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Published: June 27th 2006
Bob and Lorraine's Farm
all farms should have cool trees like these...please...for me..sTo be a successful farmer--and by that i mean, to be a farmer who doesn't go mad and throw himself in front of a tractor or play hide-and-seek with his cows--you have to possess a fantastical, and often cynical sense of humor. the fire will burn where you don't want it to and will completely avoid the dead tree you've been trying to burn out for the past week. when it finally does burn out, the dead tree will do exactly what you've been trying to get it to do for days; it will fall over...right on top of the fence. the frost will kill all your plants but won't harm a solitary leaf on a single weed, a weed that is also killing your plants. the cows will be unwilling to move to a fresh pasture when their grass is all devoured, but will follow someone else's ruddy stray sheep through the fence minutes after you finally get them in said fresh pasture. all this and more...oh and i mustn't forget the greatest joke God likes to play on Australian farmers...sending an American to help you break your tractor (twice), put your fence posts in crooked, and mow through your
irrigation pipes (three times). it's a good thing Bob has a such a good sense of humor. heh...heheh, right Bob?
Friday couldn't (and wouldn't, no matter how much i shook my fist) come soon enough. all week i'd been looking forward to the weekend camping/spear fishing trip that i was fortunate enough to be invited to. i don't even remember what i did monday, tuesday, or wednesday. probably burning stuff and a bit of cleaning up in Bob's shed. i'm sure i broke something of Bob's in the process. poor, poor man. thursday Bob and i went across the island to the winery where he has his grapes processed, aged and then bottled. we were supposed to help bottle the wine, but by the time we arrived they had already bottled all of Bob's wine. we were devastated, naturally. Eventually Bob and Lorraine will be doing their own bottling, but as it stands now, their winery on the farm consists of one 3-foot wall. They're building it by themselves out of cobb (if you don't know what that is, google it) so it's taking a long time. at any rate, there was plenty of wine to pick up from
Black Cockatoos
a flock of black cockatoos flys over the farm everyday to let us know it's lunch time. (awww, good story) the winery so Bob and i packed his little toyota truck and trailer to the gills and headed home. very, very slowly. we had a bottle of the Rose that night for dinner and it was pretty good if i don't say so myself. and i do say so myself because why would i have someone else say so for me? (really stupid figure of speech).
Thursday night also brought Teresa's arrival. okay so there was a bit of a misunderstanding regarding Teresa's description. apparently when Lorraine said "A young American woman is coming to stay for a month or so" what she meant was "A woman old enough to be your mother is yadda yadda." So in truth, Teresa is a 40-something single mother from North Carolina. So much for younger company. Ah well, what can you do? Friday is on the way!
Rachel and company were supposed to be over late friday morning to pick me up; which meant i only had to do a few hours of work (yes!). unfortunately though, Rachel, Anthony, and Mary, Rachel's twin sister, got tied up chopping up sheep into little bits and pieces and didn't arrive until 1pm or
Sheena Hates Me
she's 20 yrs old and pretends to like me sometimes, but it's a well known fact that she despises me to the core. so. this gave Bob just enough time to get a good half day's work out of me. My favorite task in that half day was this: "Hey Bryan, why don't you siphon the bit of petrol out of that barrel into that little can and then roll the barrel down to the shed." sounds easy enough...for someone who's ever siphoned uhmm...
anything before. short story shorter, i swallowed a good amount of the petrol and was burping it up the rest of the day.
Note: gasoline is the
worst thing you've ever tasted and/or burped; i promise. i've never wanted to vomit so desperately in my life. no matter what i ate or drank, it just would not go away. so, needless to say, my camping trip was off to a grrreat start. speaking of the camping trip...it's a good, long story and deserving of its own entry, sooo THIS ENTRY IS OVER!
enjoy pictures of farmland + animals + Brown Beach + wine bottling machinery....exCitInG!!
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Becky
non-member comment
wine you say?
sounds yummy, i am quite a wine connasour...connisire....connisaur...corn eater.... whatev. anyway, remember when i said i want a gift from you becuase you had the honor of leaving on a date as important as MY birthday, bring me wine. or mail it. glad your having a good time, and i hope Bob doesn't kill you for leaving his farm worse off than it was before you came. and hey, something about 40-year olds...read my bullitan entitled "old chicks rule" it's pretty good.