You Better Werk, Bitch

Oh Hay Gurl

A funny thing happens when you live in New York for too long. Despite your own particular origin story, you start to get so urbanized that you forget about things like grass and hay and animals and then you start to fetishize them to the extent that elaborate daydreams and often weekend mini-breaks are built around recreating this experience that you spent the first half of your life trying to escape from. 

Case in point: I grew up not exactly in a rural place but surrounded by farmland. I regularly encountered, like, corn and went to 4H fairs and was dragged on a weekly basis to the local farmer's market, which I legit hated when I was small because I thought it was dirty and smelled weird and was very suspicious of it. I MUCH preferred the fluorescent, plastic wrapped sterility of the supermarket to the grimy, raw realness of the farmer's market. I am ashamed to admit it, but there it is. Please do not revoke my fucking hipster foodie card, dudes. (I hate myself.)

Which is why it's hilarious to me that after sort of hating on all things small-townish and rural as a young child and adolescent (but then again I hated everything) I now find myself electing to work in amongst the dirt. I keep having weird flashbacks to these very familiar and yet somewhat distant sense memories -- the sound of the wind in the trees, the smell of dirt, the smallness of small towns that still rely on word of mouth and, like, flyers on bulletin boards to disseminate information. 

Vermont is a very weird place, which I'll get into another time. It's hard to know whether this corner of it is particularly hard-scrabble and industrious or if it's just the people I've found myself surrounded by. And so for reasons pertaining to a) wanting to fit in rather than be pegged a coddled, lazy city girl b) genuinely desiring to be useful and helpful and c) having literally no life at all whatsoever (unless you count finding new ways to cook with obscene amounts of butter and binge-watching Gilmore Girls) I found myself volunteering to work at a neighboring farm on my one day off, ie today. 

I am not trying to sound complainy, I am merely trying to emphasize what a huge change of lifestyle this whole working a fuckton thing is for me, being that I used to orbit approximately one square mile in New York, and my work weeks consisted of 7 or so hours a day, five days a week of standing around and bullshitting, with at least an hour a day of that time drinking on the job. Sure it sounds great, but ultimately it left me feeling pretty bored and useless. Hence the LYFE CHANGE. 

I digress. As I mentioned earlier, we are finding ourselves here in the Northeast Kingdom in the midst of an Indian Summer. Which is great for a lot of reasons. It is, for example, how I was able to go for a 2 hour hike in the mountains this morning and feel distinctly AT ONE WITH NATURE and also sort of like I was in a Twilight movie with all the rocks and moss and piney shit (I don't want to talk about it). Bonus I effing SAW A BEAR PRINT IN THE MUD AND ALSO NARROWLY AVOIDED BEING MY GIRL'D BY A NEST OF GROUND HORNETS. 

But for farmers it means haying. I am no expert, but evidently any time you are faced with a stretch of warm dry days as a farmer type, it is imperative that you seize upon the opportunity to cut, bale and store hay while it has a chance to dry. Needless to say, Laini was in a lather about getting haying done, and asked me if I'd help her neighbor Gerard put up his hay, since his wife had injured herself and he needed an extra set of hands since it was their market day.

I was given to understand that my role would be to man the market stand, ie ring people up for their produce. I was STOKED at the prospect because it meant I would be afforded the opportunity to rub elbows with the locals (images of handing bags of green beans over to some hot burly dude and batting my eyelashes danced in my head) and that I would be able to, I dunno, wear makeup and earrings and attempt to look marginally presentable for the first time in about 3 weeks. THIS WAS GONNA BE SO FUN.

LOL.

Turns out I spent two hours standing in a wagon in the blazing sun hoisting bales of hay onto a conveyor belt to be received by a couple of people who were stacking it inside the barn. One needs to wear long pants and a longsleeved shirt so as to avoid getting scratched to all hell, so it took approximately 5 seconds for my carefully applied mascara to start melting down my face in rivulets of sweat. So much for my plans to be social and meet cute. 

The plus? Clambering up on a wagon stacked with hay is sort of fun. And I got to drink switchel not because it's the NEW HOT DRINK but because I was litrully in the field and thirst-slaking was real. Plus I got some eggs as a parting gift. Also I learned that 1) ladybugs bite and 2) turkeys sound like barking dogs. I think I have to stop eating turkey?

And all that working made me feel less bad about my epic fat feast of fried green tomatoes and shrimp and grits, which most people don't know is a traditional Vermont supper.*

So. Much. Butter.

So tomorrow it's back to work for this broad. I hope I do not die. Pray for me.

*It is in no way a traditional Vermont supper. Stop being so gullible.