Wrentham, Mass: White Barn Farm and Other Things

After another lengthy drive we now find ourselves in Wrentham, MA home of the White Barn Farm.  Our plan for this road trip was to balance out the vacationing with some good old fashioned farm work via the WWOOFing network.  The deal is you contact a farm and tell them when you want to come and work and if they say 'yeah ok, sure' then you head down and spend a couple of weeks working in exchange for food and housing.  The specifics of the deal will depend on the farm but that's the basic concept of it.  For us it's a great way to stretch our travel budget while learning about small-scale, sustainable farming.  Why learn about farming you ask?  Well, just in the past two years we have gotten into gardening and the feeling of accomplishment in watching things grow and having fresh veggies has grown into an eagerness to learn more.  We figure a farm is just like a gigantic garden with way more types of vegetables than we've ever heard of so what better place to learn?   As luck would have it, Curt grew up in the same town as one of the owners of White Barn Farm and was good friends with his younger brother so we had no problem getting our first gig!  Chris Kantlehner, along with his wife Christy (who is 8 months pregnant!) own the farm together and lead a small team of workers and volunteers to manage the farm.  Together they grow organic vegetables, flowers, (and watermelons) and have a CSA share program with over 70 members.  They also sell veggies to local restaurants, and operate a farm stand 5 days a week.  It takes a lot of work to keep everything running smoothly so once we got here, we were happy to lend a helping hand.

Our first 2 days on the farm were BUSY, and by busy we mean we had a bit of a crash course on how things ran around here in order to get in the groove! While the weather was continuously transitioning from sun to rain to thunder and back to sun (while still raining!) we jumped right into the routine and helped out with setting up the farm stand, sorting tomatoes, and picking vegetables.  It was the first time either of us had worked in over a month and the first time either of us had felt that 'first day on the job' confusion in over 6 years!  But now that a few weeks have passed (and we finally have a chance to update the blog!) we're doing quite well with our new jobs.  Time flies fast on the farm and the days are jam packed with work and adventure.  Let's see if we can recap a few highlights from our stay so far:

Chris, Curt, and the legendary Mike Bair took a trip out to Narragansett to surf some hurricane swell, the farm had a movie night and played Jaws through a projector onto the side of the barn, we went on an unsuccessful hike around the local woods and ended up bushwhacking, we went to a free music festival in nearby Falls River and saw an art exhibit of screen-printed concert posters (which really excited Curt!), did some yoga in the barn with Chris's mom, and had a Boston excursion with Pat K (Chris's younger brother) and his girlfriend Leslie and then with our good friend Lori.  We also saw the brand new Patriots themed Trader Joe's (a big deal for the locals!) and experienced our first Bass Pro Shop (a big deal for Curt and Kim!)  We apologize to all our loyal fans out there in Internetland for not being more up to date with this blog but free time is hard to come by on the farm.  But now that we're caught up we've got some projects in the works.  Kim is going to do a post on an onion endeavor she is currently working on and we're going to provide some more in-depth details on our traveling home aka the Zinger...  for now check out some pictures from the farm and Boston to get some more details on our adventures this month!