Helsing Junction

When we arrived at Olympia, Davi explained that she was planning to spend the weekend at a farm nearby called Helsing Junction, which was having an organic music festival fundraiser something something, and that we could get free admission if we spent at least 4 hours volunteering.

She had a meeting on Friday that went a little long, and by the time she got home I had pretty much packed everything we needed into the car, and off we went! We got only a little lost and had to call her brother Brian for re-direction. (The street signs were turned, we discovered.) We parked Byzantium in a field and went up to where all the people were.

We went straight to the kitchen and were put to work. I was shanghaied into making stir-fry. Initially, I was told to fry tempeh, which I do not know how to do. (Tempeh, for those of you who don't hang out with vegans, is some sort of fermented soybean product.) I was recommended by various other people in the kitchen that "it's like cooking bacon except it doesn't make its own grease" and "you can't screw it up" and "don't burn it." Then someone responsible came by and said, "How about you just make the stir-fry and it'll cook in there."

The stir-fry involved two coolers full of pre-prepped vegetables and stuff, including: minced garlic, chopped onions, yellow squash rounds, green squash quarters, marinated tempeh, yellow and orange sliced carrots, broccoli, bok choy, chard, shiitake mushrooms, olive oil, soy sauce, and a collection of spices. There was a frying pan and a large wok, a metal spatula, a pink plastic spatula, and two propane ranges. There was usually one other person with me, which is good because I spent about two hours making the same thing over and over, often times forgetting about the mushrooms or the tempeh or other ingredients. I left the plastic spatula leaning against the frying pan, then picked it up and burnt the hell out of my finger by getting pink plastic stuck all over it.

I spent most of the weekend in the kitchen. I liked the people and the endless supply of delicious tiny yellow tomatoes. The kitchen was very close to the stage, and so you could always hear the music that was going on.

If I left the kitchen and went to the music, the best part of the music was the giant stack of straw bales from which one could watch the stage. It was a roughly pyramid-like structure, with nooks and crannies that became less and less defined as the weekend went on and people kept jumping around on it.

At one point, I slept on the straw pile inside a sleeping bag. I got two people to make nuclear paper cranes and met a boy who made an amazing orgami eagle in like fifteen minutes. There was a backrub circle around the campfire on Saturday night. I got to wear my blue and yellow hair all weekend, and I got a Helsing Junction Farm t-shirt for helpfulness. Davi picked the same shirt color, so we matched.

We were some of the last people out of the farm on Sunday. We did a lot of dishes and packed things up and then realized that we hadn't packed up our tent and camp stuff yet, so by the time we got back to the Nuthouse it was already six o'clock on Sunday night. Davi ran off for dance class with seemingly infinite energy; I decided to laze around the house. I hung out with Brian, who I don't really know--I met him once during Davi's 21st birthday party--but who is a thoroughly enjoyable human person.