Friday, June 3, 2011

Keep Rowin', Rowin', Rowin'

Cold day today. Sunny, but cold. Full sun all day, but the temperature only crept into the upper 60Fs at noon-- even then you could hardly tell. A crisp wind blew straight through closing.

NYU took today and next week off to go camping in the White Mountains, so the crew this morning was a little lopsided. Rhode Island has been helping around the store until Viking comes in the afternoon, but this was his lucky day. We dragged him shorts, sandals and all into the fields.

We grouped up at the greenhouse and tractor caravaned out to the forest fields-- Rhode Island clinging to the side of the old tractor with the boss, I went with the foreman on the new tractor. We laid out five more lines of drip across the field and wrapped the lot in plastic. Rhode Island is a chatterbox, but he caught on quick enough. Everything went so smoothly, he almost seemed disappointed-- expecting "the fields" to be harder. The foreman and I shared a rare laugh. I don't think Rhode Island has anything to worry about:
The boss confided-- Rhode Island is a tall one, but much too blonde, he'd broil to death after an hour out here.

Finished wrapping, the Boss and Rhode Island returned to the store. Bah, the foreman and I stayed in the forest fields planting a long row of Snapper peppers. We made it about half way through the the row when lunch time swung round.

After lunch, Bah returned through the woods to finish the peppers-- the foreman and I remained behind. The size of the job ahead only occurred to me half way through. Really wished NYU or Rhode Island had stuck around.

We headed to the low end of the tomato fields and started wrapping. This end of the field is nearby a large stream and the height of the water table (the foreman explained) makes irrigation mostly unnecessary. The rows here are a bit shorter, but with just me behind the tractor we wrapped fifteen rows. By the last row I was sweating and leaning hard on the wrapping machine's rigging. We buried all the loose edges and rolled up hill.

At some point the boss tilled over the space between the top edge of the tomato fields and the farm store area-- somehow squeezing in room for eleven more rows. The foreman and I laid eleven drip lines and slowly wrapped them all. Including the easy rows in the morning, we wrapped 31 rows in plastic today.

The day was growing short, but I shambled down to join Bah at the stream rows we wrapped earlier. He already finished planting two rows worth of Sweet Million cherry tomatoes. I sat down and over the course of an hour planted all the Sugar Brix Grape tomatoes. The foreman finally joined us, and we three planted a quick row of Chocolate Cherry tomatoes. It took a long bit of overtime, but only one variety of cherry tomato remains unplanted.


This is an exciting weekend, my girlfriend is coming up to visit (we'll call her Darlin' for now). Last year Darlin' came up, we only poked around the farm store and chatted with Viking. This time we're gonna hike all over and show her the whole mess of farm. I'm hoping she'll catch the farm bug one of these days, she already has a positive disposition towards all of it-- it just takes that little extra step before it really grabs ya (a rainy burning day smoking in an old van, pants soaked though in diesel-- did it for me). Chatted with the boss before leaving, he's heard a lot about Darlin' and is happy to finally meet her. He says-- Gotta see why you're runnin to the city all the time instead of working weekends, he he he. I'm charging up the camera and we'll take a bunch of pictures. Maybe a stolen strawberry or two are in order.

Onward weekend!

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