It is the last day of August and I have about seven minutes before I have to go out to start the day (it's dark at 6:15 now). Often, August is the month that has drama and tears and stress and people quitting and people feeling burnt out and Ellen and I always said that you should never make any big decisions. While we have had all the same amount of work and tomatoes to cope with, we have not had any of that other trauma and drama. Things are going pretty well, no one is feeling too overworked and underappreciated and the trains are still running on time. I just wanted to note this because our crew is down to its fall nubbins and they picked 150 ponies of tomatoes in the last two days (100 of those in the all-day rain because they wanted to) and people are still singing in the bean patch.
Meanwhile, there is plenty of non-farm stuff to cope with. Carrie has had a particularly trying month, with a suicide in her family and a wife who is always having to travel for work, leaving Carrie in charge of the indomitable Zoey. Stephen and Julia are learning to manage life with a six week old who has nearly doubled in size and worldliness since she appeared. We have had a steady stream of illnesses moving through the crew (unrelated to work, but affecting their availability).
But the work keeps happening and the tomatoes keep coming and the fields look pretty beautiful and we are in the process of merging two farms and farm systems, taking our farmer friend Zach into our fold, which is a huge undertaking and flies in the face of the past wisdom of not making any big decisions on August.
And that is the seven minute update. We are at the peak of my personal Long Day season (12 hours outside, then desk), but this means the hours will get shorter from now on.
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