Well, the end of my second week as a farmer is almost upon me, and I realize I haven’t updated the blog all this week. To make amends, I’ve posted a bunch of photos below. Enjoy.

Since I last posted, quite a lot has happened. I’ve learned how to drive a tractor (a pretty big one, I might add); I’ve gone through the whole cheesemaking process - doing all the steps rather than simply watching. Cutting curd is probably the trickiest part, though, in all honesty, none of this is really rocket science. It’s really just a matter of paying attention to what’s going on around you and being careful. That goes for the cows as well as the cheese. The difference is the cheese won’t kill you if you screw it up. Chances are the cows won’t either, but I suppose the possibility is always there.

On Sunday, after my day off, I felt like absolute crap. I was exhausted most of the day and whacked my head pretty hard on the grain intake valve and spent most of the day achy and ill feeling. I think that this was all the result of doing more physical work in a week than I’ve done in the past year. Day to day, it was fine. But once I got some rest my body just kind of shut down. When I woke up on Monday morning, though, I felt 100% better.

On Monday, we lost a calf. After milking, we moved the cows to a new pasture. The calf, Cordelius, decided that it didn’t want to go and took off in the other direction. Brennen - one of the other interns - and I tried our best to catch him, but he got past us and, somehow, out of the barnyard and back to the “home field,” where the cows had spent the past week or so. We all went looking for him a few times throughout the day, but saw no sign.

The next morning, milking proceeded as normal, except for Cordelia — the missing calf’s mother — who was mooing for her calf the whole time. Halfway through the milking, we looked out into the barnyard and saw the calf out on the other side of the fence. He was hungry, trying to milk off of the dry cows in the yard, but was otherwise fine.

For me, this week has been all about developing a routine. On Friday — tomorrow — Jonathan is going to Union Square farmer’s market and Jackie (another intern) and I will be milking the cows and making the cheese by ourselves. While this isn’t the first time unsupervised for Jackie, it is for me. I’ll report back on how it all goes tomorrow.

This Saturday, I’ll be working at the Lincoln Center farmer’s market in Manhattan. Sunday I’m off, and that’s the end of week number two.

UPDATE: I ended up posting this on Friday, after the day’s cheesemaking. All went well. In addition to Jackie and myself, we had help from Lise, a woman who volunteers here on a weekly basis. Jackie, who’s been here a month longer than me, has done this unattended before…but this was my first time. Besides a leaky valve, we had no issues to speak of. There’s still a lot to learn, but I have the basic procedure pretty much down.