C-love and the special sauce

We had a rainy night and a gloomy day with sprinkles, so field work was put on hold so that we could shuck, peel, and break apart garlic for planting, "seed garlic". All the largest bunches were set aside for this purpose, the theory is that the biggest bulbs with the biggest cloves will, in turn produce large garlic next year. For the sake of the starving children in Africa I hope this is the case. This garlic is to be planted in the first week of October and the time is drawing near. Bridget and I spent a hour or two doing this while Lynn was at her interview at the co-op. She comments, they don't actually have a co-op but simply a natural food store. This may be the case, I still don't understand what a co-op is, still her interview goes well.

    What do you call it when you are abducted by the garlic aliens?            
  A cloves encounter.

    What was garlic's drug of choice in the 80's?               
 Clovescane.

    What is Garlic's favorite cover crop?           
Clover, of course.

    What kind of cigarettes do garlic art students smoke?          
Marijuana.

Silent in the Weeds

A day for politics and the remembrance of age.

Today is Fred's Birthday, and he can cry if he wants to. I knew the day was approaching but let it slip my mind. Whilst we were on hilltop harvesting lettuce he asked me how old I was. I said 27, and I got you beat by ten he said. Okay, Fred is 37, owns his own farm for four years now, and has a baby less than one year old, this gives me some perspective I didn't think I would receive. I think it strengthens my resolve to do what I need to do, create something for me. That is forget everything else that has been going on around me, others lives and fears. Take up arms and fight every day for the chance to have my own life of peace and prosperity.

What have I
   to bequeath as a legacy?
The flowers of spring;
Hill cuckoos of summer;
   maple leaves of autumn.
RYŌKAN


Well the presidential election is a hot topic although it is understood around here that you think Mitt Romney is a poor choice, to put it kindly. If we don't vote for someone but vote against the candidate we don't want, then Romney has given some here reason to vote. What can be said that hasn't already fallen from the lips of pundits, candidates, the public alike? I just think it is entertaining to see Romney floundering around trying to pull his foot from mouth. This topic all in all is boring.

"The working poor are not devoid of responsibility they are drowning in it."
-Jon Stewart

After the Fair Comes Mother Earth

Slow, slow, watering job is all can do after a weekend like mine. This needs to be done as it is. The ground in here is dry as always, plus watering plants is somewhat cathartic. The girls are hoeing when I get to Fabio, preparing the bed for endive.

Out to orchard field with a truck full of frilly mustard. It is a good looking salad leaf. The rows where we are to plant this mustard are becoming overgrown with some volunteers from last years brassica crop. It is growing over the kohlrabi. So instead of planting we weed until lunch. I try and practice my zen weeding technique. It is hard to be zen when you are uprooting entire colonies of successful crop plants. If the body acts in a way to disturb the mind there is dissonance, zen planting is much more successful.



I found lunch to be quite satisfying. It included a salad with peanut dressing, chickpea and potato curry (turmeric), green tomato chutney, and redundant but delicious humus.

When returning to orchard field from lunch, some more weeding is done before we start hoeing the beds. I swung that hoe around again and again chipping away at weeds and clumps of clay until my wrists hurt from the constant bludgeoning. I do wonder why the rototiller was not pulled out. Perhaps it is broke or more trouble than its worth to lug it out here. 

I should mention that orchard field has no orchard in it. At one point it did, but the previous owner decided to take out all the trees. I do not know why this was done, seems very foolish to me.
I count my breaths and crouch down to cup little craters in the soil, homes for the newly liberated detainees, seedlings from seed trays.

My weekend:

I attended the Mother Earth News Fair, once a year the famed magazine comes to south western PA to promote green living, farming practices, and let vendors sell their wears.

I am scrambling to get out of the house by ten o'clock. When I find that impossible I push it back to eleven. I am packing my car with camping supplies, a last minute plan after speaking with B-rad. I called to ask if he was interested in going to the fair, but he already was, and with a group of friends. I don't have a real tent so I throw a couple tarps and a rope in my car and hope there will be a few trees on the campground to sling them over. The trip to Seven Springs is not a bad one, except for the tolls $3.20 both ways. I had only one mission when  arrived at the fair, and that was to hit the seed swap at Southern Exposure's tent. Looking around The Mother Earth News Fair it seemed a lot like a county fair. Goats and chickens in pens, hay bales strewn about, smells of food trucks.

The main attraction one Joel Salatin, the proprietor at Polyface Farms in Virginia's Shenandoah valley. He imparts that we all should participate, that this is the only time in history that we as a human race have decided that we are separate from the natural world, that it does not effect us and that we don't have to worry about our effect on it. He suggests that we leverage our remaining fossil fuels to create plastic laminate for greenhouses on every building. People could grow right in their own back yard and instead of wasting i.e. burning fossil fuels, we would be using them for years to come. Instead of Ecological abandonment, "It is our job to massage our ecological womb with the correct management to create more decomposable biomass than nature would do in a static state."  If it's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly - first, he says. The travesty of our day is not that we are lazy but rather that we are busy doing the wrong things.


 

I attended a few talks, one on Bioshelters by my PDC (permaculture design certificate course) instructor Darrel Frye. A bioshelter is simply a greenhouse managed like an ecosystem, it relies on some specific design elements to maintain a warmer climate.

Four step plan

Today I am working with Fred. He wants to put up a fence in the pastures for an onslaught of animals he wishes to add the farm. It might not come as a surprise, I am not all that excited about this decision, but as far as farms go its one that farmers often make. Animals need daily attention and this is added work at this point. Fred has a pretty good idea of how he is going to run these animals, and he tells me about it this morning as we look out upon the hillside. Fred wants to parcel up the land into six or eight paddocks, so that he can rotate the cow(s) and goats and pigs, of which currently he has the one, Ella. Of course there is Lucy but we are to forget her, with death looming.

Fred also tells me about how he plans to modify the barn to accommodate these new tenants. We speak of this for a long time, it is Fred's prerogative to talk. When we finally get to the fencing, it is hot and my brain and body are shutting down. I feel a step behind. Putting insulators for the wooden posts, a few small metal clamps, running the wire, which Fred does most all the pulling, it's not that difficult of a job. I use a square wrench to pick up the slack on the ratchet spools on the near end. Then the diesel delivery truck comes and Fred leaves me to set up some new spools before lunch. The tractors are hungry too.

I spend the evening planting lettuce in home field with Meg, Mary, and Michela.

Cut it up and add Heat

My special yellow heirloom tomato sauce.

-4 cloves of garlic
-5 striped germans
-8 Waspatoon peach tomatoes
-a handful of sun golds and honey drops
-a few of aunt Mollie's ground cherries
-Thyme, don't ask how much.
-seriously forget all the amounts I listed, use what you have.
-optional herbs (but not really) rosemary, oregano, basil
-white wine, shouldn't be too dry or too sweet I used Big House White
If you like spice add a hot pepper I used a Fish (one of my heritage varieties)
I didn't go for it, but in the case you are on Top Chef add a ripe pear

Brown garlic in olive oil. Add tomatoes and herbs. Boil down close to your preferred thickness, add wine. Continue to boil down.

I only yielded one jar, a small disappointment. I did serve three plates plus with linguini before canning. A delicate flavor that will ripen in the jar with time.

A Heck of a Job

I was still lying in bed when I heard Fred and Kristen shuffling around. Evelyn had been making a little fuss earlier which is not a usual occurrence. Fred has a meeting down at Pitt University, not sure what it was about in the end. He has a trip out to Philly directly after Pitt. We talked about it the day before over corn chowder that he made with farm goods. Corn and milk being the main ingredients. Last night after shuffling everything around in the barn for today's CSA pick up, we came back to Fred finishing the soup. He will be talking on a panel about getting food to the hungry, focused on people who "miss meals" during the week. Essentially the only way to help these people Fred believes is to teach them how to grow their own food. We look at a calorie table in a book he has. I suggest avocados as a joke, it turned out nuts have even more calories and sunflower seeds even more. I support sunflowers in the city.


Lynn was in high tunnel #2 when I got there to water it. I watered the hell out of it. They needed it too.

I am sure there was some harvesting to do and some work in the barn but now I forget what we did. There is a point that this farm work starts to all blur together. A strange occurrence, but I am sure as hell that I recognize a tomato that I have picked in the field, later on down in the barn. Like a face you've seen in a crowd, a stranger that you recognize months later. With the striped Germans anyhow, each one really does have its own character.

Meg was sent to market, and Kristen was in the barn all day. Cathy her mother is having knee surgery, and usually takes a shift at the barn. She will be out for a few months at least, and she will be missed. Bridget and I are tasked with pulling up plastic from the melon patch. One of, if not my least favorite job on the farm. The dust is enough to give a man a coughing fit. It's a long and arduous task. After only one hard fought row we break for lunch. Bridget breaks open a liter bottle of nut brown ale which I had bottled and put in the fridge last night. "irresponsible", but I'm game. Now after secondary fermentation with carbonation it tastes much better, I might even say I like it, although I have never had a brown beer that tasted this light. It is the perfect thing to quench thirst and raise spirits.

As the day winds down Kristen sends word that I should come down and get some produce. I strongly oblige, and gather four grocery bags. There is plenty to go around. I am somewhat less frustrated with the money situation. I wish all Wednesdays I got to clean up in the barn like this.

I am nearly packed and sitting at my computer finishing my last PASA CD rip, when Kristen drops off some money on my dresser, the $10 she promised I assume, I usually say thank you immediately but I was distracted and still sore in more way than one. When I finally go to grab it on my way out I see there is a twenty dollar bill, and another inside of it. I am flabbergasted. All this time I had thought Kristen just didn't think I was worth it or that I was getting enough by just being here. What an ungrateful ass I was. I had to at least thank her. With my bag slung over my shoulder I found Meg in the kitchen told her to have a good night. Meg was hoping to hang out with just-the-girls so I think my departure was perfect timing. She did tell me that Kristen was out putting the animals away.

I found Kristen just leaving the cow barn on the golf cart and called out to her. During a short conversation I found out that Abby had told Kristen about me saying that it was my last day, no doubt this had an impact on her decision to pay me, but still. If she truly thought I was leaving then she could have just kept her money I suppose, but this and a bonus ten I think she has seen me in action, in the barn as she was left to watch it all day herself. I want to give Kristen some credit here because she saw that withholding a small amount of money might have taken a perfectly good farm hand out of the equation. I don't want to say that things wouldn't have gotten done without me, but it would have been just that much more of a burden. I leave content with all intention to return next week.

Just a Taste

Harvest, like always. Serious harvest. Bridget and I alone picked six lugs of saladettes mainly indigo rose/Cherokee purple. Massive trays of Striped Germans. Everyone else joined us in picking the cherry tomatoes, and tomatillos. Some volunteers and Fred picked the corn whilst I picked watermelons. When I looked over because Fred was yelling about something or other to Meg, I saw him munching on an ear. This influenced my decision to peel off during some of the work where I would not be missed, and have one myself - I was hungry after all. It took me a while to find an ear that was big enough that I would be satisfied, the large ones had just been picked. When I did find it, there were worms in it, as there have been in many of them. I ate it anyway, the lower half was almost pristine.


Meg and Abby a volunteer, got to talking. The truth is I don't say much at the farm. At one point Abby asked me when my last day was, I quippingly said "Wednesday.", and walked away. That was it, still in a sore mood about the thought of no pay, which only amounted to gas money. I am serious too, I plan on quitting after tomorrow.

Alone on a Hill

At the end of last week I decided to start coming out to the farm three days a week, I told Meg then Kristen. This morning Kristen wanted to talk to me about the decision. She wanted to tell me that the $10 a day stipend I was being given was for full-time work and because I have the opportunity to make money elsewhere, that I would no longer be getting paid. My first reaction was okay I guess, I just stood at the sink filling my jug, then I walked out saying nothing just nodding my head. I then headed over to the heritage garden where I stood there, with this event rolling through my head. Kristen said something along the lines of tell me how you feel about this, and that she would still pay me the ten for today because she didn't tell me last week, and here I was. Fred standing in the vicinity during the chat, piping in "If you were here for the money you must be pretty hard up."

 

What am I here for? This measly amount of pay bothers me more than anything, it is so little already. My time is worth nothing it seems. So I did little to no work on the heritage garden just walked around avoiding people. I found that the dill I was waiting on to go to seed had been mown down. I did manage to find some seeds but less than I hoped for. I found the Custom at the top of the hill but no one was around it. Strange. From the hill top you can also see across the road to the greenhouse and I could see Meg was in there working. I moseyed on back. All day I thought about what reaction would be best that might even get my pay back. I can't see a scenario where I am happy staying here anymore, the end of the season is about two months off. How could I stay till then? If I leave I am sure they will have little reaction, I doubt I would get a call begging me to return. I'm not respected here.

Way Down Yonder in the Pawpaw Patch

Pawpaws are North America's largest native fruit! The pawpaw, is making a come back due to new found interest and breeding operations. I love it because the deer don't like to eat its toxic leaves. What more could I ask for?

This small under story tree loves rich soil with lots of organic material. In it's first few years of life it is important that it does not get full sun. Over exposure stresses the tender leaves. Pawpaws are often found near river banks where they become a small thicket.

The flower of the pawpaw is reddish brown faces downward and smells of rotten meat. That may sound off-putting to your tender nostrils, but it does attract unlikely pollinators - flies.

Acetagenins found in the pawpaw are a known cancer fighting agent.

It's the host plant for zebra swallowtail butterflies.

There is an annual pawpaw festival in Ohio!

The first written record by De Soto in 1541 tells accounts the Native Americans cultivating it. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson loved the fruit dearly.

One of the pawpaws planted at the edge of the forest behind the house.

Midnight Post

So much happens so fast that I can hardly keep track. Keeping up with this journal has been difficult. I have been either physically or mentally unable at the end of the day. I was using the computer to upload PASA talks from Fred's library, and at that time I should have been writing. I was most likely lying on my bed feeling heavy and comfortably deadened.

We started picking green tomatoes on the hilltop because late blight has arrived. Ripe tomatoes are soft and the greens ones, aside from my liking for their under ripe flesh, can be tossed around with less care they might bruise. I took to playing a few rounds of bocci with them. I could only get away with this because I was all by myself on this pick. One might think that more time would be spent alone on the farm but that is not always the case. I spend most daily projects with Bridget, the only other true live-intern, but at this time she is in the barn checking in CSA members. Usually this would be Meg's job, and a cushy one at that, sit at the barn while members trickle in. Today she has a friend in town from Canada I believe, Nova Scotia perhaps, and is leaving early to meet her downtown. I played Bridget in rock paper scissors to see who would take first shift. We have played RPS a few times now and I have yet to win, each time I throw paper and she throws scissors. My strategy is to continue to throw paper. The game might be slightly altered, in the farming spirit to corn/beans/squash CBS, the three sisters.

When I had picked four lugs of tomatoes I took the golf cart down the hill to take my shift at the barn. Chugged a cherry soda, because I felt that it was my obligation to take advantage of the situation. I would say all in all I checked off no more than 8 CSA members on this evening. I found it comical that I was covered in so much dirt and sitting at this banal post. The best part was that I found a book under the desk worth reading, "Stalking the good life" by Euell Gibbons

(awesome spider picture missing...)

There are some incredible spiders in the high tunnels. One that Bridget believes is a golden orb spider, and another with black and yellow markings, both of them with bodies as big as an inch long. The only other time I had ever seen a spider this large is when I almost ran into a Banana spider while on a nature walk in Florida. The high tunnels are not Pennsylvania, so to speak, they could be a jungle climate, except for the fact that there is a plastic dome over them, making it impossible for rain to enter in. Each layer of plastic separated by air is the equivalent of the climate fifty miles south, or was it one hundred and fifty. Either way these greenhouses are a poorly thought out design, except for their ease of construction. I swear I almost wrote ease of destruction. Here lies a desert of desolate dead soil under a polyurethane prison.

Tractor safety school came to the farm. The Ag safety crew from Penn State dropped by to give a lesson on the do's and don'ts of tractor operation. Dennis the main speaker of the day, was a friendly and well spoken presenter. The fact is tractors tip over killing hundreds of farmers each year, and a great numbers of injuries also occur. New regulations have improved safety, the inclusion of a ROP or roll over protection for instance, but it is up to the operator to check these systems. 

 

The power take off or PTO runs the many implements from a spline at the rear of the tractor which spins from power geared off the engine. The PTO can rotate anywhere from 9 to 24 times a second. The amount of horsepower is exponentially greater than your own, giving you no chance of getting free if caught. Getting yourself caught in the PTO is as dangerous as it gets. The horror story that Dennis spun was of being caught in the implement whirling around for over half an hour wrapped around it and living through the ordeal to be crippled and disfigured. Pretty picture. Tractors have many similarities to the automobile, but some differences that I thought might trip me up when it came to driving. The Ag guys set up a course of road cones, a little weave and reverse, swinging back to the beginning. It is important to push the clutch when stopping. The automatic car may have made a manual transmission all but obsolete, tractors only have one gear as it is.

Sew and Tell

Rolled in around nine, got strait over to the heritage garden. Stretched for a bit, tied up some tomatoes and pulled some thistle. My pant leg was ripped before I even put it on this morning, split up from the bottom of my right leg. The rip made the pants look like bell bottoms and was annoyingly flapping around especially when I walked. Because I had the tomato string and my pocket knife with a sewing awl I decided to sit down and fix this problem. I eventually worked out a good stitch where I pulled the loop of string all the way through then sent my knife attached to the end of the string through the loop and pulled it tight, this is how I imagine a sewing machine does it. So far the stitch is holding tight. 

I grabbed a shovel to aid Bridget in Fabio who was digging a ditch to fill with mulch for a pathway between the new beds that we had just hoed in. She was almost done with digging the ditch by the time I got there from my crocheting experiment. I helped her to finish this job meant for a chain gang. We then attached a trailer that was essentially a big wheel barrow to the back of the golf cart, taking it down to the mulch pile. Finally, I thought, mulching, now here's something that makes sense to me.

Weed beets till lunch. Why can't we have a more virulent beet? A beet that is the weed, "damn all these beets, I just can't pull them all." I guess the world is not ready for a steady stream of red.

Baby Evelyn has started crawling!