Helen (Or, Why I'm Not Ready to Have a Baby)

Incase you haven't already seen my facebook profile picture, this is Helen.  She's a Lamb (thats a baby sheep for those of you keeping score at home) and she's very very sweet.  She's also less than one week old, and, as a result, has a lot of needs.  Actually, she mostly just has to get fed frequently, and seems to get cold pretty easily.  In case the image ins't a good visual reference, she can be scooped up with one hand, and most of the time doesn't mind (yes, in that picture she is IN my jacket).

So pretty much she's too cute for words, and is SUPER distracting.  That said, I got to be in charge of her last night, and while I still love the heck out of her, she's' taught me an important lesson.  I don't want to have a kid right now at ALL.   Upon arrival at my cabin round abouts 11:00 last night, I put her down in her box while I got the stove going for us.  She promptly hopped out and started wandering around my mostly dark cabin figuring out which things were good to bump with her head.  She had a lot of fun knocking my big-rubber-boots-stuffed-with-socks (needed to clarify that these function as one noun), and would not eat anything.  No matter how I tried, putting her in her box had very limited success, unless you count success by the number of times she peed on my floor (one time) or the number of things she tried to eat (all of the things), but still, she was having no truck with sleep, or with her bottle.

 So, being a sucker, I wrapped her up in a towel and tried to make her comfortable next to me on my bed.  She'd fallen asleep in my jacket earlier, and I thought maybe the regular breathing had helped put her to sleep.  So she thanked me by peeing on my bed and all over the arm of my one fleece jacket (Irony?).  I put her down on her pee spot put many towels round her, tried again in vain to feed her the milk which I had warmed up with a thermos of hot water, and failing that, tried to go to sleep.  This did not work.  While she had made herself quite comfortable, and passed right out, I was left trying to contort my body around a medium sized no-sleep-zone right in the middle of my bed (what did you THINK was going to happen, D-Rod?).  By about 1:15, she was so zonked out that she didn't really notice me moving her out of bed into her box.  This gave me a perfect opportunity to put my face down on her pee spot, now rather cold, which I took full advantage of.

I fell asleep just a little worried that she hadn't eaten before falling asleep, but I figured she'd be okay.  She was okay, and when she got hungry (6:15) she made her needs quite clear.  Of course, at this point her bottle was ICE cold, as was the milk in it.  I gave her a little bit so that she would stop crying, but was worried that between the cold temperature outside, and the cold milk, she might get hypothermia or something.  So after a quick poop on my floor, the hungry bleating lamb and I went up to the kitchen yurt to warm her milk back up, which she drank with glee.

The moral of this story is I don't want a baby right now, I like sleeping too much.  I anticipate caring for  this lamb several more times, but I'm not ready to do this all the time at all, especially with somethings whose needs will be extending beyond "some milk and a warm place" pretty quickly.

And to misquote Marshall Erikson,  as long as I think Hurricane Rodriguez is a good name, no kids for me! (Though, considering it will be MY kid, Hurricane may double as an accurate description.)

Prepping to farm (at the gym)

So upon learning that I had been accepted at Calypso Farm and Ecology (calypsofarm.org) for a farm and education apprenticeship, I was delirious!  A grand adventure, I was having one!  I was off to the frozen northlands to teach kids about broccoli or something!  I was going to be farmer!  I would have to haul, shove, pull, dig, till, sow, and many other verbs as well, I thought.  I was SUPER pumped, but quickly decided I needed some things.

A list of the things I decided I needed in no particular order.

1.  A haircut
2. Big Burly Arms
3. A Bird Book
4. Probably some other stuff too like my toothbrush

The haircut was easy, I had someone chop my brown-blonde mop off, and suddenly I looked SHARP!  It felt a little weird, actually, the tri-toned catastrophe that had been my hair had a major advantage: it projected goofball about six feet out in front of me.  Now I looked, if not respectable (the piercings allow me to retain my hoodlum status), at least like I knew how to take care of myself maybe.  I decided the look was good, went and bought some clippers, and will be giving myself the same haircut every other week all summer weather I need it or not.

I got a bird book too, I have nothing clever to say about it.

I was able to acquire most of these things without difficulty, but the question of Big Burly Arms remained.  How, thought I, does one get those, and, once gotten, how does one find a surgeon low enough to splice them onto my torso just below and set back from my other arms so that they wouldn't get in the way?  But seriously, I figured that, in order to be a farmer I would want to get my body at least ready to be active.  I had been maintaining a rigorous exercise program for my thumbs (Thank you Skyrim, Batman, and Halo: Reach), but had been pretty sedentary otherwise.  So off I went to the Gym, to try to prepare myself for working on the farm.  I began what I can only describe as the ADD workout program.  First, I would run on a treadmill some.  Next I would wander (those of you who have seen me try to clean a messy space without direction can vouch for me, I'm a CHAMPION wanderer) over to the area with weights and machines and just use some of them for a while until I didn't want to anymore or some big guy stood around looking expectant or glaring.  After a few weeks of this I did a little (very little) critical thinking (SHOCKING) and decided I should focus my workout on the sorts of things I'd actually be doing while working on the farm.  So I said to myself, "Self, what kinds of work do farmers do?" The answer was obvious: farmers cary heavy stuff around.

I edited my workout to include walking around the gym carrying two 45lb weights.  I would switch which types of weights I carried (barbells or those weights you put on a bench press bar), and walked at different speeds.  I practiced walking then stopping suddenly, picking them up and putting them back down without using my back etc. This was fun, especially since the first couple times I did it it was pretty late at night (24 hour gym, wahooo!) and there was no one else around.  I had all sorts of space to walk around in!  As I continued this routine, however, I found myself garnering many stares.  This culminated in the following conversation between one of the gym's personal trainers and myself

 "hey uhhh, what the heck are you doing?"
 "I'm walking around with the heaviest things I can carry."
  "Yeah yeah yeah, but why are you doing that?"
  "I'm practicing for being a farmer"
  *long pause*
  "can I see your gym pass?"

Well jokes on them, cause I'm at the farm and I've already carried something!
BAM

There are some blog posts... we hope!

Welcome to our blog! We will try and write on it regularly during our 5 months in Alaska.
But no promises-- we have no idea what to expect in terms of free time for bloggin'. Or much to expect in terms of anything, really. So stay tuned for updates/ revelations of life on a small farm in the middle of Alaska.

Wondering about the name of the blog? 

Summer in Alaska + working with people from camp + not actually working at camp + trying to convince camp people to visit by coming up with a super cool name that is easy to chant = Alaskamp!

Also this is our address. Mail! Write us and we'll send you some vegetables.

Name

General Delivery

Ester, Alaska

99725