A Day in the life of a Jewish farm

This week, on my day off from my surprisingly stressful job teaching drama at a Jewish summer camp, I visited the Jewish farm where I’m hoping to be living come September. This is what my day looked like:

1. 6:00 a.m. Blindfolded trust walk, followed by meditation on a dock, followed by readings of poems by the two American nature poets most beloved by hippies and Jews(I’ll buy the first commentor to correctly identify both poets a beer) followed by skinny dipping (or what we Jews call “mikveh“) in a pond with virtual strangers.
2. 7:00 a.m. Shacharit (morning prayers)
3. 7:45 a.m. Breakfast (with real French press coffee, which I haven’t gotten to have in over a year)
4. 8:30 a.m. Harvest cucumbers, weed carrots and leaks, tie up cauliflower leaves
5. 12:00 p.m. Three on three basketball. Every time someone asks me to play basketball, I am beset by a wave of social anxiety and insecurity that’s been stored away unresolved since the first and last time I tried to play basketball for fun in the 5th grade. I always decline. This time, after being repeatedly pressed to join the game, I acquiesced. I don’t know if it was the fact that we were all Jewish, or the fact that we were mostly hippies and punks or the fact that we were of various genders, or just the fact that all of us were adults, but much to my suprise (A) I didn’t seem to be all that terrible compared to everyone else and (B) if I was, everyone was so nice and chill that I didn’t even notice it. Is it possible I don’t hate sports as much as I thought?
6. 12:30 p.m. Lunch of delicious fresh local vegetables and pita with hippy-style hummus (light on the oil, heavy on the garlic)
7. 1:30 p.m. Mincha (afternoon prayers)
8. 2:00 p.m. Prepare toppings for a 40-person pizza party
9. 4:30 p.m. Job interviews in the grass, in the shade
10. 5:00 p.m. Causal inquiries into possible rides to the train
11. 6:00 p.m. Milk some goats.
12. 6:45 p.m. More urgent scrounging for a ride to the train
13. 7:00 p.m. Eat pizza baked by the former chef of Brooklyn’s best gourmet kosher pizzeria
14. 7:15 p.m. Last ditch effort to find a ride to the train
15. 7:45 p.m. Give up on searching for a ride to the train and decide to spring for a cab
16. 7:50 p.m. Discover that the local cab company is closed for the night. Search vainly for an alternative or competitor.
17. 8:00 p.m. Frantic final effort to get a ride to the train
18. 8:10 p.m. Someone I’d exchanged awkward OKCupid messages about a year ago offers me a ride to the train. Feel awkward accepting it.
19. 8:15 p.m. Give up on a ride to the train. Make arrangements to stay the night and go home in the morning.
20. 8:30 p.m. Run into the aforementioned chef, who offers me a ride to the train. Enjoy a 25 minute car ride through the New England twilight, enjoying the subtle beauty of the Appalachian landscape.

Aside from all that ride-scrounging, it’s hard to imagine that my life even for a few months could be so idyllic. Can I move tomorrow?

Advertisement