deutschland

So, I'm in Germany. It's been a ton of fun, spending Christmas with a wonderful family, skiing in the Alps, ice skating on ponds. You know, the regular winter stuff. It's been quite a change from the beautiful Mediterranean clime of Southern Spain, but I'm glad to be reminded of what real winter weather is like again.

The countryside has been a winter wonderland for the most part. I took a train from the Northern-Central part of Germany (Kassel) to Ulm in the Southwest. The landscape was covered in a thick frost that almost looked like snow. Although we haven't had any flakes fall since I've been here, the temperature has been below freezing and the existing white stuff hasn't gone yet.


The Alps were covered and the skiing conditions were perfect. We spent a good portion of the day working our way across a resort nestled in the lower mountains that lay at the beginning of the range in Germany. We even crossed over a mountain to ski into an Austrian valley at one point.

That night, we stayed in a cottage with friends of German #2's family. These people cared for her and her brother while their parents worked as they were growing up, and taught them to ski. The cottage was situated at the bottom of a snow-covered valley and we had to ski in from the road because there was no driveway. The whole house was heated by wood stoves and furnaces and was as hot as an oven compared to the frozen world outside. We cooked a small dinner on an old-fashioned wood-burning stove and ate in the light of a propane lamp (the cottage has no electricity). I turned in early, after nearly falling asleep in the toasty kitchen. My bed was cozy in the cool bedroom. I had heavy, down-filled blankets to keep me warm after the day of outdoor fun.

Before heading home, we decided to ski-climb the hill behind the cottage and ski back down in the deep snow. As I'd never done either of those things, I provided a bit of comic relief to the event. But it was so much fun, and I should have a video pending to post. Remember dune-diving? Yeah, it went a little like that.

Now I've been dropped off at the home of German #1. I realized he has not yet made it into this blog. He's a friends I met at the Farm in MA and he left a year ago already. By the time I started this blog, he'd been gone. So far, we've made good time ticking off to-do's from our list, seeing some ancient Roman ruins nearby, ice skating and eating warm apple strudel with vanilla sauce, and hanging out with his friends. I met a very fun young woman who is American because of her parents, but has lived in Germany nearly her whole life. Strangely enough, she identifies more strongly with her American citizenship.

More details will come of my time in the small village outside of Stuttgart in the coming days. Right now, there has just been too much to catch up on and we're planning on seeing Heidelberg today. Ciao for now!

and... we're back!

Merry Christmas to you all! I've made it to Germany and have been celebrating with German #2 and her family. It's been a very lovely holiday for me and it makes me miss all my friends and family back home even more. I'm looking forward to seeing you all when I get back home.

Ok, there were just too many to try to post them in an order I wanted, so I just put all the things I wrote for the past few weeks in one post. I hope you enjoy reading about my time at the funny farm; it sure was a trip.

Happy Holidays!

here goes...

abandoned

My host has gone to Belgium for four days, leaving Onur, Claudia (two other volunteers) and me alone with no car. He’s given us a list of chores to complete in his absence, but it seems we’re having a hard time finding the motivation to do them. Onur and Claudia seem only to be interested in smoking our host’s weed and wasting my computer’s battery. I’ve managed to get a total of 45 minutes for myself the whole four days. Now, my laptop’s battery is dead and the solar panel has failed, too. We have no electricity and no internet. Thankfully, the water is heated by gas and we have propane ranges and wood stoves for cooking and warmth. I can handle a little blackout, I think.

spanish cowboys

Our host hadn’t been gone six hours and we received visitors. Two strangers on horseback appeared, looking for the man. They told us they were traveling around by horseback for the weekend and were hoping to stop here for the night for respite and a visit with their friend. Well, we called the man in Belgium and decided, why not? What could be too difficult about two Spanish cowboys?


Two Spanish cowboys may have been easy but suddenly at sundown we were nine people on this host-less farm. What to do? Do they speak English? No: so poor Claudia, the only woman and native Spanish-speaker must play host alone. Are they going to eat with us? Maybe: so Onur and I better prepare enough food. Will they be staying? Hopefully not: the four others will leave, but the two cowboys need beds.


All was quickly put in order. We settled into our host’s bedroom with a big fire, plenty of beer and wine, and marijuana for the masses. Onur and I whipped up some veggies, dip, and a quick pasta stir-fry. Claudia got the conversation ball rolling and directed us through several courses of tea, coffee, and joints. Every time we thought the hour had come for the end, we wound up just boiling more water and rolling more fatties. It was 2:30 before everybody staggered back to town and the three of us were able to clean up and get our guests settled for the night. What is this place?

wild horses

Two new WWOOFers arrived from the town last night. Our host is still gone and had instructed them to walk. Apparently, he gave them terrible directions and they arrived in the dark after asking several people for help.

Sasha and Phoebey are from the States—the San Francisco Bay area—and have just come from what sounds like a WWOOFing paradise. The place is a short walk from town (there is no road access), uses solar power, and seems pretty self-sustaining. The work is scheduled and varied, plentiful. The host has clear expectations and demands. I wonder what they’ll think of this place.

Today, four healthy-looking horses showed up. These creatures wander free here, having no stables or feed schedules to confine them. They’re in much better shape than the two emaciated mares and the one with a large open wound who’ve been here the past two days. Nifty coincidence: one of the new WWOOFers knows how to ride. Onur and Claudia think this is serendipity, a gift from the universe. I think it’s a disaster waiting to happen.

We took some time to corral, feed, and get acquainted with the horses. They were saddled and mounted. And they stood in one place. Well, at least we didn’t have to treat anybody for a fall with no way to the hospital.

the serrania de ronda


This place is unlike any other I’ve ever seen. I’m living on a mountain range tucked away in the South of Spain, a park in the Sierra de Grazalema. On all sides are tall mountains, the tops of which have been shrouded in clouds for the second week of my stay. Even the valleys are dotted with hills and small towns perch on the hillsides. The cortijo itself is pretty isolated, situated along, winding dirt road that passes few houses (most abandoned) on its way to town.


Distances here are misleading. To reach a ridge a stone’s throw away by foot can take a half-hour or more along meandering goat paths, sometimes having to hop a fence or descend into a ravine before climbing back up.

I wish I had better pictures to share, but this place is just too big to fit inot a camera. And mine seems to be dying anyway, having lost its shutter button during the olive harvest in Villamartín, and now displaying a multi-colored blob where the display should be.

Trees cover most of the hills, but even bare places are peppered with oaks and shrubs. Streams cut across sections of the wilderness, often crossing the road leaving shallow arroyos, as there hasn’t been much rain this season.

In addition to the horses, there are a few flocks of sheep that wander their favorite corners of the countryside. I often hear the bells around their necks clanking across the valley from a nearby ridge.

This is the cortijo where I’d been living for most of December. For all its oddities and annoyances, I must say you can’t beat its location. It’s plopped right in one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen.

the funky bunch

Our host returned with four new volunteers, all from the States. They’d been studying in Belgium and were now doing some traveling before going home for the holidays.

The other two Americans, Onur, and Claudia have all gone, leaving me with the youngsters. In a spat of cosmic humor, Sasha told me to “look after the kids.” She is the same age. So there I was, indeed looking after them. I felt like I was spending the weekend with ‘fresh air kids,’ urban youth come into the country to escape the hardness of the city. I’d taught them to build a fire, cook, and bake from scratch. They too, would go soon, leaving me alone with Theo. It was too bad they didn’t teach me how to humor him—they learned to like it here almost overnight.

and then there were two…

For the past three days, it’s been Theo and I, with occasional Marco (Theo’s brother) sightings. I’ve done more sanding than I thought possible. In addition, I’ve run to town a few times with the man, meeting friends, having drinks and tapas, taking out the trash. The truck ricochets down the hill like a dull silver pinball, threatening to roll down the hillside.

Tonight, we roasted a leg of goat. Ok, I roasted the goat’s leg. Theo had a goat slaughtered to share with all of his volunteers and then everybody bailed. Oops. Well, between the two of us, we ate the whole damn leg anyway. It didn’t take as much effort as I thought, first to roast it then to eat it. I merely poked it in several places, shoved in some whole garlic cloves and threw the bastard in the oven. Two hours and a smoky kitchen later (oops, again), we had a tender piece of meat done just right. I hastily boiled some potatoes and sautéed some chard from the garden (Theo thinks I’m a good cook because I taught the four kids), and dinner was served. It was a short night for my host—an early dinner and some brief conversation sent him to his bed and me up the hill to my cold house.

Strange, but I never thought I’d enjoy a wood stove as much as I have the past few nights. Of course, it keeps me warm, but before I would have chosen a different heat source. Growing up, it was more often drudgery than entertainment for my brother and me to spend a weekend gathering wood with my father. And we always touched each log at least twice: first to bring it in from the forest and second when we brought it to the house from the barn (often through snow that we first had to shovel). Then there was the dust—fine layers of ash covered everything all winter. If my mother didn’t do weekly battle with the particulate matter, we would’ve been overcome, Pompeii-style.

Here, however, bringing in firewood presented a challenge—first I had to find it and then bring it in before the sun sank. Do I have enough? Are there enough different sizes to build up the fire? Then came the nightly game of actually getting the thing started, followed by regular feedings through the night. All this to raise the temperature in my little cottage a few degrees. And I’ve loved it!

And that’s where I find myself now, having fulfilled the ritual and taking time to remember these two bizarre weeks and look ahead to the events coming.



horse sense

Living at the Hacienda taught me a little bit about horses, but mostly I learned that they are not the dignified, stately creatures we often believe them to be.

As I walked out to the olive grove on my third day at the Hacienda, I was still naively viewing these creatures with a slightly mystified respect. A white mare was steadily gazing at me as I approached. I wondered what she was thinking of me, so deeply she seemed to be peering into my being. I walked a little farther and noticed that she was merely scratching her behind, quite obviously, on the tree next to her.

While ridding the corrals of manure (a job that can be done with dignity but is never stately), I tried to count the number of times the horses passed gas. I couldn’t do it, that’s how often it happened in the fifteen minutes each corral took.

The occurrence that cinched it all for me, however, was something I couldn’t have expected. And this wasn’t even one of those times that just looked comical because I caught it out of the corner of my eye. This event was actual and I swear the equine perpetrator laughed. Several horses are stabled in stalls that stand next to each other and are separated by fences between the runs on the outside. As a stallion unsuspectingly stood outside watching us walk past, the one next door craned his neck over the fence and totally goosed his neighbor! I truly believe the gooser was neighing with impish glee afterward.

Cortijo Hell-hole

I made it out. Oy, that was a rough one. As usual, it´s feast or famine with the iternet, so hopefully I´ll have a ton of posts from my last place. Thanks for keeping me in your thoughts (and prayers. Seriously, that place was creepy). Right now I´m in an internet center in Ronda and will be heading to Germany tomorrow to spend the holidays. I´m so excited! More soon!

um...

So I'm currently in the middle of Spanish nowhere and I'm a little worried. My host leaves soon for four days, leaving us on this farm with no car and little access to the outside world. Thankfully he has wifi here (go figure) and one of my fellow volunteers has a cell phone that she can let me use, otherwise nobody would know if I had had been murdered by my crazy, pot-smoking host. Say some prayers; this might be a rough one. TSOldtimer, over and out.

black gold

I'm not talking Texas Tea, either.


The olive harvest is over. After four weeks of abusive pruning, the trees have been stripped of their fruit. It seems these trees just can’t catch a break. For starters, they must grow in this hot, arid climate and chalky clay soil. Our inexpert pruning techniques of thwacking the suckers from the trees must also be painful. And finally, the harvest itself is a truly violent occurrence. After carefully spreading a long, wide net of fine mesh around the trunk and beneath the boughs, we set about the tree with long wooden poles,
beating the olives from the branches. We harvest as many twigs and leaves as we do fruits, and have to pick them out by hand before we can collect the small round olives into the wagon. For all this work, I have yet to learn how much oil comes from pressing. A fellow WWOOFer told me that the olives are about fifteen percent oil by weight. I will never look at the little bottle of oil in the supermarket the same way again.

I’ve gleaned a little about the process by which these small black fruits become oil. We’ve taken our olives to the only mill in the area that still processes them in the “old way,” according to our host, and uses no chemicals to extract the oil, nor do they mix all the olives they receive, thus reducing the quality of the resulting oil (apparently the olives that grow here are famous in the region). Here, the olives are washed and then ground up, pit and all. The resulting pulp is mixed with some water and may be allowed to settle overnight, or immediately be sent for pressing. If allowed to set, a small bit of oil (about 7% of the 15% of the fruit that is oil) will rise to the top of the slurry. This liquid treasure is much sought after, and apparently isn’t ever for sale because there is so little of it. It is the purest olive oil, having not experienced any denaturing heat from even the cold press. My host hopes to collect some before everything is pressed. When the paste is ready to be pressed, it is spread over round woven mats and these are stacked in several layers. The weight of the olive pancakes already begins to express some liquid, and it is collected in the pan that the mats are stacked in. After enough are stacked, the pile is pressed by a hydraulic pump at a pressure of up to 400 kilograms per square centimeter (about 5,689 pounds per square inch)! This is, apparently, low-pressure to avoid producing heat that damages the oil. All the liquid expelled is collected in a vat and again allowed to settle. Here, it separates by weight into olive pulp, water, and oil. From this point, the oil is either skimmed off the top or the vat is drained from the bottom until only the oil remains. The World Book Encyclopedia tells me that modern industrial processes involve further extraction using a chemical solvent that is applied to the pulp that remains from squeezing. This mix is separated by a centrifuge and the solvent is evaporated from the oil that is left, but this oil is generally flavorless and has lost much of the color and nutrients of the cold pressed oil. I think this is the cheapest variety that can be bought in grocery stores.

We were three Americans, four Poles, and one Irishman doing the harvesting. I guess we could classify ourselves as migrant workers, foreigners following the harvest, providing cheap labor for an expensive product that the local people take for granted. According to Susan Griffith in Work Your Way Around the World, 5,000 to 6,000 workers from Morocco and Latin America pass through Southern Spain every year to work in the fruit and vegetable harvests. The large number of Moroccans that enter the country have prompted the government to highly regulate the hiring of foreign workers. Prospective workers often have to provide several layers of documentation and employers must go through a lengthy and costly process in order to obtain visas and work permits. In many cases, (like mine) these fiery hoops are ignored altogether and workers are hired undocumented, being able to obtain neither a residence card nor a national insurance card, which aid in receiving social services.

This reminds me of the situation in the United States, where we are arguing over legislation that would either make entry easier for foreign workers in order to ensure availability of services, or further restrict legal entry, allowing exploitation and dangerous working conditions. Or perhaps the idea is to allow for cheap labor at a lower risk. I can’t remember.

Even from the position I’m in now, a foreigner here with no documentation and little knowledge of the language or the culture, I can’t identify with what these people must experience. I have travel insurance and can leave whenever I want, having money saved just for this experience. I’ve joined an international organization and made a deal with my host in which I have set and fair hours to work in exchange for food and lodging—security. The Polish folk working alongside us had a slightly different perspective, however. They, too, belonged to an organization that had placed them here and provided a bit of a security net. However they had even less knowledge of Spanish than me, and were traveling in order to escape the dearth of jobs in Poland. According to them, unemployment is very high in Poland right now, and it’s common for young people to leave the country to look for opportunities elsewhere.

So: olives, oil production, migrant workers, and social issues. I guess I am learning something in Spain.

more stories

Here's some more, then. Same deal as last time: read them from the top down to get them in the order they were written. Thanks for the comments! I hope all is well with you, wherever you are!

pizza!

We went out for pizza last night. We drove into a nearby town called Puerto Serrano. All the little towns (and even the big ones) are strange to drive through! The streets tend to not be laid out in any kind of scheme, and they are rarely wide enough for traffic to flow through easily. American drivers would have a hard time here, being unable to navigate, or having to have patience in a blocked street. That just seems to be part of the psyche here, however, to let traffic happen. You can go or you can’t and there’s nothing that can be done but sit and wait. People even seem to approach it with some humor, honking at the pedestrians who just wander in clouds, or flitting around little trucks parked in the middle of streets.

We listened to KISS FM in the car. I think every country the world over must have this radio station. It plays the best mix of today and the 80s (with a handful of Spanish tunes). And at the Hacienda, when the radio isn’t playing this ubiquitous station, there is some kind of soft rock or American pop coming from the CD player. One can only take so much Lionel Ritchie. However, I must say I did approve of Jack Johnson, and wonder how soon we can hear that one again. Today at lunch we were graced with Van Morrison.

Moritz had given us the name of a place that sold good Italian pizza. The only things Italian about the place, however, were the pizza and possibly the little old man who worked there. The walls were covered in the oddest assortment of pictures from Tarifa to Geronimo. The radio played cheesy music, and a large television set on top of the dessert freezer was showing Sesame Street with no sound. Each table held a Connect-4 set from full- to travel-size. After we each ate a pizza on ultra-thin crust, cheesier than the radio, we shared a piadina, a specialty from the owner’s region. I was amused to note that we have that very same specialty in Central PA and call it a bilby.

community

When I set out, I wondered whom I would meet on the road. Who were these people that would be my new community, although we wouldn’t necessarily have a geographical location in common? What kinds of things would we have in common? What kinds of things or places were they searching for, and would they be able to give me directions on my search? Would I be able to offer words of advice or navigation to any of them, sending them to places I’d been, or experiences I’d lived?

I’ve already met a few; the WWOOFers here at the Hacienda seemed to form a mini-community. We work together, often at the same tasks, and we share our interests and ideas. I’ve been learning why my companions are traveling, a little about what they’re hoping to learn along the way. I must say we have similar goals. None of us seems to know what we’d like to do everyday. Some of us are hoping to live simply. A few of us are trying to learn how to live self-sufficient, sustainable lifestyles. There are even some who just want to travel cheaply!

I grew close to them in a short time, and found it just as difficult to say goodbye to those who’ve gone as it was for others I’d known longer. This is one thing I’m learning about myself: I need community.

I always thought of myself as a dyed-in-the-wool introvert, needing nobody and drawing my life from my own interests. Now I’m finding that, an introvert I may be, I need the people that surround me more than I ever thought. My time growing up at home and at college taught me that I could easily be worn down by spending too much time around others. My time at the Farm taught me to balance my time between being alone and being with those others who sometimes drained me. My time in contemplation of these things has taught me that I truly draw energy from those around me, and that I surround myself with a core group of people who can sustain me even when I am alone.

Growing up, I was lucky to have a large family, immediate and extended. Not only did I share a house with three siblings and two parents, I had a host of cousins to play with and aunts and uncles all over the place where I lived taking care of me. All my grandparents lived within a five-minute drive (if that), and I saw them several times a week. Many members of my father’s family lived on the dairy farm where I grew up, and there were always holiday gatherings when all the others came back. My mother’s family, likewise, lived in town and I often spent weekends with them when we would gather at my grandparents’ house for dinner or just to read the newspaper. Saturday night was a popular time to meet up for card games and Solid Gold Oldies.

In high school, my friends rounded out my community when my cousins and I went our separate ways. We obviously spent all day together, sharing the same classes, activities, and frustrations.

College was a rebuilding of my community, and I found it in the music department. I think we were a group unto ourselves there, the overworked students (and sometimes faculty) who spent 14 or more hours a day in Zug Memorial Hall. Again, we had a space in common (Zug), similar experiences (“what did you think of Dr. So-and-so’s class today?”), and supported each other through our trials and triumphs. We were inseparable, rooming with each other, teaching each other, eating together, and having fun together. Saying goodbye was inevitable, and painful.

The Farm has been the most obvious community in my life. The people there, staff and guests, have chosen to live together. We took the step for ourselves, this time, to be intentional about building community, not being thrown together by the circumstances of birth, geographical proximity, or shared study. The concept behind the Farm is to foster mental and physical health by doing meaningful work and fostering healthy community life. Importance is placed on living together: the staff are provided on-site housing by the company and the guests share houses. Importance is placed on community events: there is a meeting for the whole community weekly, three meals a day are shared in a large dining room, and activities fill the evenings and weekends. And each person is considered vital to the functioning of the work of the place. Each team is designed to perform a task that is sustaining to the Farm, be it producing crops, preparing meals, maintaining the grounds, or maintaining the buildings, and each member of each team helps keep the work running smoothly, or at all.

Now that I’ve removed myself from those communities that had supported me, I find that I automatically grasp at those people around me, trying to mold some type of cohesion for myself. My old communities aren’t far away: my friends and family are scattered across the places I’ve been and will someday be going to. However, without physical proximity, I have a hard time drawing support from these former homes I’d built for myself. In leaving them behind, I’ve discovered that I try to rebuild immediately and realize just how important those previous communities were, are, and will continue to be to me.

¡buen provecho!

It seems every language has this phrase to wish one a good meal, but the lazy English-speaking world must borrow from the French: bon appètit. These words encourage us not only to enjoy the food, but the whole experience. There are flavors, aromas, colors, and textures to savor. We are invited to relish the company of those around us. We are nourished by the feast and the atmosphere together.

Tonight’s dinner required little invitation for delight. Having but four guests at the moment, our small party was joined by the Spanish family and friends of the local folk who work here. José, one of the groundskeepers, prepared stuffed tomatoes and a dish of fried eggplant, filled with prosciutto and cheese. The food alone was amazing, but was only the warm-up for the Flamenco that filled the dining room for more than three hours!

Southern Spain (specifically the Guadalquiver valley in Andalucia) is the origin of this old art form that includes singing, dancing, and instrumental accompaniment. Lonely Planet says that it began in the late 18th century with the Roma people (once thought of as Gypsies, called gitanos in Spanish) as a singing style, produced from deep within. Later, the form incorporated instruments in the form of clapping, castanets, drums, and guitar. Today, Flamenco can be performed in any of these ways, or all together, along with dance.

Washing dishes in the kitchen, I could hear the deep, almost primal sounds of the men and women singing along to the guitar and drum box. I walked into the dining room flooded with sound and energy as members of the party sang from the bottoms of their lungs. It was as if they were challenging each other, the singers and the drummers. “Keep up with me, if you can!” “Follow me—I dare you!” Ana, a woman who once worked here I was told, belted out her poetry to a younger man who played along on the drum box. Her voice and eyes showed him the rhythm, and she clapped along to drive the beat home.

When there was no guitar, there were voices. Drums were replaced with clapping hands, pounding out rhythms to match the flow of the melody. Solo voices warbled out tunes to begin a new fiesta of sound. The passion of the music spawned dancing: a couple swayed about each other, weaving their arms through the air as though through water, barely touching even when turning as a couple. Then, with a quick twirl and a clap, the song and dance ended together in a rush of music.

Late into the night the Flamenco carried on, almost cacophonous at times. Pitchers of mojito quenched the thirst that flowed about the room with the smoke of cigarettes. Slowly, the party faded and people headed home a few at a time—but not without a song on the way out the door.

moscas en la casa

Reports come in from all over: the cold of winter is settling in. Switzerland has snow. Slovakia, too. In Pennsylvania, the temperature has dropped, and snow fell the first week of November. Here in Southern Spain, the weather remains hot and dry.

Andalucia sometimes experiences a phenomenon called “second spring.” Rain falls hard in October, quenching the thirst of summer and calling to life the vegetation that lay dormant. The world dons a green mantle for the winter.

No rain has come, neither has the temperature bothered to drop. The red dirt crumbles beneath my feet, rises, lingers, lands again. People say they can count the number of times it’s rained in the past several months, but the olive trees don’t mind. They seem to thrive in the parched clay, hiding moisture away in the husks of their ancient trunks and the small, oily fruits that dangle from their branches.

The flies, too, enjoy the extra time the weather has given them to be nimble in the warmth before winter’s cold sends them off. We go about the business of living and so do they. The cool hacienda is a haven from the sun in the afternoons, and we light a fire in the hearth to stave off the slight chill of the evening. We work and then bask; we dine then wash the dishes, mindlessly brushing away the myriad winged phantoms that dance past our fingers to alight once again, like the dust, on everything.

glory, hallelujah

Finally the internet gods smile on me again! Sorry these have been a long time coming. For convenience, I've posted them in opposite order. That means you should read them from the top down, rather than from the bottom up, which would be blogger chronological order. There will be more to come, of course, and I have pictures that will be added to these posts once I have a faster and more reliable connection. Until then, cheers! And thanks for thinking of me!

arrival

I’m in. As I write this, I’ve been four days with my first host and it is something else. A little different than most WWOOF assignments, this is a business that has paying clients visiting most of the time. At the moment we only have one, but I think we’re expecting more soon. The slow season is arriving and we’ll be having fewer guests than usual (apparently 25 was the largest number at a time in the past month). The Hacienda is a horse ranch that offers riding lessons and riding holidays to people from all over the world. It seems that mostly Germans come, but when I arrived there was also a couple from New Hampshire (they looked like total Berkshirites, by the way; the man’s son even attends Simon’s Rock College in Great Barrington, near my old Farm). The clientele this place attracts is indicative of my hosts’ nationalities: many are from Germany, with others from all over Europe. Only two Spanish women work here and they both live in the nearby town. Everybody else lives in the Hacienda (kinda like the Farm, once again…). So far I’ve met people from Belgium, France, Switzerland, Finland, Slovakia, Egypt, and New Zealand. The people who have been here longest speak German and Spanish most often, but because of the multiple origins of everybody else, English tends to be spoken the most in everyday conversation.

The set-up is grand. I have my own room with a private bathroom, three fabulous meals a day, and the freedom to wander the whole place, as I like. My primary work is in the olive grove, preparing the trees for the olive harvest; the work is hard, but not difficult. Although the whole countryside is covered in olive trees, because of the labor involved and small return, we only harvest from a small paddock of trees, with the oil and fruit produced used in-house. This is how it goes: Imagine a dwarf-sized fruit tree with hundreds of suckers creating a hedge around the bottoms of the two or three widely spread trunks. Now, my task is to cut away the suckers using a suleta (think one-headed pickaxe) and hand axe. Sounds easy enough, right? Ok, now imagine that the wood of this fruit tree is so hard the blade can’t actually sink in, yet the suckers and branches (several of which are an inch or more thick, and taller than I am) are so flexible they give and bounce when struck. The trick seems to be whacking the things hard enough at just the right point where the sucker meets the trunk to just knock it off, rather than actually cutting through. If you then factor in a temperature of 75°(24°C) and a high sun, you basically have my six-hour workday. But it’s not so bad. We begin work at 8 am, with breakfast from 9:30 to 10, then more work until lunch at 2. Breakfast breaks up the day nicely, with the work ending at the high heat of the day, leaving the rest of the afternoon (until dinner at 9) free. And I’m really enjoying beating the hell out of olive trees!

The trip here was an adventure all by itself. I was traveling for a very long time. After my arrival in Madrid, I had to immediately hop the Metro (subway system) to get to the center of the town where I immediately caught a train to Jeréz de la Frontera. Jeréz is a town in the Southern province of Cádiz. From there, I meant to take a bus to Villamartín where the Hacienda is. I made it to Jeréz just in time to miss the bus. And then my credit card wouldn’t work in any of the cash machines. It was the perfect nightmare scenario I was hoping to avoid. I’m in Spain, I have no cash, it’s 10 at night, and nobody speaks English. There I was, wandering the dark, semi-deserted streets of an unfamiliar town with all my luggage, looking for a cheap hotel. And nobody had heard of the hostel in my guidebook. Thankfully I finally found a decent hotel (read: cheap!), and the first English-speaking Spaniard who could help me. I rented a room for the night, tried to resolve my credit card problem, and slept a fitful sleep. The next day, I hit the streets again, in search of a bank that could give me a cash advance, or a kind stranger that could give me bus fare. I managed to find the latter and made it without further incident to my new home.

So now here I am, supplied with a roof, food, and labor for my hands, companions-at-arms, and an international phone card. Who could ask for anything more?

Well, ok, maybe some cold hard cash wouldn’t be bad.

mís compañeros

As of the time of this typing, five other WWOOFers and assorted other staff have wended there ways here to the Hacienda. These are their stories.


Giles and Anna come from New Zealand. These dynamic Kiwis have been living on the road quite literally for the last two and a half years. To support their habit, they’ve tricked out a diesel van they bought on the cheap from a friend’s company and have quite a lovely set-up inside. There’s a bed and plenty of cleverly laid-out shelf space for their various bits and pieces. They’ve been working primarily in one of the olive groves here for the past five weeks, although they’ve also spent time WWOOFing through Ireland, the UK, France, and other parts of Spain. I’ve pretty much adopted them as my mentors through my first WWOOFing experience, asking them all kinds of questions about what to expect from work, how to find my way around, and just what they’ve been chasing after these days. They’ll be gone from the Hacienda by the time this is posted, making their way back to England by way of France, and then either returning to New Zealand or Southern Spain to settle in for a time. It’s their hope to build a place for themselves using sustainable building techniques and powered by off-the-grid renewable sources. Amazing fact of the day: Anna was a Rider of Rohan! She and her horse were extras in the LOTR film, The Two Towers!


Carl is from Slovakia and has been working short-term jobs around the world for some time now. In the last year, he spent time working in Florida with his brother, and then WWOOFing in Hawaii! Since returning to Europe, he’s been on his way around Spain, escaping the Central European winter. I certainly don’t blame him. It seems he’s been in the mood to wander from here to there just to see what’s around, picking up skills and memories along the way. Karl was one of the first WWOOFers I met here at the Hacienda and his easy-going attitude helped me feel at home right away.

Kris currently lives near Brussels in Belgium. I think he’s looking for a change a little like I was, although he’s started his search with more of a safety net. He’s still employed and is taking two weeks off to try his hand at farming and then to visit some friends in Madrid. After studying economics in university and then landing a job with a firm, Kris is wondering what other kinds of lifestyles are out there and is on the way to check some out. We both question the need for the “responsible nine to five” existence that seems to surround us, but neither of us is quite sure how to escape yet. Hopefully this time away will give him some perspective and help him to find the path he needs to take to fulfillment. By the time this is posted he, too, will be gone, but I think he should give notice at his job and come back! Who’s to say?


Brendan is a young Irish man, just arriving from other WWOOF experiences in Portugal and Northern Spain. He’s now 101 days on the road, setting out from near Dublin with a small group of friends. As his road grew longer, his list of companions grew shorter, each heading in other directions to other opportunities. Brendan comes from a university education in engineering, but isn’t interested in that kind of work right now. He’s searching for work he finds worthwhile and meaningful to his environmentally conscious lifestyle. So far, his travels have been extensive, stretching across much of the northern part of the continent.


Daniela began her work at the Hacienda as a volunteer. Her primary responsibilities have been with the horses, but after she became an employee at the Hacienda, she’s also taken other duties including grounds work and kitchen duties. Daniela is Swiss and speaks Romanisch (among several other languages; she learned English in 10 weeks as an au pair in Boston!), an old and very colloquial language, common in only a small region of Switzerland. She’s only 20 and will soon be leaving the Hacienda to begin a practicum in architecture so she can begin to study it in university. She and her small dog, Lucy, bring a lot of cheer and energy to the Hacienda and I’ll be sad to see her go in December. Perhaps we’ll leave at the same time so I won’t have to be so sad….

In addition to these, my peers, there are several other folk living and working here, with as many nationalities. We have a couple of riding instructors from Germany, a very kind and industrious Belgian groundskeeper, a Frenchman with a wide array of skills (languages, machine repair, farming, oven-building and baking to name a few!), a German housekeeper with a huge heart and great sense of humor, and the family of owners who manage the place hailing from Egypt, Switzerland and Germany. There are also a handful of Spaniards who live nearby that manage the daily tasks of house- and grounds keeping in order to keep this place in tip-top shape. Our guests also come from all over, spending their days relaxing, riding, and sharing their meals family-style with all of us in the Hacienda.

In ways not too different from my old home at the Farm, these are the people with whom I share my time, my experiences. We work together, play together, break bread together. We rise with the sun, toil beneath its rays, and then play in the evening cool, all on the grounds of the Hacienda. This is maybe too claustrophobic an experience for most people, but I’ve found this to be the most worthwhile way for me to spend my time in a place. I come to know my environment, develop relationships, and learn how to build community wherever I am.

cádiz

Two of my fellow WWOOFers and I took a day trip to Cádiz. It was our one day-off for the week and we decided to stave off boredom by seeing one of the nearby cities.

Possibly the oldest city in Europe according to Lonely Planet, Cádiz stands on an outcrop of rock jutting into the Atlantic Ocean. The city is heavily fortified as a result of attacks that occurred over the centuries. The first attack, by the Dutch in 1596, led to the building of the Castillo de Santa Catalina. Other fortresses, the Baluarte de la Candelaria and Castillo de San Sebastián were built on points just out in the water. We toured the Castillo de Santa Catalina, a very empty stronghold (we were the only patrons) that has been converted to historical exhibits and contemporary art galleries. From there, there were lovely views of the Castillo de San Sebastián, a fort at the end of a 750-meter causeway. Oddly enough, the causeway is open, but the castle itself is not. Folk walk, bike, or vespa out to the end to… turn around and come back again. Also puzzling are the staircases from the bridge down to the ocean rocks that appear to be covered by the tides at times.

The town itself was very small, completely walkable from border to border in an afternoon. And if it’s afternoon, all you have to do is walk: everything is closed for siesta. Even the tapas bars stop cooking and only serve drinks from 1:30 to 5. We spent a good deal of time just trying to track down a bar that would serve us food, finally giving up and buying “artisan” ice cream instead. I had flan con caramel: delicious!

After exhausting our options as tourists, we headed back to the bus for the trip back to Villamartín. As nice as it was to get away from the Hacienda and see a new city, we all felt a little out-of-place playing tourist. I think I much prefer my work in the olive grove to gawking at a sleepy Mediterranean city. However, this trip was not without a practical saving grace: I found a bank that could give me cash on my credit card and I didn’t have to use English once. Another remarkable point of the day was when we ran into two guys from San Francisco in front of an ad featuring the Golden Gate Bridge. After a brief conversation in Spanish (in which they immediately learned I’m from the United States), they got around to telling me where they were from and finally asking if I spoke English. Weird.

and... we're off!

Two weeks to the day since I left the Farm. Two weeks to the hour since rubber met pavement, and I’m starting the train trip to Philadelphia to catch my plane across the ocean.

Has it really been two weeks? Only? Apparently so much can fit into a short span, and yet so much can feel neglected. I made a weekend to trip to Harrisburg for a wedding, bought stuff for my travels, opened a bank account, closed a bank account, traveled to Ohio for a soccer game, got treated for Lyme Disease, packed (three times)… what have I missed?

I wrote briefly about the wedding earlier. It was a nice affair: the ceremony was small and personal, as was the reception. I think my friends planned and executed nearly everything themselves, with a little help from family and friends. I got to spend a weekend with three friends from high school, who I haven’t seen in several years. Although two of them had married since, and other changes have occurred, it was easy enough to pick up where we left off. A good portion of the weekend was spent playing Guitar Hero, so I think that helped, too!

I managed to visit with family a few times. On my birthday, the day I arrived home from Harrisburg, the six of us (a rare occasion when we’re all in the same room) invaded my grandparents’ house along with a few aunts and uncles. We tried to get Grandma and Grandpa talking about their youth, and we heard some good stories: the day Grandma, her brother, and ‘that skinny Catholic girl’ came out to the field to get my Grandpa off the tractor and go out; what my grandfather was like as a young man, and how my grandmother’s family liked him; and how my twin great-aunts were kept in the bun-warmer of the old wood stove to keep them warm! A week later, we had another gathering under the pretext of my homecoming. What really transpired was everybody congregating in our living room to watch the Penn State game. But I did manage to see several people I haven’t in a while, and probably won’t again for a good period to come.

At one point, I discovered a tick on my leg—the first I’d ever found on myself in PA. Despite many tick bites I’d never been treated for Lymes in Massachusetts, where it runs rampant, but here the immediate prescription was Doxicycline, an antibiotic also commonly used to treat gonorrhea. The physician’s assistant thought that might be something I was interested in knowing. This was all a little disconcerting, considering my imminent departure, my disinterest in being antibiotic-ed, and my real worry over the irritated and bruised bite itself (the PA didn’t seem too bothered by the quarter-inch deep-purple spot). Oh well, at least I won’t get the clap for my first week in Spain.

I got a new bank account! I closed my old one! That was an adventure unto itself, fraught with waiting periods, misread faxes, and finally ending in a heavy deposit that I can’t actually touch until mid-November. I hope my credit limit holds out….

And finally, after the travel insurance, trip registration with the state department (because they’re concerned for my safety. No, really.), and frantic emails and phone calls to the Spanish farms expecting me in just two days, I had time to actually gather my supplies and pack them up. Twice, just to make sure. And then, a third time because I changed my mind. Now, I have time to fret. Look out.

It’s not that I’m unprepared, or that I’m timid about what I’ve set before myself. It’s just that these small worries that I haven’t had time to consider are now coming home to roost. Before, I couldn’t be bothered with how little Spanish I speak because I had people to get in touch with. I didn’t need to worry about being mugged in the streets because I had travel insurance to buy. A further itinerary and return ticket? Are you kidding me? I had to figure out what order I was hitting up my hosts! And now, with as much of that taken care of as could be, all I’m left with are the “squirrels in my brain,” as Starpilgrim put it—the frantic fears chasing themselves around my consciousness. And the awful thing is, there’s nothing I can do about those things either! But once apprehension sets in, it’s difficult to shake. I’m breathing, and assuring myself that it’ll all work out (because IT WILL), and so this will pass. Anyway, once I get off the plane I’m going to need to make something work.

So, I’m on my way! Too bad the train doesn’t cross the Atlantic!

i'm just a'goin' over jordan...

Siiiiiiiiiigh...

I made it out. My arrival in Houtzdale was marked by nothing extraordinary. As a matter of fact, I didn't even have a welcome party. My dad was the only one home and was on his way out the door to pick up his truck; I think he was eagerly awaiting my arrival so I could give him a ride.

I'm not sure if the ride was quite the head-clearing, personal-space-providing catharsis I was expecting. Mostly I was just driving. I wasn't struck by the feelings of separation until I was two minutes from my parents' driveway. For whatever reason, stopping at the intersection to Kendrick Road was the visual cue I needed to realize I wasn't going back next week, or next month, or any time in the immediate future. Half of my belongings (two-thirds of which were a bed and chair) fit into the bed of a pick-up and the other half had come ahead of me, to take up a new residence in my parents' basement. I wouldn't climb out of the truck to see Moo, or Mummy Dearest and her brood, Star Pilgrim, Roma, Bob, Steve, Flavio, CJ, or any of them at dinner in forty-five minutes. So the moral is, my dad had to greet and hug his sobbing 25-year-old son, trying to both console him and welcome him home.

Now I'm in Harrisburg. Some homecoming-- arrival only to head out the door 26 hours later for another trip, another commitment. My friends Heather and Jer are getting married this weekend and I'm here to help celebrate. I just hope no unexpected waves of realization and the ensuing self-pity overwhelm me during this joyous occasion.

In other news: Two weeks until I fly! So much to do! Help!

one-way

I now have a one-way ticket to Madrid. On November 1, I fly from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, into the rest of my life!

poetry

Ok, I just had to drag this out of the comments section. It's too good to be left there. Thank you, Monster Librarian, for running with my idea. This is just amazing.

He moved sullenly through the house
seemingly thwarted by the dish of bananas,
which sat upon a hideous macramé coaster of sorts
that a lover had made once.

His senses heightened as he entered the kitchen
the smell of peanut butter
invoking memories of seashells and horses,
children’s literature his grandmother had once read.

A grandmother who reeked of Borax,
who loved him as blindly as he had once loved carnivals.
But that was ages ago
before self-help and psychotherapy had gotten to him.

Tired of his life in lawn care
He dreamt of library science
And a possible career in Liverpool
where he would master the Dewey Decimal System like a mathematician bent on mastering hexadecimals.

He would sort books with ease
Quarantining the books on dragons and tracheotomies and elevators
from each other
as his ex-lover had quarantined him from her existence.

--Monster Library Student

pretty please?

Now the waiting is happening. I’ve sent out emails to five farms and have heard from exactly one. I’ve been formally invited to stay on a Farm in Spain! Now, the problem is, I need to be invited to stay on at least two more. I think that would make my stay most productive and interesting. Since I sent my feelers out five days ago, I followed WWOOF’s suggestion to prod again. And then I realized I never referenced my ID number. These people probably think I’m some hobo who managed to get their address and wants to freeload on their olive farms…

In other news, I’m searching for cheap plane tickets and interesting itineraries. I’m thinking of WWOOFing elsewhere, too. Turkey is looking promising these days. However, according to the Spanish consulate’s guidelines for entry, I need to travel with a round-trip ticket in order to get my 90 days of visa-free visitation. Hmm. So, if I want to travel, oh let’s say, from the US to Spain, then to Germany, and on to Turkey before going home, do I still need a round-trip ticket? Particularly since I’ll need to fly home from Spain before my 90 days are up? This is not my idea of efficient travel. It looks like another call to the ol’ consulate will be in order. Cross your fingers and say a prayer: I’m doomed.

for grins

This post is solely for my amusement. And maybe yours, too. Let me know.

I just wanted to see what happens when I type:

• bananas
• self-help
• macrame
• psychotherapy
• horses
• seashells
• peanut butter
• Borax
• children's literature
• carnival
• tracheotomy
• library science
• lawn care
• elevator
• dragon
• Liverpool
• hexidecimal

Thank you.

oh boy

My life is happening a lot these days. Not only am I planning, sending, reviewing, replanning, and wondering what I'm doing most of the time, I'm also trying to squeeze some more community life into the days I have left. Not an easy task.

So far, I'm not counting down 'the last things' yet, but I'm getting close.

I took a walk by the nearly-full moon last night with German #3 and our newest BVSer, Everybody's Little Sister. It was a beautiful night, balmy, slightly cloudy-- just enough for the moon's light to be diffused over the entire landscape. We walked from Main House to the gravel pit and back again, pausing several times to just stare in wonder at the giant glowing orb above our heads. I needed that little stroll to put some things back into perspective. Yes, I'm leaving and may not enjoy a night hike like that at the Farm again, but the moon shines everywhere. And I'll be getting to see it shine on me in Europe soon, as it'll be shining on my friends all over, too. My two companions were also examples of the courage I hope to tap when I leave. They've chosen to pick up for a year and be put somewhere unfamiliar. And in the midst of all my planning and fretting and running-around-like-a-chicken-with-its-head-cut-off, I remembered that there are still quiet moments to be enjoyed here. Sometimes I need to stop and remember that I can still live here, up until the day I don't anymore.

the sands of oregon

I know, I know. This is what happens when I don’t write while I’m away on a trip. I get back with a thousand things in my head, and then my life gets in the way. Here’s the last bit of my trip to Oregon.

I spent my last two days in Oregon in Reedsport and Portland.


While in Reedsport, KT and I hiked the Oregon Dunes, a state park of giant sand dunes that stretch along three or more miles of the coast. It’s a popular site for ATVs and dune divers. Like us! The dunes are enormous! I think they may be similar to Jockey’s Ridge State Park in North Carolina, but perhaps even bigger. We wandered along the dunes, (also similar to the Sleeping Bear Dunes in Michigan), climbing the highest peaks we could find, and then threw ourselves off the top. I highly encourage everybody to crash down a sand dune. Sand is much more forgiving than rock or ice, and although you feel as though you’re being buffeted on all sides, at least the blows are being delivered by what feels like giant cushions. Drawbacks include sand adhering to every surface, and often sneaking into unprotected openings. I was still cleaning it out of my ears a week later.

After brushing ourselves off, we headed into the small borough of Winchester Bay to buy some fresh seafood for dinner. KT introduced me to the local businesses, and some friends who owned them. The town’s cannery, where we bought Chinook Salmon, snapper, and ling cod, was owned by one of her old teachers. We also stopped by the oyster house and watched shuckers harvest the shellfish that were brought in that day from the beds just a mile or two away in the bay. We learned how they “seed” lines with old shells then suspend them in the bay for baby oysters to grow on—this way the fish are protected from taking on the nasty flavors from growing in the muck at the bottom of the bay. We bought a few and tried them in different preparations at home. Yeah, I still don’t like oysters. Sorry, KT.

The next day, we took a roadtrip Northeast to Portland. What a cool city! I don’t know how to describe it, other than genuinely clean-cut. There were a lot of skateboarders of all ages, which was odd to see. Moo had asked me to do some reconnaissance to find some grittiness in case she may want to move there some day. It was weird, but there really wasn’t much grittiness to that city. But it’s not the kind of place that looks like it’s hiding its poverty and lower class. There just didn’t seem to be any. Recycling bins lined the clean streets and a major portion of the downtown is serviced by free mass-transit. Another odd thing was how we kept running into teenagers sitting in groups asking for change. I didn’t know what was going on, but by the time I realized something was up, we stopped running into them so I couldn’t ask. I wonder if it was related to the groups of people we saw camping, hobo-style, in the Japanese-American Park and under one of the bridges that crosses the Columbia River.

The Pacific Northwest was beautiful and I fully intend to return someday. I still haven’t seen Seattle, after all. Perhaps Portland will become the city that I have to live in when the time comes for me to live in a city. A good public transit system, culture, political and social liberalism, and the great outdoors surrounding—what more could I ask for?

it's on the doorstep

I awoke today and found the frost perched on the town
It hovered in a frozen sky, then it gobbled summer down
When the sun turns traitor cold
and all the trees are shivering in a naked row
I get the urge for going but I never seem to go

I get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
Summertime is falling down and winter is closing in

The Urge for Going by Joni Mitchell

here goes nothing

I did it.

I handed in my notice of resignation.

In four and one-half weeks, I will be jobless and homeless. In that order.

See you in Spain!

bienvenido al consulado general de España...

"Hello. Can you connect me with the visa department, please?"

"Yes, what can I do for you?"

"Is this the visa department?"

"No, but I answer the phones today. Hahaha!"

"Ok... I have some questions about getting a long-term tourist visa for a trip I'd like to take to Spain. Can I ask you?"

"What nationality are you?"

"United States."

"Citizens of the United States do not require a visa for a stay up to 90 days."

"I know. I was hoping to stay longer. Perhaps 4 to 5 months. What are my options for that?"

"Why you want to be a tourist for 6 months? If you are in school, you need to have the school in Spain to contact our office and send in the proper paperwork."

"No, no. I'm not going to school. I'm staying with hosts and will be traveling around on my own. I don't have an official organization sponsoring me."

"Please see the website for information on this visa you are asking about. Ok? Thank you."

oregon - north coast road trip

I arrived in Portland with neither delay nor fanfare. I think I caught KT off-guard when I found her in the terminal—she had to look twice from her guidebook before she realized who was walking toward her.

“Yay!” we both exclaimed and went off in search of dinner for me. Then we climbed into KT’s car, Bosco and headed into the sunset, beginning a two-hour drive to a campground on the beach. Thrice crossing the Columbia River, we arrived at the campground in Washington state.

“Are we going to have to pitch a tent in the dark?” I asked.

“It’s a surprise! You’ll see.”


We pulled up to Yurt 83, an interesting collection of canvas, linoleum, and wooden furniture. I’d never slept in a yurt before, but Luna’s owner Christy once lived in one and I remember being fascinated by the odd mix of integrity, transience, and unlikely sturdiness that made up that tent. Walls and a ceiling of heavy canvas are stretched over a wicker frame, which in both cases resembled an old-fashioned baby-gate. The floors were both made of sturdy wooden planks, and in 83’s case, covered in vinyl flooring. Christy’s had actual windows of glass and wood frames, and 83 had a steel storm door. Ours was simply furnished with a bunk-bed, futon, and night-stand. As I recall, Christy’s held a sink and woodstove in addition to her sleeping and dining furniture. I guess what struck me as so incongruous is that yurts I’d seen were designed to be easily disassembled and portable, while the lives of those inside are not necessarily either of those.

After unpacking Bosco, we took a walk to the beach in the dark. This was my second time only to the Pacific and KT gave me advice on being watchful. This tricky ocean can change quickly and often sends “sneaker waves” that rise onto the dry beach and overwhelm unwary beachcombers. “Never turn your back on the Pacific.”

The next day, we had a five-hour drive down the coast to Reedsport, KT’s hometown. We hoped to take the trip in segments, stopping at key points between legs on the coastal highway. Astoria, Fort Clatsop, Seaside, and Newport were places we hoped to see. Anticipating a long day, we hit the road. Apparently, we didn’t know how long a day to expect. Each stop lasted longer than we expected, and each time we embarked with the intention of making real distance, only to stop twenty minutes or so down the road. There’s a lot to see in Oregon!


At our first stop, we climbed the Astoria Column, a tower of 167 steps. The outside is a winding frieze depicting the town’s history. From the top, we could look over the great bridge that spans the 4-mile mouth of the Columbia River. We also caught a glimpse of the small seaside town.

At Fort Clatsop, we saw the second replica (the first was destroyed by fire) of the camp established on the Columbia River by the Lewis and Clark expedition. We took a tour of the wooden fort, seeing the simple bunkers and captain’s quarters on either side of the tiny fortification. We also made a self-guided study of the expedition, beaver fur trade, and native whaling practices.


Our final stop was Seaside to see the haystack rocks—monoliths of granite rising out of the surf. Our conversation turned to the value and meaning of community as we walked along the beach. It seemed like an apt thing to discuss as we wandered in view of giant condos that were threatening the town’s charm and social structure.

The sun was setting over the haystack rocks as we climbed back into Bosco—we still had hours ahead of us. A while after darkness had overtaken us, we stopped at one of the many outlooks along 101 and watched the Haceta Head Light flash over the ocean. It was a clear night for stargazing and a chilly wind blew off the water.

We finally made it to Reedsport, both of us ready to drop where we stood. I was lucky—I could nap as a passenger. Sleep came quickly and easily, with the next day a new promise of activity and adventure.

wedding bell blues

The last time I did this, I doubled my weekly income in eight hours. This time around, I personally insulted a culinary genius, ruined my favorite oxford, and doomed a newly wed couple to marital insipidity.


I was asked to help serve for the wedding reception of a community member’s son. It was supposed to be me, Germans #2 and #3, and a former community member from Boston. We were to help serve food and wine for 200-250 people, and then we could dance as long as we wanted! What a deal, huh?

This is how it went down. German #2 flew home to Germany three weeks early (I’m crying on the inside) because of her hand injury, so our senior BVSer filled in. And KTL was there, too, to assist Nev, the bartender. Or fill in. Whatever we needed her to do. Most of us converge on the farm across the street, which is decked in full storybook regalia. We’re not all there yet, but that’s ok; it’s early. We start to fill water glasses and finish setting the tables. An hour later, German #3 and the Bostonian are still MIA. I call Main House.

German #3: Main House, this is German #3.
Me: What are you still doing there?
German #3: Waiting for a ride. Nev was supposed to bring me over when he came. I don’t know where he is.
Me: Good grief. Be ready; we’re coming to get you.

We’re thirty minutes late with champagne and appetizers. Meanwhile, I’m still trying to single-handedly fill 250 water glasses with ice. Thankfully, German #3 and the BVSer arrive to start filling champagne flutes. We’ve lost any hope for the Bostonian. Apparently, it’s not enough that pouring champagne is a slow, arduous process; BVSer can’t open champagne bottles. And the woman making the appetizers is harassing everybody because, “We need people to serve these! I can’t do it myself!” Of course not. Let me ask my staff of three to assist you while I pour ice into goblets with a red plastic beer cup. We don’t really need to get the champagne out. Classy.

Crunch time passes (we think). The guests are champagned out and the apps are getting fewer takes with each circulation. Great, a breather! Oh, but can we gather dirty highball glasses from the tables and take them to the house to be washed? The bar has run out. Ok, makes sense. We hit the floor, gathering empties. How were we to know that this was just the tip of the iceberg?

Even up to dinner time, the bar was losing the battle to the gin and tonic crowd. No matter how hard two of us were working to collect empty glasses from the crowd and send them up to the remaining two crew members who were scrubbing and cutting fruit, we could not produce enough glasses for everybody.

Finally, dinner rolls around and we’re on the buffet line. Familiar work! This is what we were actually asked to do! How sweet a feeling to know one’s task. Except for me, apparently. The head chef asks me to take over for him with the vegetarian option, only to reclaim his spoons several minutes later. “Wrong. Give me those. Get out of here.”

Shortly after the last guest leaves the buffet line, we’re sent onto the floor to begin clearing and refilling water and wine. I suppose at this point, we are also supposed to be refilling champagne flutes for the coming toasts. Except at the same time, Nev needs us to also keep gathering empty beer and highball glasses (and can somebody be washing them?). We can do this, you see, because we are bionic people.

Mid-clear, as the groom’s father is reciting “How the Whale Got His Throat,” to the crowd the head chef calls me over. “Hey, come over here. What’s your name?”

“Does it matter?” I respond. I have no idea what he wants, but I’m too fried to care. Apparently that was the wrong answer.

“Oh, why would you say that to me? Huh? What do you mean by that? Get out of here. I don’t want to talk to you. Find out how many servers there are, but don’t give him anything. He doesn’t get dinner.”

Fine. I’m too exasperated to eat. I’ll wash beer glasses instead. Meanwhile, the bride and groom are being toasted with wine. Shit.

Eventually, after making a pass of the entire tent for wine and dirty dishes I ask Nev what else is required of us. It’s 11 PM and none of us have had dinner yet. I’m ready to go home; it’s the end of the one day I had off this weekend and I may have to open the kitchen the next morning. The answer comes down, but it isn’t clear: just gather the rest of the glasses and pack them up (into what, we don’t know), wash some more glasses for the bar, and then everything else can be taken care of tomorrow. Oh, but the cake will be soon—can you stay to help set up for and serve that? Right. The cake. And people are still drinking. They probably will be for the rest of the night. And we’re supposed to take their glasses?

The cake is served at approximately 11:15 and we walk to the car shortly after washing another two racks of glasses for the bar. We’re just about to make good our escape when, “Damn, the tires are spinning. We’re stuck in the mud.” Luckily, Steve the curator of the Red Barn is leaving the house and asks us why we aren’t down at the tent dancing the night away.
We explain our situation and he offers to help us out. We start by pushing on the front of the car, trying to back it out, but only manage to get scatter-shot with muck. The next step involves recruiting the groom’s father to hitch us to a farm truck (in his tux, no less) and pull us out. Finally we are free and driving back to our beds, each not-so-much looking forward to work days and a 5 AM drive to Pennsylvania.

everyone's a comedien

My brother wrote a stand-up routine. I have a brother. He's the one that didn't show up in an earlier post because he almost didn't show up in time for my visit. Here are some highlights (in my humble opinion) of the jokes that might almost make him famous.

Man, I remember growing up.... Today what happens, you scrape your knee you get antiseptic, anti infection, a tetinous shot and a band aid. Back in the day you get a “Well better be more careful next time”. If you weren’t gushing blood nobody cared. Or if you did cut yourself my dad would clean it off with that greasy yellow slime that mechanics used to wash their hands, and it always has oil streaks through it from the last guy who used it. After you wash the wound with penzoil 10W 30, they put that orange stuff on it. Nobody knew the healing power of this particular liquid, we just know it burnt like hell.

Nothing is considered safe anymore and if you want anything remotely dangerous, you have to fill out paperwork, be a legal U.S. citizen, of age, and suffer through a 3 day waiting period. My brother when he was 4 years old almost cut his thumb off with a hatchet. Let me repeat that for ya, MY BROTHER, AT AGE 4 ALMOST CUT HIS THUMB OFF WITH A HATCHET. This was 1985, a person who can barely put sentences together severs his finger with a kid sized axe. Basically all my dad said after the bleeding stopped was, “It was his first time using that hatchet, I hope he learned his lesson.”

I remember, from what my parents told me, that when I was 3 years old I set my bedroom floor on fire by putting crayons into a toaster oven. Appliances today have all these gadgets on them to try and prevent anyone from injuring themselves, but 20 years ago a 3 year old kid could commit arson with some colored wax and a mini kitchen.

Kids today have child proof Tupperware containers for corrosive and hazardous materials. Do you remember what we had? Mr. Yuck stickers. That’s right that little green face meant DON’T TOUCH!!! But they never worked, one because they were always half scratched off anyway, and I basically just referred to them as Mr. Curiosity.

I was a middle child growing up though. Well I guess I still am. I have one older brother and 2 younger sisters. So my brother and my younger sister would always get new everything. New clothes, new toys, and I was stuck with my brother's hand me downs. So there I was going into 6th grade with a faded ninja turtles T shirt and some acid wash jeans. I can’t complain though, I love my brother, we had a lot of fun growing up. We lived on a farm, miles from anyone and neither of us were cool so we didn’t have any friends, so my brother was my best friend. It was great though, he always included me. My brother and I would always invent things, like booby traps. And my brother, being the smart, considerate and cautious brother that he was, knew that in order to ensure the success of said inventions we would have to test them. Yeah he included me big time. “Hey Matt, stick your foot in this rope and I’ll release the counterweight.” Wooosh. “Great that one works, now get down so we can test the next one.”

But growing up with few friends and on a farm, we had a blast. We used to run around and try and jump the holes in the loft. We’d pretend to drive tractors, then we’d try and pretend that it wasn’t us who got it stuck in the mud. But being a small child in our generation and growing up on a farm was not the best combination. Some of my dad’s favorite sayings were; “You have small fingers, try and unscrew that bolt that’s lodged in the combine there. The darn thing won’t spin.” Or also “Your kinda tiny why don’t you climb up that small chute and unclog it so the grain falls down again.”

Oh, such a {insert your own adjective here} picture he paints. Takes me right back, it does. The funniest part for me is actually remembering many of those things and thinking how the truth is indeed stranger than fiction. And may even get you put in a foster home.

Thanks for the memories, Matt!

fallout

You all remember Luna, right? Well, she loved it here so much she left me a parting gift.

Fleas.

And they're hungry. I've vacuumed, washed my blankets, and still they persist. I think I can maybe starve them out-- I only sleep here, really. But the problem is they get so hungry during the day they just leap upon my legs with no mercy the moment I walk in the door. It's quite unnerving, really.

I don't know which is more disturbing: that I have fleas in my house, or that they are so visibly active.

Any suggestions? Or should I just move out?

disclaimer

I’m tired. Week one of the boss’s vacation is over for me! Only one more to go. German #2 is still out with her hand injury—the pig-hand transplant is still healing. Needless to say, we haven’t been up to snuff.

This is the part where I mention my wonderful family—that mysterious bunch that hasn’t yet appeared here. I’m not really sure why. I was going to write about my visit home—a camping trip, my family reunion, the County Fair, my brother’s visit, and the disaster that was the dinner I tried to prepare. But I came home, and my life started happening again. Then I forgot everything. A psychological defense mechanism? Of course not! Wink!

My visit to Pennsylvania was just that—a visit. It didn’t feel like a homecoming, but certainly not to my family’s discredit. I always feel welcome in their home, but it is their home, not mine. My parents moved into a new house a year after I moved to Massachusetts. I’ve never lived in that house. I’ve never had a room or space that was mine there, so visits are never returns; it’s a new place to me. I have no fond memories of afternoons on that back porch, or evenings spent in that kitchen. I don’t have a favorite seat in the living room, a place to hang my toothbrush in the bathroom, or even a favorite way to sneak out late at night.

I guess that’s the most effective (if not the final) nail in the coffin of my childhood. Although I’ve been living away from my parents for the last seven years, have a real job, and now my own house, I’ve still felt very much like a child at times. Knowing that my parents’ home is not mine has deepened the realization that these new things and experiences are my own, and nobody else’s.

Wow, that was a whole lot of self-disclosure. Now onto the shallow drivel about the rest of the trip.

Because my youngest sister was gone for the first four days of my visit, I reaped the benefit of having a room to sleep in! I always feel funny about displacing Ari, so her absence made my nights a little less uneasy. Also, Ali, my mom and I got to take a short camping trip while heading out to collect Ari from soccer camp. I haven’t gone camping in nearly a year—it’s good to see the sport hasn’t changed much: run around frantically a few hours before departure trying to gather and fit more things than we probably need into the back of the van. It was nice to sleep in a tent again and do some catching up with my mom and sister.

Later in the week was Houtzdale Days. Because my parents are such involved parents, they helped organize and staff the 4-H club’s nacho concession at the festival. That meant three nights of wandering around the tarted-up block and sitting under the green and white canopy, making sure the kids weren’t setting fire to anybody. I got to experience some of the finest culture Houtzdale has to offer, and even get in a few rounds of ‘Spot the Cadaver—Digicam Edition’ with my mom. I seem to have misplaced my winning shots….

I got back from a side trip just in time for a family reunion. Getting to see cousins, aunts and uncles, and grandparents that I haven’t seen in a long time was really nice. I got to talk about my crazy plans of quitting my job, becoming homeless, and wandering nearly aimlessly around Europe. Everybody is SO excited for me. Of course, there were also all the other second- and twice removed-s that I still have no clue to their identities, so I had to play it cool and talk all like I know the scoop. I did, however, manage to have a few pretty worthwhile conversations about traveling (I need to get to Alaska and Mexico one of these days), and we had a great scavenger hunt. My team, the Lollipop Guild (my grade school cousins have NO IDEA what that is) blew all the other teams out of the water, thank you very much.

And then the County Fair. What can I say about the good old Clearfield County Fair? Well, I guess it’s been going on a long time. For over 30 years, my family had been taking dairy cows to put on display there, and my sibs and I even had the honor of holding the family corner in the barn when my cousins grew out of the tradition. I hadn’t actually been back since we stopped showing there. It was strange to be there as a visitor, and not a grungy farmer counting the hours until I could get home for a shower and some decent sleep. Sadly enormous, smelly, unruly beef steers have overrun the cattle barns which once housed glorious dairy animals. Yuck. Another odd thing about the experience was watching the Fair’s parade from the grandstand. My family had always walked out to some street corner where we were right up against the floats and marchers. In the streets were the prime positions for scavenging the thrown candy and heckling friends and relatives in the marching bands. Hard, metal bleacher seats aren’t much fun—so we had to start up some spontaneous rounds of ‘Spot the Cadaver’ and ‘Guess the Yardage of Tulle’ in the Fair Queen Court’s gowns. Bonus points for cadavers in tulle.

I guess that brings me up to the dinner I tried to cook. I bet nobody believes anymore that I actually do this for a living. Every time I’ve tried to prepare something for my family, it’s flopped. First was the pan of popovers that imploded. Then was the carrot salad that everybody thought came from the sewer (to my credit it was delicious; it just looked funny to everyone else’s untrained eyes). This time, I burned the raspberry Dijon chicken on the impossible-to-control heat of the electric stovetop. And no grocery store in the area carries any grains other than rice. I think I was lucky that I managed to find a box of mixed variety rice in the next town over. So, instead of the quinoa pilaf I planned, it was brown rice that took 45 minutes to cook. But my family loves me and they told me it was delicious anyway.

So, thank you God for a lovely stay, and what was the other I wanted to say? I talked about everyone, so what could it be? Now I remember… God forgive me. [adapted from ‘Christopher Robin is Saying his Prayers by Melanie]