the final countdown

3 days to go, until I go.  Today was more or less routine in a more or less pleasant way. I baked alone from 5am to about 4pm which entails zombie shuffling to the bake house at 5 to rake out the embers from the oven, then mixing dough until around 7:30 when the breakfast meeting happens.  After that it's constant espresso with fresh cream, loud music from my flour saturated ipod player, and an hour of dough division until the oven has cooled enough to begin baking - 765 degrees.  At 4pm I pulled the final 6lb rye loaves from the now 550 degree oven and zombie reshuffled up the hill to the intern house for a nap in the hammock with an anchor steam beer and an open book on my chest.  Around 6 I awoke to mosquitos and thunderclouds. After a small solo dinner I did a (successful) trial pack of my bag for europe.  So here I am with about an hour before I should be sleeping, since I get to sleep in tomorrow (7am!).  2....1...

Next...

*I forgot to explain the text. It´s the end of the first stanza of Whitman´s Song of Myself, in the green ink of Holden´s brother Allee´s baseball glove, in the font of the title page of the original pressing of Don Quixote.

Haven't posted in a while due to an effective combination of constant fatigue and lack of a camera, both of which are unfortunate because this place is so damn pretty.  Only 3 or 4 days left before leaving Bobolink and I seem to have finally found an equilibrium point in managing the workload and "idiosyncratic" personalities of the farm.  I've learned quite a bit, almost entirely about how to deal with people, and the vast majority of that by being shown what not to do.  I never want to to be incapable of listening to advice or receiving feedback, or being corrected.  If anyone ever sees me condescending to a subordinate please hit me in the face with something soft.  This place has been inspiring in certain ways, and has nudged me towards cynicism in others.  The takeaway for me I guess, is that quality can cover many sins.  

Leaving for Hanover, NH on June 4.  Pic is regarding a surprise to come. 

alive alive, alive

Finished work today with enough energy to think for once.  Been doing quite a bit of scheming in the last few days as to my fall plans (besides the school thing).  I've found some sources of grass fed raw milk in the VT NH area and so I intend to make my own cheese now that I know how.  

Think I might keep a hen and some ducks for eggs since pets are allowed.  

I will definitely be roasting my own coffee, and have found plans for an easy to construct brick oven using cast-able firebrick from a near bye company.  I also have a book for growing my own hops in the spring.  

Later I intend to take classes at these 2 institutes:  

florence of academy of art

Siebel Institute of Technology

 that's about it for now. i think.

NOTE: as I was typing this a bull escaped and wandered into the driveway of the intern house.  so I spent  a few minutes chasing him around with the broken handle of a rake.

the grinding wheel

time is moving so frighteningly quickly that somehow I'm halfway done here and have yet to move my sleeping set up from the couch and my bags from the living room.  Work-> sleep: repeat.   will post more text when I've finished the second stage of the formula.  More pictures for now.

things I've butchered so far:

a wild boar

a rooster

a long day

and I spent most of it covered in cow shit and boar's blood.  Since Bobolink doesn't bake on Monday or Tuesday, I spent the morning, afternoon, and most of the evening doing a number of the infinite miscellaneous chores that exist on a farm.  Herding, milking, cheese salting.  Being kicked, lifted, and constantly defecated upon.  And the final insult is having to take a snow shovel and clean up all the excrement that didn't land on my body or clothing.  I also spent around an hour picking the hair off of the boar meat that I cut yesterday.  After finishing around 6:00 I walked off into the woods to look for morels, finding a small handful.  Really looking forward to the bake room tomorrow even if I have to start at 5.  

 

just some photos

"it's my first day"

It started at 7:30 with a breakfast meeting around the kitchen table, a briefing between bites of granola with fresh cream.  I was shown dough division, shaping, resting (the dough), rising, baking, scraping, slashing, stacking, repeating.  After a quick lunch of tuna salad sandwiches and pickled chipotle pepper, I "helped" move the cows from one pasture to the next by carrying a new born calf, and looked over the misty hill field of I-can't-believe-it's-not-scotland, new jersey.   The day ended after 6:00 when the largest and last loaves were pulled from the oven, prep for tomorrow completed, and 175lbs of firewood stacked & ignited for the next day's baking.  The place is amazing, the people are amazing-er, the animals are amazingly delicious, and a glass of homebrew mead after a 12 hour day is a magnificent thing.

a swap of shoes for boots

Just finished one of the greatest meals of my life, one apparently composed entirely of "leftovers."  Stuffed veal breast simmered in god knows what goodness on soba noodles, freshly foraged morel mushrooms sauteed with fiddle head ferns and bacon, foie gras and peasant olive rye bread, followed by gulps of homebrewed buckwheat honey mead....  yeah

So I have officially begun my Bobolink Internship Adventure.  Right now I'm in the sort of foodie frat house where the interns live surrounded by obscure spices, wine bottles, piles of 5th hand work clothes, wine bottles, coffee grounds, wine bottles, and 1970s fda posters about Great Grains! . 

day will begin at 7:30 tomorrow.  Many photos to come. divine disorder in this place.