Hmm, I feel like putting some pictures up but I haven't taken any photos since being here except for a few botched attempts at catching the fireflies at night. This really is an amazingly beautiful farm. It's 200 acres with beautiful small pasture fields and lots and lots of trees and really nice old barns and river and pond. We just came back from swimming in the pond as the day was hot and humid. Jeff has been baking for the last 2 weeks, tending the fire in the oven, mixing and shaping dough and throwing it in and out of the oven. I've been milking cows and making cheese and hanging. The most pleasurable part of the day might be walking down this tree-lined road to close in the chickens for the night in the dusk as the fireflies sparkle and light up the fields like little twinkling stars. I love fireflies more than most things. They're the best thing of all time I think. And on this beautiful farm, they make it really magical.
Another cool thing has been getting to know Juan, an Ecuadorian farmer and farm educator who is here through the MESA program on exchange. He's incredibly knowledgeable about farming in Ecuador and all over and we've been having fun swapping farm stories from our different countries. It's really interesting to hear about what's happening in Ecuador because he is trying to promote sustainable farming there and it's just such a different situation.
Jeff and I get more excited about our own farm every day all the different things we want to do and grow and try. Cows and fruit trees and heirloom beans. Electric tractors and woks in the kitchen. The list can be endless.

Well I guess I haven't posted for awhile. Haven't really had too much of a chance or too much to write for a couple of weeks, but now I think I can squeeze something out. For the past couple of weeks, we've pretty much been getting across the country with a few neat detours along the way.
We did stop at Live Power Farm, a 150 member CSA - biointensive, biodynamic farm. We spent the day there working in their garden. Met some lovely people, there were about 6 interns there and did some garden work. That was pretty alright.
Then we spent about 3 awesome days in Oregon, camping by a river, swimming and hiking the Oregan Coast Trail in beautiful forest along the coast. That was awesome.
Then we drove and drove. Stopped at the Missoula farmers market which was nice, saw a lot of rolling prairie, stopped at a funny, neat little tractor "museum" on the side of the freeway in South Dakota and had a couple of oldster farmers show us a video of a horse-powered haystack loader (a j-fork??) - that was fun.
Stopped in Chicago and hung out with Noah! And also stopped at the Seed Savers Exchange Heritage Farm which was pretty cool. Talk about the wickedest small-scale farming bookstore. Holy. Jeff and I were drooling and had to keep each other from just putting one of each book on the checkout counter.

Anyhoo, now we're at Bobolink Dairy in New Jersey. We just arrived yesterday and it looks like it's going to be a fun month. The farm is in an extremely beautiful area, surrounded by national forest (I think that may be the running theme of this trip - hmm, not bad). 200 acres of small pastures, old farm buildings and a nice dairy and bakery. They make beautiful cheese and wood-fired bread and Jeff and I spent our first day, split up, me in the dairy, Jeff baking bread all day. It's a beautiful farm with a whole bunch of nice people on it and we're making cheese and bread - what could be bad right? Except that we;re dying for our own farm. The longer this trip is, the more impatient I seem to get. But it's going to be a good month, there's lakes all around and cows and trees and fireflies! And I can't really complain when I get to milk cows and make cheese all day.