Learning Highlights
Another week occupied primarily by calendula. We seem to have fallen into a new routine that fills three out of four of our weekly work days with calendula harvesting, which is luckily feeling a bit easier now that we have extra bins for transporting all of the calendula. Our Wednesday harvest was accompanied by a thunderstorm; rain dumped on our backs for around five minutes while we were in the field and it honestly felt so refreshing after the heat of the morning. I was actually thankful for the rainy work day, even if the rain didn’t last too long.
The biggest change for this week was the fact that I am now the WWOOFer who has been at Moon Valley for the longest, the “farm expert” as my friends have begun to call me. This meant there were a lot of opportunities to teach new WWOOFers about the farm which felt very exciting; I do not get to be a leader too often, but I really enjoy it when I do. It also felt nice to have the farm managers acknowledge my skill and trust me with passing everything on to the new WWOOFers.
A big highlight of the week was the giant pesto-making party that the owners of Moon Valley threw with a bunch of their friends. Tables were set up in the outdoor kitchen and a giant assembly line was soon churning out batch after batch of fresh pesto, it was chaotic but also really fun. My friends and I were in charge of taste testing, sealing, and labeling the bags of pesto.