Holy Cow and other farm adventures

By Tamika Whitenack

Wow! I don’t even know where to begin...

Depending on how religiously you follow this blog/how much I randomly text you, you may or may not know that I spent the past two weeks on a farm in upstate New York. This experience was very full....of learning, new things, animals, fun, and of course, good food. Prepare for a very, very long blog post. In case you don’t have time for that, I’ll try to keep things organized with headings....or you can just look at all the pics at the end of this post!

I journaled every night that I was on the farm, so a lot of what I write here will be based off of that. Taking the time to write down and process the day is so nice (that’s why I like blogging), and I felt like I had the time to do that at the farm, whereas normal college life, and even home life, often feels too full for daily writing, and I neglect journaling.

Okay, a bit of background. The farm I went to stay on is called Magic Forest Farm and I heard of it through a friend who had WWOOFed there. I did the farm through Workaway, which is an online platform that connects volunteers like me with hosts who need workers. The owners of Magic Forest Farm are Joan and Jason, and their farm is 225 acres.

I arrived at the Albany train station Friday March 9 afternoon and waited in the cafe starting to realize that what I was doing (going to a random farm by myself) was unlike anything else I’d ever done before...I got a ride to the farm from a woman who works in Albany but lives on the farm property (they have several houses that they rent out). To reach the farmhouse, you have to go up a steep and winding road, the much of the property is trees. The actual farm house is basically a barn, but there’s also a more modern house (called the purple house) that they rent out, but were also having volunteers stay in. I arrived at dinner time, and was greeted by Molly, their dog, who without fail barks whenever anybody enters the house. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I remember my first time walking into the dining room, Joan, Jay, and 3 volunteers sitting around the table, and the artsy woodsy aesthetic of the house....hard to describe it, but it’s a very clear memory which is why I mention it.

Apologies that this blog post is going to be all over the place! It’s so hard to organize, because I would love to give you a play-by-play, but that would take soooo long! So I think I’ll just write about various categories of things and then general impressions and then pictures, and hopefully that will capture it.

A typical day:

We don’t have a super structured schedule, but I usually woke up around 7am, read in bed, went to the farmhouse from the purple house and ate breakfast (or fed the animals if nobody had done that yet) and then did farm work (more on these various tasks later) in the morning, often made lunch around 11something, ate lunch together, did more work in the afternoon, made dinner and ate together, went back to purple house for a relaxing night around 8pm (or later once I started hanging out with other volunteers before bed), and was usually asleep around 10something. Joan and Jay sleep at 8/8:30, so we usually leave the main house area by then. In short, this trip was great for my sleep schedule (with a couple exceptions).

Other Volunteers:

This is possibly one of the most important parts of the experience, as I think the people that you’re working with have a huge influence on the mood of the farm. I got really, really lucky here (I think I am a really lucky person...everything always turns out good for me!).

One of the other volunteers on the farm while I was there was a girl the same age as me who had graduated from Berkeley High School in the spring. She’s taking a gap year, and had been at the farm since late January. This was really nice, because it meant that I had someone nice and relatable who knew how the farm worked and could help teach me the routines. We bonded over both being from the Bay Area (especially East Bay), and found that we had some mutual friends/acquaintances...but we also found we had so much more in common! Some of it quite strange coincidences. Most mind-boggling was that we were both in Leon, Nicaragua at the same time in summer 2016 for Global Glimpse trips, just not in the same cohort. We also shared a love for musicals (listened to the full Hamilton soundtrack 3 times whilst at farm), Disney music, childhood books (Bedtime for Frances was an exciting shared favorite), food and baking. We both have positive outlooks on life and shared various other values/attitudes/thoughts...so this made for a good friendship. We also had similar senses of humor (best described as being kindred spirits with Trader Joe’s....we think we’re awesome, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously) had a lot of fun, and may have annoyed everybody else at the farm with our antics: lots of cooking/baking projects accompanied with sing-alongs to Broadway or Disney (especially fond of duets, Love is an Open Door was a fun one), exclamations over our “shared past” in the terms of recalling favorite old books, movies, or songs...mainly books, talking about best Bay Area places to eat....we also did a lot of smack-talking about Alexander Hamilton/silly men in general, but more on that later. Basically, we had a blast because why wouldn’t baking vegan lemon poppyseed muffins while singing along to “Satisfied” be your ideal lifestyle? I’m incredibly grateful for my good luck :)

There were lots of other volunteers while I was there as well, which I think contributes to the fullness of the experience as well. It’s great to meet people from various places in the world with different backgrounds, in different stages of life. Farms definitely attract eccentric people in some cases which made for some very interesting characters, but it was all a good experience and fun to share the day with lots of people.

When I arrived, Berkeley girl was there along with another guy in his 30s and someone in his 20s. The 20s guy was from New Jersey, at the farm for a few weeks and figuring out his life after a couple years at community college. The 30s guy was a long-term volunteer and had stayed at this farm before, from Philadelphia but spends a lot of time traveling and doing workaways in other places interspersed with work as a cook in restaurants. He did a lot of fun stuff in the kitchen, and I’m excited to copy the thinly sliced vegetable (sweet potatoes are good) layered with other small diced veggies and spices and roasted on a sheet pan thing that he was fond of.

There were four international volunteers during my stay at the farm, all there for about a week. There was a young couple from India who moved to Syracuse so the husband can pursue his PhD in business. The wife will start school at Cornell next year for a PhD program in sociology relating to developing nations. They were both incredibly sweet, made delicious Indian lunches. Another volunteer was a 20something woman from Shanghai, majored in engineering (and did part of her schooling in France for 2 years). She was also a sweetheart and it was cute the things that she got excited about: making banana bread (she was fascinated and called in banana cake), lasagna, and the record player. The last international volunteer was a middle-aged man from India who was a videographer, and while he was here he was making a promotional video for the farm (I’m excited to see the finished product). We (when I say we, its usually going to refer to me and Berkeley girl) loved him because he was our biggest fan in terms of cooking.

The last volunteer was incredibly eccentric, had come from an intentional living community north of Boston and ate 8-10 egg omelets every morning. (made me think of Gaston....Beauty and the Beast was another one of our soundtracks of choice).

Anyway, basically I think that people are so interesting! I love them.

Animals!

The farm doesn’t have a ton of animals, but enough for them to be very much of note. They get fed twice a day: once in the morning and once in the afternoon. I fed animals relatively often, and felt very farm-girl whenever I did. There are 2 white peacocks who aren’t terribly relevant. Then there are the two mini-donkeys: Dominic and his mom Clara. They’re my favorites, and share a living space with the horse, Vincent, and the cow, Saucy. Saucy is pregnant and will eventually be good for milk. The four of them have a funny power dynamic that makes feeding slightly difficult: the donkeys are afraid of Saucy, and Saucy is afraid of Vincent (who is not afraid of anyone?). Saucy was also raised with the goats, so she sort of thinks she is a goat. The goats are divided into males (5 of them) and females and kids. There was one kid born a few weeks before I arrived, and another pregnant goat, but sadly she didn’t have her kid before I left. The goats are cuties. One of the male goats likes to rub his face in pee and then rub his face on you. Over by the purple house is the duck and chicken house! There’s a lot of them and they’re all rather loud and poopy. We collect eggs when we feed them. The chickens seem to have more eggs to collect in the afternoon, the ducks in the morning. Unclear why. Discussion of animal sex with Sydney confirmed a fun fact that I read on the Vassar bathroom stall: ducks have corkscrew shaped penises! Which is actually kind of awful and makes for lots of duck rape and violent sex :( Besides the "farm animals", there's also Molly, the dog, and Beakers (short for BK, short for Black Kat) who is adorable. Also, there's probably mice but luckily I never saw any.

Farm work!!

I learned so much while I was here, and this is probably where the bulk of it and the most interesting stuff comes up. The farm usually has lots of different projects going on, but a lot of stuff was covered in snow while I was there so not everything was happening. I’d love to return sometime to be more involved with the garden and also foraging for mushrooms.

The snow may have inhibited other stuff, but this was the right season for maple syrup!!! At this farm, the various steps for syrup production are tapping the trees, collecting the sap, cooking in the large cooker in the woods, finishing cooking on the woodstove in the house, and then bottling. I was able to be involved with every step except tapping the trees! My very first day I went down to the cooker, a large wood stove with a long sheet pan on top of it...like six feet by two feet, maybe? The cooker is rigged to a large tank and faucet that we filter the sap into, and then it drains into the sheet pan and cooks down. The stove beneath is fed by long wood pieces from the farm’s trees. The sap gets cooked down 40:1 water to sugar here, which means we need 40 gallons of sap to get 1 gallon of syrup at this concentration. The cooker is pretty cool, but my favorite is definitely collecting sap! It’s basically like hiking + weightlifting? There are trees tapped all over the property of the farm (hundreds of trees total), so to get to the various sites we ride on the 4-wheeler/ATV, which I wasn’t allowed to drive. I started wearing this thick pair of navy pants because riding on the ATV is such a crazy, mUDDY experience....imagine one of those jerky amusement park rides, then add in mud and no seat-belts. Once we get to a site we unload the empty 5 gallon jugs from the trailer attached to the ATV and take them through the woods to collect sap from the plastic blue bags attached to the tapped trees. Sap collection is fun because it’s like a little treasure hunt, also tromping through the snowy forest is just beautiful! I got stronger, but definitely cannot carry two full 5 gallon jugs through the snow. After we collect jugs of sap, which is clear and a little sweet (they drink it like water with dinner sometimes), we filter the sap through a strainer into the tank at the cooker. The sap then cooks down over the course of lots of hours, and then we jug it up and bring it up to the farmhouse to finish on the stove. It’s still thin at this stage but starting to show color. As it starts to thicken on the stove we start checking it with the Brix meter, a special thermometer that floats when the maple syrup is officially maple syrup. Then we bottle it into cute jugs!

Even though I wasn’t around for foraging mushrooms, they also grow two types of mushrooms. Oyster mushrooms are grown in a straw alfafa mix. The straw is boiled, then mixed with alfafa, and then we mix it with mushrooms spores and stuff hole-y plastic bags with it. The bags are stored in a temperature controlled room and after a while they fruit out mushrooms through the holes. The duration of that takes 5 weeks, but they have a ton of batches going at once, so we almost always had oyster mushrooms available to cook with. I also learned mushroom inoculation using logs. Different types of mushrooms like different wood, and they do shiitake with oak and maple logs from the farm. We drill little holes in the logs, stuff them with mushroom spawn, and seal the holes with wax. These won’t start to produce mushrooms until multiple months later, but it was cool to be involved with the process.

Fiber! The goats are angora goats and we use their hair/fur to spin yarn. The cut fiber is washed, and then dyed. I dyed once, a bright green. After it dries out, we pull out the curly “locks” because they are considered more valuable. Then we pick out dirt and skin flakes (ew) and comb it out. Joan also got this cool machine called a drum carder which helps to clean out the fiber and makes little round fluffy rolls of fiber that are easier to spin. You can also blend colors this way. Once the fiber is all clean and separated out, it can be spun into yarn. I learned a little how to drop spin, but the fastest way is with a wheel (thinking Sleeping Beauty?). Joan is very good at this and makes it look easy, but it’s actually quite hard I believe. After being spun, the yarn can be knit into cool stuff!

Those are the three main production type things that I did, but I also did a lot of other random work. I helped plant seeds for lots of different vegetables that will go in the garden! I helped with building a little shelf thing using the screwdriver gun thing and some pretty wood. I also dug out firewood from the snow, which was such a good workout! Most of the houses are primarily heated by wood stoves, so my fire building skills got a lot better. I also did some normal house cleaning, and helped muck out the animals’ stall...this involves shoveling their poop into a big bucket and trying to get Saucy not to lick the bucket because she is a silly girl who likes to lick her own poop.

Adventures:

My world for the past 2 weeks has pretty much been the 225 acres of the farm, but I did go to Albany for two adventures with Berkeley girl volunteer. They are quite classic Tamika-type adventures.

Adventure 1-Grocery Stores: We got a ride in with a tenant/past volunteer who is working at the Albany food co-op. We spent over an hour in this store and went down every aisle, spending a particularly long time in the bulk section and the lotion/soap area. We then walked through Albany aimlessly for a bit, before figuring out the bus system and getting on the bus to go to the Asian supermarket! It was a good store and we got lots of nice vegetables (more about this to come). This was the primary aim of the outing, but after that we decided to go to Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s. 4 grocery stores in 4 hours, so a pretty good day.

Adventure 2-Schuyler Mansion: As we are both Hamilton-fans (and started communicating largely in Hamilton quotes for a few days), we decided it would be fun to go to the house of the Schuyler sisters, which is in downtown Albany. We took one of their “focus tours”, and we chose the one that focuses on the women of the Schuyler household. Catharine (Ma, is that you??) van Rensselaer was Philip Schuyler’s wife, and she was super rich and he was pretty rich too they have a very large house, no surprise. The tour was very good, I liked our tour guide: a history nerd who actually studied medieval studies and teaches fencing but also was very adamant about not glorifying the American Revolution and being straight up about the fact that the Schuyler’s were rich and owned enslaved people and lots of other questionable stuff. He also made us practice proper dance posture and broke into “Angelica, Eliiiiza, and Peggy” at one point, so of course I liked him. The tour was fun, it’s always wild to think that you’re actually in the room where it happened ;) Hamilton and Eliza were married right there! Some fun facts from the tour: 5 Schuyler sisters, 3 boys. Angelica eloped with a thought-to-be-poor man and was banished from the house for 2 weeks, then it turned out he was rich so she was allowed back in the family. Eliza lived to be 97 (that 50 years line makes more sense) but everybody else died before her. Because they didn’t bathe, they all wore chemise undergarments which were changed multiple times a day to help prevent smelling. They didn’t actually wear corsets but stays because the ideal feminine shape was not hourglass but rectangle on top of trapezoid for this period, hence the bum enhancers....after the tour we also go really intrigued in investigating the Hamilton-Laurens relationship and found a bunch of letters online that really make a more than friendship seem likely. We also looked at Hamilton to Eliza letters and came to the conclusion that Hamilton is just a clingy flirt who likes to hear himself talk and doesn’t have a lot of respect for women...typical.

I know you’ve been waiting for it (Wait For It?), but it’s time for the FOOD SECTION. I think the most logical way to do this is to just list everything we ate, and notate with a * the things that I made (though you could probably guess anyway). Note that all baked goods were vegan because Berkeley girl is vegan. Also note that we ate leftovers (for lunch mainly) but I’m not going to mention it unless it was made into a new dish. Also if it sounds like breakfast, I probably made/assembled it myself since we didn’t really eat that meal as a group. Also, for most baked goods, maple syrup was used as the sweetener.

The complete list:

Cabbage salad, Pasta with mushroom and red sauce, garlic bread

Almond butter and toast

*Roasted potatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes, and onions

Dehydrated strawberries (side note: the dehydrator is a fun kitchen tool)

Falafel, pita, veggies, hummus

Granola with almondmilk and strawberries

*Banana bread

Dehydrated bananas

*Red rice with citrus-shoyu, lettuce salad

Potato-plantain sheet pan with coconut +curry

Oatmeal with banana, peanut butter, cinnamon, almond milk, tea

*(oatmeal + tea was my go-to breakfast)

Tilapia with garlic scapes, pasta with alfredo and mixed veg, garlic bread

*Bean burgers, salad, sweet potato apple sheet pan roast, peanut lime ginger sauce

*Banana fruit leather: cocoa-almond, cinnamon-flax, strawberry-poppyseeed

Rice, lentil curry, mushroom sauté, salad

*Beans and rice casserole, mixed veg with oregano, fennel and garlic scapes

Sheet pan shredded potatoes, onions, celery, carrot, mushrooms, fruit salad, banana-rice cake

Chickpea curry, rice with vegetable and spices, carrot-fruit salad w/ maple almonds

*Rice with veggies and kale and spices

BBQ beans, “leftovers” soup (just imagine everything noted above in a blender)

Rice pudding

*Lasagne with ricotta, spinach, eggplant, mozzarella

Vegan lasagna with tofu ricotta, spinach, eggplant, cashew “cheese”

*Salad feat. Roast swet potato bits

*Maple candied salted almonds

*Spinach salad

*Miso soup with wakame and mushrooms, *Tempura vegetables

*cranberry-orange bread

*salty-maple caramel popcorn

*lemon poppyseed muffins

*salad, buckwheat groats with beans and balsamic grapes,

*cabbage salad

flatbread pizza sans sauce

challah toast with ricotta

crepes with nut butter and banana

*peanut noodles, *summer/salad rolls with cabbage, carrot, mushroom, tofu

*brownies

*pumpkin coconut curry with tofu and veggies

aloo gobi (spelling) feat. Potatoes, cauliflower, and lotsss of spice

naan, rice, *kale and veggie mix

*pumpkin bread

mashed potatoes, roasted seasoned mixed veggies, red beans

*quesadillas, mashed potato pancakes, cabbage salad

*sushi: maki rolls with avocado, cucumber, oyster mushrooms

*chow mein with bok choy, gailan, bean sprouts, mushrooms, tofu, garlic scapes

*spicy eggplant

*cranberry relish

*maple cornbread

granola

really good salad with avocado, radish, lettuce, bell pepper, tamari-ginger dressing

Thai-inspired curry, roast sweet potato sheet pan, rice

Hummus, spicy roast potatoes

*Chickpea cookie dough, *quinoa

*stir fry: eggplant, bok choy, carrot, mushroom, thai basil, garlic scapes, ginger

sweet potato sheet pan

*brownie batter

I definitely ate a ton of sugar and snacks (we got fun stuff at Trader Joe’s) whilst at the farm, but I sort of took a YOLO attitude since it was only 2 weeks. I definitely am ready for a bit of a cleanse and return to my running routine though! But this was the longest I’ve gone without running and without getting stressed out so I’ll take that as a win.

It’s really hard to fully explain my experience on the farm, and I think this blog post may glorify it in some ways. I did have an amazing time, got to do a lot of cool stuff, learned a lot, and made some good friendships. But it definitely wasn’t all sunshine and daisies and it also broadened my perspective in a different way, as per usual, making me incredibly grateful for my life and circumstances and opportunities. The Vassar bubble is real and I have often talked about that, but the farm is totally different sort of bubble...a constantly changing cast of characters doing work on property that is the livelihood of the owners. Working with the land but also worrying about money and grocery shopping, living in upstate New York where neighbors are spaced far away...

I think one of the things that was most striking about my two weeks on the farm is that it really felt like way longer than that! I think that relates to the fact that it wasn’t a vacation, it was me adopting this lifestyle for a bit, and combined with the comfort offered by my fellow Bay-Area girl, it felt really normal to be there, but stepping back and looking at it I was kind of shocked with how different this was from anything I’ve ever done. I’m not describing this well at all, talk to me in person if you want more Tamika-attempting-to-describe-feelings.

Okay, if you’ve made it all the way through this, I am so impressed because it’s a longggggg post. My last note was prompted by a comment someone made at the farm but not really related to the farm. I think that I worry about losing people that I love because I do care about people to the point where it matters that I lose them, but it’s also kind of comforting to know that I have the capacity to love people enough that losing them is upsetting for me? Because if I care enough to be sad when I lose people, then that signifies that I am capable of a level of love that really matters and makes me feel, and that’s pretty cool, and just because I lose a person doesn’t mean I lose my ability to love people, it just means that I’ll find new people and projects to put that love towards.

I've probably missed some stuff, it's hard to get it the whole two weeks into one blog post. For now though, it is

PICTURE TIME, apologies for formatting: