When he was at Oberlin, my brother Charles was elected Loose Ends Coordinator at his food co-op. This was the politically acceptable title for President at the time. The title does not really convey all the things that a President does, but it brings it down to a level that makes everyone feel cozy about a lack of hierarchy.
So, speaking as the LEC here, I am going to circle back and wrap up some of the stories that were left unfinished in recent postcards. Six weeks after my self-pitying description of projects that were haunting me, I can report that all have been resolved. The turmeric arrived, without an apology but in good condition. The taxes are done. The herbs took about 10 phone calls and that many more emails, but we got all that we needed from greenhouses as far away as North Carolina. And, just when I was giving up hope, I finally got the call from Kenny Baker the trucker.
Usually the lime truck needs to come when the ground is still frozen so it won't get stuck. The truck probably weighs 12 tons empty and then there is the lime. You can't spread when it's windy. You can't spread when it's wet. By the time I had finally connected with the right Baker truck driver, the ground was already thawed, so we had to wait for all the conditions to line up. This has been one wild and windy spring without three warm days in a row.
We couldn't wait forever so we started planting some fields without spreading lime. I called Kenny Baker now and then, just to remind him to keep me in mind. Finally, finally on Friday afternoon last week he called and said he would be here the following morning. The winds would be calm.
Luckily I already had a plan to be out in Loudoun so that was good. By the time he arrived at 10:15, four of us had already mulched most of the potato patch and I was ready to be rescued from that job. I climbed into the huge, dusty truck and pushed all the inevitable detritus off the passenger seat. Kenny Baker looked like he could be anywhere between 80 and 100 years old, wiry and wrinkled. I think he was surprised to see what I looked like too. I introduced myself and we headed off to spread some lime.
It would have been better if he had known before we started just how many fields we were spreading and how big they were. He couldn't see into the back of the truck to know much lime was left, and we were driving in a giant lime cloud. The whole thing was terribly unscientific. I had ordered 8 tons but he brought almost 14 because he just couldn't let himself bring such a small load. We bounced across field after field, spreading some unknown quantity of lime -- he had set the machine at 1 ton/acre but that is meaningless if you drive too close to your last pass, or too far away. Anyway, he had lots of questions as we blasted the fields -- how much is this place worth? What do you mean you don't know, of course you know. What are you growing here? What did you grow here last year? You must make a lot of money. How much did this cost when you bought it? How many people work here? Where you sell all this stuff? And after I had a brief phone call with Jon about planting carrots, he paused and then said: You're kind of bossy with your husband, aren't you?
By the time we had used up all the lime (in the middle of the very last field that remains unfinished) he knew a lot about this business. And if I call him again next year he will remember who I am and there is a chance that he will put me higher on his list.
Meanwhile, back in Vienna, the ecoterrorism continues. For about a week the groundhogs stayed very quiet. I checked the holes every day and they still were stuffed with sticks and rocks and no one was going in or out. The kohlrabi plants began to grow some new leaves. But then a few days ago, the groundhogs resumed the battle. Every morning I find at least one hole has been dug out again and I get some more sticks and rocks and repack the hole. I also add a bucket of garbage, just so I can make the whole area less appealing. Most of the food I dump is pretty uninteresting to those varmints. They push the unwanted vegetables down the hill -- broccoli, onions, citrus peels. So I make sure to retrieve those and stuff them way down into the hole. Today I took it to another level and poured a bucket of fermenting onion plants (fish and seaweed and a lot of rainwater) down the hole. I can be as persistent as any groundhog. And they got that treatment because for the first time in a couple of weeks they went back to the cabbage patch and ate their way down the bed.
See? These are some seriously loose ends that someone needs to watch over. Everyone else is too busy to check groundhog holes every day. I asked Jon if he would ride around in the lime truck and he said that was my job. In a half an hour some lady is going to call me about "collaborating" about something -- she is a chef who just got an award for her work on the intersection between climate change and agriculture. I have no idea what that means, but I will ask her. And I have to drop a truck off and pick up the one that just got inspected, while we talk on the phone.
There is no end to the excitement around here. If the sun ever comes out and we get past 65 degrees, we will be exploding with activity. Gotta get all those dangling loose ends tied up before that. Making great progress...
Wednesday, April 25, 2018
Wednesday, April 18, 2018
Letter to My Dad
Dear Daddy,
I have not seen you in person for exactly 34 years but I still think of you every single day, and that is not hyperbole. It is hard not to think of you as I am still traveling on the same roads, sometimes driving the same tractors, and certainly doing the same work as we were all doing together in 1984. It is the same work but of course it is different. It is the same place but very different.
Today I noticed that the trees are almost exactly the same as they were on the day we buried you. The leaves are just starting to uncurl the tiniest bit. There are mustard blossoms, as there were on that cool April day. In those days, we used to plant onions from sets and that was just about the only crop we had in the ground on April 18, so I remember walking past the onions that were about two inches tall as we made the long and sad walk from the slab to the grave just down the hill from the Moutoux Shed Patch. The fields were empty except for some not-yet-tall rye.
Our season starts much earlier than it did back then. By now we have been putting plants in the field for almost a month. We transplant onions that grow from seeds that Mom plants in the greenhouse in the middle of February. We learned that from Stephen Chamberlain, who first learned to farm on this farm with you. We plant lots of lettuce -- which replaces the income we used to make from strawberries back in your day. We do not grow a single strawberry plant. We do not believe that anyone actually makes money on strawberries. We have learned to grow spinach consistently now that we know that soil temperature matters a lot -- in the olden days, you never knew when spinach would come up. It was a mystery.
Just today we started the second renovation of the melon cooler. When you first built that room, the floor was dirt and we stepped down into it. You designed it to store melons and part of the way it stayed cool was that it was a little bit in the ground. When it rained, the "cooler" would fill up with water like a swimming pool -- that was not an intentional feature. Twenty years ago we overhauled that space, filled it with gravel, took out the shelves that were made to fit pony baskets and turned it into more of a work room than a cooler. Today Stephen (your grandson, the one who seems to have a disproportionate share of your particular genes) started the demolition. He really wants to be allowed to lay the concrete, but we point out that for projects of this magnitude, even you would pay someone to make it come out right. He is waiting to find out the price of paying a professional so he can make his argument from the perspective of cost savings.
You would absolutely recognize the whole stand area. The stand itself is virtually unchanged. The cooler is the same cooler that you and I stood in front of one memorable day, yelling at each other about the freshness of the corn. People who were there can still remember watching the two of us, nose to nose, saying "YOU TASTE IT!" "NO, YOU TASTE IT!" Of course I can't recall if either one of us actually tasted the corn. I only remember the argument.
What I remember most and miss the most about you was your laugh, the joy that burst out of you. And also your quiet, wry smile. Now that I am ten years older than you ever were, I understand how young you were. You were navigating a complicated world, working harder than you wanted to and thinking about how to change that and juggling all the people and responsibilities and neglecting so many details and feeling frustrated and tired. This whole place was just so complex -- because of you, mostly.
Because of you, I thrive on the complexity. I always thought life would be so much better with just one farm, in one place. And we have certainly simplified everything by selling one of the farms and growing all the Fairfax County crops in one spot. It has been a long time since we drove a tractor down the road to get to fields four miles away. But the Loudoun farm is a diverse production farm now, and we drive back and forth all the time. Sad to say, the view has been completely ruined for the whole 30 miles between the two farms. No more beef cattle, no more long vistas, no more fog. Just one strip mall after another. Well, the last five miles before the sharp right turn are okay. Just some boring houses but still a few farms mixed in.
Jon and I remember the stories you used to tell about driving on the roads around here, coming home to the house on Beulah Road. We try to imagine shutting off the engine as we come over the tiny crest of a hill at Towlston Road, and rolling the whole mile down Route 7, swooping around the curve at Beulah Road and coasting down the driveway. It is impossible now. There are cars and traffic lights and a four lane road -- and Beulah Road is no longer hilly so there is no last swoop of momentum to get you to the driveway. You must have been driving ridiculously fast and it must have been in the middle of the night.
Your children are all happy and healthy, every one of us. Nine years ago, Jon got diagnosed with cancer and had the stem cell transplant that Leon S. was trying to get you to learn about when you were running out of options. Jon was lucky enough to get sick when there were many more treatment options than you had. I have to say, when we learned that Jon had cancer, my first reaction was that we had already been through this and I felt defeated. But they don't have to use such a huge hammer to deal with cancer any more, and we are benefiting greatly from all that has been learned in the last few decades.
Of all of us, only Anna lives in a perpetually clean house. And Charles has the second most organized house. But Lani and I both seem to be replicating the house of our childhood, and I think that has a great deal to do with the businesses that we are running. Anna and Charles chose slightly tidier lives and Lani and I took the more rustic and dusty path.
We are all closely connected with your sister -- she has had to be our one Newcomb elder ever since your mother died in 1989. She has taken care of all of us, one way or another, and many of us have lived in Boston because of her. She connects us to you and to our cousins and to everyone on the Newcomb side. We adore her.
We are all disappointed that you never knew any of your grandchildren. There are nine amazing people in that next generation, and now there is one more fantastic little person in the generation after that. I think that all of the grandchildren have been fully indoctrinated with stories of you. You were never close to perfect (although you did say to me once, "when you're this close to perfect, it's hard to improve." And then the wry smile.) but your energy and vision and charisma have reverberated through our lives.
There is so much more to say. I used to write you a letter every year on April 18 but I got out of the habit. I can resume my long summary next year and tell you about Blueberry Hill and Mom and being Jewish and all the other things I didn't fit in tonight. It is hard to believe how much it is possible to miss someone who has been gone for so long, but I still miss you. And I will continue to think about you every day.
Love, Hana
I have not seen you in person for exactly 34 years but I still think of you every single day, and that is not hyperbole. It is hard not to think of you as I am still traveling on the same roads, sometimes driving the same tractors, and certainly doing the same work as we were all doing together in 1984. It is the same work but of course it is different. It is the same place but very different.
Today I noticed that the trees are almost exactly the same as they were on the day we buried you. The leaves are just starting to uncurl the tiniest bit. There are mustard blossoms, as there were on that cool April day. In those days, we used to plant onions from sets and that was just about the only crop we had in the ground on April 18, so I remember walking past the onions that were about two inches tall as we made the long and sad walk from the slab to the grave just down the hill from the Moutoux Shed Patch. The fields were empty except for some not-yet-tall rye.
Our season starts much earlier than it did back then. By now we have been putting plants in the field for almost a month. We transplant onions that grow from seeds that Mom plants in the greenhouse in the middle of February. We learned that from Stephen Chamberlain, who first learned to farm on this farm with you. We plant lots of lettuce -- which replaces the income we used to make from strawberries back in your day. We do not grow a single strawberry plant. We do not believe that anyone actually makes money on strawberries. We have learned to grow spinach consistently now that we know that soil temperature matters a lot -- in the olden days, you never knew when spinach would come up. It was a mystery.
Just today we started the second renovation of the melon cooler. When you first built that room, the floor was dirt and we stepped down into it. You designed it to store melons and part of the way it stayed cool was that it was a little bit in the ground. When it rained, the "cooler" would fill up with water like a swimming pool -- that was not an intentional feature. Twenty years ago we overhauled that space, filled it with gravel, took out the shelves that were made to fit pony baskets and turned it into more of a work room than a cooler. Today Stephen (your grandson, the one who seems to have a disproportionate share of your particular genes) started the demolition. He really wants to be allowed to lay the concrete, but we point out that for projects of this magnitude, even you would pay someone to make it come out right. He is waiting to find out the price of paying a professional so he can make his argument from the perspective of cost savings.
You would absolutely recognize the whole stand area. The stand itself is virtually unchanged. The cooler is the same cooler that you and I stood in front of one memorable day, yelling at each other about the freshness of the corn. People who were there can still remember watching the two of us, nose to nose, saying "YOU TASTE IT!" "NO, YOU TASTE IT!" Of course I can't recall if either one of us actually tasted the corn. I only remember the argument.
What I remember most and miss the most about you was your laugh, the joy that burst out of you. And also your quiet, wry smile. Now that I am ten years older than you ever were, I understand how young you were. You were navigating a complicated world, working harder than you wanted to and thinking about how to change that and juggling all the people and responsibilities and neglecting so many details and feeling frustrated and tired. This whole place was just so complex -- because of you, mostly.
Because of you, I thrive on the complexity. I always thought life would be so much better with just one farm, in one place. And we have certainly simplified everything by selling one of the farms and growing all the Fairfax County crops in one spot. It has been a long time since we drove a tractor down the road to get to fields four miles away. But the Loudoun farm is a diverse production farm now, and we drive back and forth all the time. Sad to say, the view has been completely ruined for the whole 30 miles between the two farms. No more beef cattle, no more long vistas, no more fog. Just one strip mall after another. Well, the last five miles before the sharp right turn are okay. Just some boring houses but still a few farms mixed in.
Jon and I remember the stories you used to tell about driving on the roads around here, coming home to the house on Beulah Road. We try to imagine shutting off the engine as we come over the tiny crest of a hill at Towlston Road, and rolling the whole mile down Route 7, swooping around the curve at Beulah Road and coasting down the driveway. It is impossible now. There are cars and traffic lights and a four lane road -- and Beulah Road is no longer hilly so there is no last swoop of momentum to get you to the driveway. You must have been driving ridiculously fast and it must have been in the middle of the night.
Your children are all happy and healthy, every one of us. Nine years ago, Jon got diagnosed with cancer and had the stem cell transplant that Leon S. was trying to get you to learn about when you were running out of options. Jon was lucky enough to get sick when there were many more treatment options than you had. I have to say, when we learned that Jon had cancer, my first reaction was that we had already been through this and I felt defeated. But they don't have to use such a huge hammer to deal with cancer any more, and we are benefiting greatly from all that has been learned in the last few decades.
Of all of us, only Anna lives in a perpetually clean house. And Charles has the second most organized house. But Lani and I both seem to be replicating the house of our childhood, and I think that has a great deal to do with the businesses that we are running. Anna and Charles chose slightly tidier lives and Lani and I took the more rustic and dusty path.
We are all closely connected with your sister -- she has had to be our one Newcomb elder ever since your mother died in 1989. She has taken care of all of us, one way or another, and many of us have lived in Boston because of her. She connects us to you and to our cousins and to everyone on the Newcomb side. We adore her.
We are all disappointed that you never knew any of your grandchildren. There are nine amazing people in that next generation, and now there is one more fantastic little person in the generation after that. I think that all of the grandchildren have been fully indoctrinated with stories of you. You were never close to perfect (although you did say to me once, "when you're this close to perfect, it's hard to improve." And then the wry smile.) but your energy and vision and charisma have reverberated through our lives.
There is so much more to say. I used to write you a letter every year on April 18 but I got out of the habit. I can resume my long summary next year and tell you about Blueberry Hill and Mom and being Jewish and all the other things I didn't fit in tonight. It is hard to believe how much it is possible to miss someone who has been gone for so long, but I still miss you. And I will continue to think about you every day.
Love, Hana
Friday, April 13, 2018
Resuming the Battle
I am not talking about farming in general, even though farming could be considered a big fight with Mother Nature. She is always on the side of the weeds. She is whimsical and wild when it comes to weather. She has no interest in farmers, really. She has her own agenda and we continually try to trick her into letting us grow some vegetables, giving her all sorts of treats and trying to keep her bazillions of microbes happy and alive.
Nope, I am back to the same old topic about fighting the critters who mistakenly believe that we are planting these nice straight rows of kohlrabi so they can eat them in an organized fashion. There is nothing new under the sun here -- but we are back to battling creatures who are hungry and determined.
Today when I saw how far they had eaten down the field -- every single plant, methodically eaten to the ground, about 75 feet into the field -- I decided to take matters into my own hands. (Jon had set some Havahart traps last week but no one had paid any attention.) I went to see where the holes were and I found a whole condo. There were three giant holes close to each other, at the bases of trees, and there were about four more holes just over the hill. Big ones. Even though it makes no real sense, I decided those groundhogs would have to spend their day either digging in or digging out, instead of eating our plants. I stuffed each hole with rocks and big sticks, stuck in vertically as far down the hole as I could. Then I got some buckets of garbage and dumped them over the piles of sticks. Then I peed in one of the holes, just for good measure. When I went back up with more garbage, I saw one chubby groundhog running away from the hole, so I figure it had come home and found the door locked.
So tonight I went back up to see if anything has changed yet. Not yet. They are trying to figure out what just happened. My friend Laura is visiting and she calls me an eco-terrorist.
You bet. In the greenhouse something is climbing up onto the tables and eating lettuce and tomato plants. Some amoral rodent ate 250 Happy Rich plants (in one night) that were stashed under a roof to keep the mythical snow from smashing them last weekend. In Loudoun there are voles pulling the lettuce down through the plastic and eating dozens of plants a night. One of our workers, a reasonable and humane person, has started to stomp the voles when she sees them. She says it hurts her soul but she is not going to stand by and let them eat up all our plants. We are still chasing geese off the fields at Parents every day. I don't need to kill these animals, I just want them to move away because there is a crazy person making their life a misery. I think it can work. A few years ago I am sure I forced some groundhogs to move away by dumping five gallon buckets of rotten tomatoes into their holes for many days in a row. At first they dug their way out but after a while they just moved.
The thing is, groundhogs move into holes that are already established. Apparently the biggest and most aggressive ones get the best real estate. One year we paid the professional exterminator to fill in all the holes and spread a special smelling concoction, and he said he was sure they would not come back. He was wrong. We know where most of the holes are and we have relocated dozens of groundhogs over the years, even though it is illegal. You are supposed to kill them, not move them. That makes no sense to me. Jon caught about 24 raccoons and groundhogs in one year and moved them all to a nice wooded area on the other side of the Dulles Toll Road. Every time, he shows them to me to make sure they aren't just the same ones coming back again. They aren't. They all have different faces.
Food safety laws prohibit using dogs or cats to control these varmints in areas where we have food growing or getting washed. I'm pretty sure a good cat would make a big dent in the rodent population. My dad used to fantasize about breeding a giant house cat so we could have a hunter to keep the rats down. He said a 30 pound cat would be optimal.
Anyway, there is no guarantee that my eco-terrorism will really convince this group of groundhogs to move, but I am quite sure they will stop eating the plants for a while. I saw one going down into the hole just before I jammed it all up, so that one is busy for a few days.
Meanwhile, we are feeding the foxes our leftovers. There is a beautiful mother fox with a den of cute little kits behind Anna's house. Even though we know they eat chickens if they can get in, we also know they eat rabbits, and that is just fine with us.
Raccoons are not cute, they are amoral (they kill chickens for sport).. Rabbits are voracious and they poop all over the greenhouse. Groundhogs have unlimited capacity to eat. Rats are vile. Deer are rats with long legs. Squirrels are rats with bushy tails. Geese are disgusting. I know coyotes are undesirable but I would not mind if they came and cleaned up some of these pests. Food safety laws do not prohibit natural predators.
And so the battle continues.
Nope, I am back to the same old topic about fighting the critters who mistakenly believe that we are planting these nice straight rows of kohlrabi so they can eat them in an organized fashion. There is nothing new under the sun here -- but we are back to battling creatures who are hungry and determined.
Today when I saw how far they had eaten down the field -- every single plant, methodically eaten to the ground, about 75 feet into the field -- I decided to take matters into my own hands. (Jon had set some Havahart traps last week but no one had paid any attention.) I went to see where the holes were and I found a whole condo. There were three giant holes close to each other, at the bases of trees, and there were about four more holes just over the hill. Big ones. Even though it makes no real sense, I decided those groundhogs would have to spend their day either digging in or digging out, instead of eating our plants. I stuffed each hole with rocks and big sticks, stuck in vertically as far down the hole as I could. Then I got some buckets of garbage and dumped them over the piles of sticks. Then I peed in one of the holes, just for good measure. When I went back up with more garbage, I saw one chubby groundhog running away from the hole, so I figure it had come home and found the door locked.
So tonight I went back up to see if anything has changed yet. Not yet. They are trying to figure out what just happened. My friend Laura is visiting and she calls me an eco-terrorist.
You bet. In the greenhouse something is climbing up onto the tables and eating lettuce and tomato plants. Some amoral rodent ate 250 Happy Rich plants (in one night) that were stashed under a roof to keep the mythical snow from smashing them last weekend. In Loudoun there are voles pulling the lettuce down through the plastic and eating dozens of plants a night. One of our workers, a reasonable and humane person, has started to stomp the voles when she sees them. She says it hurts her soul but she is not going to stand by and let them eat up all our plants. We are still chasing geese off the fields at Parents every day. I don't need to kill these animals, I just want them to move away because there is a crazy person making their life a misery. I think it can work. A few years ago I am sure I forced some groundhogs to move away by dumping five gallon buckets of rotten tomatoes into their holes for many days in a row. At first they dug their way out but after a while they just moved.
The thing is, groundhogs move into holes that are already established. Apparently the biggest and most aggressive ones get the best real estate. One year we paid the professional exterminator to fill in all the holes and spread a special smelling concoction, and he said he was sure they would not come back. He was wrong. We know where most of the holes are and we have relocated dozens of groundhogs over the years, even though it is illegal. You are supposed to kill them, not move them. That makes no sense to me. Jon caught about 24 raccoons and groundhogs in one year and moved them all to a nice wooded area on the other side of the Dulles Toll Road. Every time, he shows them to me to make sure they aren't just the same ones coming back again. They aren't. They all have different faces.
Food safety laws prohibit using dogs or cats to control these varmints in areas where we have food growing or getting washed. I'm pretty sure a good cat would make a big dent in the rodent population. My dad used to fantasize about breeding a giant house cat so we could have a hunter to keep the rats down. He said a 30 pound cat would be optimal.
Anyway, there is no guarantee that my eco-terrorism will really convince this group of groundhogs to move, but I am quite sure they will stop eating the plants for a while. I saw one going down into the hole just before I jammed it all up, so that one is busy for a few days.
Meanwhile, we are feeding the foxes our leftovers. There is a beautiful mother fox with a den of cute little kits behind Anna's house. Even though we know they eat chickens if they can get in, we also know they eat rabbits, and that is just fine with us.
Raccoons are not cute, they are amoral (they kill chickens for sport).. Rabbits are voracious and they poop all over the greenhouse. Groundhogs have unlimited capacity to eat. Rats are vile. Deer are rats with long legs. Squirrels are rats with bushy tails. Geese are disgusting. I know coyotes are undesirable but I would not mind if they came and cleaned up some of these pests. Food safety laws do not prohibit natural predators.
And so the battle continues.
Sunday, April 1, 2018
Sprung Is Spring, For Real
A few days ago we thought we wouldn't work on Easter Sunday because it is a holiday for most people and we got so much done in the last few days, we could take a break. But then the weather forecast said that there was a lot of rain coming on Sunday night or Monday morning and it was unlikely to warm up and dry up for days. Okay, Jon and I would go out to Loudoun for a few hours in the middle of the day to work with Zach on some field preparation. We would be there from about noon to 4:00.
We didn't have a plan but we knew we hoped to get some carrots planted. And we knew there was some ground that needed to be prepared for plants sometime in the near future.
When we got there, Zach was already spreading compost and Samuel was about to spread some fertilizer. I could see that we needed to catch up to Zach and figure out our priorities.
Here is how our day unfolded:
Jon hooked up the fancy seeder to the Kubota.
I started disking.
Jon put the bedder on the tractor for me and then he took over the disking.
I bedded for carrots and turnips and brassicas.
Zach spaded.
Zach had to go do Easter with his family so he taught me to use his little tractor and cute spader (which is really our equipment now but it still feels like it is his). It goes about 0.00001 miles/hour.
When Jon finished disking we looked for the carrot seed that we had left on a shelf in the barn. We couldn't find it anywhere and we looked everywhere. So frustrating.
I texted Carrie, back home in Vienna on her day off with Kate and Zoey, to say that we couldn't find the seed and I was going nuts. She said she would bring some. I told her to bring a seeder while she was coming anyway. She got in the car with her whole family and started driving.
I kept spading.
While he waited, Jon hooked up the flail mower and mowed some cover crop down.
Then he hooked up the water wheel and filled the tank. I got some transplant sauce ready.
Stephen and Sophia and her friend came with plants from the greenhouse. They hadn't known they were invited to do this job until about an hour before, but they were willing and ready.
I kept spading.
Carrie arrived with the seeds so Jon could finally plant some carrots. While she was here, she planted radishes and mustards and turnips because she is the Queen of Seeding and her little seeder apparently works better than the big fancy one when it comes to tiny seeds. Zoey and Kate watched and waited.
I kept spading.
Eventually Carrie got to ride the transplanter for a while too, and then Julia got to plant.
I kept spading.
Everyone finished their tasks and went home. It was about 6:00.
Zach came back from Easter celebrating and got back on his little tractor to spade in one of the tunnels.
Jon hooked up the plastic layer and I went in search of another roll of drip tape.
We started laying plastic on the nice fluffy ground that I had just finished spading. It went beautifully. We kept going until it was too dark.
With no clear plan, but with plenty of options, Jon and I worked for eight hours without stopping. On our way home, we bought some snacks to keep us alive until dinner. It's Passover, so there are not so many choices when you stop at a gas station, but we survived on nuts and milk.
What a good day.
We didn't have a plan but we knew we hoped to get some carrots planted. And we knew there was some ground that needed to be prepared for plants sometime in the near future.
When we got there, Zach was already spreading compost and Samuel was about to spread some fertilizer. I could see that we needed to catch up to Zach and figure out our priorities.
Here is how our day unfolded:
Jon hooked up the fancy seeder to the Kubota.
I started disking.
Jon put the bedder on the tractor for me and then he took over the disking.
I bedded for carrots and turnips and brassicas.
Zach spaded.
Zach had to go do Easter with his family so he taught me to use his little tractor and cute spader (which is really our equipment now but it still feels like it is his). It goes about 0.00001 miles/hour.
When Jon finished disking we looked for the carrot seed that we had left on a shelf in the barn. We couldn't find it anywhere and we looked everywhere. So frustrating.
I texted Carrie, back home in Vienna on her day off with Kate and Zoey, to say that we couldn't find the seed and I was going nuts. She said she would bring some. I told her to bring a seeder while she was coming anyway. She got in the car with her whole family and started driving.
I kept spading.
While he waited, Jon hooked up the flail mower and mowed some cover crop down.
Then he hooked up the water wheel and filled the tank. I got some transplant sauce ready.
Stephen and Sophia and her friend came with plants from the greenhouse. They hadn't known they were invited to do this job until about an hour before, but they were willing and ready.
I kept spading.
Carrie arrived with the seeds so Jon could finally plant some carrots. While she was here, she planted radishes and mustards and turnips because she is the Queen of Seeding and her little seeder apparently works better than the big fancy one when it comes to tiny seeds. Zoey and Kate watched and waited.
I kept spading.
Eventually Carrie got to ride the transplanter for a while too, and then Julia got to plant.
I kept spading.
Everyone finished their tasks and went home. It was about 6:00.
Zach came back from Easter celebrating and got back on his little tractor to spade in one of the tunnels.
Jon hooked up the plastic layer and I went in search of another roll of drip tape.
We started laying plastic on the nice fluffy ground that I had just finished spading. It went beautifully. We kept going until it was too dark.
With no clear plan, but with plenty of options, Jon and I worked for eight hours without stopping. On our way home, we bought some snacks to keep us alive until dinner. It's Passover, so there are not so many choices when you stop at a gas station, but we survived on nuts and milk.
What a good day.
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