No one told us about the Arctic chill

We have been on the farm now for 3 weeks and we have gotten to the point where all we can think about is leaving. That is mostly due to the Arctic front that apparently has made its way to Ireland, and in the last three days the temperature has dropped by at least 15 degrees. We spend our nights wearing sweatpants, hoodies, and woolly socks, and as we watch TV we sit directly on the space heater in an attempt to stay warm.

The farm has been an experience, however, and here are a few highlights from the last week:

Thanksgiving without an oven. Menu included already cooked slices of chicken (we couldnt find turkey), mashed turnip, cranberry sauce, instant stuffing and instant gravy. Not exactly a gourmet meal, but we made the most of it, and we were sure to at least spend a little extra money on a bottle of red wine. We found some old curtains that we used as tablecloths, lit some candles, and toasted eachother with mugs of wine on how lucky we are for having been able to come on this trip.

The pigs. As we are in charge of feeding them twice a day, we have begun to bond with the animals. They hear us coming and bumble their way over to us. We swear they have doubled in size since we arrived at the farm. We now have a strategy when it comes to feeding them: One person walk into the pen as a distraction, while the other slips behind and sprints to the trough to dump the food. Once they hear the food being dumped we are completely ignored, and no longer have to worry about being trampled into the mud. We are getting a soft spot for the little guys, and we are coming up with ways for the gate to be "accidentally" left open on our last day at the farm.

Tom. Tom has been a recent addition to our life. He is Padrig's 85 year old father and he and his wife live in the big house on the farm. The highlight of our day is seeing Tom's daily outing on the farm. He begins by stopping at the barn, assessing our carrot bundling while warning us about the Arctic chill. He then slowly creeps along the muddy path to stop and stare at the pigs for a good 20 minutes, making sure they are okay and getting quite upset if they haven't received their daily treat of old tomatoes and avocados. He seems to have a soft spot for them, as well, and we are considering asking him if he wants in on our pig evacuation scheme. We think Tom is great, but became extremely concerned for the safety of the Irish population when we saw him roll up in his car to the farmers market to buy some fish. His face was 6 inches from the windshield and he usually has to be within 5 feet of us to even recognize (or hear) us, so we can only imagine what he must be like on the road. He is very proud of himself as he informed us that last year he bought the first automatic car in Ballinasloe.

We find ourselves getting rather frusterated with the lack of organization and common sense of our bosses. We leave you now with our favorite quotes from each of them, just to give you an understanding of what we're dealing with:

Padrig: "Hey, do you want to know something? I just found out that these little raisins are actually made from dried grapes! I never knew that till this month!"

Una: "I'm having one of those days where I can't believe I'm an organic farmer."
Laura: "Did you always want to be a farmer?"
Una: "Oh no. When I was eighteen I wanted to be an actress!"

Thank god we only have a week left on the farm.