My 22nd Birthday!

Yesterday was my first birthday as a college graduate. Wow, I made it 22 years. Since I am living in a new place and living and working with people that I am only familiar with I was worried if it would be much of anything, but it turned out perfect...just the kind of birthday I would hope for. Another girl I work with had her 21st birthday on June 23rd, the day before mine, so we had been planning to celebrate together. We went to Zorbaz, a Minnesota pizza eatery (one of my favorites...yum) and ate nachos, had some "adult beverages,"and ate yummy oreo cake that Emy's mom bought for us. It was a lot of fun. I had to work on my birthday, which was a normal workday filled with its normal stresses and small moments of peace while picking peas in the morning hours. After work my new friends wanted to celebrate my birthday, which I was surprised by because I thought that the night before was the birthday celebration, but at my request we went to Dunn Brothers and drank coffee and played games and hung out. It was perfect, since coffeeshops are one of my favorite places to hang out. Also, on the way to Dunn Brothers we saw a rainbow in the sky, which I deemed my "birthday rainbow" and the sunset was beautiful, a gift from God for my birthday. I also was able to talk with friends and family from different parts of the country and received many birthday wishes on facebook. 

My Birthday sunset!

My Birthday Rainbow!

I am now one year older, and possibly one year wiser (we shall see), and am forever gracious to the Lord for his work in my life and to my parents, who gave me life and I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for them. 

When the weeds keep growing

There are a couple key things that make organic growing different from other forms of agriculture. The biggest thing is that organic farmers don't use chemicals on their produce. So the question that I have run into is then "since you can't spray what do you do?," and that's why the organic farmer is valued. The care that goes into organic produce is more intensive. You have to watch your crop and look for all the faulty pieces about it. So instead of spraying the weeds, the weed control starts from the very beginning of the growing season before anything is planted by "tilling" the earth. Really, it is important to break up the soil. Then, when the plant is in the soil you can sometimes take heavy machinery through the crop, but on most occasions you spend your time hand-weeding, wheel-hoeing, and hoeing the crops. 

This is how I spend a lot of my time on the farm, or at least right now. When I first arrived I spent my first day hand-weeding a bed of carrots. One of the also recent arrivals told me that farming can become kind of dull and monotonous. This is very true. Last week a bed of beets took me and two other interns all morning to hand weed. The intern that told me that it was monotonous very shortly after brought out a radio and turned on MPR (Minnesota Public Radio). Other people listen to their ipods while they are working. At first I thought that it would be a good idea to bring my ipod into the field with me, but the other day when I was wheel-hoeing dandelion greens I decided that sometimes no-music isn't so bad. I enjoyed digging my toes into the soil and listening to the birds chirping, the cows grazing, and the wind moving the grass back and forth. It is almost freeing to be there, looking over the miles of fields that cover the land and think about the grand things of creation. 

Reflections of an amateur farmer

Well I have officially reached the one week mark of being on the organic farm. I didn't expect that the farm would  be so big. The farmer, Gary, is running quite the operation. He has 300 shareholders to feed everyweek so he has a lot of vegetables to grow. Everything here is new and different, but exciting at the same time. I harvested vegetables last week that I have never heard of before and I discovered foods that grow in the ground that I had never thought about (Garlic...who knew?). 

Sometimes the work is exciting and other times it can be rather monotonous. My first day I learned how to hand weed and thin carrots and parsnips. This took all afternoon and it took 4 of us to complete the task. Day two was harvesting day. I was surprised that they already had vegetables ready to harvest, but with a greenhouse available it makes growing vegetables available earlier in the season to eat, and with how dry it is the vegetables were ready to come out of the ground. We harvested radishes, salad greens, some bak choi, scallions, and spinach. One Wednesdays we pack all the vegetables to be ready for delivery the next day. This is an assembly line process that includes making boxes, weighing bags of lettuce, and packing the prewashed vegetables into the boxes and into the truck. The truck leaves at midnight and travels to Alexandria, The Twin Cities, and St. Cloud. On Thursday we had a crop walk which is something that all the interns do with the farmer once a week to catch each other up on the progress of the growth, planting, weeding, etc. When we finished I redgy weeded the rest of the day. This craft is a machine that attatches to the back of the tractor that has seats and round claws attatched to handles that dig the dirt up. It makes weeding later on much quicker and easier. On Friday I direct seeded squash and sunflowers into the beds and then I hoe weeded for the rest of the afternoon. Luckily we had Saturday off and I got a chance to see Alexandria and find some (already) favorite local coffeeshops. Today (Monday) I seeded in the greenhouse cabbage, bunched onions, and romaine lettuce. In the afternoon I transplanted watermelons into one of the beds. 

It is amazing how such a craft of farming has been lost on us. The simple task of hoeing was something that I had to be taught. Everything is new to me and the rest of the interns are patient with me as I learn. Luckily many of the skills are not that challenging to acquire. It will be perfecting them that will take time. 

As far as feeling comfortable with this new group of people, it can be challenging at times and other times I am so happy to be surrounded by people who have similar convictions as I do in terms of how our current society is structured. Many times I feel like an odd one out, being one of few, if any, practicing Christians, but it makes it all the more exciting. I am learning to navigate a world different than the Christian college that I just came out of and I am being challenged in my faith as well. But I also feel that I can fit right in with these people who see the world, society, politics, and many other controversial issues similarly to myself, which is a good change from the environment that I had been in previously. 

At nights we read, listen to folk music, cook, and sit around and chat. They are rather resourceful people. It is many a night where people are creating or eating foods that I have always purchased at the grocery stor. Just tonight a couple of my "co-workers" were making homemade pizza dough. Other things that have been made in the kitchen are crackers, ketchup, bagels, applesauce, and much more. I also enjoy purchasing my milk and eggs from the local farmer nearby and participating in the local community, which is one of the many reasons why I am here.  If you are interested in learning more about the farm that I am on go to www.ploughsharefarm.com and remember  to participate in your local community!

Graduation...an end to the time of our lives...or the beginning of a new adventure?

A couple weeks ago I graduated from College. It was a time of mixed emotions. There is accomplishment over 4 years of rigorous studies, relief of ACTUALLY graduating, Joy of being done. But there is sadness to saying goodbye to friendships that have developed over four long and hard years, and, for me, saying goodbye to an area of the country that I have come to enjoy and love. The East Coast is a unique place that is hard to find in any other part of North America. There are also emotions of fear and anxiousness of what comes next. The great unknown of the future. What will my life look like in five years from now? or Tomorrow? 

After I had packed all my belongings into my 2001 Hyundai Santa Fe and checked out of the musty apartment that I had grown to call home I walked across campus one last time and I said to myself, this isn't so horrible. There are new adventures to be had, new stories to make, new lessons to learn, new places to see. I value everyone that I met at school, the places I saw, and the things that I learned, and I will take them with me, but there's nothing wrong with getting out there and seeing the world and making my own of it. So I say...farewell Gordon College and the East Coast (for now) and Hello World! I'm open to whatever you send my way!

Welcome to Color Our World

Welcome to my Blog. This is an experiment. I played with the idea of creating one because I didn't think much exciting happened in my life, but I realized that there is always something to say. When I discovered the name for the blog I realized that there was so much that I could share with the world. 

So how did I choose Color our World? I was in my car driving to New Jersey for Easter Break with extended family when it came to me. In my car there is a postcard stuck in that thing that flips down to keep light out of your eyes and sometimes there's a mirror in it or airbag directions. Some people put there CD's in there. Anyways, the summer after I returned from Guatemala I went to an art exhibit at a Jewish Community Center in Minnesota that was of photographs of Guatemala. The exhibit was color our world. I picked up the postcard there and it has stayed in my car since then. There is a picture of a beautiful indigenous Guatemalan in her traditional dress looking curiously at you. 

But it wasn't just the Guatemala connection that stuck out to me. The title started to resonate with other things in my life I am passionate about. The overarching thing that I am passionate about is social justice and I believe that a means towards social justice is getting to know "the other", whether the other is male, female, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, wealthy, poor, comes from the City, or rural settings, Christian, Muslim etc.. There is so much that we can learn from people that are different from ourselves. 

There are also so many colors that the earth creates. This summer I will be working on an organic farm in Minnesota and I love the different colors of vegetables and the beautiful greens of the plants. I love the blues in the ocean, the leaves in the fall are an expression of beauty. There are some colors that aren't always the prettiest color, and I think it is a depiction of people and relationships. There are things in this world that aren't pretty but when you mix the ugly with the pretty you have a mural of beauty. 

I played with the idea of changing "our" to "the" or "your" or "my", but I decided to stay with "our" because life is about relationships and community. It is about sharing life together. Living life with others is good for humanity. As one of my favorite professors said in class one day, "There's nothing more important than living together. " So let's join in this journey to color our world together. Look for more posts coming soon and leave your comments so that we can share life together. 

I don't know how to put picture descriptors, but the picture is of my with my family that lived with when I was in Guatemala. They were painters and painted that beautiful picture in the background. Carlos and Thelma are the parents and Pabel and Katherine were the children. The four gringas are myself and three others from our trip. Each and everyone of the people in that picture colored my world