Milk Makers at Sprout Creek Farm

What an amazing way to wrap up the project. Friends and I drove up to Poughkeepsie, New York, on Thursday night, where I participated in the Rusty Bucket Series at Sprout Creek Farm by giving a presentation to the farm workers and neighboring community members about my consumer project and my design practice. As an educational farm, my message fit in with their mission of teaching school kids and adults alike about the value of understanding the efforts and dedication involved in producing their most basic necessities. Jumping at the opportunity to spend time on a working dairy farm, and celebrate my 31st birthday in a unique way, the four of us stayed through the weekend in a cottage on the farm, participated in chores and explored the area.

First off, I have a new found appreciation for goats. I'm not even kidding, they're remarkable creatures! We learned to milk them with the farms' new pneumatic equipment, fed the yearlings (young goats who have not yet had babies and therefore not ready for milking), and playing with the kids who were aged 2 days to 2 weeks old. Only Joe was brave enough to climb under one of the giant manure-machines of a cow, but we both shoveled some of their nastier by-products. And last but not least, we fed the chickens and ducks and collected their eggs. All this under the care of some wonderful farm workers, who we got to know fairly well over the four days. From Jesse, the lactose-intolerant gluten-allergic bread baker; to Rebecca the urban-transplant educator who had invited me up, who regaled us with tales of slaughtering turkeys and taking up the farm's gardening on top of her other chores; Margo, one of the three Sisters (I don't know why they never called them nuns....) who started the farm in 1982 on the grounds of their school in Greenwich, CT, when they came to the conclusion that they were part of a system that was raising a generation of B.S. artists, and then moved it all to its current location in 1990; Meredeth who runs the market, who was a student of Margo in the 80s and had been living in Virginia working in advertising with Margo offered her the job marketing the farm; and Bonnie, the young Bard College graduate who lives in a suped-up trailer just off the farm who patiently taught us goat-milking and shared her quest to adopt and raise one of the goats on her own.

On the merits of fun, personal growth and education, spreading what I've learned thus far to a willing audience, and capping the project with experiences that surpassed what I could have expected, I could not have had a better weekend. More to come on where I take it from here....