July 3rd: A Day in the Life at Sweetwater Farm

Morning goat milking. Kind of a pain- takes forever and is hard on the lower back. A quiet breakfast with Charlie and Elodi, the French-Canadian woofer. She's very sweet. She grew up on a farm in Quebec and has broad shoulders and muscular arms. Not at all the marketable body image most city girls are going for but I think she's gorgeous. She listens quietly and intently as Charlie rants on about how the bible is a load of crap and the biggest scam the world has seen, when the conversation started out with me asking what temperature I have to heat the milk to pasteurize it. A fly fell in it. This breakfast however, was quiet, each of us engrossed in our respective publications of the Sun literary magazine.

Tim West arrived, a very cute and energetic cook from the same camp as where I met Charlie, to plan the menu and arrange a staff for their next gig in August. My younger step sister wouldn't talk to me for two days after having seen us kissing at the camp. I felt really bad. I knew she had a crush on him, even though he's eleven years older than she is which, when you're fifteen, especially an immature fifteen, does make a difference. But he came on to me and I didn't resist. Melodee and I were bra shopping at H&M a few days later when I brought up the matter and, quickening her pace and hoping I'd follow, she skimmed her hand across a lacy lingerie set and said, as if in an afterthought, “You didn't have to DO him though.” We didn't have sex. Not even close. She thought we did and for some reason, for her that was the deal breaker. I assured her, even pinkie promised her, that we didn't “do it”. I threw in one more apology for good measure and our relationship was healed.

I took a fantastic bath in the beautiful bathhouse today, with a view across a few miles of empty rolling hills. The hills part in the middle to reveal a crotch of ocean and the view doesn't stop until the natural horizon, however many hundred miles off. But today there was a fog bank creeping up on us and filling in the split between the mountains with a thick pile of white wet clouds.

Unloaded a truck and lugged some things here and there. Lunch and post lunch sleepy lounging. I laid on the couch with my legs over Tim's lap and the two of us dozed while Charlie assaulted poor innocent Elodi with an exasperated explosion of his thoughts on mass food production, the manipulating arrangement of super markets, and Monsanto lobbyists. As I fell in and out of slow murky sleep, phrases from Charlie's rant worked themselves into my dreams.

After lunch and lounge, garden work! Lots of weeding and watering. Tim strut around with his shirt off, carrying an axe at one point and a pellet gun at another. He shot a rabbit while it was munching in a raised bed and later (after my second shower of the day) showed me how to skin it. Charlie's cat, Minnie Mouse, dug up the head and pelt and Tim (now with a shirt on. Rubber gloves too.) chased him with a hose until the cat dropped the rabbit parts. Tim reburied them. Charlie's garden overlooks hills and hills of beautiful Big Sur forest, white slab rocks jutting out here and there. Dropped the weeds in the chicken run and the lemongrass in Charlie's for tea tonight.

Down near the goat shed, I hung some curd in cheese clothes while Elodi milked. Wrapped some Camemberts in the earth-chilled aging room. “Just like a Christmas present”, said Charlie. Off to dinner. I wonder how Tim will cook the rabbit. Not much to say today- very quiet. But very happy.