A SATURDAY IN THE LIFE.

4:30 a.m.Snooze button.4:35 - 5 a.m.We get out of bed and take care of chores by the light of our headlamps, and hope we feed the right animals the right things. Cher picks us up in the truck at five and we head towards Nashville, a little sleepy from another poor Friday night of rest. It is becoming tradition for Friday night to be our sleeping nemesis.5 - 7 a.m.From Bugtussle to Gallatin it is another tradition to listen to NPR's Snap Judgment, a storytelling program akin to This American Life, only with more hip hop. Hannah and I find our new favorite quote during the episode: "You may say I can't sing, but you can't say I didn't sing.” That show really needs to be an hour and a half long, to get us all the way to market because the gardening show that follows it––not naming names––is a little hard to handle.7 - 7:30 a.m.Star Bagel for breakfast and coffee. Yet another tradition––a necessary one.7:30 - 8 a.m.Market set up. Ira, the Smith's ten-year-old, hauls all the baskets out the back of the truck and we unpack an unbelievable amount of food for the size of truck we bring. Hundreds of people will be fed this week from food we crammed into a 4x8x4 space. Farmers, notably, could always have a second career in packing––if that's a thing.8 - 12:30 p.m.These few hours are a blur of conversation and numbers. By the end of it we find ourselves both elated from interaction, and absolutely wiped out from it. It's like working in a retail shop where the only day you work every week is the busiest day of that week. Oh, but the rest of the week you spend hardly seeing anyone else at all. But we get to see the customers we love, and commiserate with fellow farmers, and by the end of it we have enough money to make it to next week's market. God willing.12:30 - 2:20 p.m.The drive home is a long one––traffic jams usually do that to trips. We listen to Barren River Breakdown, though, which doesn't speed up the trip but definitely gives it a worthwhile soundtrack.2:20 - 2:40 p.m.When we get home we tend to our animals who, though we feed, love and care for them like crazy, act like we've been gone for weeks. Our transplants, too. Farms are needy entities.2:40 - 3 p.m.An older neighbor stops by and we spend a little time chatting about our cabin and the goats and the chickens. This was our first time meeting this particular local and we really like him and his genuine interest in what we're doing. Our neighbors are amazing, and though they typically farm nothing like us, in some ways we can't farm like anything without them.3 - 3:15 p.m.Lunch. Sorta. It's amazing how difficult it is to eat well, or consistently, on the day we sell healthful food for a living.3:15 - 3:45Go to the spring to get water. This is a painful task because the farm is incredibly dry right now and the spring is really low so we can only take a little water––two gallons––at a time. Who do I have to write to get a rain around here?3: 45- 5:10We take a few minutes to go visit with the Smiths about market, which ends up being more like an hour, but it's nice. Visiting, like it was with the local just minutes earlier, is what binds community. Visiting with neighbors––the Smiths and the old timers––is not necessarily another Saturday tradition, but it definitely should be.5:10 - 6:50 p.m.I've been obsessed with making Hugel beds lately, which are a permaculture concept that essentially involves digging a ditch, filling that ditch with logs, and covering those logs with soil. The idea is that the logs will slowly break down over time and contribute years of fertility to your garden bed. It's like putting the fertility underneath the raised bed. So I spend a bit of the evening, and the rest of my energy, working on these––grounding myself.6:50 - 7:15 p.m.We still use firewood every day (despite the fact that it's summer) so I have to break down logs nearly every day. This time it's a particularly ornery cedar log that, by the morning, still remains mostly in tact.7:15 - 9Because it's Saturday night and farmers know how to party, we fill this time with dinner and a podcast, or more precisely, redfish pasta (the fish coming from the Smith's last vacation), and an episode of Judge John Hodgman podcast.9 p.m.Bed.- Jesse.