Almost Tomatoes

The day started off cloudy and humid, it ended sunny and humid. Temperature hung around 80Fs a little before noon onward.

A new guy's first day-- the summer help begins! He's a nice quiet fellow, home after finishing his second year at NYU. When I arrived this morning he was already in the main greenhouse seeding a couple trays of lettuce-- trouble was he didn't soak the soil first. He worked here a couple years ago, but life in the city must have made him rusty. Chatting, I pushed him in the right direction and he had a much easier time planting.

Bah and I rode back to the landscaping job and finished spreading the mulch and edging all the gardens. I rev-ed up the gas powered brush cutter and mowed down a weed slicked hill. We finished and cleaned over the yard-- looking fine-- and headed back for lunch.

After lunch me and the boss rode back to the house with the old tractor. I tied a chain around the frontloader and we pulled stumps by the woods edge.

Drove the van and Lucy back to the farm-- and that dog was a mess. She must have found some fresh cow manure-- Lucy was caked in brown-green all across her head and back. We hosed her off and I spread a bit of mulch around the farm store. No more mulch please.

Viking and the boss had a row while I was coming back from landscaping. He must have gotten into a mood and chewed into her, when I came back she had the fangs out. Learned a bit more than I'd bargained for, about her hard time growing up and why she wont take lip from anyone now. When I left for the field, she was only half ready to throw her job in the boss's face-- don't think she realizes how much he needs her around. Fortunately we avoided further skirmishes.

I joined NYU down in the tomato-field-to-be, the foreman had cut out 5 rows this morning. We pulled out some of the drip lines saved from last year and laid one per row. I felt bad for NYU as he was really struggling with his line-- I set 3 rows of drip 100% ready to go before he'd managed to untangle and lay his first. The foreman rolled over in a tractor with the plastic laying attachment-- I scrambled over and the two of got started covering the rows over while NYU laid the final row of line. After an hour of arbitrary adjustments we finally got everything lined up and the plastic went down nice and tight. Walked the lines with a shovel tightening any loose plastic, then called it a day.

The sun is here, hope it stays-- we have tomatoes to plant!