I am late getting to the farm. My weekend was not as productive as I wanted it to be due to an inflamed knee. The culprit, a bad case of poison ivy. I spent a few minutes bandaging it up to keep the weeping cellular fluid from soaking my pant leg, I hadn't packed for the farm because of how swollen and uncomfortable it was. I was supposed to be here at 8, I pull in around 9.
As I walk in Meg walks out, apparently I wasn't the only one who was late. Working in Fabio, weeding, Meg finds a tomato horn worm. They are quite large, she squishes it. Not before Kate or Molly suggest that someone eat it, green tomato leaf puree slimes out. No thanks.
We head out to the land of tomatillos. Weeding. These plants have really taken over the area which has kept the number of weeds down - thankfully. The rows are filled on both sides with little paper lanterns. I find out that salsa verde is made with the tomatillos. Why yes, of course, these guys are pretty popular.
Luckily in the morning the first couple rows are shaded by a belt of trees, I appreciate the respite from the sun, but it may have made the plants "leggy", in other words long and lanky as they reach out for more sun. The shade has done them the same favor it has done for me. It becomes apparent as we are working that Bridget is very late. I wonder about it for a moment, but no one else seems to be concerned so I let it pass. Bridget shows up at lunch, my tardiness is forgotten; if it was even noticed. We eat chicken of the woods, a mushroom that grows primarily on oak, it really does taste like chicken.
We then hoe weeds in the beet field, or we beat with hoes in the weed field, one can never tell. Another pathetic row of crops, and we are trying to save the few insignificant plants that made it. I don't know when these were planted, so it is hard for me to surmise how they ended up this way. I wish I could think of a better way to plant them then in a barren dirt patch tilled and killed by a plow then hoed over once more by hand. I remind myself to look into Masanobu Fukuoka's no till farming. Low growing cover crops seems to be my untested theory, a green mulch of sorts.
Nate and Abby, the latter I have never met, are leaving the farm. They have been packing up their things into a POD outside the farm house. I got the nerve to ask Meg why they were leaving and she tells me that they just weren't getting along. This is hard for me to believe as I have been treated very well here, but I do sense an undercurrent of unrest. Meg is leaving this fall as well, and makes some remarks while "we got the beet we got the beet, yeah wegotthebeet", goes through my head over and over again, that she is not all that happy to have lived with her employer. I don't want to miss quote her, but it seems that something has been rubbing her the wrong way. She walks down the freshly tilled row with a seeding machine which drops new beet seeds in a trough with a metal wedge and combs the dirt back over them with a small cord of chain link.
Fred has requested that I accompany him to pick up a new hutch for the dinning room as the last one was Nate's, now packed away. As it turns out Kristen and baby Evelyn are coming too. Now for a forty five minute drive in the Ford F150. Fred turns on a CD of a P.A.S.A. conference talk on poly tunnels, it is mildly interesting. "Que Pasa?" Fred doesn't get it, but I hear Kristen huff in the back seat. P.A.S.A. stands for Pennsylvania Assosciation for Sustainable Agriculture. I try and say how glass is superior, Fred says glass breaks. So does plastic. "Plastic doesn't cut you, and get in your crops." I see where this is going, and I surrender.
Upon return I feel that my time in the truck was a good break and decide to make my poison ivy tincture. One part jewel weed, one part plantains, two parts cheap vodka in a glass mason jar, a farm house staple. Meg is covered in rashes like myself and we will probably get more, but next time I hope to neutralize the oils before it gets it's destructive little chemicals inside of me.
We then hoe weeds in the beet field, or we beat with hoes in the weed field, one can never tell. Another pathetic row of crops, and we are trying to save the few insignificant plants that made it. I don't know when these were planted, so it is hard for me to surmise how they ended up this way. I wish I could think of a better way to plant them then in a barren dirt patch tilled and killed by a plow then hoed over once more by hand. I remind myself to look into Masanobu Fukuoka's no till farming. Low growing cover crops seems to be my untested theory, a green mulch of sorts.
Nate and Abby, the latter I have never met, are leaving the farm. They have been packing up their things into a POD outside the farm house. I got the nerve to ask Meg why they were leaving and she tells me that they just weren't getting along. This is hard for me to believe as I have been treated very well here, but I do sense an undercurrent of unrest. Meg is leaving this fall as well, and makes some remarks while "we got the beet we got the beet, yeah wegotthebeet", goes through my head over and over again, that she is not all that happy to have lived with her employer. I don't want to miss quote her, but it seems that something has been rubbing her the wrong way. She walks down the freshly tilled row with a seeding machine which drops new beet seeds in a trough with a metal wedge and combs the dirt back over them with a small cord of chain link.
Fred has requested that I accompany him to pick up a new hutch for the dinning room as the last one was Nate's, now packed away. As it turns out Kristen and baby Evelyn are coming too. Now for a forty five minute drive in the Ford F150. Fred turns on a CD of a P.A.S.A. conference talk on poly tunnels, it is mildly interesting. "Que Pasa?" Fred doesn't get it, but I hear Kristen huff in the back seat. P.A.S.A. stands for Pennsylvania Assosciation for Sustainable Agriculture. I try and say how glass is superior, Fred says glass breaks. So does plastic. "Plastic doesn't cut you, and get in your crops." I see where this is going, and I surrender.
Upon return I feel that my time in the truck was a good break and decide to make my poison ivy tincture. One part jewel weed, one part plantains, two parts cheap vodka in a glass mason jar, a farm house staple. Meg is covered in rashes like myself and we will probably get more, but next time I hope to neutralize the oils before it gets it's destructive little chemicals inside of me.
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