Waiting for Joaquin

As always, the weather is awfully hard to predict.  And there seems to be quite an industry in hyperbole and storm-chasing.  For many days the weather people have been watching the progress of a storm that has been growing into an increasingly strong hurricane.  After all these years of Septembers and Octobers, picking before the storm with a name, preparing for the worst, hoping for something less drastic, we have learned how to keep all our options open.

Ellen gets really nervous because she watches the weather reports constantly; I am less nervous as soon as I have a plan. I don't like uncertainty.  Since hurricanes create uncertainty, it seems best to be ahead of the game as much as possible.

Yesterday I decided the best strategy was to fill the coolers and wait to see what happens next.  So today the whole Loudoun crew dressed for rain and we headed out to the fields -- it had already rained over four inches so everything was soft and mushy and trucks were out of the question.  All morning long a light misty drizzle fell on us.  We picked about five golf cart loads of kale (about 40 crates) and then moved on to the broccoli and cauliflower and radishes and celeriac.  By about 10:30 I was getting cold since my socks were soaked inside the boots.  We stopped to get warmed up, change our socks and have some hot chocolate.  Then back out for another couple of hours in the chard and beets and herbs and celeriac. It was a very good morning.  Everyone stayed cheerful the entire time.

We had the best potluck lunch ever (all potluck lunches are just about the best ever, but today's was especially good) and we spent some time on a "check-in" --
Shua had told me that he wished we had more conversations that allowed us to get to know each other better.  So we sort of had a hybrid question of "if you knew me well, you would know that..." and "tell us about a body part that is particularly interesting to you, and why."  We learned about Shua's childhood of hand massages, Ellen's obsession with feet, Hannah's interest in what it would be like to be a tall person with long legs... it was fun.

Some people headed back out into the rain for peppers and eggplant, and three of us stayed in the barn to wash the mountains of food we had collected up.  Ecole did the inventory -- we picked 150 crates of leafy stuff.  We still don't know which markets we will go to, but the reports are getting less dire and we might end up at four out of five of our weekend markets.

Meanwhile, because wisdom comes from experience, Ellen went out to make sure the drain pipe in the pond wasn't clogged so that the water wouldn't run over the dam.  She put on her waders and took someone with her to make sure she didn't get swept away or chewed on by a snapping turtle.

We loaded one Sprinter to the ceiling, front to back, with only crates.  Then we backed the new Sprinter up to the door and filled it about halfway.  Hannah and I drove 45 minutes back to Vienna and parked the vans behind the stand and left them to be unloaded tomorrow. I was too wet and cold to face all that sorting and rearranging. 

So now we wait to see whether the hurricane comes closer or turns back out to sea.  At one time they were predicting 6 - 12" of rain (I ignored that) and now it is down to 2 - 4" (still more than we need).  I feel much better with all that nice clean kale stacked up in the truck.  We have choices, and that's how we like it.