Wordy...

June 13th

First morning on the farm started early. Body clock woke at 3:45 and I lay listening to so many sounds: the machine in the barn that keeps Aphrodite’s milk cold until Andy takes it to the cheese factory, the dogs chasing away wild dogs or foxes from the chickens, sheep and lambs. Or, it might have been the rat just outside my window on the porch. It’s a screened window. But I did steal another hour maybe two between 6 & 7.


I heard stirring in the house and opened my eyes to see that the sun had risen and it was seven. I rushed out because Nick had promised to take me out with him to let the sheep graze in the morning. Second grazing is in evening after siesta for a few hours.

Nick is Andy’s son, 20, and gentle like his father he’s going to stay on the farm and make it his life. I didn’t think these things happened anymore. It’s just the two of them now. Mom died of cancer when Nick was just 4 and the family still lived in England. The following year, Andy moved Nick and his two older sisters “back home” to Greece where he worked on farms a few years before buying and building up this one.

So, I cleaned up a bit in the bathroom before sitting down to breakfast. It’s funny that when you know you’re going to work and get dirty and when everywhere around you life is simple, that morning shower loses its importance. I copied Nick and toasted some bread then moved my knife between the peanut butter and the black cherry preserves. Oh, and Andy offered a yummy green tea. After the quick breakfast and a smoke on the porch, Nick and I were off.

Sheep are silly animals, similar to badly behaved children. And to herd them is a job of much idleness mixed with abrupt moments of panic and yelling as they suddenly move into the oats field or the corn, or the neighbor’s field, or the clover. Or, as with this morning, after Nick had left me with them, planning to come back to help me herd them back after their two hours meal, they started back for the farm. They heat up as the sun moves over the sky and morning moves into midday. So today, before Nick made it back, I had to jump a fence with my stick to intercept and shu them back to the field where they were to graze for another half hour. It’s funny too how so many of them hovered under the shade of the young oak grove and munched on bits of grass and weeds. I’m sure they operate on instinct alone.
.

Nick arrived to help me bring them back and showed me a pile of loose hay that they needed moved to a field into piles. I donned my scarf and work gloves and grabbed the pitch fork. Wow, I used the pitch fork. So I moved loads of hay via wheelbarrow to a small field and felt that I’d accomplished something at last. After Andy came back from errands (he’d picked up a needle and shot in case I’m stung by one of the many bees here), he set me to watering the garden.

The farm’s garden, of course, is about the size of an enormous swimming pool, not what you‘d call a patch. The hose is heavy but I used my left hand rather than the fractured right wrist. After over an hour under the pre-noon sun, I was at last, finished with the watering. It was time to eat and Andy had prepared a beautiful meal, again. This time it was a peppery lentil soup and a salad of boiled potatoes, squash, carrots, and fresh tomatoes and parsley tossed in olive oil and lemon juice-feta to taste. It was so yummy! As was last night’s dinner of pasteechio (yummy casserole of pasta and meat with a custard type topping), fried potatoes and a fresh salad of tomatoes and cucumber with olive oil, there was again fresh feta cheese. Nick gave me a local farmer’s wine (a bit like vinegar) and encouraged me saying that we would stop work for about 3 hours (afternoon rest) because it is too hot to get anything done. He encouraged me to do what I like, “Andy has the car today but tomorrow we will take it to the beach during this time or the hot springs.” He pointed to a hammock he’d set up for me under some trees in the front and a table he’d put there beside it, “You may read your book, take a nap, go for a walk…Do as you like. Me, I’ll probably smoke one of my cigarettes here on the couch and watch some futbol.” His cigarettes are not like the ones I brought on the plane. He spoils me with his hospitality.

I woke around 4:30 and Andy was already at it again. He was out on the patio where I joined him. “Would you like some tea or coffee?” It was like having two mornings in one day. I like that. I went back in to wake myself this time the green tea with lemon. It worked. Within the half hour I was ready to get back to it and trimmed the rose bushes back before the afternoon had cooled enough to take the sheep back out for their second grazing. This time Andy took me.

We take them to a different field in the afternoon and he showed me to keep them out of the corn and the clover. Andy was far less concerned than Nick. “Don’t worry about it.,“ he kept stressing. He told me to stay there beside the corn and clover just until the sheep started back down the hill. At that time, he explained, they will head back to the fields where you’ll need to protect the olive trees. He told me that when they started walking down, I could simply start back toward the neighbor’s olive orchard through the corn field because it would be far easier to walk than the hill and ravine behind the sheep. I worried about them alone but he insisted, “Don’t worry!” I also remembered a field that Nick had mentioned where I should not let then go, I recalled it to Andy and he insisted that I should not worry, just go back to the olive trees and read, “wait an hour or whatever until they arrive.”

I was sure that I’d lost the sheep because they did not arrive to the field near the olive orchard where I’d been waiting. I walked back to the slope and looked, I couldn’t find them, then climbed down the hill, passed snakes slithering into holes and spiders the size of a child’s fist, really worried that I’d lost the sheep. He keeps probably 60 of them. I climbed lower until at last, I saw them. I sat on the hillside another hour and decided that something was wrong. They were far too happy because they were not moving up the hill as they should have been. The sheepherder’s job is to be sure the sheep do not go where they are not supposed to. Well, the sheep were eating the crop of barley for about an hour before I decided, against Andy’s insistence not to worry, that it was a crop and I should worry. Well, it was. Andy insisted that I not worry because it was his fault and not mine. Whew. Hopefully tomorrow should be easier.

Sitting on the porch I was having a cigarette and reading my book with my bare feet sitting up onto a chair waiting for the boiler to heat the water for my bath when Andy came out with a glass of local wine for me. Ahh, and the bath, a shower head mounted to knee level and who’s pressure was faint and mild, was so glorious I didn’t want it to end.


And now, it is 4:15 a.m. I managed four hours after the bath and dinner and finally gave up an hour ago. My alarm will sound at 6:30 because I want more of the quite with my tea and before the work begins tomorrow morning. I know my body’s clock will eventually catch up to this time zone. Until then, we have siesta, and tomorrow’s will be at the beach.