On Wednesday night, Keegan and I hung out with GPaul and Darla until very late. I'll spare you the details, but I will tell you this: it involved whiskey, and Keegan drank a lot. Somewhere around 2 AM, I tucked him into bed.

My alarm went off at 6:30 to get me up for my 7:00 garden shift. Luckily, Keegan got to sleep for another three hours. Unluckily, when he woke up he had a tofu shift to get to. The tofu hut is loud, full of steam, and stressful. Keegan was hung over. Not a good combination. The honcho let him leave early.

Back to my garden shift. Garden shifts are four hours long, outside in the sun. It was tough going on four hours of sleep. Ethan saved the worst task for last: covering the newly planted potato field with hay. Itchy, itchy, with no green around to absorb the heat. One person on the shift was starting to seem a little woozy; Ethan said she could stop working if she didn't feel up to it. After a pause, he continued with, "and if you can't make a decision about it, you should stop." She stopped.

Evidently, Louisa, VA is under an extreme heat advisory today and tomorrow. According to the internet weather sites, it currently feels like 111 degrees Fahrenheit. I saw a cat pant yesterday. Someone posted on the today board that everyone should be careful to stay hydrated, especially garden and tofu workers. And, of course, there are almost no air conditioned spaces on the farm.

Today, I had another garden shift. This one was more laid back. I harvested tomatoes, corn, and carrots. We sorted carrots while sitting in the shade. I mean, it was still hot, but at least we were doing easy, pleasant tasks. I had a tofu shift this afternoon. Kettle clean. Scrubbing stuff with hot, diluted lye. Sweating like a pig.

Don't worry, Mom. I drank lots of water before and after.

Today is also the first day of a new visitor period. Our first visitor group! How exciting. I hope they're nice.

I am interested in moving to a new SLG. I have a few in mind. I have told them that I am interested, and now things are slowly shaking out. With the population here maxed out, there isn't much wiggle room as far as housing goes, so it'll probably take a while for me to get where I want to be. Top picks, in pretty much order of preference: Beechside, Sunrise, Morningstar.

I really only have one criterion at the moment: my SLG needs to be child friendly. There's one child friendly SLG that isn't on my list, and that's Tupelo. Tupelo is too damn far from everything else on the farm. That's part of its charm for the people who live there, but... it's so far. As far as picking the best (for me) child friendly SLG goes, I'm just going on gut feelings here. I haven't lived here long enough to get a solid feel for what the social scene is like in each one. I've felt very comfortable in Beechside, fairly comfortable in Sunrise, and a little awkward in Morningstar.

Rick got back from vacation today, and we talked about Unicorn School. I signed up to be the Degania meta. We both have grand plans for Unicorn School; we need to talk more to figure out how well our plans line up. I'm pumped.

Basically, we're settling in. We're figuring out what we want to do and where we want to live. Things are going well. (And it's super hot out.)