The skies began to darken this afternoon around 3. Salome and I were jumping on the trampoline, or rather, Salome was jumping on the trampoline while she made sure I was sitting on the edge and not jumping (or 'gump-ah', as she calls it). Clouds began swirling and I could see rain beginning to fall in the valley toward St. Peterzell.
"Salome," I began, "we need to go in the house, a storm is coming."
"Chico auch!" she replied. (Chico [the family dog] also.)
The skies darkened ever more and about 10 minutes after we went into the house, the rains came and the winds blew. Hard. I haven't seen it get that windy since I've gotten to Europe. We're finishing up moving the green house (putting the plastic over it) but there were still some random things laying out by the garden. Jeff and I ran out in the pouring rain and pounding wind to pick up the pieces. It was a fun storm. Apparently the church in town got struck by lightning. The power was out for a good 45 minutes. Chico gets scared when there is gewitte. He paces and pants with his tongue hanging out and there is unfortunately nothing we can do but say his name in a soothing, calming voice.
Fortunately for the hay, we finished that yesterday afternoon before today's thunderstorms came. Making hay is probably one of the hardest jobs I'll be doing here. Dirk has 'joked' that all the work I've been doing has been training for hay making. I believe him now. I can see my main job while Dirk is sitting on the hay collector is to follow behind him on foot and dragging a giant rake. Remember, there are hills here. It's not your flat-land cut the grass, let it dray, rake it, bale it hay making. Because we have hills, there is some land which is not accessible by machine and all the work has to be done by hand. Sometimes when a machine can go in the area, it's not possible to get everything on the first try which is when we have to follow behind with the rakes. After the collector is full, we follow Dirk down to the barn and proceed to unload it. With 3.5 loads, we filled a room that's perhaps 20 feet x 25 feet and as deep as 8 feet.
When the cows are in the summer stall, they are let out to pasture everyday (or night, depending on how hot it gets that day). There is a large section (read: hillside) that is set aside for the cows. They don't get freerange of the whole section. We divide it off and when that section is all consumed, we remake the fence to enclose the next section. There is also a path that leads from the stall to the cafeteria. All of these fences are electric. I'll post pictures when it's not raining so you can better understand.
Last week on Wednesday I woke up with a ruckschmerz (back pain) on my right side. It felt like a muscle was tensed up and something wasn't allowing it to relax. I was unable to do much of the outside work so I was left to play with Salome. The next day I was taken to the doctor and he gave me some pain tablets, which didn't really help. Fortunately by the weekend things had evened out pretty good. I just hate it when I wake up and am sick. The main reason why I'm here is to work and when I can't do that I feel like I'm letting the family (my employers) down.
Jeff is visiting. He was the trainee here a year ago. The family absolutely adored him and I didn't know how to feel about him visiting. I had my reservations, especially since they called me his name the first three months I was here. Turns out he's pretty cool, though he is sitting in my place at the table. I don't know how I feel about that.
Looking forward,
Jon
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