For some reason, when I first agreed to go with Danielle on a European organic farming adventure, I imagined we would spend most of our time dressed all in white crushing grapes with our feet in a giant wooden barrel. It would always be sunset and the leaves of the grapes would be the color of the green Crayola crayon, and there might be an old guy with some sort of indigenous type instrument (like an accordion or something!) sitting on an overturned wine crate nearby. The air would smell like lemons and chocolate cake and spaghetti sauce.
As you may have guessed, it is not really like that. The farm we are working really long hours (yesterday was around 13 I think) and the work is for the most part uninteresting (yesterday I tied lavender together for about five hours). Add to this the unsunny disposition of our host mom… long story short, I am looking forward to leaving on the 14th.
As Danielle pointed out in her last post, with Woofing, you get what you pay for. The woofing hosts might get a wobbly handicap accessible walkway, and the woofer might get a farm that has 10-14 hour days and hosts that at times of stress or fatigue, speak as if they were officers at boot camp. When we first arrived at the farm, the pace of work was frantic. I feel like when you are working in a place like this, being tired is dangerous. Our fellow woofer smashed her thumb with a hammer while making that walkway and while we were patching her up, she fell dead asleep. I feel like the hosts at this farm ask a lot of their woofers, probably too much, in fact. (The fellow woofer who just left a few days ago spent 3 weeks here and did not have even one day off.) To punish them I attempt every day to eat them out of house and home everyday. This is the only way I can really hurt them, besides secretly watering the weeds in the garden or telling the bunnies they can come to Spain with me. Or complaining about them on the internet. 
During those first few five-alarm knock-down drag-out hair-pulling bone-crushing hair-pulling wow-these-hay-bales-have-lead-in-the-middle days, I was pegged as The Weenie. So now I am the “inside” wwoofer. I am apparently in training to be an Italian housewife: I am being taught how to make pasta, clean the house, do laundry, and groom a steadily intensifying temper.
I continue to give pep talks to the bunnies every day. The seven that are left look at me with their tiny little expectant eyes every day when I push weeds into their little cubbies. I tell them to cheer up and eat, and to look away while I take their dead friends away to bury them in the impossibly hard dirt next to the goats.
I do miss Greece some times. I remember random things throughout the days here like how Katerina used to talk to the dogs in Greek but the cats in German.
In other news, we have gone apeshit. There is no village near by and the only contact we have with anyone outside the farm is an occasional wave or nod from a friendly bike rider passing by. We have advanced so far in the Connect the Actors game that nothing is a challenge anymore. Even doozie combinations like Pauly Shore and Jeremey Irons take less than 2 minutes. If anyone knows of any type of international Connect the Actors championships or something, please let us know! Our new game is just making five-pointed lists, endlessly, back and forth. The best cancelled TV shows. People you admire. Things to do before you die. Things you hate about lavender. When this game is exhausted (probably tomorrow), we will just start punching each in the face other for entertainment.
We also spend a fare amount of time concocting elaborate fantasies in which some nice people in a spacious but stylish Italian car stop at the side of the road and interrupt our work with a “Bonjurno! Are you tired of weeding? Would you like to go to Bolonga with us? Also, we have Diet Coke with lemon wedges here in our heavily air conditioned car!” Every car that passes has the potential to hold THESE PEOPLE, so I watch the highway constantly. I fear my vigilance has affected the quality of my weeding.
My favorite part of the day is the hour in the evening right before dinner I spend watering the mammoth garden. It takes forever and Danielle is usually busy walking the hormonal dog or watering the animals, so its just me and my Ipod in the garden for a long time. When I start with the artichokes and the lettuce, its still hot, but by the time I get to the tomatoes, the sun is behind the house and the valley is suddenly lit with oranges and yellows and purples, and its sometimes so pretty I stop dancing around in the mud to stare. It is one of the few moments of the day when I remember I am actually in magical, intoxicating, disorientingly beautiful Italy. It reminds me of what I imagined this trip to be like and it’s awesome.
