...from the middle of Monday to the middle of Tuesday.
Mondays are the one day of the week where we can plan off-farm activities, even if we have to fit them around the farm activities that thread through every day. This was a typical 24 hour stretch in November...
After my piano lesson (where I focused so hard that it felt like smoke was coming out of my ears, and rusty iron filings were drifting to the floor), I decided to drive five minutes in the wrong direction to go to a CSA house and round up all the CSA bags that were empty and waiting. Usually we get them on Wednesdays but we have been running out, as people are neglecting to return them. While this may be important to us, it doesn't even make it onto their weekly mental radar. People have way too much to remember.
I got home in time for a quick lunch and some email work and then Rebecca and Jon and I went to get our covid booster shots. It was so fast and easy -- they don't want you to have a moment of hesitation. They just grab your ID, enter everything into the computer while a nurse jabs you in the arm and slaps on a bandaid. While Rebecca and I were waiting for Jon (different vaccine, different room), we were sitting around in the lobby and I saw an elderly man at the check-in kiosk -- and he was carrying a blue PVF bag. A nice, new one. I almost jumped out of my seat. The lady next to me in the lobby was amused by my reaction. Now, I know it is good advertising to have our bags out in public, but those bags are supposed to circle right back to us so we can fill them up again. I did not say anything to the man, I let him walk away with his purloined bag.
That night, after dinner, Jon and I tackled one more batch of venison. The hunter had left us some undetermined number of deer in three different plastic bags in three different baskets. This is a big task, disassembling a deer. We used to stay at it for hours but now we just do a little bit each night. We have to separate the meat from the bone and then we have to carefully remove any connective pieces that will make the ground meat taste bad. It is so tedious and now I have to wear my glasses so I can see all the detail. When we are done it does look like a crime scene.
I put the leg bones directly into a groundhog hole. Those greedy groundhogs have been eating all the carrot tops, munching down the row. I make it a regular practice to mess with their hole and make it really unpleasant.
Carrie texted me in the evening to say that she had two sick kids who could not go to school the next day, and her wife was going to have to cancel the class she usually teaches on Tuesday morning. Carrie didn't like any of my suggestions until I said, why don't you and I get up at 6:00 and pack the CSA shares so you can take the kids in time for her to teach her class? Usually we start packing at 9:00 after the kids have gone to school, and when the workers arrive.
So that's what we did. We met in the 40 degree dark at 6 AM and we set up the CSA line and we had a companionable couple of hours, just the two of us. We got most of it done before everyone arrived to do the rest of the tasks and Carrie went back to her momma duties.
I went up for breakfast at about 9:30 and got sidetracked making phone calls and answering more emails. I got a text from someone I didn't know, reminding me of our 10:00 appointment. I had no idea who he was or what he was talking about. He was waiting for me at the farm. Which farm? That's often a problem -- which farm am I supposed to be at and what did I say I was going to do? And then a tiny light began to glimmer in the back of my brain. My mother had answered the phone at the stand last week and asked me if I would be around at 10:00 the next Tuesday. Yes, I am always here at 10:00, packing bags (except for this really unusual Tuesday, whoops).
Anyway, this was someone from the Farm Bureau who was visiting farms across Virginia, filming interviews with farmers. It was for a PBS documentary that will have limited distribution (not in our metro area). He needed a farm in Fairfax County. Not a lot of choices there. So we spent an hour or so filming and talking and touring. This was all possible because we had finished packing the CSA early, by chance. I would never have said I had a free hour at that time on a normal Tuesday. No one told me that was going to be my job. My part of this documentary might be one or two minutes. The funniest part was when he very gently suggested that I might want to change my shirt. I had a wet, muddy sweatshirt on. I didn't really want to get changed. I took off the sweatshirt and asked if the next layer looked okay. He said it was better.
I have gotten good at speaking in complete sentences and telling stories, so I answered his questions in ways that I hope will not embarrass me later.
Then I finally got in the van to go to Loudoun, loaded with a pile of used, soggy greenhouse plastic so Michael could start replacing the sides on the high tunnels.
And that was a semi-typical 24 hours in the life of this farmer. Flexible, light on our feet, always ready for the unexpected, that's us. And always on the look-out for our precious $2 cloth bags
