Escape!

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What a crazy month it has been since I last wrote. Two of the wwoofers, Tom and Cassie, left the farm the first week in December. Tom went back home to New Jersey and Cassie went to Key West with Jason, a guy we met in Key West over Thanksgiving. That left just Chris and I on the farm in Miami. Nothing against Chris, but I have definitely felt Cassie and Tom’s absence more than I thought I would. I did not realize how much they made my day. This has definitely been a reminder that it is not necessarily how you spend your time, but who you spend it with! Their departure also elicited a change in Saul - this time, a positive one! Whether he is nervous the rest of us are going to leave or just relieved to have less people to manage, we’ll never know, but what is clear is that he has turned a new leaf. He has offered for Chris and I to have friends and family from home visit us on the farm, taken away the mandatory tracking of hours each week, and been overall more pleasant. I think I recall him even saying “please” and “thank you” a few times this week - incredible! I was questioning my willingness to stay on the farm for the next few weeks without Cassie and Tom, but now that Saul has shown he has some feelings, I think I’ll stick around.
With Cassie and Tom gone, my list of tasks has definitely gone up, and changed a bit as well. I’ve been doing a lot more gardening as opposed to just straight physical labor. We have planted tomatoes, peppers, collards, green beans, soy beans, broccoli, bok choy, several types of lettuce, potatoes, sweet potatoes, garlic and other herbs and carrots. The garden seems to be progressing on the slow side, so I have been working on figuring that out and trying to get things moving. Saul is very much against planting in rows, or really with any method of organization, so it has made keeping track of things a little difficult, but I’m making due.
One afternoon, while cutting down dead passion fruit vines off the border-fence with a machete and hand saw, I met Miquel, the old Cuban guy who lives next door. He came over with his machete and helped me take down the vines. He spoke not a word of English, but that just made our Spanish conversation even more fun. He told me about the beautiful beaches in Cuba and tried to convince me to visit. I would go to Cuba in heart beat.
Chris and I hadn’t seen the pot-bellied pig that lives next door lately, especially in the week following Thanksgiving. We feared the worst - that he became Thanksgiving dinner - but alas, he came out of hiding after about a week, a relief returned to our thoughts. Haha, poor piggy!
A huge load of dirt was delivered to the farm and Chris and I have spent a lot of time distributing it to low spots and holes. We are awaiting a truck load of new mulch with intentions of distributing it all over the farm, under trees, around flower beds, around the grotto, over newly emptied plots, etc but it has yet to arrive. Saul dropped off a bucket of avocados at the mulch delivery guy’s place last week in hopes of buttering him up, so only time - and bribes - will tell! The soil here really is incredible. The trees are so healthy and the fruit they produce is delicious and relatively untouched from bugs and animals. He makes sure to rotate his crops to new locations each time he plants and allows soil to replenish itself for a while before planting something new. When a tree consistently produces bad fruit, it is removed and something else is put there. Despite his unfortunate attitude towards us, Saul has a great outlook and practice towards his farm, and it shows in the produce and beauty of the property. Perhaps if everyone took this type of care of their property and their crops, organic products could be more available and possible.
My experience on this farm continues to reinforce my growing support for organic. Organic is more than just the absence of pesticides, but is a movement, a mindset, an outlook on life and the earth in general. Organic, to me, has become the practice of caring for the earth in a sustainable way that encourages the appreciation of our resources for our generation and future generations. It is about looking at the big picture and realizing what we have gotten away from. Weren’t all farms organic and family run at one point? How did we get so far from that?
December 6th I spent the day in Miami beach by myself. I spent the morning people watching and sitting in the sand at South Beach, watching all the crazies. The afternoon was spent at “Art Basel Miami”, a huge art festival with thousands of pieces of work from artists from all over the world. Definitely the coolest exhibition of art I have ever seen. Everything on display was also on sale, with prices over a million dollars for one piece! Naturally, I bought about $10,000 worth of art - not.
Friday, December 11th, I drove to Key West with intentions of staying for just two days, and returning to the farm Sunday morning for work. I went to see Cassie, who is now living on a tug boat with Jason, the captain of the boat, and to see Colin one last time before I leave Miami in January for a new farm. My weekend was going really well, I was psyched to see Cassie, not to mention her new digs on the tug boat (!) and to hang out with Coin and his friends again. The appeal of Key West was too much, so I called Saul on Saturday night and told him I wasn’t coming back to the farm, ever. Ha. He didn’t take that too well, and while I felt some guilt for ditching out on the farm, I know that I would regret going back to the farm. I told Saul I’d be back in a couple of weeks to pick up my stuff and left it at that. From December 11th to the 20th I lived in Key West, alternating between staying at Colin’s house and staying on the tug boat, which was anchored about a mile out from downtown Key West. A highlight from the last two weeks includes watching the most incredible meteor shower from the tug boat, in the middle of the ocean! I saw at least one shooting star per minute for about two hours.
The boat has a full kitchen with all the cooking supplies and food you could imagine, so whenever I’m on the boat, I eat really well - either as a result of my own cooking, or more often, eating what everyone else cooks. Jason, Travis, Chris (aka Dirt) and Sammy are the current crew on the boat and all been more than entertaining with their individual personalities and cooking abilities. It has been a pleasure spending time with Cassie both on the farm and on the boat, and she has truly become a good friend of mine who I cannot see losing touch with. Aside from the craziness of running away from the farm to live on a tug boat, the other people I have met in Key West have made it all worth it. Colin really has the greatest friends and I feel very lucky to have gotten to know them all so well over the course of the last two weeks. Everyone has been more than nice to me and totally laid back about me living in Colin’s house, on the boat, wherever. Hanging out with Colin, for the first time in a long time, has been really fun. I think it’s safe to say we are friends again, wow. If it weren’t for the debaucherous life style that Key West constantly promotes, I just might consider moving to there, someday.
I am home in RI for Christmas, despite a reluctant departure from Key West and Miami. It is nice to be home, however - seeing my friends and family who I always miss. I am returning to Miami on January 11th with my friend Theo, from RI. We are picking up my car in Miami and driving to Captiva, an island town on the west coast of Florida, to spend a week with family friends who have rented a house there. After that, I’ll be driving to Pinetta, FL (a town on the Florida pan handle) to Serenity Acres, an organic goat farm (http://serenityfarmfl.com/). The farm needs help with kidding season (when the baby goats are born) in March, so I intend to stay there until at least mid March. It has been an eventful month both wwoofing and otherwise, and I’m looking forward to more of the same in the coming year as I move my way west across the US. Thanks for all your support, xoxox!

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Photos

Full Moon Party
Chris, Cassie and I made head dresses and did some drumming in the grotto for the full moon . . . yeah!

Smoothie ingredients
I made a smoothie for breakfast with this fruit: guava, papaya, banana, carambola. YUM

Dirt
This is the welder on the tug boat, Dirt, and the baby shark he caught three nights in a row while fishing off the back of the boat