General life on the farm

The life on the farm is pretty fantastic. There’s been countless times when I’ve thought “I can’t believe we’re actually living this way”. Our time off is mostly spent at the beach swimming, playing football or playing frisbee. At first we all sucked at frisbee but luckily for us Will is willing to teach us and Tom is a national champion at Ultimate Frisbee so we’ve got pretty good tutors. And Will has offered to teach us how to surf so we’re hopefully gonna learn how to do that too. The beach is a beautiful place and most of the time it is generally quiet so we have the place to ourselves. Lately we’ve been going to a mostly empty pub where we can play pool and ping pong, and the games are only a dollar each so everyone’s a winner.

Santa Barbara is a spectacular town. Although, it does take about 40 minutes on the bus and then another 20 mins to even get to the bus stop. SB and most of the town has a Spanish/European vibe to it with terracotta coloured roofs and white buildings. One of the many markets that Shepherd Farms attends is in this beautiful town, and we take full advantage of our association with the farm. Because we work for Tom we get vendor discount at the market and it ranges from 50% off to a dollar or 2 off, and it’s awesome. The guy at the cheese stand gives us half off and occasionally gives us whole bags of cheese for free.

Fiesta in Santa Barbara

SB looks so much like Spain because it’s history is closely tied to the Spanish influence in Mexico and south-west America. Once a year on the first full moon of August the town throws a week long party called Fiesta. Essentially everyone gets drunk and throws confetti filled eggs at each other which coats the street in multi-coloured paper for weeks to follow. We decided to join in with the traditions and get very, very drunk.

The night began with us all getting dolled up and ready to get drunk. Unfortunately, we fucked up and managed to miss the bus by 5 minutes so we had to sit waiting another hour for the bus. Eventually the bus arrived and we travelled into Santa Barbara and promptly started drinking in a place called London Road Pub which didn’t seem much like an English pub to us but they did serve pretty expensive drinks. We then headed to a place called Santa Barbara Brew Company where they serve their own brand of beer so we got  4 pitchers and began the process of getting nice and drunk. Cathy met up with us and took us to a club called Soho where we had to pay $14 to get in, but on the bright side there was 2 local reggae bands on which were pretty good (not that I can remember much of them).

Will got a bit lost and ended up somehow getting a sandwich. Because Carp is so far away and there was no busses on we chose the option of a taxi. This turned out to be the wrong option. The taxi cost us somewhere within the region of 50 bucks and that wasn’t even all the way to the farm. Sam called the driver a “thief” and we got out of there. Sam and George started to run home and then the police pulled them aside and started bugging them. Me and Will walked and were still given a talking to by the police but we somehow managed the 2 or so mile walk back from Carp, and I fell asleep in the spare bed with a towel for a blanket and my own underpants as a pillow. So all in all it was an incredibly dignified, and was cheap to boot!