Tough

Rained all through today. In the upper 40Fs.

Back from the city and with the rains, green has taken over. Years ago from a Eireann bus window I saw greens like this around county Limerick. If I remember right, it was about this wet then too.

A lot is happening around the farm, but I didn't really get up to much today. At the end of last week we received a palate with 800lbs of potatoes, so today we set about preparing them for the field. We have 6 varieties now, mostly reds, golds and fingerlings, then one screw ball potato type which has a golden interior with red star-bursts.

I dragged 16 boxes to the workshop from storage in the barn. The foreman sharpened up a bunch of knives and the boss brought down chairs. We three set down out of the rain, got to slicing up potatoes and talking shit. Everyone has been around potatoes to see the little "eye" growths that pop out when they're stored too long/ stored near light. Well, given a little soil and care those eyes eventually turn into potatoes. We went through the bags of potatoes, slicing them up so each chunk had its own eye-- allowing one potato become 5 or more.

The boss had a fine time in New Orleans-- apparently the whole proceeding was accompanied with Dixie jazz and Stevie Wonder appeared to accept an honorary doctorate from the institution. Maybe the Boss's daughter will come help around the store and farmer's markets in June/July-- we'll see how that goes. I was the weakest link in our cutting chain gang-- the boss far out in front. In between cracks on my potato performance, the subject was mostly the foreman's transmission and whether he'd buy american or foreign for his next car. Between the three of us we polished off 500lbs of potatoes by lunch.

Around this time the girl running the store rolled in and started opening up for the first day of business. This girl is viking tough, and can chat a shift by in no time. People actually stop by everyday, just to talk with her-- single-handedly she's brought in more business with a conversation than all our attempts at advertising combined.

Viking girl has it pretty rough-- Joplin's Bobby McGee kinda sums it up, but-- she and her husband tried to open a cliff-side recording studio with friends, until the friends sold them short. Viking and her husband took off in a van and made it as far as North Carolina before the car broke beyond fixing. Somehow they swung their way back and live with her husband' mother. Like myself, she wasted away all winter waiting for the season to start and get back on the farm-- unlike myself, she and her husband have been living off baked potatoes for the past month.

After lunch the foreman, viking girl and I hung around the storefront catching up. Viking has started up a big tomato garden in her kitchen by the window-- grown far larger than the farm's plants by this point-- I gotta remember to bring her a share of the grape seeds I have dried from last year. Together, they put the fear of the farmer's daughter into me, its maybe a good thing I'll be out in the fields. Around then the boss rolled back in and we all set back off to work: Viking to straightening up the shop, the foreman out to harrow in the rain and I set off to cut more potatoes.

Fortunately I catch on fast and put my potato knife to the quick, finishing the remaining 300lbs an hour before the day's end. I tided up the shop, packed the boss's van up for a dump run and started fixing the bathroom. Gave the tile a mop scrub and thorough going over with the wet-vacuum. Scrubbed over the toilet, sink, fixtures and walls. The piping is outside the walling, and where it passes through the concrete flooring and tile was looking pretty rough. I vacuumed up all the crap, dried the concrete and laid in several new tiles, cutting/cracking them to fit the awkward angle and spacing.

Cleaned up, and chatted away the last 5 minutes with viking until closing.

Ahaha, how could I forget! The biggest topic of the day was another little surprise in the night. Apparently that little bull really got the job done, another calf was born last night. That makes two, so far. I'll get the camera fixed and see if I can do something about showing some cow pictures.

Final cow aside: Talking with the boss over potatoes, he had a lot to say about the herd. Apparently our cows are a "poled" species-- meaning their horns have been removed through selective breeding. He couldn't praise the breeding choice enough. He told me and the foreman about all the difficulties he had as a kid-- cows would get their horns caught in fencing, caught in brush, they would headbutt and gore other cows. Bad as that was, he said trying to de-horn them was infinitely worse. You don't (or can't) saw the horns off-- so you melt them off by applying acid, essentially melting two holes in their heads so as not to leave even a nub of horn behind. I got the feeling these acid applications might have traumatized my boss somewhat-- as he cut the story quite short.

Its good to have Viking back, as she really mellows out the personalities-- we'll see how long the peace holds.
Onward farm!