Weeding, Cooking, Swimming

First project of the day: Pulling out lettuce from the front field that had started to bolt. Graham and I worked on this long enough to transport three carts to the pigs. When lettuce plants bolt, they change from small, compact heads of greens into tall, weedy, flowering plants. This is part of the normal life cycle of a lettuce plant, but it also makes the leaves bitter and unpalatable. However, the pigs won't turn their noses up at them:


The pigs are actually part of a very unique system that is in place on this farm. While Patrick and Colleen farm the majority of the land here, Brian and Rebecca own the farm and run a brewery on site: Crannóg Ales. It turns out that running a brewery actually partners quite well with running a farm. This, of course, makes sense when you remember that beer and cider are agricultural products. By having the brewery as part of a working farm, they are able to be fully organic and run a zero-waste operation. The spent grain that is fit for eating is fed to the pigs. The waste from the pigs helps to fertilize crops on the farm. Other organic waste that is not fit for pigs is composted. Waste water from the brewing process is used to keep the compost heap moist. Then, just like with the manure from the pigs, compost is used when growing crops. Finally, they grow their own organic hops on site, and in past years they have had a small flock of sheep that are pastured in the hops field. Sheep will eat lots of plants, but not hops. Hence, the sheep weed and fertilize the field! They've really devised an elegant system.

Here's a picture of brewery:


After we fed the sheep, we continued weeding onions (we're only about a third done) and we also mowed some pathways. Graham is off visiting his grandparents this weekend, so the rest of the mowing will be up to me. It's not bad work, except down really narrow pathways. Moving between the peas is tough because I don't want to damage the plants. Even the silly plants that thought to grow into the middle of the pathway. Plants are Patrick and Colleen's livelihood, so I don't want to risk that by mowing over anything that shouldn't be mowed over! Basically, that meant when the mowing got tough, I asked Graham to do it.

Finally, I ended my work day by cooking my first meal for everyone. Everybody takes turns making lunch and dinner. This system makes for some great sense of community and shared responsibility, and eating meals with everyone is one of my favorite parts of the day. I made a vegetarian shepherd's pie with lentils instead of beef, colcannon, kale, an a radish salad. Everything came out pretty well, but I made a little too much food. It's not the end of the world, we'll just see shepherd's pie at lunch for the next couple days.

During dinner, Patrick suggested that we all go down to the lake for a swim, which is exactly what we did. The water was freezing, but it felt very refreshing after a hot day out in the sun: