Note: when working outside all day, wear sunscreen.

I'm an official redneck right now - SO BURNED. Today was long and wonderful. Erin, Tim and I transplanted tomatoes and peppers all morning and then Alvin and Bruce hooked up the irrigation system and turned it on - it was actually a really exciting moment. It's pretty funny to have left the east coast in a rainy cold wet summer to come here to a hot dry and dusty one. The land we are working on has been dry land farmed as long as anyone can remember. That means it's never been irrigated and was probably growing winter wheat or sugar beets. It also means that this is the driest soil I've ever touched and everything immediately dies. When we turned on the water today it was so exhilarating to see our little transplants and crops suddenly swim in water, you could just feel their roots breathing a breath of fresh air and drinking it all up. We dug irrigation channels along our crops for the rest of the afternoon - the potatoes were the longest and took the most amount of time. Jess and I ended up taking off our shoes and running down the potato rows with hoes and digging ditches. Bruce bought us beer and mike's hard lemonade (he drinks it, it's hilarious) because it's friday and it's hot and boring to dig ditches. Because the soil is so dry, nothing lives in it, no worms or creepy crawlies, and also because it's been tilled and farmed for the last 20 years - there's no rocks or animals - so when the water gets in the dirt, we would literally sink almost to our knees between the rows!

I also transplanted basil for me and Jess in the hoop house at the PDC.

At the end of the day we all took off our shoes and drank beer in the irrigation channel. Alvin Hoff came over and invited us back to his place. Jess said it already but...this man is phenomenal. He looks like the farm version of Craig Battle. We hung out with him and toured his gardens for over an hour, got a little drunk on homemade grape wine and talked about Ronald Reagan being the worst president for agriculture. I could have died happy. His wife was also sweet, long blonde hair and off to Kentucky for a family farmers conference with Wendell Berry! Alvin grows way more stuff than he can eat but he won't sell any of it. Instead, he barters it all away. Some homemade brew here, some manual labor there...he asked me to help him with the lambing (they have 250 lambs) this fall (because, as he put it, "women are better with the livestock ya know...") in exchange for some wine and veggies. I obviously agreed.

Jess and I drove back exhausted, sunburned, and completely happy, screaming songs from the oldies station (the only station in Glendive besides Jesus rock) with all the windows open.

life is exactly how it should be.