Work Camp, Week One

Posted By: John Chakan

 We have finished the first week of Work Camp here on the farm, and though the weather didn't cooperate (more on that in a bit), our fantastic first week crew got a ton of things accomplished.  Special thanks go out to Tristan, Amy, Michelle, and Tracy, who came up with John the last week of May to work on the garden and prepare for Work Camp.  This week, though, we had Tristan, Amy, Michelle, Tracy, Raman, Billy, Josh, Lara, and Addie.  We also had our two Work Camp Heroes, Ken and Pete, and of course, our Kitchen Guru, Tim, keeping us well fueled.

So, what happens at Work Camp?  This past week, we set up the office, we leveled and set up tents in Earwig, Sequameadow, Deep Woods, Cherry Boys, Berriwood, Sunny Hill, and the CILT Unit (only two more units to go).  We cut and stacked 5 cords of firewood.  We organized the kitchen.  We weedwacked (or whipper-snippered, if you will) acres of grass.  We had a calf born on Wednesday (so we spent a lot of time milking).  We fed animals, moved sheep, did lots of dishes, and had a lot of fun.

What was slightly less fun was the fact that Mother Nature apparently missed the memo that it was June, and therefore nearly summer.  We had rain starting Tuesday night, with a little more Wednesday night.  And then, just in case we forgot it wasn't February, we had a full-on Alaskan winter storm yesterday.  In less than 10 hours, we received over 2 inches of rain, and enough wind to blow three tents off of their uprights.  We will need to do some repairs today, but we also have more staff arriving this evening to help.

Next week will be a lot of fun, fine tuning the details of camp before we start staff training.  Stay tuned for pictures and more updates.

-John