Best of both worlds...?

I'm slipping in a quick blog post without even really thinking about the content.  It's amazing how motivated to work on the farm or write blog posts I can be when there's a massive pile of washing teetering precariously in the laundry room.

Since my last post, I too have been teetering between two worlds.  First of all my role here at the homestead has been cementing itself into some sort of structure.

The farm is starting to feel like a farm rather than a constructions site.  The fruit cage is almost finished (I think I've been making that statement for about a month now), the netting is almost up.  Poor Ian buckled down and got the netting in place last week.  I can't begin to contemplate how he achieved this.  Please bear in mind that our cage is of epic proportions, now think about the netting arriving in two pieces, and not rectangle pieces...oh no, kind of misshaped blocks of material.  Then the rain came and made it impossibly wet and heavy.  Then I got a cold with made me 'unhelpful' and whiny.  Then the cold turned to a chest infection which rendered me utterly useless.  Somehow, on dark evenings after work, he got the netting straightened up and on the frame.  Gotta hand it to the guy, this was an admirable feat.  It's exciting to see this progress, the chickens roam free in there and we have four 'sale table' fruit bushes ready to plant (three goji berry bushes and one elderberry).  Those four bushes should enjoy sharing the acre of netted cage with the six chickens; very spacious!  But seriously, now is the time to start planning what produce will grow in there and how many more chicken we can buy.

Talking poultry as we were, the ladies of Chickingham Palace are finally laying.  Well, two of them are anyway.  I had started to believe they were messing with me.  Just lording around the palace grounds enjoying their quinoa based organic diet.  They don't know how close they were to becoming a staple in my diet!  But nevertheless, we have our first produce.  Very delicious it is too and I can say the "I am an egg farmer".

The next exciting farm activity undertaken is the planting of four apple trees.  Another sale table bargain.  I did this all by myself.  Dug the holes, mixed the compost and top soil, planted the tree and covered the base with the cottonwood tree we chipped a couple of weeks ago to keep them warm.  "I am an apple tree farmer".

Although it has been incredibly mild here, the weather is changing and the nights are drawing in.  I momentarily envisaged things being quiet on the farm, so I applied for a seasonal job.  I was chirping away to Ian about how it would be good for me to "keep in with the city folk" whilst earning a little money.  So on Monday morning, I merrily set out for my interview as a seasonal sales associate in Old Navy.  Sorry, hang on a moment, I've phrased that wrong.  It apparently was not an interview for a sales job in a clothes store, it was a "Group Audition" for a "Sell-abrity".  That's right, just take a moment to picture the moment some jumped-up little HR genius pitching that idea to make staff feel valued.  Now I don't mean to sound like a grumpy old woman, but by then end of the 'audition' I was at risk of jail time if I heard one more sparkly, happy person say awesome (pronounced AW-sum) just one more time.  Now I've always found things to be more relaxed and informal here on the West Coast but I nearly fell off my chair in disbelief when one auditionees and one panel member started crying during the interview, sorry, audition.

Anyway, even though I started behaving badly towards the end of the interview and effectively heckled a couple of times and laughed inappropriately at the over-zealous love for the company, I got the job.  If I'm honest, it was actually quite nice.  The people there did genuinely appear happy in their work and were enjoying the 'family' feel from their colleagues, I guess I'm just unaccustomed to this kind of approach.  Maybe I've been alone on the farm too much.  Perhaps I do need to go back out there into civilization and get used to the happy, positive side of people.  Who knows, I might even stop chatting to the chickens like they're my best friends.  I might even find that this clean, bright, happy environment is a good balance for me.  It will be a change though, I mean I had to borrow some clothes without rips and paint stains for the interview...yep, it's time for me to dip back into urban culture again! "I am a Sellabrity".