Today we drove to Pennsylvania. It took an hour. We turned forty times, hit a turtle and then someone told me we were in a new state. The landscape was fantastic. There were old houses everywhere and tiny farms decorated like it was the 4th of July. Everything was so clean. Must have been the Dutch in them.
The farm we pull up to isn't one of the picturesque places. Rather it is a solar house built in the 1940s owned by a lady who hugs, EVERYONE! The grounds were actually really great - full of grassy knolls, fruit trees and weed patches.
We went on a walk around the owner's property and she fed us every weed she could find. Some were unbelievably good. Some smelled like lemon cuticle cream and others tasted exactly as you would think they would - grass. We also sucked on wild garlic for our immune system (this afternoon I woke up with a mild cold). The other adventurous girl and I bit ours - it tasted just like garlic. Really no surprise there.
-Weeeeedsssss
She then prepared her infamous "green drink". To put this into context she did lecture us about eating green things for about 20 minutes beforehand so the group was pretty much convinced that we were slowly killing ourselves on our current diet and were very much converted. All the weeds she had gathered earlier, nectarine seeds, various other healthy seeds, ChichichichichiCHIA, almonds and pineapple juice were blended into a pretty delicious juice. I think I would have left out the fennel and oregano - but I mean it really depends on what you are looking for in a "green drink". Lesson number 45 of the day was to chew you drinks to aid in saliva production and digestion. This definitely helped in getting the bits of clover that were stuck in our cheeks.
-Grace Le Fever Friday's
We then were served a giant bowl of salad (weeds, lettuce, dark greens, flowers), soup (You see compost, I see soup!), wonderful bread (which is too expensive for us to buy on our budget), nut bars and fruit salad (full of kiwi berries - probably the BEST fruit I have ever had).
-Blurry kiwi fruit
The owners also runs a fantastic health food store full of bulk products, shampoo and goats milk, that we went to after lunch. Most of us just bought chocolate and lip balm. The Germans taught us to say Bach Flowers in German (you can google them - the Bach flowers not the Germans)... it sounded uhhhh angry. I think I have mastered it and they would probably think otherwise. I was serious about googling Bach Flowers they aid in the most common problems that we are faced with, such as but not limited to, dealing with annoying people, trying to make a decision that concerns your family members, trying to let go of things beyond our control, and dreaming about bizarre death scenarios. I bought the "rescue remedy" because it described the next two years of my life perfectly.
With a belly full of leafy greens and fair-trade chocolate I came back to my dorm and had an intense nap - it took me about 30 minutes after I woke up to understand that it was still Thursday.
Tomorrow - bigger and better things - working in a warehouse because I was too slow to sign up to work in the fair trade gift shop.
-note: There are some fantastic pictures of edible weeds and a wonderful woman in her mid-eighties that hugged all 25 of us to come soon.
