It really never stops completely anymore, the farm, but today was an unexpected whirlwind of First Day activity. We thought it would be a rainy Monday and we would just doodle around, not doing much. Zoey (18 months) couldn't go to daycare because she was a little bit sick, so Carrie assumed she wouldn't be able to work today, she would just watch over the new workers.
Ha. It didn't rain and we were propelled into spring. All day long Carrie and I handed Zoey back and forth, from one golf cart to the next, so we could do what we needed to do.
While Zoey and I watched, Carrie helped set up pallets outside so the onion plants could come out of the greenhouse for the first time and soak up the sun.
I took Zoey into Mom's house to look for pea seeds. We found Michael L and Zoey ran around and around, pausing to look at the birds on the bird feeder.
Tag team -- I handed Zoey off to her mother and got on a tractor so I could make beds in the hoop house for the first planting of radishes and turnips and beds on the hillside for the last planting of peas.
My turn again: Zoey and I went up to my house for a minute, partly because her shoes and socks were soaked from stomping through puddles. I thought we should warm up. We changed her pants and she did her usual exercise of climbing the stairs and coming back down. Then we had oranges and bread and butter. I thought I might try to dry out her socks but couldn't figure out the right method. Put them in the toaster oven, but didn't think about the fact that baking them was probably not the right temperature. Smoke and burnt socks. Zoey didn't understand why I was laughing so hard but it was impossible to explain.
Returned her to her mother, barefoot. Returned the cinders, wrapped in a paper towel, to show why she was barefoot. At this point Katherine of past blessingway fame (a long ago story about a very different sort of baby shower) arrived with her big one year old boy. That one is addicted to puddles and sat right down in the water, splashing happily.
I realized at this point that the food in the CSA room was running very low because all the customers were taking lots of make-up food. They missed a week or two here and there and this is the last CSA day of winter, so they took piles and piles of spinach and kale and lettuce. Yesterday we had two rooms full, with 16 different items. Any other week, we would have had 8 crates leftover at the end of today. By noon today we were down to the dregs. So I went out to pick more spinach, more escarole, more lettuce, more scallions, coming back with one crate at a time so there would always be something arriving in the room. The two mothers and the two babies had an impromptu picnic behind the stand, pausing to wash the greens as I zipped in with each delivery.
Raced home to change my clothes and go to piano. There is a limit to how much mud I can wear into other people's houses.
Zoey had a long nap while I was gone, and Carrie got a break. When I got back, I refilled the CSA room again and hooked up the tractor to the compost spreader so Carrie could get back to work when the nap was over.
One more hand-off: Zoey on my golf cart while Carrie drove away on the loader to spread compost. We had to pick more spinach and lettuce for Jon's common meal but then we could go and watch Mom on the tractor. Zoey is going to grow up completely believing that mothers drive tractors, just like I did, and just like my children did.
If it had rained, they could have had a quiet day at home and I could have worked on my knitting and thought about the recommendation I am supposed to be writing for Stephen. But it didn't rain, it was lovely, and we got peas and radishes and turnips and lettuce planted and we are well on the way to getting some ground ready for onions in the next few days.
We could only manage this because the 18 month old is cheerful and adaptable, even with a runny nose. But, thank goodness, tomorrow she is going back to day care. Her day care mom is Maria, the same Maria who took care of all our children -- one generation later, we are still glad to have Maria to free up our hands for farming.
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