Week Five: Apprenticeships
Entering Apprenticeship Week I, there was an excited and slightly nervous buzz as we slowly divided after lunch on Monday to head to our first apprenticeship block, none of us knowing what to expect from the coming week. Being in the farm apprenticeship was an exciting opportunity for me to dive deeper into something I had always been fascinated by, but never fully explored. It was also nerve wracking, as someone who finds comfort in knowing the schedule and syllabus for each day, and being prepared for it. I am guilty of checking the weather app at least three times: as I set out my clothes in the evening, before I leave my bed in the morning, and before leaving the Wing, peering through lovely gingham window shade. It has been something I have been challenging myself on, pushing past uncertainty of the coming activities to enjoy the present moment.
As Farmer Sam handed us sheets of paper, he asked us to review what we had learned in our Farm Foundations week, and suggested what we could explore, before having us write down what we were interested in. All of us chatted together in mounting excitement, our voices much like the call of the chicks who had been let outside into the yard for the first time that morning. Fellow Gappers in the outdoors apprenticeship and the cooking apprenticeship shared our excitement, bringing back with them the skills to start making a pine needle basket or six pies to share with the house. Meditation with a snack of homemade biscuits beforehand was the peak of relaxation and mindfulness for me.
Throughout this week we had many amazing moments, and a few mishaps. We celebrated our wins: moving long hoses & fencing, making low cat tunnels to help winterize some fall crops, collecting seeds, and my personal favorite: helping catch a sheep in the wrong pasture to return him to his compatriots, including the venerable Sarsaparilla. We even learned a bit of beekeeping, something that fascinated me growing up in a fairly urban environment, especially after I learned there was such a thing as balcony beekeeping. The mishaps may have been few but they were memorable: breaking the tool we needed to clear a bed, and being trusted to create a pasture only to realize it had toxic plants. Throughout it all, I learned to move with the highs and the lows, realizing that not knowing what was to come became less and less pertinent, almost like learning to ride in the back of the farm truck, moving with the bumps instead of getting thrown off balance.
Working on the farm, Farmer Sam told us, was the work of managing several large and small tasks, and balancing what needed to be done with the knowledge of the impossibility of doing it all in one day. We closed off the week with a lesson on self care from Farmer Sam himself, and a reminder that self care was an act of preserving that balance, and shouldn’t wait till everything was done, because waiting for that to happen ensured it wouldn’t happen at all. As his dog Maeve pranced alongside us, we wandered the farm as if seeing it for the first time, appreciating its beauty instead of tasks to be done.
-Abby, Gap 2023
In other news, in the Outdoor Skills Apprenticeship this week, we spent a lot of time learning how to keep warm in the fall - from building debris shelters to practicing hypothermia treatments in a backcountry setting. Lots of silliness ensued!
Sadie enjoying a hypo-wrap nap.
Wren and Solana’s cozy shelter in the woods!