Day 2

This should actually be titled Day 1, but whatever I already started the other one.  Today was a bunch of firsts for me.  It was my first early wake up, driving around a 6 wheel John Deere cart, mishap with the dogs, introduction to the rabbits, and thoughts of realizing my new lifestyle as a whole.  So I set my alarm for 640 AM, and I didn't realize how early that was because I have been sleeping until 12 PM the whole summer basically.  The alarm went off and I was a little startled, but I got up washed my face and went down to the kitchen for breakfast.  Cath had left two bagels for me and whoever else wanted them.  So I went to the fridge got out the chocolate chip with cream cheese bagel and threw her in the oven.  There was an awkward moment when I realized they didn't have a toaster, so I had to use the oven...classic.  I got myself some OJ and kind of paced between the table and the oven because I didn't really know what to do haha.  Anyways, the bagel was garbage, but it held me over until lunch.  The inside wasn't completely warm so it was a nice half and half temperature bagel.  The breakfast was definitely subpar for the food I have been eating here ( nothing against cath ;) ).  So I ate by myself and then Will came down in his robe and greeted me, and then went back upstairs.  It wasn't until 730 that he came down for breakfast and we didn't leave the house until 745.  Preface:  before I came to Maryland I went to Salvation Army to buy some pants that would be I could move around easily and were cheap enough to get dirty.  The clincher was that I made it a requirement that I only buy jeans that had ridiculous logs on the butt pocket of the jeans, i.e. Ecko Unlimited, Jordan, etc.  Basically, I thought this would help bring out my already flourishing gangster persona.  So after I had on my Ecko jeans, my shoelace hair tie, and my new hiking boots I was ready to take on the Whitmore farm, for my first morning routine.  It was drizzling very lightly outside while Will and I walked to the Barn.  We loaded the back of this 6 wheel John Deere cart they call the "gator" with chicken feed, pig feed, two hay stacks, a bucket for collecting eggs, and then some more chicken feed.  So I start the ol Deere and its kind of strange driving such a machine at first, but I got used to it.  I went to each coop that I did yesterday and pulled each coop with my John Deere about 10 feet first,  then acquired eggs then filled each chicken room with more hay, and then checked the inside to see if they needed feed or not.  I did this and then cleaned each of their water bowls for 5 different coops spread out around the whole farm with gates in between each coop.  So after I finished my first coop Will and I were leaving the pasteur when we found some goats in the chicken housing, so we had to drag them out and set up a solarly powered electric fence so they wouldn't come back in.  After retrieving the electric fence generator I was driving back into the gate by myself, because Will had to get something from the barn, and therefore had to open and close the gates with my Deere by myself.  That was the hardest part.  I had to open the gate, quickly run back to my Deere drive it through the gate, then run back and hatch the gate before any of the watchdogs got out.  There are 5 watchdogs on the farm, one for each pasteur.  So as I was closing the gate, getting out of my Deere, Spike ( the watchdog for the pasteur I was in ) bolted out for the chicken coop.  Immediately I ran to try and grab ahold of his collar, but he was running away from me in a kind of playful manner.  I was yelling Spike get back here please come back, aww shit come on Spike.  After running my legs out i finally caught up with him and dragged him all the way back to his side of the gate.  Luckily, no chickens or goats had roamed to the other side of the gate because after Spike got out I didn't remember to shut it while I was chasing after him.  That was my first real mishap yet.  I was pretty worried, but glad that Will didn't see the whole fiasco, because he was still at the barn.  By the time he had come back it looked like I had been waiting for him the whole time...classic.  We then set up the electric fence generator so that the goats wouldn't go near the chickens anymore.  After I finished my chicken coops we then plunged into the disgustingness of the pig pens, literally.  I had to clean the pigs water bowls and I have never experienced a smell, or a kind of uncleanliness that these slovenly animals fostered.  The full grown males were huge.  They are pretty harmless, but kind of scary at first because they like to bump you around.  So while I had to clean the sludge off of their water bowls, they were poking there snouts at me and at first it was kind of alarming, but then it turned out to be kind of funny.  One almost fully pushed me over.  After feeding the pigs, and cleaning all the water bowls it was time to check up on the rabbits.  By the way this whole time I had been driving the Deere which was pretty strange, and at one point Will exclaimed you drive so slow!  And I kind of took a blow from that comment because I thought my driving skills were superb.  Anyways after we got our rabbit feed and our water for their bottles we went to each cage and moved each one about 2 ft so that they weren't raging in their own poop for too long.  After that we would feed them and then check for water.  As I was opening one of the hatches to feed the rabbits Will told me to keep my body situated so that if a rabbit tried to escape it couldn't because the bucket of feed would be in the way as well as my body.  He also told me that some of the rabbits had babies and to watch out for them because they like to lean against the feeder/ hatch/ door.  I opened the hatch and made sure all the babies were in the cage and then proceeded to fill the container with feed.  As I was reaching for food the mother rabbit emerged from the back of the cage and was just watching me at first.  As i was feeding I asked Will if rabbits bit and he responded with no, but it has happened before.  And before I knew it I had a little gash in my hand, and an unforeseen fear of rabbits.  It was kind of a hard bite, but Will didn't think much of it.  After I did this for 6 cages I went into the barn and cleaned off the morning eggs and separated them.  After that I helped Will feed and hydrate the rabbits that live inside the barn.  Those rabbits were extremely timid, and very afraid of humans.  Ironically, i felt likewise and I looked down at my hand.  After feeding and changing water for 7 cages, Will and I went in for lunch for anise tuna melt.  It was marvelous.  After lunch we went back out to the barn, and I had some more jobs.  I had to feed the pigs again, go around a second time in the afternoon and retrieve the afternoon batch of eggs, and pick up the food bowls from the dogs., and give the goats some extra hay.  Even typing all of this makes me tired.  But I did want to say that while I was doing the afternoon round, I kind of felt like Ben Stiller in Night at the Museum on the second time around where he gets the hang of it.  I kind of felt like I was in charge and knew what i was doing, kind of.  It was also raining this whole time, to add to the dirtiness that I experienced.  So after I finished everything, including packing some eggs to be sold, I wounded up taking a shower at 515 PM.  So a solid days work from about 745 AM until 515 PM.  I am very, very tired as I write this because i didn't end up going to bed last night until 12 AM.  Anyways, dinner was good we had a calzone takeout from a nearby town, with a homemade salad with a pretty solid balsamic vinaigrette dressing on top.  And to top off the day again I had another glass of wine.  this could become routine i think.  Actually, probably not..ha..cough cough.  So Day 2 is completed, and tomorrow I will be joined by a fellow named Daniel who just graduated college and will be staying in the room across from mine.  I am pretty excited to meet him, because even just today it kind of got a little lonely when Kent is at the doctors office, and Will was at the butchers shop.  But, then again it isn't that big of a deal, yet.  I kind of thought to myself today that I never realized how much of a meat farm this was.  I kind of thought that I would be working with vegetables and that sort of deal, but then again it is mid September, so I guess that makes sense.  There were also times where I felt like the work was kind of monotonous/ tedious, but then again today was just my learning day and I am sure I will be doing different things later on.  Well as of now I'm pretty spent.  Nighty.