After a half-week of an overload of informational activities I was excited to have my first full day of truly hands-on tasks. I finally got to experience planting and got to ride with Denny in the planter while he planted soybeans in one of the neighbor’s fields. It was mind-boggling to see how easy Denny made steering the huge planter and how he managed to turn such a huge piece of machinery around in order to farm in perfectly-spaced rows. At one point the marker broke, and I thought we were going to have to stop but of course Denny just got out, took some tools out of his overalls, and fixed it up in less than 15 minutes. Overall the planting experience and the gigantic machinery involved was really overwhelming. My hands-on experience then continued back at the farm where I made some guacamole. I got to use the Vitamix and that was a new thing for me, it turned out so well that I think I might want to get a Vitamix one day in the future.

The highlight, and the dirtiest, of my hands-on experience was gardening back at Dalona’s house. I plan to one day have a small garden whenever I settle into my own home and grow fruits and vegetables and herbs. But I have absolutely zero experience doing any sort of yard work, let alone growing things. We planted some green beans, lettuce, zucchini, and tomatoes, which required some tilling and hoeing. I decided early on that this was a milestone event for me, and I abandoned my gardening gloves early on and dug my hands into the soil and compost as a symbolic gesture of my intentions. For the tomatoes we put down some of the compost that Dalona makes from the food scraps into the already fertile Iowa soil. Then we got to collect the eggs from the two chicken coops they have, feed cows, and play with a newborn kitten. I loved Dalona’s farm and really respected how most of what her family eats is from her garden and the few animals they keep.

I really respect subsistence farming, and in my ideal world I would one day have the time and resources to be able to do something similar. It was great to have Dalona explain to me all the hard work that goes into it and how knowing when to plant things can be a tough calculation. This made me realize how much work even such a small enterprise could be. She mentioned how there are a lot of sacrifices involved such as never being able to go on vacation and having to always be around at sunset to tend to the hens. But even if I can never have quite the set-up that her family has I hope to one day at least have a small garden for me to get my produce from and a few hens for eggs. I hope that I get to go back to Dalona’s place sometime in the next two weeks, so I can get some more experience gardening and learn more about how it is done.