For the past four days the farm has been ours. All of the six people who live here are currently away, and so is the garden manager who doesn't live here but ends up here pretty often anyway. He said, "take care of the greenhouse and the chores, I'll be back Monday." And then here we were, with a farm to take care of.

We mucked the barn, as has been previously mentioned. We had some help at the beginning, but the brunt of it was just the two of us and our pitchforks (we each broke one and then had to go down to the hardware store, covered in stinky muck, to get another). We watered the seedlings, opened and closed the sides of the greenhouse at appropriate times. We fed all the animals and made sure they had lots of clean water. We watched the calf -- there's no other word for it -- frolic. We came inside at the end of the day tired and hungry and happy, all our muscles whispering good work.

And nothing died, so I think it was a success.