Sunny’s blog of her time on the farm!
One of our May helpers--Sunny Dangui--has a blog and has written about her time here at Prince Bay Farm!
People|Nick & his stories
This is Nicholas Lorenzo Prince, aka Nick. His hippie friends call him Pagan, and we know him as the owner of Prince Bay Farm. There’s a lot about him in his 75 – no, 50 something years of life. Here, I picked out his most typical recurring actions that makes Nick “Nick.”
He talks a lot.
One of the most popular topics at the dinner table is Nick’s younger wild days. Once he starts, it’s hard for him to stop. One of his volunteers was trying to ask him a question right before he was about to eat, but Nick stopped him.
“No, ask me after dinner. I want to eat my food HOT.”
He loves sharing his stories about his hippie days. After all, those younger wild days are so far away. Re-telling them keeps them fresh and alive. When he’s contemplating on what to say next/fill up the awkward silence, he’d say “so” in a deep voice, or “yay” in a short, flat cartoony voice, or “neener neener.”
neener neener neener neener neener neener neener neener neener neener neener
He farts a lot.
He showed every Chinese volunteer a classic dad trick. He would hold up his little finger and cry,
“Ow ow ow I’ve got a cramp, pull on my finger!”
As soon as the volunteer’s finger touches his, he lets out a thunderous fart. One of his volunteer wrote in her blog about Nick’s magic finger.
“Nick has a magic finger. Every time you pull on it, he farts.” Nick quoted.
I, needless to say, was one of the victims of his “magic finger farts” along with many other farts. The loud but innocuous ones, the loud AND deadly ones, the ones that pop out of nowhere during a movie session, or just some other random ones that happen to track me down in the weirdest hours.
He also convinced one of the girls that I was the one who farted, but for the sake of honesty of this blog…. I solemnly swear that I did not fart (audibly, or that I remember) on his farm!
neener neener neener neener neener neener neener neener neener neener neener
He reads a lot.
His friends call him “Nickipedia” because he reads so much that he knows everything. Apparently, he knows a lot about his farm, but he also know so much about other aspects of life. As a science major, he did tell me that chickens poo, pee and lay eggs through the same hole… He also taught me things about China that I didn’t know. Nick had had 51 Chinese volunteers before me and loves China very much. He often jokes, “If China starts a war with the US, here at Prince Bay Farm everything will be fine, because Nick loves China, and China loves Nick…”
There’s a thing about speaking in third person. It sounds serious, but it really just sounds funny…
When he was picking me up from the airport, he told me about his stacks of books at home. I thought he was exaggerating, but no… books were literally everywhere. In the room I stayed in, the closet was stashed with books instead of clothes; at the end of the staircase is a bookcase filled with books; outside of Nick’s room is another bookcase with lots of books…
When I was a kid, I imagined myself making a Guinness World Records by reading all the books in the world, then Harvard University is going to present me an award. How did I put these two together must be due to some weird happenstance since I was walking in Harvard courtyard at the time. But yeah… it’s not exactly possible, but the least you could do is try and catch up. Like Nick.
neener neener neener neener neener neener neener neener neener neener neener
He taught me so much about life.
“Wanna know the meaning of life?” Nick asked me the first day I arrived.
“Sure. What is it?” I replied.
“Spell guru.”
“G-U-R-U.”
“Gee, you are you. Be yourself. That’s the meaning of life.”
That’s probably the most philosophical thing Nick has ever said to me. It doesn’t really make sense, but it also sorta does.
Age is a weird thing for Nick. He is a kid trapped in an aging body, but sometimes – very rarely – he also acts his age. When he looks at me with his twinkling blue eyes contrasted with his tanned skin, I immediately think of Santa Claus, aka Saint Nicholas. He looks different at every age – at leas in comparison to the pictures he showed me. Every time before graduation, my friends would tell me to “keep being sunny,” but I retorted: “Imagine if I’m 70+ and I’m still acting like a kid, that wouldn’t be age appropriate.” But seeing Nick, I realized – hmm, who cares?! Have fun while it lasts. Carpe diem.
I think Nick is secretly proud that he brought out the craziness in me. Little does he know, I was born a crazy girl 
Farmwork|A Complete List
Digging
We dug holes for Mexican petunias to grow on the ditch near the road. They were in many small pots from the earlier years, and now Nick decided that it’s time to move them. Digging is hard. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to even move a tiny pile of
Digging is hard. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to even move a tiny pile of dirt, because it is usually tightly gripped together by grassroots. It was oddly satisfying to hear the ripping sound of the roots as the tip of my shovel hit on them. Nick would steady the shovel in the dirt then jump onto it with both feet to shove it down the earth. It looked oddly comedic but it wasn’t easy to do. I bumped my knee on the handle a couple of times and I also had trouble balancing… so much for 12 years of ballet!
After doing the digging myself, I developed respect for the gravediggers. It’s not an easy job. They really do earn their keep.
De-Bugging
More information here: 10 weird chicken facts
Hoeing
Hoeing is a funny word because you always have to double-check what it means. Nick once had a foreign volunteer who confused its meanings. One day, Nick told him to get a hoe. After 20 minutes or so, he came back empty-handed, saying, “Nick, there’s no women around here.” Nick said, “Why do you need women?” The volunteer said, “You told me to get a hoe.”
Well, apparently, our farm hoeing consists of breaking out new land and banking the rows of plants. My shoulders are still sore from it…
Moving
I moved Mexican petunias and fallen branches to the burn pile with a wheelbarrow. It was so funny to hear Nick pronounce “wheelbarrow.” “Get your wheelbarrrr,” he says. Nick took up his big scissors one day and cut down some low branches on the trees. Some of the small ones fit into the wheelbarrow perfectly while I had to drag the big ones by hand. I felt like a boss zombie in residence evil when I’m dragging the branches across the farm.
Picking
Picking is probably my favorite part of farm work, because it feels like the time of harvest, of reward and of relaxation. I picked green beans, squashes, Malabar spinach, sweet potato leaves, and amaranth to cook. I also picked out the blueberry sprouts in blueberry bushes to keep the bushes low and bushy, so it’ll be easier to pick when the time comes. The blueberries are technically still “greenish-berries” now since they are not yet ripe.
My favorite plants to pick are strawberries and asparaguses. The strawberries can be harvested twice a day, and we can simply pluck the strawberries off the stem the pop them into our mouths. Mm, mmm, mmmm. Yum. I usually wash them first so I can discover any possible wormholes – holes made by worms – so I don’t intake more protein than I expect to take. The asparaguses also grow really fast and can be eaten right off the plant.
Scrubbing
Someone found an old, rusty pitchfork by the burn pile and I scrubbed it with a metal brush. The metals clanked as they brushed against each other like music. My hands were all rusty after that. Rusty, rusty, rusty…
Sweeping
During one of our rainy day day offs, we swept the house a little bit. Not much to say about that.
Another quite therapeutic but potentially hazardous job was sweeping the chicken yard. Once you set into the sweeping motion, your body can simply go on autopilot and your mind is free to do whatever it wants to. However, the dust that the broom sends flying can also be deadly if sucked into the lungs…
Shoveling
This was a once and over job. I shoveled the compost with Maria one afternoon. The compost pile was falling out of its wall, so we needed to pile it back up. My mind also went on autopilot after a while… until my pitchfork stabbed up a white, slimy, gooey thingy that wouldn’t come off.
It was a worm. I destroyed its body and natural habitat. Now it’s haunting my pitchfork because it has nowhere else to go.
Eww.
Stringing
Nick keeps calling these beans Chinese noodle beans, but I can’t remember ever seeing these thin, long, noodle-like beans in China. Overhead, there are several white strings flying from one side of the field to the other. I am to find the long stems of the bean and twirl them along the strings so that they won’t run in the dirt and rot. Nick says some of these stems could go up to a meter.
I did the same for the tomatoes.
Watering
More information here: Watering the chickens
Weeding
Asides from feeding the chickens with weeds/unnecessary grass, I also pull out weeds from the flowerbeds and the field. For the fields – my least favorite job next to de-bugging – we would go alongside each row and spot tiny greens that are out of place. There is also a fire ant nest somewhere hidden in the rows that calls for stepping on. For the flowerbeds, I would grab a short-handled hoe and go along the side of the beds. I wasn’t thorough enough the first time I did it, and Nick found several more strands of weeds after I thought I had finished.
“Lose face, huh?” Nick said to me, directly translating from the Chinese phrase.
I wasn’t even thinking of it until he brought it up! But well, that’s the cons of having a host who knows so much about China.
Taking pictures!
I thought this was my job for a while. One day, after finishing my usual watering and weeding, I asked Nick for something else to do. He told me to grab his camera and take some pictures.
I probably took a million in 10 minutes. That’s called dedication to the job.
Trimming
Echo and I were trimming two bushes. She piled her branches neatly in a pile while I tossed them everywhere just as Nick showed me. When Nick came over, he looked longly at our trimmed bushes, Echo’s pile, and my lack of it, and said, “Chinese, American.” Lol…
Farmwork|10 weird chicken facts you’ll know only if you’ve been on a farm
Chickens are perhaps the exemplar of the bird category. Most people have tasted their meat at least once in their lifetime. Their flesh has once traced our bodies as it squishes between our teeth and slides down our esophagus, yet seldom do we see this animal as something other than food. After spending some time working with the chickens in Nick’s farm, I’ve gained a deeper understanding of this strangely ferocious yet timid creature.Here I present you – 10 weird facts about chickens that I’ve learned so far.
1. Chickens eat everything.
Yes – everything, from the weed I pull out for them every morning to their own kind.
One of my jobs includes checking for bugs on the potato, squash and zucchini plants. Squishing the bugs grosses me out because of their extra “juiciness.” Imagine popping a pimple the size of your fingernail. As much satisfaction as popping an average-sized pimple may bring, it may be a little too much with that much “juice.” Killing them also challenges my ethics. When it comes to their eggs, I wonder: “Is it considered life, right now?” As much as I don’t like doing it, I know that it’s necessary. I rip off the leaves with the bugs and eggs on them and feed them to the chicken. It’s still bug-murdering, but at least I can save myself from the gross part.
Then I come back to pick up the squashes and zucchinis. The chickens actually get first dibs of the squashes! The squashes that have bumpy skin are usually too old to be eaten, so I would go into the yard and feed them to the chickens. I slice them off quickly on a metal sheet covering a chicken cage pretending that I’m playing fruit ninja. It’s oddly satisfying.
A morning after rain, a girl found the chickens happily pecking away on the dead body of another chicken. Merciless cannibals. In China, when children don’t behave, their parents often scare them by saying, “I’ll throw you out to the wolves.” On the farm, throwing out to the chickens might be more realistically scary. Just stay in the chicken yard for a while. Those steel cut beaks will strip you down to the bones, because chickens eat EVERYTHING. Trust me.
2. Chickens are dumb
The way they sound, the way they move, the way they react and the fact that their eyes are so far apart make them dumb. They are also heartless and cowardly. Their behaviors seem to be largely dominated by their nervous system instead of their brains. Every action seems to be a bodily reflex to the surrounding instead of one that’s being processed through thought. After I dump fresh grass into the yard, they would all crowd over and start pecking away. They started pecking on their dead companion because it is biologically programmed into them. Some birds, e.g. parakeets, can store memories and develop some sort of friendship with you. Chickens simply scurry away like you’re about to kill them when you’re simply bringing them food. I mean, they probably have a reason to be. If a giant walks behind me and I have no defense mechanism, I’d probably be constantly scared as well.
I guess that’s why chickens are “chickens” 
3. Some chickens though… are pretty sly.
Just as there’s an Einstein in the human race, there’s a divergent in every species. Some chickens, are far from dumb. They still seem dumb – but they know what they are doing. Take the first chicken that started pecking the dead body, for example. It is a leader. While chickens are biologically programmed to peck, someone has to start it for other to follow.
As the story goes, there’s a white hen in the farm that’s always on the loose. It’s like a ghost – some volunteers have seen her, but she is too fast for anyone to catch. Every time she sees Nick, she dashes away like a flash of lightning, because according to Nick, she remembers that he kills chickens…
I have never seen this white hen. Either it is still somewhere in hiding, or it had been taken away by some eagles. It is pretty smart. Being chicken keeps you alive.
4. Chickens pee, shit, and lay eggs through the same hole.
A volunteer once asked Nick, “Why do chickens shit on their eggs?”
Nick said, “They don’t. It just all comes through the same hole.”
Chicken poop has a layer of whiteness on it, and the whiteness is its pee. Not only do they come out of the same hole, they come out at the same time.
That volunteer said that she’s never eating eggs again, but then she chugged down a couple more the next day. I, however, solemnly swear that I’m not eating boiled eggs again. Even though the shell might have been cleaned in boiled water, the thought of it having been in contact with chicken poop makes me want to throw up. My lips are NOT touching a chicken butt.
5. Chickens can balance on one leg.
Even though there’s a posture in Chinese wushu called “Golden rooster stands on one leg” (金鸡独立), I could not believe this until I saw it for myself. Chickens have huge butts and teeny tiny short legs, and they wobble like a penguin when they are running away. Standing on one leg seems too much of a challenge for them. But they did it!
6. Chickens can change genders.
One day, I audibly praised the most beautiful rooster in the yard.
“He was born a girl,” Nick said.
“What?! Chickens are transgendered?” I cried.
“No, hermaphrodites.” Nick corrected me.
Wow. Looks like gender fluidity does not only happen with humans. It is a natural phenomenon.
7. Chickens can be trained.
Perhaps yet another evidence of chicken intelligence. Like circus animals, chickens can actually be trained to do special things. I’m sure it takes extra effort, however. Somewhere in North Carolina, in a farm full of chickens, people could drop coins to make chickens do calculations, play the piano, and other non-traditional chicken activities.
8. No… roosters’ crows are not just your alarm clock
The old tale goes: The rooster crows at dawn, and that’s when you should start working. Here, maybe the rooster does crow at dawn, but I never hear it. I do hear it crowing at the most peculiar hours, however – like 7:30 am or 9:00 am. Nick says that roosters also crow when they are defending their territory, like when gorillas pound their chests.
Welp. They didn’t really defend their territory from me. They simply scurried away when I entered their yard…
9. Chickens have a lot of “periods”
Chicken ovulation, mostly commonly known as laying eggs, happen a lot. A hen can lay up to 360 eggs a year! I dub this process “chicken periods,” because hey, we females understand the problem, no?
10. “Easter chickens” lay “Easter eggs”
Different breeds of chickens have different colored egg shells. There is a type of chicken that lays eggs with slightly bluish shells, and are thus dubbed as “Easter eggs.” The color of the yolk also tells a lot about the nutrition component in the eggs. The darker the yolk, the more nutritious it is. Maybe it is like pee – the darker it is, the more substance you’re letting out of your body.
“Do you know what the little white stemmy thing in eggs mean?” Nick asked me.
“That means they could be chickens!” I searched my mind for the word “fertilized,” which sadly didn’t come up.
“No, they are not chickens. They are eggs.”
“They are ‘could-be’ chickens!”
…
As the debate went on, I thought about the bug eggs again. Is ‘could-be’ life also life? Is abortion murder?
*Bonus fact: Guess what? Chicken butt!
Nick trained his volunteers well. We’ve all been programmed like chickens to respond “chicken butt” as soon as he says “guess what.” This old playground verse is going to spread across the world when volunteers return to their home country…
Guess what?
Chicken butt!
Guess why?
Chicken thigh!
Guess how?
Big brown cow!
Farmwork|Watering the chickens
When I told my roommates that I’m going to do a farm stay, they said, “You’re going to do indentured slavery?” Which is true… but hey! I’ve never been a slave before! It’d be quite an experience.
Having grown up in the convenience of a city, I’ve gotten used to taking everything for granted since my life is too comfortable. That was until I found out about Helpx, a site where volunteers can do farm work for farmers in exchange for food and stay. Although Helpx requires a membership fee for volunteers to contact the farmers, my host Nick contacted me first!I didn’t have many plans for the summer before my internship starts and wanted to get my hands dirty at least once in my lifetime, so I decided to go on this new adventure of a lifetime.
We work Mon-Sat 9:00-12:00, 13:00-15:00. In the morning, each of us usually has a daily job that will keep us busy for an hour or two, so Nick can “take a shit in peace.”
With my little experience in gardening as a child (and drowning a potato because its roots couldn’t breathe when I plugged in the pot by accident), I expected to get involved in some irrigation work. After all, plants need water to grow. I water the water spinach, mint, and chickens – yes, chickens – while Nick wanders around with a Fujifilm point & shoot or chills in the loo.
I start with watering the water spinaches that are growing in three blue tubs. They are called 空心菜 in Chinese, which literally translates as “hollow vegetable,” because their stems are hollow. My mom usually sautés it with sesame sauce. Ugh I miss homemade Chinese food.
I fill the tub with water until it covers the dirt. The three tubs are located in different areas in the garden, so I always have to drag the hose to get around the raised beds. The hose isn’t that heavy alright, but when it’s 10-feet long… it’s pretty much like dragging half your own body weight around.
The hose shoots out several different types of sprays, and I use “shower” for water spinach and “full” for the chickens. By “watering the chickens,” I really mean filling the chickens’ bowls with water. There are two bowls in the chicken yard – a big and a small. I fill the small one all the way and the big one four fingers to the top so that the geese don’t dive in and splash everything out. I also found a couple of bricks in the bowls when I was emptying them once a week. Nick said those are for the little things to stand on so they don’t drown. Smart thinking.
Indeed, when I water the chickens, I don’t just water the chickens. The water is shared by all the animals in the yard: the geese, a turkey, and the guinea fowls. The guinea fowls usually fly out of the yard during the day and fly back in behavingly at night. Like guinea pigs, they are incredibly noisy. The single turkey often walks around proudly and opens its tail while audibly saying “gobble.” Its red skin hanging beneath its beak would quiver with every stomp it takes, along with the tiny stick of meat on top of its head that resembles an undeveloped unicorn horn. It seems like an intimidating animal with all its redness and unfriendly face, but the real threat is the geese. They are generally friendly, but sometimes they would chase you around for no reason. I have never been attacked by a goose, but I heard that there was a male goose on the farm who actually chase and bite its feeders. It died before I came here. Moral of the story: attitude gets you a long way.
Afterward, I hang up the hose at the outdoor shower rack. The other girls like to take outdoor showers for some reasons. The hose does not give hot water, but the water it holds actually get heated up by the sun during the day so they’d have hot water to shower after work. Speaking of sustainable living!
Then I grab a bucket and “weed” for the chickens. No, they don’t smoke pot. I pull out weed in the field to feed them. They say that eating weed gets you high, but obviously, this isn’t the type. As concerned as my friends are that I’d become a pothead, as long as the chickens keep their sanity, I should be just fine.
I fill the bucket half full before I go into the chicken yard and pour the weed to the chickens. The chickens gather around the pile right away. They are also such chickens – every time I walk behind them, without even thinking of touching them, they would scurry away making funny chicken noises.
The pulling usually takes me about 45min. Then I fill the bucket 1/3 full with water and water the mints growing on the sides of the house. Nick hollowed out a gourd to use as a water scooper to scoop water out of the bucket. It works really well and is organic – although the handle gets slimy sometimes.
When I’m done with the usual watering & weeding, I would either find Nick chatting with someone or stop by to help someone else with their chores. Stay busy!
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