and, it's July...

 Farm life has been a busy one of lately and I have found myself more exhausted in the evenings, henceforth, no entries of lately for my three followers!  I have now been on the farm for a month and it seems like three (in a good way).  In all honesty, life on the farm is getting better and better.  The community of interns are becoming more tight, the veggies are ample and bursting forth with vibrant colors, and we have now started Tuesday jam sessions which include banjos, a fiddle (ME!!), a couple guitars, a mandolin, and the potential for more.  The work days are often long, dirty, and filled with sun and sweat which exponentially make harvest days that much more rewarding reaping the fruits, or should I say veggies of our labor.

So, every week we spend an afternoon working for Stark Winery in Stark Mn, a young organic winery.  Two weeks ago, our job was to pick 200 pounds of strawberries from Robin's sons organic strawberry patch.  This so-thought 4 hour long project turned into a 9 hour afternoon of work.  We picked 47 buckets of strawberries and probably ingested at least 3 more between the six of us during the 4 hours of picking.  But...it didn't end there, then we came home and had to clean ALL of the strawberries.  It was a definite team & patience building project.  The theme of the evening was the classic "Desert Island" where we decide what 3 people, 3 books, 3 items, etc we would bring with us while we were stranded on a desert island.  Kinda felt like summer camp for a while.  Well, the good news was that we had no melt downs, the Lord of the Flies was referenced several times, and Gigi will have a full band on the island for our listening pleasure.  :)

Chick, chick, chicks!

 We got baby chicks Tuesday, July 5th!  They are so damn cute!!!  Another example of the fact that small things bring me a lot of joy.  These are only a fraction of the photos I took...I couldn't even handle the cuteness.  Well, we have 50, now down to 49, bless that little one's soul.  It's hard to see, but in the photo above, you can see one brownish/calico colored chix...he's a cutie.

Liz, myself, and Emily taking a dip in the Sunrise River...our new favorite swimming hole.