first night in petaluma

Greetings from Petaluma and the Green String Farm! I can't even begin to explain how lucky I have been and how amazing my first days in California have been. I stayed with some awesome people in Berkeley last night who brought me to the farm today and the people I've met so far are great. There's just complete beauty surrounding me right now; the hills of Petaluma are incredible and covered with vineyards, with vines ready for the growing season. No grapes, yet. The farm work I'll be doing here does not include growing the grapes, but I'm sure I will learn a ton about the process and get to check out winemaking at some point soon.

I can hardly process what I'm about to immerse myself in for the next three months. It sounds like a lot of hard work, and that there are lots of dirty jobs to be done. But already the food that we've prepared and eaten is AMAZING and so fresh. We made butternut squash and lentils tonight with some quinoa that was left over from the intern class that moved out today. There also were salad greens left, which we ate along with locally made goat cheese with honey (probably one of my favorite cheeses/flavors). There also was an incredible cheddar that we seem to have a lot of in the house which was excellent with a pinot noir that one of the interns brought from a winery she worked at in Napa. I have a sneaking suspicion I'm going to spend a lot of time thinking about and talking about the food we eat here. Get ready foodies :)

I'm going to get myself to bed before an early morning tomorrow. We're having breakfast at 6:15am and meeting at 6:50am to go through the morning chores routine which last for an hour each day. Then at 8am we will be working on a project that needs help that day, until 12noon. There's lunch til 1 or 1:30, and then lessons with Bob Cannard (one of the co-owners) that last for usually a few hours. After that comes dinner and hopefully some relaxing. Depending on your chore assignments for the day, you may have to close the chicken coop or close the farm store at night as well. It's all very structured and it sounds like every second of the day is occupied with a task or something that needs to get done. Hopefully I'm able to keep up!