Common Ground Fair

Let me paint the picture for you. 8 o'clock, Friday morning. Maine. Standing on the edge of a forest, clinging to a $2 cup of coffee and huddling with six other Overlook volunteers against blasts of 30 degree wind. In the forest through which we just walked, there are horses harnessed to felled pine trees, led by men with long beards and plaid flannel shirts, an image straight out of the 1800's. Before us, a gate leading into a giant fairground that doesn't open for another four. I'm wearing four layers and still freezing. I'm clutching a program that lists MOFGA's (Maine Organic Farmers and Gardener's Association) Common Ground Fair's Friday workshops. As the wind blows the pages every which way, my fellow volunteers and I are trying to map a mental schedule of the workshops we'll be attending for the day. 9 o'clock: Permaculture and Medicinal Herbs. 10 o'clock: Sustainable Agriculture in Central America. 11 o'clock: Intensive Gardening, starring Will Bonsall, who, if you're in the sustainable ag/seed saving culture, is quite the celebrity. Noon: Sheep Dog Demo.

By the time the gates open at 9, I am beside myself with icy pain. As the crowd that has been building for the past forty minutes (some 60,000 people visit the fair every year) move into the fairgrounds, a variety of white tents splay out before us. Boot Root Kitchen, featuring organic, home grown carrot soup and eggplant sandwiches. A stand selling hot apple cider. A huge tent devoted entirely to alpaca fleece. A barn demonstrating heritage breeds of chickens. Men with giant oxen mill about. The marketplace is buzzing with people selling handmade crafts and sweaters and composting toilets and a million other things I can't afford.

As I walk through the fair on my way to Permaculture, I am surprised by how normal everyone there is. Having very little exposure to the New England organic farming culture, I have been expecting a sea of dirty hippies and barefoot children covered in flowers. Not really the case. Mostly, just average people bundled up, talking about the summer's tomato blight, or their success growing a certain variety of faba bean, or the prices of apples (Ok, perhaps not ordinary topics of conversation). I am reminded of my grandparents, Nana and Harry. Imagine a sea of them, and that's what the Common Ground's crowd is like. Of course, there are a few exceptions. Freegans, for example, were around. People who only eat free food. Pulling plates of food from trashcans all over the fair.

So, this is a glimpse of my experience at the Common Ground Fair in Maine this past weekend. It was an amazing time, and I learned a lot. As soon as I have the land, I'm ready to grow my own organic commercial garden. And I definitely caught some of the excitement about everything that is happening with organic farming and gardening. It was a lot of fun. I highly recommend you go next year. I don't know how to end this entry... LOOKOVERTHERE BYE!

Cow Rollick

Is Overlook Farm a real farm? Yes, and No. If you brought in a commercial farmer (the real sustainable kind, of course) who had livestock and crops, he would rub his stomach and laugh heartily. Mostly at our animal husbandry. This is not against the livestock folk who work here at all. But, we're a farm of young volunteers who come and go every few months, who aren't working experts, who lack forty years of animal experience. It is a farm run by amateurs. Not to mention the random variety of animals here. Cows, pigs, goats, all standard. Then, there's a camel, water buffalo, alpacas. Where are the experts on those animals?

This came to mind today, as five of us tried to move six full grown cows. Big debacle. They get lose [switching to present tense], so we move them to some old pasture, but, Uh Oh, the bull is close by and looking ominously through the flimsy fence at the nice lady cows. So, we move them again, except Stephanie gets in the chicken pen and starts eating the chicken feed, and Clancy is over by the woods, and the rest of the cows are figuring out that the electric fencing isn't ON, so plow, plow, no more fencing, more loose cows. Thirty minutes later, we've got a bucket of feed to lure Stephanie, while the other volunteers, knee deep in manure, are yelling at the other cows to keep them at bay and trying to move fencing. Big mess. And it's raining.

Truth be told, however, it was an entertaining adventure. And, all in all, no harm was done, and we volunteers are laughing at our own misadventures.

Ok, this is a farm, sort of. You do have to consider that there are farmers/animal husbanders whose cattle obey verbal commands, who don't need to use buckets of feed to control their livestock, who run things more smoothly, who take things more seriously. I mean, they are trying to make a living. We, the Overlook Vols, are a lot more ragtag and haphazard, and the whole point of this farm is education, not production.

So, for the naive like me. When you own cows, teach them some damned obedience.

Gateway to Difference

The absence of my updates (did you notice? Oh how touching) is due to the BUSY-ness of my week. Man, oh man, it has been a week. By week, I mean four days. Monday, I had a five hour program with a group of 6th graders, and then, on Tuesday, straight into the Global Gateway program. It's the biggie. A group comes in and stays for three days. As the facilitator, you spend nearly all of those three days with the group, and in the spare moments, you spend your time getting ready for the next step. It's a whirlwind, I tell you.

So, The Sharon Academy (TSA) of Vermont brought 36 kids Tuesday afternoon. I took fifteen of those kids under my wing, while two other volunteers took the rest. We had a busy time together. There were tours, chores, three different activities (Survival, World Map, Identity) that helped the group focus on issues of poverty, chronic hunger, and community, meals in the Global Village, and lots of debriefs and discussions. I think I worked from 8-8 yesterday. I am tired.

But, my group (who named themselves "Breta") was full of unbelievable kids. Truly, they are an example of why my job is a good one. They were all very open, very engaged in everything, unafraid to talk and discuss. In a lot of ways, they did my job for me, getting their minds working without my help. I had so much fun with them. I'm starting to cry. Oh boy. How emotional. Someone strike up the band. It's singing time.

But in all sincerity, it was an excellent first Gateway program for me. The highlight might have been the orientation we did before they spent the night in the villages (2nd night). During the orientation, we use a lottery to assign different roles to the "families", aka: the groups of kids sleeping in different village sites. So, a few became handicapped, and I put gloves on their hands and taped their fingers together. A few became pregnant, upon which I had them put full water balloons in their shirts, and then promptly taped them in. One of my guys, Ben, became pregnant, which was hilarious. And then, after dinner, each gave birth and had a new baby. Ben had a particularly loud and dramatic labor.

So, I think the Gateway program is perhaps the best of all. Because it gives the kids some authentic, different experiences. I don't know. I'm not crazy about throwing out statistics for starving people, or lecturing about inequality and injustice. It's all abstract. But, when a community of kids have to live in a Tibetan yurt (nomad tent), pretend to be pregnant and handicapped, build fires, buy food together from a market, and haul water from here to there, they really learn something. Poverty and hunger move from the abstract to the detailed. A teacher can't teach you that stuff. Experience is a far better teacher. And, the thing I love about experience is that it involves feelings. Not just rationalizations. Experience is about more than coming to conclusions or making ideas neat and tidy. It complicates things, and helps you to hesitate before you make your mind up. At least that what it does for me. So, I feel good about the role I play here. I feel good about what this place provides. I got that going for me. Which is nice.

I'm about to go to Maine for an agricultural fair. Very excited. Should be a cool experience. Stay tuned.

Dark Day

I'm sad to announce the experience of my first animal death today.

The death count has actually risen to three by lunchtime.

The first dead animal was found this morning. We were down in the pasture by the driveway, moving the sheep to some fresh grass. In the middle of the flock, a little white lamb had died. I didn't realize it at first, as one of the livestock vols picked the lamb up and carried her outside of the fence. Then, I noticed how limply her head hung, and knew what had happened.

Two goats also died today. None of them was a surprise. This past summer, the farm received an absurd amount of rain, which led to a lot of parasite-related illnesses among the sheep and goats. The three deaths today were related to something parasitic.

I guess I have to wonder what my reaction is, or what it should be. I live on a farm now, with a lot of livestock. Death happens. Animals get sick. And they aren't pets. After living here a while, the way people romanticize their pets almost seems childish, I guess because animals are such an ever day part of life. That, and as a farm volunteer, you tend to look at all animals as resources.

But, still, I was sad to see that dead lamb. She was so small. As time goes on, I'm sure I'll become desensitized to the whole thing, the animal birth and death cycle. Maybe a part of me will always dislike it.

On a lighter note, in response to John Lewis' comment, Abu kicked one of our vols in the mouth, because he was agitated. She is fine. A tooth got knocked loose, but has been repaired. And she has a whopping bruise on her arm. I didn't see the camel kick, but I heard it was a frightening sight to behold. Camels are usually quite gentile and not to be feared, unless you piss one off, apparently.

Freakin' Sheep

Freakin' Sheep. I hate freaking sheep. Almost as much as meat turkeys.

Oh sure, they're woolly and go "Bah" and have provided the human race with domesticated service for thousands of years. Besides that, though, sheep suck.

Mostly, sheep suck because they are the most flighty, nervous animals imaginable. Everything freaks them out, and when sheep freak out, they run like crazy. Everywhere.

This tends to be a problem because we have to move the sheep out to and back in from pasture every day. In an ideal world, they run in a neat pack, following someone holding a bucket of textra, i.e., "sheep crack". This hardly ever happens. Most of the time, half of the pack gets nervous and ends up running the other direction. Last week, three sheep ran about a half a mile into the woods.

My disdain for sheep came to a peak about three days ago. It was late afternoon. I was exhausted. I get a radio call to come help in Abu's (the camel's) pen. I run over there, to find out that Abu has kicked one of the volunteers in the face. Don't worry, she's ok. Apparently, the vol's had been trying to catch a few sheep in the pen who needed to be pulled aside for breeding (the sheep share Abu's pen at night). Abu had gotten upset. So, we have three sheep running around with the pack, and we need to catch them. Thirty minutes later, two have been caught. The last one is totally freaked out and, every time we try to corner her, she bolts. There was a lot of diving onto solid ground, and volunteers making a line with their arms outstretched. At one point, the damn sheep actually lodged her head in the fence, and still we didn't catch her. Finally, Susan made the dive, and we got her, and then had to wrestle her the thirty yards to her pen, which took three volunteers and ten minutes. I hate sheep.

So, here's a joke. How many volunteers does it take to catch a sheep? Answer: seven. Ha? On the next edition, find out why I hate meat turkeys.

Sustainability

This is a buzz word if there ever was one. Sustainability. You hear those young hipsters saying it all the time. It's definitely become part of the new "green" fad, and I am one of those people who tends to distance myself from fads. I haven't been opposed to the idea of it, but I've avoided diving right in and proclaiming its glory. What you are about to read is a conversation I've been having in my brain, between two different perspectives.

But, as one of my fellow volunteers pointed out to me, fads often lead to something bigger. If you think about it, most cultural/literature/artistic revolutions probably began as fads. The Renaissance. Big fad.

In any case, I find myself using the word "sustainable" regularly these days. It happens to feature very prominently into the tours that I have to give. Several aspects of the farm are aimed towards sustainability. We have an organic garden, a gigantic compost mountain, composting toilets, low-flow shower heads, etc. We also rotationally graze our sheep and goats, which allows our pastures to regenerate and keeps our soil healthy. Several of our Global Village sites demonstrate sustainable technology, like a methane converter that collects methane from composted manure.

As I give tours and educate kids more about sustainability, my attitude towards it is changing. (I'm still wary of preaching about it, and definitely don't preach when I give tours.) It was my boss Todd who changed my mind, when he described sustainability as "taking care of the present to protect the future". I think that's what he said. For those of us with some privilege and luxury, the future is not of great concern. We will have access to food, we will have good health (or medicine at the least), and we don't care that much about what we leave our children. Dammit!

But, as I'm starting to understand, if you're a subsistence farmer in the highlands of Guatemala, your worldview is a little different. The future is precarious. You barely have access to food as it is. Health is limited by malnourishment, and determined almost solely by what you eat (whereas I hardly ever link my health to the food I eat). You have a little land, the rest being taken up by agri-businesses like Dole and Chiquita, and your land will be divided among your children. If you want to promise them a future, you need to leave them good land. When you live like this, it is unbelievably important that you sustain. That you take care of your resources. Because when they run out, you run out of options.

Does it make sense to use organic fertilizer (and not chemical fertilizers) if you're a subsistence farmer? Yes. Does it make sense to buy into sustainable practices (that are culturally appropriate)? Yes. Is it a fad? No. Not to them.

I am not playing a pity angle here. I don't pity the Guatemalan subsistence farmer. Actually, one of my favorite parts of giving tours in the Global Village is leading the kids to the realization that living in a bamboo hut in Thailand is not necessarily miserable, or that the point of the Global Village is not to take a poverty tour. Different cultures, not worse-off cultures.

Anyway, I don't pity the subsistence farmer, but I do recognize that help is needed. And that there are solutions. Like sustainability. To shrug it off because it's a fad is bordering on arrogant. You might say that I'm thinking in a different person's worldview. You might say it's part of my job. So it is.

When I'm on the Job

This morning, I officially became "on the job". When this guy is on the job, watch out. It's like a hurricane of trouble... and good looks. Good lookin' trouble, they called me, in high school. Glooble.

So, today I gave my first "tour". It's not really a tour, but I am lacking a better word. The word

"tour" brings to mind lots of fake smiling and memorized information and bad jokes. What I did today was more of an "experiential educational program". An EEP. I'm abbreviating all over the place tonight. At 8:45, 48 9th graders from St. Peter-Marian arrived in a school bus. Catholic school. I inherited a group of 16 and the sacred duty of guiding them through the "Humans and Habitats" program. Here's the basic layout: Introduction to Heifer's Mission, and a video about Heifer' work around the world. Then, a tour of the farm and garden, followed by a tour of the Global Village, followed by a village meal at one of the sites, and topped off by the World Map game. My group of kids were fine. Very, very 9th grade-ish. Pretty nice, somewhat interested, but not enough to be uncool, and flirty flirty. Nevertheless, they did their best to learn about Heifer and livestock and stuff, and I didn't have much trouble with them. We had our lunch in Thailand, and I was actually quite impressed with them. Our fire only took twenty minutes to get going, and they liked the Thai food.

The conversation at the village meal was probably the most meaningful. They went through the wood collecting and fire building and food preparation and cooking over an open fire. And then, we all sat down after we cleaned our bowls, and I asked a few questions, such as: "Did you like the meal?" "Would you eat it every day?" My personal favorite part was asking them how long it usually takes them to make lunch. Answer: three minutes, for a pbj. How long did this meal take? Answer: an hour. When you think about the labor, the smoke, and time, would you want to cook this meal two or three times a day? Answer: Hell no! But, if you lived in this area of Thailand, you would have to. So, food for thought. A very good conversation.

Anyway, the ball is now rolling. From this point on, things will be busy busy, and I will be working working. Ready as I'll ever be.

More pictures. (1) Our farm garden. It's about 2 acres, and produces 10,000 lbs. of produce a year. Not bad. (2) The view from our farm. You can see the Boston skyline on clear days. This is why the farm is called Overlook. (3) Sugar Road, a road that runs by the farm. It's where our maple syrup harvest takes place... hence the name. Hah! (4) RUFUS! Yes, this is Rufus, and yes, he is incredible. We have all agreed that there is now a romance going on between Rufus and our other calf, Molly. Young love.

Pictures

Here are some pictures that I stole from a fellow volunteer's blog.

(1) All the vols, baling hay.

(2) This is me, atop a mountain of hay. We moved 600 bales of hay. Woo boy.

Big Days Ahead

So, training ended yesterday, officially. I have to say, it was a welcome end. I couldn't take any more meetings and sitting in classrooms and pretending to be a whiny kid on a field trip while my fellow volunteers practiced their tours.

I do have to say, however, that we education volunteers had a pretty good time pretending to be students visiting the farm. If you're confused, let me explain. This week, every edvol (education volunteer) got to practice facilitating a tour or program. Meanwhile, the other edvols pretended to be a visiting group. And we made many a character in the process. One day, I was Timmy the troubled boy whose parents were getting divorced, and I kept alluding to my mom's "happy pills". Sick stuff I know, but this is my blog, so suck it. Yesterday, my name was Jixby, and my favorite food was sausage oatmeal, and my favorite activity was protecting my house from dinosaurs. So, all in all, that was pretty fun.

But, training is over. All the edvols went into Worcester (pronounced "Woostah") last night to celebrate over mexican food and beer. We have two days off, and then it's the real deal. My first tour is on Monday, with a school whose name I forgot. I will be taking them through the Humans and Habitats program, which is about a five hour tour. Part of the tour, a part that will no doubt be difficult, involves a "village meal" in Thailand. Basically, I will provide the kids with cookware and food, and they will have to build a fire, prepare the food, and cook it at the Thailand site. It will be an authentic Thailand meal. I don't imagine that the process will go smoothly, but that's part of the fun. I have two other tours next week, and I am really excited about it. Today, a rainy day to do nothing. Ah.

New England Climate: A Fierce and Fickle Mistress

You know, for the past two weeks, I've been very taken with the weather in Massachusetts. Every day has been sunny, in the high 70's, and beautiful. I've been secretly laughing at all the poor schmucks boiling away in the southern, 100+ heat back at home. Hoorah New England summers!

And then, New England turned on me. In one day. Yesterday. Rain came, and with it, temperatures that are reminiscent of winter in Tennessee. Oh, look Sam! It's 40 degrees outside! And raining! Too bad you have to spend the entire day outside feeding livestock and touring the Global Village. Yesterday afternoon, as I was trying to restore feeling to my numb fingers, I realized that I was wearing three layers and fantasizing about hot showers, in September. If I went off my 22 years of experience with September, I'd make the mistake of guessing that it'd be another month until I could start wearing pants. That's how it is where I come from.

In Massachusetts, not so much. It's another cold, wet day, and it's all downhill from here. For the next six months or so, this little farm boy is going to freeze his balls off. Stay in tune for that.

Practice Tour

So, I gave my first practice tour with Ivy, another volunteer, today. The education volunteers are getting geared up for the real stuff, which starts next week. The tour I gave is our most basic tour. A video, brief discussion, and tour of the farm. The objectives: to describe the work, mission, and history of Heifer, to explain where food comes from, to describe several sustainable agricultural practices used by Heifer in developing communities, and to identify the benefits of livestock. Most of them are fulfilled during the visit to the different Global Village sites.

All in all, Ivy and I did well. The rest of the education vols pretended to be our audience. Once you really get the ball rolling, things comes easily. As guides, our job is to "facilitate", a very good teaching technique in which you simply ask a lot of questions and get the students to find the answers themselves. For example, say I take a group to the Thailand house.

A kid asks, "Why aren't there any toilets? Where do they poop? Hee hee?"

"Well, little Timmy, where do YOU think this Thai family would use the bathroom?"

"Outside!" says Timmy.

"Probably so. But why don't they have a toilet?"

"I don't know they should get one AHHHH!"

"Do you see any plumbing in this house, Timmy? Or pipes? Or electricity?"

Then, through Timmy's answers, the group will discover that this Thai family cannot afford plumbing, or lives too far out in the country, or lacks access to the government services that we Americans enjoy. And they figured it out all by themselves.

Anyway, the tour was enjoyable, and I think it'll be even more enjoyable when I have a real group. Plus, it was exhausting. 2.5 hours of talking! Whew! Too bad our other programs usually last 5-7 hours, if not 24 hours. Here we go Heifer!

Daddy Goat Horny, Michael

Ah ha! It's breeding time! And I thought people were crazy about sex. We at least mask our rotten intentions with manners and romantic poetry and such. These livestock animals go straight for the "gold", if you will.

For the past week, we have been giving our goats and sheep hormone injections, so that the females get prepped for some conception, and the males go ape-shit with horniness. It's a pretty strange system. We number some girl goats "ones" for example, and they get put in a pen with the buck goat "ones". The reason, if you're curious, because it's not the most natural practice in the world, shooting your animals up with hormones, that we do this is because we are trying to control the time at which our animals breed. We have a birthing program that women participate in, in which they assist a female goat/sheep in the birthing process and help care for the newborn. I imagine there is a deep connection that occurs between the females. Perhaps. I'm not really sure. In any case, we need our animals giving birth at the right time fore the program.

Anyway, right now, we've got a handful of goats (female) and buck goats (male), and sheep and rams locked up behind the barn. The females and males are still separated, but their pins are adjacent to one another, to get them thinking about some sexy time. I imagine that there's a little bit of flirting and passing notes going on right now.

But in seriousness, the buck goats are freaking nuts. All they do is fight one another and try desperately to break into the girl goats' pin. Quentin Tarantino, our biggest buck goat, just stares at them and makes menacing grunts, occasionally knocking his head into the wall. It's kind of horrifying. Funny how sexual desire looks a lot like a murder threat with these guys. Meanwhile, Rumple Stillskin, our smallest buck goat, has decided that he can't wait until mating day. So, he has taken his sexual frustration out on our third buck goat, Henry. Poor, poor Henry. Henry has spent the last week sticking his butt resolutely in a corner, trying to protect his innocence from Rumple's advances. A few nights ago, he actually broke down the wall of the pin trying to escape Rumple. Meanwhile, Quentin broke down the other wall of the pin trying to get the ladies. Come on buck goats!

Also, the buck goats urinate on their own beards. On purpose.

Don't get me started on the poor lady goats and lady sheep. I think they just want mating day to be over. It's certainly no picnic for them.

So, welcome to the Animal Kingdom, I guess. I'm glad evolution gave us humans wine and music and dating. Otherwise, I might just cop out of the whole breeding experience.

Birth Announcement!

I am happy to announce the birth of a new calf! Last night, one of our beef cows by the name of Stephanie gave birth to a little boy calf. You would have thought that we would have heard a cow giving birth right outside out house, but Rufus went unnoticed until after chores this morning. He is huge. Probably about the size of a labrador. And very woolly. I did not know that cows could be woolly. My image of a cowhide has always been something smooth and only slightly hairy. We have some cows that are downright shaggy, and it appears that Rufus is one of these. He has a full body of tan cowl curls, and a big white stripe down his mid-drift. He is amazingly cute. Very awkward, with long gangly legs, a very pink nose, and a butt that sticks up about half a foot over his head. Go figure.

So, tonight, the volunteers will throw a party in honor of Rufus. Stephanie appears to be a happy mother. When we left them, she was giving her baby a hearty tongue bath. Unfortunately, we won't be milking Stephanie, so no extra milk for the starving volunteers. Anyway, be sure to make a toast to Rufus at least once today! Bon anniversaire!

My address is Sam Hedges, Overlook Farm, 216 Wachusett St., Rutland, MA, 01543.

Send me anything!

Also, went to Boston yesterday and toured the Harpoon Brewery, a micro-brewery based in Boston. Good tour, lots of delicious beer tasting. Let me do some quick advertising on behalf of Harpoon. Try their Saison Royale. It's part of their Leviathan series, and it won't be around forever. It's more than good. Maybe the best beer I've ever had. Seriously. So delicious and flavorful. Saison Royale, Leviathan, Harpoon.

Write Me!

My Schedule Today

Today was an exceptionally good day, so I thought I'd share it with you. Maybe it'll give you insight into life on the farm.

7:00 a.m- Woke up and made breakfast. A tasty mix of flax and Harvest Wheat with some blueberries that my roommate Ben picked. And coffee, of course. If I'd been lucky, I would have had some milk from our dairy cow, Mabel.

8:00 a.m.- Chores and check-in. The staff met in the barn to check on weather and what the schedule was today. Last day of full orientation for all the volunteers. Good, sunny weather, in the high 70's.

8:15 a.m.- CHORES! One of the best parts of the day. Before we did any chores, however, we had to "run the goats". This fun little activity involves leading the goats out to pasture in the morning, and back to the barn in the afternoon. It's part of the rotational grazing process. One person leads them with a bucket of "textra", the goat form of crack, and everyone else kind of runs with them to the pen. I had the crack, and I ran them out to pasture, where, instead of going into the fencing, they ran into the nearby woods and started going to town on the undergrowth. It took ten people and fifteen minutes to wrestle all of them back into the pen.

Then, we had to do the same for the sheep. And I helped feed the guinea hog, the buck goats, and the pigs. It involved carrying to buckets full of water a ways. Ouch. End of Chores.

9:30 a.m.- A little free time! I went to our two acre garden, where we're doing a lot of harvesting, and helped pick green beans and snow peas.

10 a.m.- A little orientation in the farm's kitchen, where all the food for guests is prepared. Liz the kitchen lady taught us how to pickle/can vegetables, a useful skill indeed.

11 a.m.- Back to the garden! This time, Maggie and I picked tomatoes. There were about three different varieties. To pass the time, we talked about Islam, the Middle East, and the U.N. She's a very interesting person to talk to. And finally, we picked raspberries! So delicious. But picking raspberries, a pain in the butt. The plants are huge, close together, and prickly, so you really have to work to find the bastards. In the end, we had a good sized wheelbarrow full of produce. In a year, the garden produces about 10,000 lbs. of produce.

12 a.m.- Lunch. Sandwich featuring goat cheese from out goats, and tomato and basil from our garden.

1 p.m.- Meeting with Donna, our livestock manager. Fascinating woman. We mostly just shot the breeze about the different livestock on the farm.

2:30 p.m.- Orientation close. Next week, we begin orientation in our different volunteer groups. Education volunteer orientation for me!

3:30 p.m.- CHORES! I had to run the goats back in, and then milk a few of them. Then, more harvesting from the garden. This time, we harvested produce just for the volunteers. WOW! It was exciting. We gathered carrots, potatoes, green beans, tomatoes, mustard greens, kale, arugula, lettuce, and green peppers.

5:30 p.m.- Dinner time! About eight of us cooked one hell of a meal. Most of it was made from our garden, with the exception of some flour and such. There was mushroom and gouda quiche, potato casserole, green bean salad, goat cheese and beat salad, carrot muffins, gingersnap cookies, rhubarb crisp, and homemade ice cream made from our cow Mabel. It took 2.5 hours to cook, but a lot of that cooking was very social. Twas a grand dinner.

11 p.m.- Went out for a walk before sleep, only to find that Abu our camel had gotten loose. It's not easy moving a stubborn camel. While I pulled and pulled on his harness, Susan tempted him with a bunch of hay. Ten minutes later, we moved him about twenty yards back into his pen. Damn camel.

Then, sleep. We have the day off today, so a bunch of us are going to Boston. Peace out, dawgs.

The Violin

So, you knew it was coming. You had to have known. Here it comes. Time to play the violin (is that the phrase?) BILLIONS OF PEOPLE ARE POOR AND HUNGRY, DON'T YOU FEEL GUILTY YOU RICH AMERICAN FOR YOUR EASY AND COMFORTABLE LIFESTYLE!

Sigh. There it is. Nobody really likes hearing it, and the guilt trip gets old and/or doesn't actually change your life in any major way. Except maybe you give some money away. But, white Americans, as my sister will agree, are good at taking a snapshot of hunger and poverty, feeling bad about it, and moving on with their lives. In all honesty, what more can you do?

Why am I talking about this? Well, during orientation at Heifer's Overlook Farm, the discussion on hunger, poverty, and injustice has to come up. Why? Because the purpose of Overlook Farm is to share the experience of hunger and poverty with its visitors, to broaden their perspectives on the conditions in which people around the world live. The main way we do this is with the Global Village, a program through which I went yesterday. I must admit, all cynicism aside, it's a wonderful program.

And this is how it works.

On Overlook Farm, there are six "Global Villages". Each global village is essentially a working model of a house site in a particular developing country. We have Guatemala, Peru, Tibet, Thailand, the Mexican/United States border... and I forget. So, for example, in the Thailand village, there is a typical Thai household, raised on stilts and made out of bamboo. There is a Thai garden full of staple Thai crops, a pond for tilapia, and a pin featuring two water buffalo. Everything in the village is modeled after an actual household in Thailand that Heifer has done work with.

In the Global Village program, a group of people, usually students, live in one of the Global Villages for a night. And, boy oh boy, they do it about as authentically as they can. The program begins with a lottery, in which you pick a random number and get placed in a village with a few other people. My family was placed in Tibet/China. Immediately, things got sticky. One member of my family was disabled (me), another was pregnant, only one could read (and let me just say, if you're disabled, then you actually disable yourself for the night. I had to do it; not easy). We received a limited amount of money, the equivalent of a day's wages in our village, and had that money to go to the "Global Market" and purchase food for the night. I, personally, expected to share a decent meal with my family of four. I was wrong. After haggling a lot, we managed to get a baby bottle for the baby, a small bowl of beans, 1/8 of a cup of rice, 1/4 a small onion, and a handful of kale. Split four ways. Then, we had to build a fire, prepare the food, cook, and eat it. What we ended up cooking is best described as "warm bean water". It was hot, tasted vaguely of beans, was very watery, and bland. So bland.

But, it was all we had. I admit, it was not representative of a Tibetan meal, but that was mostly our fault. If we had been realistic, we would have bought barley and yak milk.

At some point in the night, our "mother" gave birth to a water balloon baby, whom somebody to take care of at all times. So, while we cooked breakfast, for example, someone had to hold the baby. If it died (aka: popped), we had to have an hour of silent mourning.

Then, the big event for the night. Our family had an arranged "crisis". Read from a sheet of paper, the crisis we received was based on true events and forced us to make a decision as a family in regard to our future. Briefly put, our crisis was this: In the year of 2005, the Chinese army invades our territory and threatens our nomadic way of life. We must move. Do we: (1) Stay in the mountains and farm on steep land that will only be good for a year because we must use pesticides and chemicals to grow crops there?, (2) move into a refugee camp for Tibetan nomads, in which we would probably starve, not to mention sacrifice our nomadic way of life and civil liberties beneath the hands of the Chinese, or (3) move into a large city in order to find work, though none of us have any marketable skills because we've been nomads all our lives, and we'll probably end up homeless and starving.

So, we had to make a decision as a family of what to do. OK, you may be thinking that this is awfully dramatic. It is. But, in 2005, a lot of Tibetan families had to make this kind of decision. The kind of decision with no good options, where death and starvation seem to be a end result of every option.

For the most part, that's the Global Village program. We went to sleep around the fire. It was freezing and wet and quite miserable. We made some oatmeal for breakfast, packed up, and moved out of Tibet.

What's the point? To feel guilty every time I think of Tibet? No. To experience what it's like to feel truly hungry? Yes. To know what it's like to make impossible choices? Yes. To experience the difficulties of a life guided by hunger and poverty? Yes. For me, it was like trying on a new pair of old shoes (my phrase). In other words, receiving a new perspective, in someone else's shoes, when that someone else is hungry and poor and, guess what, is YOU! It's one thing to sit in a classroom and learn about poverty. It's another thing to live in a poor household for a night, with a poor family, eating a poor person's meal.

Here's a quick example. So, we have an expecting mother, whose baby will need milk. The mother can't breastfeed because she is too malnourished, and the baby will probably die. We need to buy good milk at the market, but the milk costs 1/3 of our daily wages. This is a decision we actually had to make. Should we buy the milk for our baby, or spend that money on food for the family, essentially sacrificing the baby's life in the process?

Again, it's dramatic. But it makes you experience something. And experience is really what it's all about right?

Ok, time for more Orientation. I haven't totally answered the question of "Why?" Why experience this at all? What does it change? I'm not sure. But I'll get back to you.