Yale-ies

We have a bunch of Yale freshman visiting/working on the farm this week for their outdoor orientation - like 10 of them + 2 older leaders. It's been a lot of fun, but also quite busy/hectic. Laura and Dave said beforehand they're always almost more trouble than they worth, but they (or at Least Laura) like having them here and getting to show them the place and introducing them to farming and specifically organic local farming.

With Dave busy with house stuff (they are putting on an edition, and he's doing a lot of the work himself as an ex-carpenter)+ Laura busy with Lily (the 2 year old) and about 7 months pregnant, this means I end up doing a lot of managing of them. At first I thought they were right about the whole as much trouble as they were worth bit. Like everybody they were super slow the first day, and it's hard organizing a lot of people, and I didn't know how to explain stuff right - I would leave out stuff that I thought was obvious, but clearly wasn't, and then have to go back and explain it again. However, they have improved dramatically just over the last few days, and maybe I've improved in explaining/managing a bit and now things seem to be going much smoother and we are getting a whole lot done cuz we have an extra crew of like 12 people. There's actually finally been a little time to do weeding (which has long been neglected as there is so much to harvest right now). It's great.

We (the apprentices) have also started socializing with them a bit more. They came on Sunday, and I don't think I really talked to any of them at all sunday or monday (besides a little bit while working), but last night we all had dinner together out at the picnic table and had a great time. Then today when everyone else went to market, I stayed back with Rick (a temporary hourly worker) to harvest all the root crops, as I normally do on wednesdays. The two of us were in charge of managing all the yale-ies. I thought it might be a bit of problem, but it actually went quite smoothly, and we got stuff done real fast, and had a great time and talked a lot and all. Then at the end of the day I brought them all a watermelon for a snack, and we all laughed and talked and had this watermelon spitting contest. It was awesome. I hope the week continues to be so good.

- Nick