real farming

As you may have guessed from the relatively long period of silence, we are actually on a farm now! We  have been at Moyleabbey Organic Farm, near Ballitore, Co. Kildare, since the 4th. And we have been busy! We are working 9-6 monday-thursday, with weekends plus monday off. So the days we work feel long but the break is long too! Its a sweet life really, working outside all day, eating incredibly delicious fresh food, and falling into a deep, exhausted but satistifed sleep, usually before 11 pm!!
And we are pretty great farmers, if i do say so myself. Planting, weeding, watering, more weeding, harvesting, cleaning, selling...eating...more weeding... Weeding seems to be the main thing, everywhere, all the time. We have also been kept very busy by the raspberry patch, spending 5 hours or so twice a week picking them. Afterwards i close my eyes and see raspberries.
I have discovered that I have a deep phobia of slugs. I have always hated them but here they are about 5 inches long and very plentiful. At home they arent usually much longer than an inch. I guess the dampness in Ireland is amenable to slugs. Unfortunately they seem to like me, because the other day we were pulling out old plants in the greenhouse and tons were coming up out of the holes in the black plastic where the plants had been, but sarah wasn't seeing any where she was working. Gah. Such a dumb thing to be afraid of since they literally do nothing except slime around the garden. I was trying to tell myself to picture them as tiny cats. Didnt work. I used to get nightmares about giant slugs.
Anyway enough about slugs. The most ferocious organism in the garden is the nettle plant. They are also giant and they are everywhere and we keep brushing up against them accidentally and then it stings. a lot.
Oh one more creature to talk about. Our first few days we were awoken around 5 am by some angry sounding creatures on the roof of our little mobile home/camper thing. It sounded like raccoons fighting, and it sounded like they were inside. So we were a little freaked out until we found out that there are no raccoons in Ireland, the closest thing to a raccoon is a badger and they wouldn't be on our roof. So, it turns out that it was just a couple birds, magpies. 
In our free time we have rediscovered the joy of reading. We brought along a few books but quickly went through those last week and over the weekend. Now we have a few novels as well as some gardening and macrobiotic books on the go. For our weekend we basically just read, and walked. The weather has been really really good since last friday so we went for several long walks. This weekend we are planning to go hiking in wicklow national park, but seems like the weather is turning so i'm not sure how ambitious our journey will be.
So thats about it for now. We are happy and healthy and loving it here.
Sarah says hi.