Last week at Starcross

For our last week at Starcross, we said goodbye to Blake as hen headed to the Bay Area for a couple days before grey hounding back to Idaho. He is missed dearly; it's been so great having him along. Three people is a good size I think for touring. Alas it is down to two now.

The last week at Starcross mainly consisted of painting the 102 yr old farm house. It hadn't been painted in decades so there was a lot of prep work like we scraped loose paint off of every wall, taped up all the windows upstairs and downstairs, and covered doors in plastic wrap. We had to be careful since most of the windows are original and at any moment we could've put our hands through them or popped them out of the window frame. Lots of the wood was rotted so we had to be careful while scraping so we didn't gouge out the wall, there's no insulation the walls inside and out are the same planks of wood.  Not only did the age of the house make things slow going, but the scaffolding we had was extremely slow to setup and move which we only really did once before saying 'screw this' we'll get it with ladders. It was such a hassle, the first day of painting it gave us so many problems and a sense of danger so after many attempts to make it safe and understand how it worked we discarded it. 

Evan and I were using rollers while Lance used the sprayer; it took lance 15 seconds to do what Evan and I were doing with rollers which took us several minutes. So Evan took control of the sprayer and since the weather was so good the paint would dry very quickly where I would paint detail oriented things on the front porch. It went smoother and faster when we started to paint together. Starcross colors are white and blue trim so the all the windows and door ways kind of pop which is nice. It looks really good now! Pretty sure the paint is holding most of the house together.

Sadly there wasn't any other farming to do since their garden had been harvested before we got there and what little remained we picked the precious week. They like to leave the remaining fruits and veggies as a give back to any animals around and for the ground. 

We had an odd interaction with Brother Toby one day; we were invited out to the olive groves to talk with him. It was more of a time for him to tell us about their olive trees, with really no time to answer any questions about Starcross itself. It was nice to learn a little about the olives but I found it rather strange the whole time we were at the farm not one time did anyone talk about religion, the monastic part of Starcross, or much of how it was started. I know they are quiet and removed people but I feel like there had to be some pretty big shifts in their lives to choose this way of living, especially Brother Toby who supposedly was the District Attorney for San Francisco. Wish they were more open about it all.

All in all it was a good experience at the farm. I know I learned a good amount and it continues to get me excited about attempting to have my own garden one day.