And it's been a long road here.
Time to pick up where I left off. I waded through winter in New York City with Darlin: got a job in a classy burrito shack, drank myself silly, visited around with old fellows and new ones. To be honest, I had mostly decided upon living in the city for good and giving up on the farming business. But-- I had bad luck chasing after the big-money-jobs, my bank numbers grew tiny and then my mother needed her neck rebuilt. Those days blew out the window. Before I could settle my head on anything-- I was already back North.
Got back a week ago, the last week in March.
Lots of stories to tell, from the burrito kitchen and otherwise.
The 'restaurant' was as classy as taquerias get-- top star write ups in the NYTimes, Food & Wine Magazine, Zagat Review and Village Voice. The chicken was organic and the beans were made vegan. That said, we drank through most of the shifts-- people were falling into the grill and onto knives with some regularity. One fella I remember very well had "No Shit" tattooed across his eyelids, he was a short black man with a braided goatee falling along his neck. The fact he exists is a testament to something-- he'd rap about "cutti" and sang about his five baby-mamas (one in every borough). One day he taught me how to make guacamole:
I filled a 15 gallon bowl with prepped avocados, dumped in a deep pan worth of salsa, salt and lime juice. "No Shit" brought me over a tennis-racket-sized potato masher and told me to have fun. Apparently I didn't have enough fun-- "No Shit" shouted, No, no, no, no! You trying to make love to the guac-- but you gotta fuck it. He took the masher and thrust all in-- he sang, you having my baby tonight and I'm gonna get you pregnant, over and over. He trust his hips with each slap of the masher and spanked the side of the bowl for effect.
Two types of people worked in that kitchen: the college students rolling burritos, and the 30-year-old-men-paying-child-support cooking the food. I didn't really fit with either group.
So I kept to myself for the most part, but on my last night a group of us went out drinking. That's where I got to know some fine individuals-- my favorite was Kev: young 20 something, married with a new born son. He sent his wife and boy back to Oakland, California while he mailed them burrito-ing money and was finishing his degree in animation. Over many beers we talked about John K, the golden 40's of animation, the problems with white/black people, cops, North Philadelphia, women and the objective ranking of artful love-making. We drank till 4am, closed down the bar and ate McDonald's Cheeseburgers in the Manhattan streets.
Then I said good-bye and I bet I will never see one of those fellows again.
There are many stories, but I'll pepper 'em in as we go along through Spring.
Now I'm back on the farm. I got home the day my mother was finally released from the hospital-- I got to play nurse for a brief morning, before the boss called and it was back to the fields.
We've been busy. In the past week and a half we: worked a landscaping job, cleared out the greenhouses, trimmed the first round of raspberries in the lower fields, repaired all the greenhouses, got the tractor into fighting shape, split 6 trees worth of wood, setup the rows of palates/trays in the greenhouses, seeded 1000 swiss chard, 3500 broccoli (so far, we're going big this year), 1000 brusselsprouts, 1000 red cabbage, 1000 collared greens, 1500 kale (2 varieties), 1000 green cabbage, 750 romaine lettuce, 500 chives/oregano/some other herb, 1000 cauliflower, transplanted 6000 tomato plants (into bigger trays), sold a junked truck flatbed/van/spare van door, rigged a frost protection device out of field cloth/broken pipes/cinder blocks in the non-heated greenhouse, painted the store, raked the boss's yard, repaired last years tools and began clearing the ground for an open air/low-to-ground greenhouse that will eventually be upgraded into a full sized solid structure.
That's what we've done. It's a new year and everything has changed. The foreman is gone. He moved to New York City to be with his girlfriend (small world), and lives just down the street from Darlin (terrifyingly small world). We met up a few times for mid-day beers-- things weren't good for him. He'd been unemployed since December, medical scares led him under the knife (in delicate places) and he was fighting (bitterly) with his girlfriend. He needed the beers more than I did. The foreman was no longer his name sake, things had gotten so bad he asked the boss if he could pick up some odd work and maybe come back. The old man said no-- it was better if the former-foreman set off into the world and didn't look back. The former-foreman asked if I could find him a job in the burrito kitchen-- it'd be hard for me to explain why I didn't try.
Now it is me. Through some tangled way, it's me now. I am the foreman.
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