A week on a farm

The week of Labor Day, I spent a week on a farm. The days were filled with a vast assortment of life on a working farm: gardening, butchering a lamb, making cheese, baking bread in a wood fired oven, making butter, preserving jam & pickles, butchering & plucking ducks, charcuterie, cooking three meals a day with a chef, visiting orchards, talking, becoming a part of a community who is conscious of where their food comes from, eating- eating a LOT of good food. There were 8 of us in farm school; all from different backgrounds, all there for different reasons.

Here are just a few photos of my time on the farm. It was an amazing experience, one that I will not soon forget. One that I may need to experience again this year.

making butter with Chef Karen from raw cow's milk, pressing it into an antique mold.

Jen making lamb sausage- from the lamb we butchered earlier in the week. we used every part of the lamb- nothing went to waste.

Jam- apricots from their trees in the garden.

Freshly made baguettes, just out of the wood fired ovens.

Katy & Erica, holding their ducks, waiting to be butchered, at the crack of dawn.

enough said.

Bees, from the hives that are located on the farm property.

The 8 students, Rick, Chef Karen, Katy & Stein- what a fun group!

One of the 40 totally cute goats on the farm- responsible for the daily milk and cheese.

Scraping the dough to shape into loaves.