DAY IN THE LIFE.

Monday, May 184:30 a.m.I wake up to the sound of Hannah sniffling and sneezing. Allergy season is a bummer around here for all of us––something that grows nearby really loves to pester our family. So I get out of bed to get her some tissue, then decide to start my day with a nice, warm fire in our already nice, warm house, per usual.4:30 - 7:15 a.m.I spend this time working on articles and making pancakes for breakfast. Hannah and Further get up around six, at which point he begins his daily hour of smiles, contemplation and, most recently, growling. It's probably his cutest new maneuver. I also feed the pigs in this time block. They're warming up to us, but I know how it goes. Once they are no longer afraid of us, they will be pushing us over to get to the food. Smart? Definitely. Friendly? Sure. But decorous? Not so much.7:15-10:30 a.m.I go to the gardens to harvest for our first CSA delivery and somehow forget everything I need. Rusty, I guess. Long winter. So added into this time period is a trip back to the house to get the harvest bins, baskets and the harvest knife.10:30-11:30 a.m.When I get back to the house I switch roles with Hannah. She begins to get everything cleaned and organized while I take over baby duty, which basically just consists of me giggling and laughing and cooing while Further stares at me incredulously. It's symbiotic.11:30-12 p.m.I drive onto the hill to take care of emails which will never cease to be ridiculous. Oh, I guess until we get electricity and internet here. Then it will cease, I suppose.12 - 1:30 p.m.I cook some pasta, beef and mushrooms for lunch and while I'm waiting for it to get done I do some mulching. If you ever find me not multitasking, I'm probably sick and you should maybe make me some soup or take me to the hospital.1:30 - 3 p.m.A bunch of piddly farm things happen in this time block that are not necessarily noteworthy––watering plants, checking on mushroom logs, weeding the strawberries, taking an eight minute power nap. You know, the usual.3 p.m. - 5 p.m.We drive to Tompkinsville to meet a shareholder and give her her food as well as stop by our beloved Brutons and pick up supplies for our water system which we plan to put together this weekend. And yes, we're excited, but the supplies cost double what we anticipated, so it's a little bittersweet.5 p.m. - 7 p.m.Bittersweet or not, when we get home I spend the next hour and a half or so putting the pipe together and hauling everything to the spring. I'm elated because water is finally happening, which helps when you're hauling heavy pipe over a creek and up a hill. Our dear friends the Ladniers will be joining us this weekend to help get the water going, and do some good old fashioned hanging out. Running water––oh man, sounds like a dream.7 - 8 p.m.I watch Further again so Hannah can get ready for market the next day and also work on some writing. Further growls some more––which is still pretty amazing––and I coo. Our conversations are extraordinary.8 - 9:30 p.m.I drive back on the hill in the dark to do internet work, and enjoy the company of a million or so lightning bugs, who all seem thoroughly perplexed by my headlights––by the two giant lightning bugs that just arrived. Then I go back home, have a salad and some chips, do a bit more writing (which I know, is not a very fun task to read about) and then finally join the wife and baby in bed.9:30 p.m.Sleep.- Jesse.

A SUNDAY IN THE LIFE.

This completes the week of "Day in the Life" posts, but I can't imagine not doing more of these, or more double negatives, in the future. Anyhow, I give you the last day of our week: Sunday, August 10th.5:15 - 5:45 a.m.I wake up at my usual time, but unlike usual I lay in bed for thirty minutes. It's Sunday, which is technically supposed to be a day off of sorts, so I try not to feel the guilt self-employed people feel when they're doing something that is not work, when they're doing anything that doesn't lead to money. But I eventually get corrupted by that guilt anyway and get out of bed to do chores.5:45 - 6:15 a.m.I galumph slowly about the farm collecting firewood and kindling to get the fire going. As often happens on Sunday I feel fatigued and inhibited by Saturday, by the previous week, or by the season. This Sunday it is all three.6:15 - 7:30 a.m.Writing. I have articles due and blog posts I want to write and a whole host of other projects I'm insane for getting myself involved in as a farmer, but oh well. If you want something done, I tell myself often, give it to a busy person. Then I tell myself, "Now stop talking, I'm busy."7:30 - 7:45 a.m.I take a few minutes to listen to NPR's Weekend Edition because it has become tradition for Hannah and I to play the puzzle every week and for her to do infinitely better than me.7:45 - 8:45 a.m.The sky looks like rain so I decide to go ahead and move the goats. But honestly, I would be happy for it to dump rain all over me so long as some of that rain hits the ground, too. The rain cloud dissipates without raining.8:45 - 9:15 a.m.I drive up onto our neighbor's pasture to check email and such. Yep, our closest internet is about a mile away. But if nothing else, the views are exceptional––especially the view of me standing in a pasture holding my device into the air looking for reception.9:15 - 10:15 a.m.I consider taking the rare midmorning nap, but determine I should probably do some more writing instead. Or rather, the guilt determines this for me.10:15 - 11 a.m.A large, dark cloud begins to form in the Southeast so I decide at random to transplant a hundred and fifty rutabaga plants. I feel the pressure and excitement of racing this rain cloud and fly through the planting at blinding speeds. Rain drops begin to hit my head as I bury the last plant. Then suddenly, nothing happens. The rain cloud completely blows over the farm and I'm left standing there sweaty, dirty, and out of breath with an empty tray of rutabaga transplants in my hand. I walk back to the house and decide to listen to "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" instead of crying. We need more rain in the next two days, or we're right back into a drought.11 - 12:15 p.m."Wait Wait Don't Tell Me." No crying. Brief nap.12:15 - 2:40 p.m.To celebrate our anniversary (which isn't technically until December) we go out for lunch at our favorite barbecue place in Tompkinsville called Frances. There we eat catfish and tater tots because that what the baby wants for lunch, and I don't argue with babies.2:40 - 4 p.m.I'm not entirely sure what happens in this time. There's some reading and talking and phone calls and kitties until the next thing I know it's four o'clock. Time doesn't always fly when you get older, sometimes it just flat out disappears.4 - 5:45 p.m.The guilt returns and to oblige it I go out into the garden, work up soil and transplant some cauliflower. The guilt becomes momentarily satisfied, a moment being about as long as it is ever satisfied.5:45 - 6:30 p.m.We go fetch water together from the spring and Hannah tells me about all of the things she's been reading on raising babies. Apparently babies like contrast in faces and that's why they tend to like guys with beards. This explains a lot for me. For a somewhat wild-looking and awkward person with a long beard and messy hair, I have always been a smash hit with babies. Who knew facial contrast was my best feature?6:30 - 7 p.m.Earlier in the day we had grabbed some lamb from the freezer so I do some writing and start thinking about dinner. My stomach joins in the thinking so I stop writing and get to work.7 - 9 p.m.I collect firewood, cook dinner and Hannah and I listen to "Sound Opinions" and "Radiolab" until we can no longer hold our heads up. It occurs to me that I mentioned four different NPR shows in this one post, and that's not including the snippets of "A Prairie Home Companion" or "On Being" or "Car Talk" or "This American Life" we heard in the day. It can never be understated how much we love our radio.9 p.m.Bed.

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.