Where I've Been All Year

Well, Dan’s farm apprenticeship ended this week and we moved out of Santa Cruz and into his mom’s house north of San Francisco. We will be here for a little shy of a month as we prepare to head east towards a future together in Appalachia.

I want to devote today’s blog entry to sharing some images of our past year there with you.
Dan and I spent the year working on University of California, Santa Cruz’s campus – which is 2,000 acres of beautiful redwood and meadow (where development hasn’t happened, YET (grumble)) overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Below is a photo of the pair of Golden Eagles that frequent the Great Meadow above the UCSC farm where Dan lived and worked.
Note the Stellar Jay to the upper right of the Eagles, announcing their presence to all edible critters in the area. Jays are like the police of nature, if you ask me – albeit, the sometimes corrupt police force!

Here is a photo of the UCSC garden that Dan propagated baby plants for all year:

And behind us is a portion of the field that he also propagated plants for:

Here is a photo of the “hoop house” in the Alan Chadwick Garden on upper UCSC campus – the original 3 acre hillside site, now 42 years in cultivation:

Here is the barn the 2nd year apprentices (Dan and a handful of others) lived in during the course of their year-long term. Unfortunately, University bureaucracy saw them booted from the barn (with 3 days notice) half-way through the growing season… after that they moved back into their own tents, which is how the 1st year apprentices live.

Here are the solar showers used by 45 apprentices throughout the year. It feels so good to know no polluting energy sources produced the warmth of your water!

Here’s an example of bio-intensive, inter-cropping – where several plants are strategically planted side by side:

Here is the same example of inter-cropping, after a bit more sunshine, water, and time:

This year I learned how to keep bees. Fresh honeycomb... mmmm….

When the 2nd year apprentices were kicked out of the barn, they received little to no support from the “higher-ups” at UCSC. Instead, the farm staff and other farm apprentices came together as a community and help with this demoralizing transition. It was amazing, in all the frustration and tension of being made homeless by your own employer, to see how much bonds were strengthened between the folks who picked up the pieces together.

Here is a photo of the announcers for “Farm Olympics” – an annual event lead by each new group of (7) 2nd year apprentices in which (38) 1st year apprentices compete in events like: boquet making, tomato tossing, pitch fork throwing, and a hose ravelling –wheelbarrow pushing-gardeningbed prepping triathlon.

I learned to silk screen and participated in several rounds of printing these apprentice-designed prints on various clothing and non-clothing items:

I helped cook community meals:

Learned to bake bread, and baked more than 20 different kinds this year:

And played capture the flag and drank Mimosas with pirates like these:

And I volunteered at the farm and garden as much as possible. Here are photos from my last day volunteering:

The last day of the apprenticeship, Dan is reading a passage from the chapter in Grapes of Wrath where the depression-era bank representative comes to boot the farmers off their land and recommends that they head out to California, and explains how the bank will be doing mechanized, chemical-intensive farming that will eventually destroy the soils and leave the land useless, and desolate.

Gifts were exchanged and, not pictured, MUCH fine farm-grown food was consumed prior to the best Greenhouse dance party I could ever imagine.

After being cat parents for so long, Frank the Cat was our hardest goodbye.

THANK YOU to all the amazing staff on the farm who make this program happen year after year, despite and in spite of all the obstacles. You are all my heroes.