The week started by picking rocks from a newly tilled field. The "Connecticut potato" is our most abundant crop. If we do not hand pick all the the rocks from the fields that we plant in we will break lawn mower blades, ruin roto-tiller blades, and it will not be the ideal environment for our crops. So we go through with wheel barrows and a tractor and hand pick all the rocks out of the fields. My job was to empty the wheel barrows, and get any rocks over 25lbs for the girls. Not that they could not handle some of those heavy rocks, I am just a little better suited for the job. It made for a lot of heavy lifting that day. We then store the rocks for later uses.

While picking rocks we uncovered a buried rock wall. It was in the middle of where our intended field was going, so we moved it. 200 feet of rock wall, moved by hand, piece by piece. This was in the middle of a full day of rock picking. In this picture Chris, our new intern, stands in the middle of the uncovered wall.

After our day picking rocks in the fields, Chris and I moved into the wetlands to help Erick with the road project. It was here that we would spend some grueling days moving rock, raking, shoveling, and chainsawing. While it is not time spent growing vegetables, we see it as "cultivating customers." Patty and Erick get a fair amount of complaints about the road to their house, so they built a new one. A serious investment. Erick has more plans for the future of the road, and the future of the farm. Some may include a farm stand and an ice cream parlor. Should be quite interesting the next five years. To survive as a farmer you need to have diversified income. You also always need to put the customer first.

We installed several black plastic culverts to aid in drainage under the road. We worked closely with the Natural Resources Conservation Services to ensure our culverts drained in a way that let wildlife through, and protected the wetlands on the property.

Road construction is not without a few shenanigans. Fact, interns fit in the new culvert. It was great after we set the pipe that we were told, "Ok guys, build a stone wall." So now we're road workers, farm hands, and stone masons. Always up to whatever is thrown our way, we built a stone wall in on time. Looks really good too. Too bad it is in a place where no one will see it.

One of my days on the road project was spent with a chainsaw. Or at least 7 of the 13 hours of that day. I was running (safely) from tree to tree taking off limbs, and cutting them into manageable pieces. A lot of the trees we cut were already dead, and the others were in the path of the new road. It is an 18" chainsaw. Heavy and powerful, it makes short work of even the thickest logs. I felt pretty manly, not going to lie.

A little geek humor. Here's the farmer's version of the game Doom. I know my friend Matt at EntertainmentBuddha.com will appreciate this one.

You can tell Erick is ready to be done with this project. He started farming to farm, not to build roads. The thing is, as a farmer you have to do everything. You have to be a carpenter, vet, road builder, welder, machine repair, accountant, marketing director, manager, team leader, CEO, parent, spouse, role model, activist, and oh yeah, a farmer. With that stress and frustration comes pride in knowing that what you do makes a difference in people's lives.

Erick is not alone operating heavy machinery. Patty is right along there with him working on the road. She does this while managing the CSA, managing the crew, keeping track of all the paperwork , and being a mother to a 3 year old and a 6 year old. I love this picture because it shows one of the opportunities that Patty & Erick have had to spend time together.

What was Kate doing while I was up to my knees in mud, in the rain, moving rocks, and running a chain saw? Kate was happy, warm, and dry planting in the greenhouse. The greenhouse will allow us to have a killer tomato crop for our CSA members.

After the base layer was down, we put a top layer of crushed rock down to smooth things out. After the trucks dumped the gravel, and Patty spread it out, it was Chris and my job to smooth it out and make it even. Chris used to work for the Coast Guard. There was a saying on the boat, "Don't lift with you back, lift with your deck-hands." We changed it to, "Don't lift with your back, lift with your farm-hands."

This is the view of the farm from the new road. Beautiful. It is nice to work for a couple that put so much pride and effort into how their farm looks for other people.

There are fish in our pond. Erick & Patty's daughter Lexi caught this bass with her grandpa. She proudly showed it to Dad who was working on the excavator.

This is the "Winnie the Pooh Tree" on the farm. The new road goes right by it. Since I mentioned Mr Pooh Bear, it is only fitting I end with a few quotes from him. "A bear, however hard he tries, grows tubby without exercise." "I wonder what Piglet is doing," thought Pooh. "I wish I were there to be doing it, too." and "Poetry and Hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you. And all you can do is go where they can find you."

At 37,286 NikeFuel "units" it was my slowest week on the farm yet. That is perhaps because it rained all week. That did not stop us from getting a lot of work done, and even getting out in the fields to plant.

This is my day off. A casual 2,276 NikeFuel. You can see from teh graph it takes me longer throughout the day to reach my daily goal. That day i spent off the farm with Kate's side of the family. I had a nice time resting, eating good food, and enjoying great company.

This is an average work day for me. This drizzly Friday started in the fields. We finished our planting of 9,000 onions, fixed some seedling transplants that went wrong in another field, and then I assisted Erick with building a stone wall behind the house. I would say this will be a typical type of day. Still, 4,000 NikeFuel over my rest day.

We started the week by dropping off a steer, Maximus, to the butcher in Athol, MA. We had never been to Adams Farm before for our beef processing. It was a very clean facility, and both ourselves and our steer were treated very well.

With the rain pouring down outside we spent the early part of the week sanding down the beams in the barn to make them look clean. It was hours upon hours of sanding white oak beams. As with most farm projects it was very rewarding to look back and see the work we had done.

While I was sanding Kate was in another area of the barn painting the trim and fixing nail holes. The space will be our break room tom comply with the Good Agricultural Practices rules. It is a beautiful space, and we're proud of the work that has gone into it.

With all the rain the fire danger dipped to low again and we burned another pile of brush. We have to clear it with the fire department beforehand, and we take a lot of precautions. This fire was in the middle of a muddy field from from any houses or woodlands. It is a big help to have the brush gone, and it makes the place a little cleaner.

More invasive species went into the fire. This is good because they were choking out the other trees around. We also cleared a bunch of multifloral rose buses. Originally brought over from Japan, they were meant to attract wildlife along the borders of grazing land. They are nasty, and now considered invasive. My legs and arms hate them, as witnessed by all the scratches I have from clearing them out.

We went out in the dreary weather to leeks. We planted well over a thousand leeks, and we're getting more in the mail soon. Quotes from leek planting: "You are the weakest leek, goodbye." and "Kickin' butt and taking leeks!"

From leeks to onions we moved across the field. Here Kate is punching holes in the black plastic mulch with the diveling tool. We then follow behind here planing onions into the soil where the holes are. The plastic mulch helps us keeping our weeding duties to a minimum (amongst other things) since we cannot spray herbicides.

We teamed up and planted over 9,000 onoin plants over the last week. That's a lot of onions! Excited to see them take hold and grow into adult onions later in the coming weeks/months. We planted varieties like "Walla Walla", "Copra", "Red Zepplin", and "Ring Master".

It is a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. This picture is actually pretty tame mud-wise. Nothing but smiles after toiling in the mud and rain for days. It is hard to get spirits down when the work is so rewarding. Maybe it's the fact that we finished planting onions and were about to head in for some hot tea. From left to right, Tara, Patty, Abbey, Kate, and John.

Part of our farm renovation is to level the back yard of the house, build a rock wall, and start flower beds for our CSA. Erick tears up the lawn for what will someday be a beautiful bed of flowers.

Part of my job was to sight in the 2,000-4,000 pound boulders Erick was using to build the rock wall. I had to direct him to make sure he placed them right, then run and shim them up with smaller rocks so they would sit sort of level. "We're trying to make naturally shaped things sit straight," he tells me as I'm hopping around like a jackrabbit wedging flat rocks under boulders heavier than some cars. You also have to appreciate that Kate took this picture in a way to make it appear as though I am sitting on one of the marking sticks. Thanks Honey...

What better way to end the post than with a nice giant barrel full of poop tea? We mix cow droppings with water to water our plants. It adds a lot of nutrients that the plants need. Don't worry, we will not still be using it close to harvest time. We do not want to have that flavoring you food. But young seedlings love it, and it is very good for them.

Not quite as big a week as week one, but still a decent week of work. Monday was a rainy day and I spent most of the day deduping seedlings. (Separating duplicates) Tuesday I spent starting and maintaining controlled brush-fires to burn some invasive species that we cleared out of our hedge rows. The rest of the week was a mixture of herding cattle, tagging calves, planting vegetables, and assisted with the road construction we are doing.

My monthly graph clearly shows the huge difference in a normal active life, and a farmer's life. While my numbers vary day to day, my farm days still top my non-farm days.

Tuesday the 24th was my biggest day. I spent the day running around one of our fields building and maintaining brush fires with our farmer Erick. There was an invasive species of trees, and another of bushes that had found it's way into our hedge row. The only way to get rid of it organically is to rip it out completely. Erick priced out what it would cost to put it all through a wood chipper and the final cost was over $60,000. That is money we just don't have to spare on wood chips. So our only choice was to burn the piles. We cleared it with the fire department and local environmental protection office and set the piles ablaze. On top of my regular farm chores, I was sprinting from fire to fire to make sure Erick had what he needed. Erick was on an excavator moving trees and ripping out stumps.

My Nike+ FuelBand numbers are growing. I have accrued over 150,000 NikeFuel to date. I imagine those numbers are going to continue to keep increasing fast.

The first two weeks show the numbers when I was running, bicycling, and redesigning the website (the last not very physically intense). You can clearly see when I started working on the farm. Before starting work on the farm, my average day was between 2,500 to 3,000 NikeFuel. My farm days average 6,000+, and peak over 9,000! According to my farmers Patty & Erick, we haven't even gotten into full swing yet. Should be an intense year.

The Nike FuelBand will show my activity throughout the day everyday. This is my biggest day yet. The day started with farm chores. My morning chores consist of feeding the adult chickens, opening the greenhouse, cleaning out the baby chicks pen, mucking out the stalls for the calves, then feeding and watering the calves. Then I transplanted row upon row of cauliflower starts. You can then see the lull around lunch time. After lunch, we laid down black plastic mulch on the new raised beds. I had to chase behind a tractor, shoveling dirt where the tractor did not cover the edge. I did that almost non-stop until dinner. After dinner, I had evening chores. Evening chores are shutting the greenhouse, closing the chicken coop, and feeding and watering the calves. And again, Patty & Erick say we're not even in full swing yet...

In my three weeks of owning my FuelBand, I have burnt over 90,000 NikeFuel "units". The Nike+ software lets me easily upload and track all of my information. I even get awards when I have a good day, keep up a streak, or blast through my daily goal.

Once I have uploaded my Nike FuelBand data to my Nike+ software, I can easy upload my results to Facebook with the Nike+ Facebook App. I can then see what my friend's numbers are. The numbers were close before I got on the farm. Now, there's no contest. (Sorry Matt and Ben for posting your sad numbers online). Matt and Ben both go on runs to stay in shape when they're not at work. This is a great example of a farmer's numbers compared to two normally active guys, same build as me.

Up with the sun every day for an early breakfast, and morning farm chores.

Each morning, Patty (our farmer) makes pancakes from the crew. Whole wheat, multi-grain, and cottage cheese pancakes, filled with last-year's berries that have been frozen over the winter.

While enjoying pancakes and coffee before starting work, we sit and enjoy watching the birds at the bird feeders outside the windows.

Morning chores consist of watering seedlings, feeding the baby chicks, feeding the grown chickens, mucking out (guess what THAT'S code for) the calves stalls, and then giving them calves fresh water and hay.

Fish emulsion is mixed with water to help little seedlings grow.

Meet Trillium, one of the calves in the farm. She's a little over a year old and a total sweetheart. She shares space with Rachael, my favorite calf. I once saw Rachael chug four gallons of water, no problem. I was impressed... Until I had to change the hay for her bedding. These calves are called "yearlings" as they are all around a year old.

New born calves are tagged to keep track of who's who. This babies' name is Grady. In this picture he's only one day old.

Grady's mom, Ginger, watches and moos as we work with her baby. She's a protective mom and known on the farm for having a touchy disposition. She didn't bother us though. She must have known we were just looking out for Grady's well-being.

Here we are "de-douping" seedlings. If two seeds grow in the same tray, we separate the two shoots out to make two separate plants.

When the seeds have grown large enough, we transplant them in the fields. These white cabbage were started weeks ago.

Here, Tara (left) and Abbey (right) transplant seedlings into the fields.

Throughout the summer, these rows will turn into a bounty of fresh food.

Farmer Erick runs the tractor (his "Mercedes") with the mulching attachment. He hates using the black plastic mulch, but it the only way the farm can survive and grow the amount of food necessary. Erick is very conscious of the environmental impacts of everything on the farm. I have learned a lot from him in week one. Every decision made on the farm has been thought through from every direction by Patty & Erick. There isn't anything that happens by chance (except the weather).

Here's me with tractor envy.

Part of my work this week has been helping Brian, our carpenter, finish the employee break room/office area. The space is being created to comply with the Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) regulations that require such a space for employees.

My job was to lug the 2 tons (4,000lbs) of vinyl flooring up two flights up stairs, then help install it.

At the end of the day, this is why I do what I do. On the left is a real farm fresh egg, and on the right is a store bought egg. See the difference? The farm eggs are a brighter orange, stand up taller, and taste so much better. Our chickens eat bugs, grass, and grain. They are constantly running around the farm, free to roam wherever they want. The proof is in the eggs. For the record, I did not do anything to this photo except crop it. I did not play with the colors at all. It is what it is.

Boats come and go at South Ferry with the Statue of Liberty keeping watch in the background.

Korean War Veterans Memorial know as the Universal Soldier.

American Merchant Mariners Memorial

This touching memorial is dedicated to merchant mariners who have died at sea. It portrays men in a sinking lifeboat. The scene is based on an actual event in which a Nazi U-boat attacked a merchant marine vessel during World War II. The Nazis aboard the U-boat then photographed the victims clinging to their sinking boat.