Running, Biking, Hiking, and a Campfire! – 6/2

Woke up early for a gorgeous run this morning. Not much is happening in these parts at 7am (I mean not much is happening on the roads at most times of the day, but it’s even more peaceful early in the morning). And I got to enjoy the scenery of all the farms on the stretch of road I ran up and down waking up with the sun. The barn looks amazing basking in he morning sun.

Breakfast was a family affair this morning. Some farm raised breakfast sausages, and some leftover bread from last night’s dinner turned into this morning’s french toast (with eggs from the guineas!). And the most delicious cherry, mango, and almond milk smoothies. All courtesy of Karie. The maple syrup was all collected locally by farms nearby.

After chores, breakfast, and some weeding – no need for pictures, it’s a pretty mundane task, but damn is it satisfying when all that’s left in the bed is the plants we actually want growing – we went on an epic bike through Florenceville into Stickney to see a waterfall! We bikes 13.5 miles each way to see what was described on the line as a beautiful waterfall and swimming hole. The ride out was fantastic, and though the little area was amazing in and of itself, calling it a waterfall is being quite generous. It seemed to be the site of an abandoned dam or other such hydro plan. One of the ruins was labeled as a “circuit breaker”. It was very cool to see how all the ruins had been displaced and moved with the changing weather. The shapes that everything took, and the meshing of the man made elements and the natural elements was quite beautiful even if the “waterfall” was less impressive than we had hoped. It was a nice little excursion to break up our 3 hours of epic hill biking (like legit, so many hills omg, I don’t think I’ve ever been in 1st gear for that much time while biking in like ever). The ride along the New Brunswick bike trail was so peaceful, and the sections where we followed the St. John river were stunning.

We also totally broke the law! There was a closed bridge that we had no idea how to circumvent on the bikes, so we just decided that, fuck it, those signs are for cars! So we went over it anyways, and took pictures on it because it was too pretty not to, I mean why not pause to enjoy the view while breaking the law, breaking the law! There really weren’t many people around, and I doubt they gave a single fuck. But it was fun, and added the excitement, because we’re us so we had a good old chuckle over it.

We finished the day with some chores, and then a campfire with some of Rob and Karie’s neighbors – Wendy and Rick. Jerry, our fellow WWOOFer here at Manic Organic plays bass, and brought his guitar with him. And Rick plays guitar, so they had a nice private little jam session for the rest of us. It was a great night around an awesome fire (which I started thank you very much) with some cool people. Laughing, chatting, jamming, eating cornbread and chili, and just an all around having an excellent time, a great way to end any day. 2 days later and my sweatshirt still smells like fire. I love it 🙂

The next big farm adventure is cleaning out the animals pens from a winter of use – aka, time to shovel some poo!