Long Day, "Thumb's Up"

Not sure why, really. Monday morning planning meeting...found out we had to go to Community Building Institute (i.e. more Americorps training) in Helena on thursday-friday. This means we have to leave wednesday night, it's an 8 hour drive. There's this funny thing about the west and the east sides of Montana, it kind of reminds me of how the rest of Vermont feels about Burlington. Burlington is some hippie oasis big city that is not in touch with the rest of the state or really have anything in common with the struggling, blue collar, farmers of the northeast or south. According to eastern Montanans, western montana is filled with the ominous "californians" also known as "dudes" (I learned this from Cole, who taught me about wranglers and dudes and dude wranglers the other night...dudes are tourists, dude wranglers are tourguides) and hippies and rich liberals and everything is "california prices" in the western part of the state...

Now I started talking about this because the west also forgets about the east. I'm in the east. Where there's more sagebrush per square mile than people, cattle or roads..and there's just not a lot going on out here. But "not a lot" is a relative term. Because I did SO much today. And the people I spent time with today were also doing SO MUCH...and it just felt like a lot was going on! What I'm trying to say is...it's totally ridiculous that Jess and I have to travel all the way west for an Americorps training that's barely even a day long, it's just totally biased and inconsiderate and even Americorps doesn't care if we have to drive 400 miles because we're in eastern montana and we don't matter.

So I dealt with getting ready for this CBI thing...which until today I thought we had gotten out of and it turns out we didn't so I had to do a bunch of paperwork answering questions about the progress of our non-profit and the state of our community/community need/deficit and the strategies that Farm-to-Table are implementing in order to deal with food insecurity.

watered potatoes and sweet potatoes.

looked at the fair grounds and saw where our booth is going to be (county fair is this friday-sunday, BIG deal)

got some things ready for Fair. going to try and be back from Helena early-ish friday so we can catch the Dawson county rodeo.

and finally...made it out to Alvins because we had a sauerkraut date and I had been looking forward to it all day. Jess bailed because she wanted to make a fence for OUR NEW PUPPY ZAPPA WIBAUX!!!!!!!! and so I made kraut with Alvin and his friend Bill and Bill's son Ben, we picked cabbages from the garden that were 5lbs each (at least), cut them in half, shredded 30 lbs of cabbage in this special cabbage sauerkraut shredder (specifically for this purpose, ingenious), and then I was in charge of mixing the shredded cabbage and 1 tablespoon of pickling salt for very 2 lbs of cabbage in this huge bin (my arms felt like they had spent too much time in the ocean, you know kind of stingy?). The pickling salt sucks out all the water from the cabbage so the cabbage starts to go limp and water foams all around and pretty soon I was literally up to my elbows in cabbage and cabbage salty foam and then that's it! We pressed it down and put a bag of water on top to seal it off so it could ferment. No water added. No spices or extra salt. Just the pickling salt, cabbage and something to seal it. It will sit for two weeks and then afterwards, Bill and Ben will have 30 lbs of kraut on their hands and God only knows what they're gonna do with it! (I suggested Christmas presents)

Alvin, Bill, Ben and I had a funny conversation while we were krauting (I just made that word up and it's pretty baller)...I told them that my parents hadn't known where Montana was when I moved out here, they literally had to look it up on a map because they didn't believe me when i told them "No, it does not border Colorado and Arizona". Bill was incredulous, perhaps even offended at this "You're parents are educated? Intellectuals you say?!?!" He had this ruddy face, and red hair (!) with a big belly but was clearly built like a cowboy, with boots and wrangler jeans and all and I was a bit scared when I thought I had actually offended him...(he makes saddles for a living, gorgeous saddles, all over his house) but then I asked him what state was south of VT and NH and he had NO IDEA. "Massachusetts! See?! Us east coasters aren't the only ones forgetting about the other half of the country" 

Bill's son had ripped off his thumb roping and Bill insisted he show it to me, where the thumb had been there was now Ben's second toe, sewn on. It was insane.

After kraut making, it was around 6pm and I thought I would grab some lettuce from Alvin's and head home. Oh no. Alvin had other plans. First we drove out to his wheat field and he made me guess how many acres of Spring Wheat he had. (The last time he did this with a hay field I had guessed 5 acres when it was 15...no sense of space and size out here) This time I was generous and guessed 150 acres when it was only 65. Well shit. Imma get better at it, jus gotta stare at sommore wheat fields thas all. We moved irrigation pipe so he could cut clover. Then he taught me how to drive the four wheeler (everyone drives them out here, it's like Thais with their motorcycles except its farmers with their ATVs), very fun and we went and picked some of the first ripe sweet corn of the season, picked lettuce, fixed an irrigation channel on the way home, drank a Heineken (laughed about Erin never drinking a Heineken, ha I love you Erin) and was back on Prospect dr. by 8...whew. 

On the drive home, saw the sun set over alfalfa on highway 10. There are not many things in the world that can make you feel that good.