking the bus back to Providence. This concludes my day at Silk Tree Farm.