First Full Day of Work

You don't really know how soft you have become until you work a full day.  I can only hope that everyone else is as sore as I am this morning.

It's not that we did anything particularly strenuous.  We mostly just crouched or knelt down so we could work on the ground.  Swimming and yoga and sitting in chairs does not prepare a body for that.

In the winter and early spring we tend to work in little bursts of activity, with plenty of breaks in between.  We get complacent about our state of fitness.  Loading a small pickup truck of firewood might take less than half an hour.  Unloading it means carrying the firewood by the armload, up the stairs onto the porch. It feels like work, but it is quick.  And then you go back inside and sit down.

Yesterday we had a full team of workers for the first time and I had to behave as if working were a normal thing to do.  First we loaded up some plants to go to Loudoun, then Katherine and I drove out there (easy, sitting down), then we did a little furniture rearranging in the greenhouse (mostly they did it) and then we went out to weed some spinach.  Spinach grows right close to the ground, couldn't get any closer, and the weeds around it form a netted mat so you have to really get under the chickweed and coax it out of the mud.  We did that for maybe an hour and a half and I had had enough of that.

After lunch we headed out to the blueberries to prune.  Blueberries are nice and tall but most of the work happens at the  base of the plant.  With clippers and loppers, we reduced the size of the bushes by a good amount, taking away the parts of the bush that would compete with itself, essentially.  It is quiet, meditative work.  The five of us settled down and started clipping and chopping.  No one said a word of complaint.  By about 3:30 I was tired of kneeling and getting up and down.  I said we were stopping soon because my knees were finished.

Only then did Warren, 24 and an athlete, say that he agreed about the knees.  Turns out he had spent time the day before coaching baseball, and since he coaches the pitcher, he had to be the catcher.  There is nothing harder on knees than crouching like that, and popping up and down. Like me, he has a chunky body (not as chunky as me, to be fair).  The other workers, all women, are all slender and wiry.

Back in the car for another 45 minute ride (just to really let those muscles solidify).

I am 30 years older (or more) than the rest of the people who were working with me, and I can only hope that they are feeling the same tightness in their hamstrings and shoulders and hands this morning. I am pretty sure they are. But the only cure for this soreness is to go back and do it some more.

This may be the year when I do less physical work than I have ever done, just because I will have more managing to do than ever before. I certainly hope this doesn't mean that I will be sore all the time. The really good news is that my knee doesn't hurt any more than usual, so this means that the requirements of working close to the ground do not have an effect on my most worn body part.

By an unforeseen coincidence, both Ellen and Carrie are out of town this week so I am actually watching over both farms at the same time.  This is good practice for me but I won't have to do this in real life -- meaning that most likely I will not be spending full days crouching on the ground with the crew all day long.  More likely I will be dropping in to say hello, or staying to help for a bit, but this may have been a rare day.  We shall see.