Red Pears

Sunny all day through, sparse clouds breezed off. The temperature stuck in the upper 80Fs, but little to no humidity.

A good night sleep and beer does a lot to reset an exhausted man, started today on full recharge.
Happy to say my brain is working once again.

I pulled in and hit the tomato fields. Bah was already at work and NYU soon joined our marathon planting session. All the prepared rows, as of now, are finished. I'm planning another picture day sometime soon as the transformation is pretty impressive. We planted until lunch, then returned and finished around 3pm. I did a head count ( the numbers aren't very precise, as the row length varies a little, but) 150 tomato plants per row and there are currently 20 rows-- so about 3000 tomato plants so far. And if you go a little further, ~25lbs of tomato per plant, there could be a crop of 75,000lbs-- many big tomato varieties remain and none of the cherry tomatoes have even been planted yet, the lbs number will only grow higher.

Bah was finishing up all the Purple Cherokees when I arrived-- but I settled in and we planted (all are heirlooms):
-- Moskvich, the quintessential red tomato, a Russian heirloom variety, strong taste, very acidic-- good for everything, best for eating as is
NYU joined us-
--the Red Pears, a pear shaped red tomato, good taste and low on seed juice so pretty nice for sauce, canning or salads
--Striped Roman, red roman with yellow stripes down the side, meaty with very little seed goo-- born for sauces and cooking
--Valencia (my least favorite), solid yellow roman variety, an Italian heirloom with no acid content so they're plain tasting-- old people with stomach ulcers and folks with acid problems love these guys and buy them by the box
--Striped German, these tomatoes can grow enormous, big blobs of yellow and red star-burst patterned, a good rule of tomato thumb is red = acidic / yellow = not acidic, these fall somewhere in between-- they have a good taste, though a little watery, I still use them for tomato sandwiches and salads (adds some colorful pahzazz to food)
--Japreuse Trueffle, I haven't tasted or grown these before, but they're suppose to be similar to the red pear in shape except purplish in color. I imagine a combination of red pear and purple cherokee in taste

Around 3pm, NYU and I were called out of the field-- Bah remained to finish the final row and 1/2 of tomato planting. We doubled up hanging onto the side ladder, while the foreman drove us with the new tractor down and around to the hidden forest field. The boss met us in the van and gave us the plan. Already the foreman and I prepared 3 long rows for zucchini and summer squash, but leaving a gap for 3 rows of cucumbers we marked out 3 long rows for the peppers. NYU and I laid out 3 drip lines, splicing together lines to reach the whole 500yard length. Slowly and with repeated stops for readjustments, we plastic wrapped the 3 rows with the foreman.
I need to work out a new water system, as I'm always a 500yard jog from my canteen when I need it. And I tore out the seat of my pants trying to stuff the steel bottle into my pockets. There has to be an better way.

NYU took off with the boss, while the foreman and I remained behind to work out the question of irrigation. The foreman was happy with how well the rows came out, he remembered stuffing hours worth of soil  around plastic back when the boss handled the laying machine himself-- I had to agree, today was pretty painless laying, and it looked straight for once. I'm somewhere in the midsts of poison ivy bout 4 or 5, somewhere in the last month I lost count-- but we marched through mounds of poison ivy to drag loose weathered piping. We connected it all to the upper woods water artery-- in the middle of another sea of poison ivy. The foreman swears he's developed some form of immunity (despite science saying its impossible) after endless rashes over the years. The boss is completely immune, but he claims his immunity is due to drinking fresh milk back when his father had dairy cows. Interesting theory-- he says the cows ate and digested poison ivy constantly, so drinking their milk gave him some sort of enzyme for processing the oils. Wish he had those cows now, I am still as allergic as ever.

We ran the line by the woods edge and set out the drip connector-- the foreman was well pleased. When we returned to the farm center the boss and NYU had the irrigation running. We stopped and unclogged a couple stopped guns before hustling over to the tomato fields. With these hot and dry days they were inching a water line periodically through the field. I ran over and helped NYU fix some lines he misconnected-- they can be a pain, the gasket and springs need to line up just so with the joint to pressurize properly. All that combined with the boss's perchant for refusing to stop the water flow during the reconnection process made for a wet a time. End plugs do not go in easy with water flowing. You have to disconnect the last pipe, with water spewing everywhere, jab in the plug-- hoist the pipe, plug and all-- then spear it into the water eruption's center. It's not so bad after a couple successful tries. That's a lie, it's never easy. Gracelessly we cleared up the tomato water issues and saddled up the transplanting wagon.

Bah had finished the final tomato rows in our absence, no rows left but tons of tomatoes-- the boss and foreman are planning to prepare more soil and wrap more rows later this week. We dumped off the remainders in another wagon, half full of 4 other tomato varieties awaiting transplanting, and headed to the main greenhouse. I'm anticipating tomorrow to be pepper day, as we loaded up the entire wagon with 2,480 pepper plants-- three varieties, Red Knight, Super Shepherd and Ace.

There were only 15 minutes left to go, but the boss had one more task for me and NYU. We laid out trays full of 2x2 plastic planters to fill the vacant greenhouse space the peppers left behind. NYU ran home right at closing, with a lot of work left I stayed. I laid out everything and the foreman came to help me fill them with soil. I soaked the soil thoroughly and we called it a day. Only stayed an hour and some late, but those 12hr days are coming fast. I gotta take advantage of these normal work shifts while they last.


I'm pretty happy about today, getting the first tomato field finished has loomed over us a long time. Thunderstorms and rain might be on the way tomorrow, so good thing the plants are in the ground-- for 1. the rain will do them good, for 2. I don't want to be in the middle of a field planting tomatoes during a heavy storm.  Instead, it'll probably be peppers. There is so much to do in the immediate days ahead, thousands of plants all need to be in the soil now.
We're busting our humps non-stop, but there is always much more that needs doing.
Oh well, thats what tomorrow is for.

Onward peppers and tomorrow!