The First Week!

"There are 50 ways to leave your lover, but only 8 ways out of this aircraft"

This week started off with a blast! The anticipation of leaving for Alaska, and the disappointment at having to leave everyone I know behind was exhilarating and stressful. I honestly don't know how it happened. One second I was packing my things and the next I had boarded a plane headed to Alaska from whose loudspeaker was blaring the quote above.

Alaskans...at least the ones I work with... have such a great sense of humor. I can honestly say that I have not been here a day without having had a really great conversation filled with lots of laughter! Although, now that I think about it... most of the people on the farm are not originally from Alaska. Tom and Susan are probably the closest to true "Alaskan's" here. But Christie and George, the other couple who live here, are from Ohio. Edge, although he's been coming seasonally to the farm for three years, is from New Jersey and Katrin, the School Garden Coordinator, is a native east German who has been living in Ester working with Americorps for the past three years. Despite everyone's different origins, the farm acts as a connection to Alaska and the land here.

Since arriving, I have jumped right into learning about the different farm activities, and the projects that are being done to get ready for spring planting. Because there is still a ton of snow on the ground (I have been sledding most of the week with Addie and Elsie, Tom and Susan's daughters, and Soula, Christie's daughter) many of the crops Calypso will be growing are being germinated in a greenhouse in the upper field. Edge and Christie have been working on what they call blocking. This is the process of replanting the already growing seedlings into a larger block of soil. Tom is also working on some general maintenance for the coming season. He is improving one of the farm's yurts for me to use on field trips and fixing some of the farm's tools. He has also been teaching me a little bit about milking and feeding the farm's goats, sheep and chickens.

That doesn't mean that I haven't been doing my share of office work. I have a ton of work to do to get ready for the upcoming spring field trips. Even before I arrived teaches had started calling to schedule them!! So I have been trying to get together a fax to send out about this season's field trip offerings and to learn about the field trips themselves!! There is a lot of information to sort through and figure out, and because I am new to most things on the farm, such as milking goats or seeding plants, I haven't found my footing with the actual field trip material yet.

Yesterday night was a nice break from all of that though. Edge, Katrin and I decided to have an adventure and ski/snowshoe/sled into town to go to a local bar called the Golden Eagle. We left at 9:30 and got to the bar at 11:30pm. We had a blast getting there!! We started off walking up into the woods in back of Calypso where there are a lot of established cross-country skiing trails. Then when we got to the downhill parts Katrin and I would hop in the sled and Edge would hook up his dog, Nobi, to the front and himself to the back with cross-country skiis and we'd be off. There were also some parts that Katrin and I just sleded on our own as well. It was really nice to get off the farm for a bit and see some of the Alaskan country side before the snow melts.

My first week at the farm has been filled with lots of laughter and lots of information, and somehow the people at Calypso manage to meld those together in a very congruent way. Although it will take me sometime to get used to the lifestyle here, I think that the next six months are going to go by really fast!