September 4th 2024 was a day where I truly made my commitment to Flint Hill Farm and my
internship, for working on a farm is more than an internship, it’s a way of life. I arrived to the
farm at 8am. I met some more farm help. With the help of Aaron I learned of the horses, their
names, breeds and the need to stay on top of cleaning up horse manure along with the tactic
necessary to keep the stalls clean. First step: get a rake or pitchfork. Second step: get the
wheelbarrow. Third step: scoop the horse manure into the wheelbarrow. Fourth step: take the
wheelbarrow with horse manure and put the horse manure into the manure spreader. It was then I
learned that the manure spreader cuts the stuff up, disposes the stuff into the fields and ensures
that the ground remains fertilized.
For the next two or more hours we went around the entire farm scooping the manure.
Another measure to ensure that manure gets absorbed involved the laying of hay and sawdust so
I assisted the farm help with placing hay and sawdust in the stalls. I even assisted laying rock
onto the potholes and bumps on the farm driveway and the farm help (Dennis) ran the spreader
onto the driveway to crush it up to level the stuff with the driveway. The chickens were also fed.
September 6th 2024 was a day when I raked hay, got the manure up and assisted with cleaning
the equipment that was necessary to perform the processing of the meat chickens which occurred the next day. I also assisted with the placing of the dairy milk into the coolers so the milk could be sold.
I learned of the storage area for the milk, where the dairy is located. Again, chickens were fed. I
noticed the ducks grew fond of me because I had to constantly run the water hose to water and
scrub the material to ensure that the equipment was clean and sanitary. I also made an ice run so
that the ice could be put in the coolers to keep the coolers cold and fresh.
September 7th 2024 was an exciting day. I arrived at the crack of dawn and along with all
present, I dug in preparing for the processing of the meat chickens. Knives were sharpened, materials
were cleaned and sanitized. We ran into one issue: the chicken plucker malfunctioned, so we all
manually plucked and cleaned the chickens and you can figure out everything else. I nearly shed
a tear, but that’s farm life.
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