Day 2 on the Blueberry Farm

Being here is more of a lifestyle change than just a fun experience.  I have learned more about myself and life in the past 36 hours than I have during the last four weeks.  I am absolutely in love with this family and this way of living.  Sigi is kind and patient.  He really takes the time to explain how to do things and makes sure to tell me that I’m doing a great job, regardless of how well I’m actually doing.  His wife Yvonne is exactly as wonderful.  She is energetic and fun and open-minded.  Their love for one another is so obvious, even after 22 years, that it would be impossible to miss.  Their oldest son Dominik, who is 21, is so resourceful and intelligent.  He calls his parents by their first names because he thinks “mom” and “dad” are more of a function than a name and is in his last year at university to become a sailor.  Mara, the middle child, is 19 and an art student in Cork.  She is witty and fun loving.  She draws and paints amazing pieces, and her favorite subject is the mystical world, especially fairies.  She does contemporary dance, as does the youngest son Josh who is 16.  He is bighearted and independent.  His biggest interest in blacksmithing and Yvonne thinks that is what he will go into because he’s so passionate about it.  They’re very unconventional and probably what Americans would classify as hippies.  Yvonne doesn’t shave.  Dominick wears clothes with holes and that don’t match.  Mara has multiple piercings, including her tongue, and Josh has long hair that he keeps back in a bandana most of the time.  None of them wear deodorant, and there is a tree growing in the middle of their house.  They do not own a TV or a microwave.  They make almost all of their own food, and what they can’t make, they buy the organic version of.  Each of the kids has their own house on the property, and Mara, for example, has lived in hers since she was 13.  Her home consists of the hippie van Sigi and Yvonne came to Ireland in on the bottom and a tree house looking part on the top.  Sigi and Yvonne said they want to make sure the kids have their own space and are free to become their own people.  At different parts of the day, one can hear Josh playing his drums, the chickens squawking, Ramona, the calf, mooing, Tina and Elvis, the pigs, grunting and Dominik and Sigi chopping wood in the field.  Each morning starts off with the family coming together to eat breakfast in the conservatory, as they call it.  It’s made up of a kitchen table and the biggest sliding glass doors I’ve ever seen.  Sigi made them himself, and if I had a view like theirs, I would try my best to come up with something similar, too.  The mountains are off in the distance, and in the foreground is a lake that the family frequently goes swimming in during the summer.  For breakfast, we ate homemade butter, homemade soda bread and yeast bread, homemade jam, and drank tea and coffee.  Everything was delicious, and some sort of intelligent discussion usually sparks up during meal time. After breakfast, I mowed the apple orchard, which is on hills, with a push mower.  I bent the blade and had several problems, all of which Dominik or Sigi rushed over to fix, insisting that it’s not my fault and that the machine is just abused.  Dominik said he can take apart and put back together machines because it’s a necessity for living out here.  Rather than spending a day driving into town and paying someone else to fix something, he learns to remedy the problem himself.  He literally took apart the carburetors of the lawn mower, having little idea how to put it back together, fixed it and carefully put it back into working condition piece by piece.  He told me he was sure I could do it too if I wasn’t scared of doing it.  I had never considered why I don’t do things like that, but I guess it is because of being scared – mainly being scared of messing up.  After mowing, I picked red currents for about an hour and a half.  Sigi came over several times to tell me how quickly I was picking and told everyone at lunch how good I am at it.  I’m not really sure I’m all that fast, but his positive encouragement made me want to work hard after lunch.  For lunch we ate homemade bread, homemade butter, homemade jam, homemade cheese, and ham from the farm, along with drinking tea and coffee.  We again, had intelligent discussion, and after lunch, which lasted nearly two hours because the conversation was so good, I went out to pick more berries.  This time I picked black currents and red currents, but Sigi had me stop with the black currents after awhile because they weren’t ripe enough.  I really enjoy having a lot of time to think and reflect about my time here as I’m working, so I don’t wea

r an i-pod and just enjoyed the noises of the farm.  When that was done, I came back into the house and had a coffee break with Sigi before Yvonne came back from dropping Dominik off in Killarney.  Shortly after, Sigi left with Mara and Josh to go to Dublin for a contemporary dance competition, so it was just Yvonne and me for the night.  We spent dinner time, which consisted of whole grain pasta with spinach sauce, combined with an egg since it was leftover from last night, talking about family and what it’s like to have kids.  She told me about how important it is to let kids make their own mistakes and how exciting it is to see her children becoming the people they want to be.  I really enjoyed her perspective on life.  After dinner, we milked Vickie, spent about 30 minutes putting the circus of animals to bed, and strained and dealt with the milk.  After each morning and evening milking, the milk gets strained and put into the refrigerator.  Then, after each night milking, the cream gets scraped off the top of the milk and put into a container for butter.  The remaining milk gets put into a big pot for cheese.  Everything gets refrigerated.  Once chores were done, Yvonne and I walked into Sneem for a pint.  I only had a pint of water, but we found a couple friends of hers and spent the next couple of hours talking about what’s going on in town and what’s new on the farm, etc.  Sneem Village consists of 280 people and six pubs.  I think that’s very Irish.  We walked back home at around 11, going our separate ways, and I wrote in my journal before falling asleep.