Beginning of the Beginning

Full sun all day through. The temperature was in the mid 70Fs. Another cold front is moving in, bringing rain with it-- should hit tomorrow afternoon. The weather system isn't due to clear significantly until next week. When does the axe finally strike?


I hitched a ride in with Gizzie this morning. He made a few pit stops for cigarettes and breakfast-- we arrived ripely late. The store was mostly ready, but we finished culling out the bad tomatoes. Lots to do in preparation for the rain and cold. The warm weekend bought us another light round of picking but little more. Gizzie set about getting the van packed for today's big money market. The foreman took off on a road trip out of state-- he was picking up a bulk order of jam jars (we couldn't wait for delivery). So it was just me and Newport.

First up: we took the machete down to the lower fields and cut/bundled up cornstalks. The boss is donating a few hundred bunches to different churches/temples around town so they can be festively decorated for Fall. It was extremely fast work. After stowing away the stalks away, we grabbed buckets and headed up to the forest field-- one last lightning round of string bean picking. The rows were extremely lean-- few beans and no new flower buds. It took the entire double row of the yellow wax beans to fill 1/3 a bucket. The greens were coming out better-- we each filled half a bucket through the course of half a double row. We dumped off the beans with the daughter in the store, then it was time for pre-winter cleaning. We headed down into the pasture around the horse pond and disconnected/stacked up the galvanized steel irrigation pipes (unused since July/early August).The boss's brother wants to harrow out the crab grass and plant something more nutritious for horse grazing, so we dragged all the cinder blocks/logs/stones out of the way. It was lunch time.


I had a late lunch. I figured out a little arrangement to solve the problem of sun/air drying the onions Darlin and I picked Saturday. I laid out 10 plastic mesh trays, poured the onions in, sifted out the dirt and left them to bake in the sun.

Genius.

Just as I was about to sit down to my sandwich, the boss's brother hollered over-- the cows had escaped again. I ran with him across the street and saw 2 calves had escaped-- I blocked them off from the road as the brother scooted up from behind. It's almost a matter of course at this point: the calves went in without a problem. Lunch time.

Here's another picture. It's Lucy the boss's demon dog. I've told the story before, but she's the monster known to tear the wings off birds, grow bored and leave them to writhe to death. The boss chuckles and calls her Lucy-fer.


The foreman finally returned from his jar journey-- we headed to the forest fields again for one last sweep through the eggplant. Everything, any size, had to go-- still we narrowly filled 3 buckets.
We dropped off the eggplant at the store, then loaded up with buckets and hoes-- the great potato harvest begins. The foreman drove us up the hilltop and took out the field chart-- it's no longer a matter of how much we need (buckets per market/per CSA/per day), everything needs to get pulled from the ground. We picked one of the odd-ball varieties we haven't touched yet and got to work. I can't remember the name of the variety, but these were huge potatoes-- soft ball sized and larger. We hoed through the rest of the day-- filling 18 buckets with just the one variety. We finished the row just a little after closing.

All the potato buckets were stashed beneath the back awning, then I stacked all the onion racks into the store for safe keeping/dew protection. Whew. Homeward.

Drinking with Gizzie tonight? Hope so, I got a few dollars and a liver burning holes through my pockets.


Take it easy.