Heavy thunderstorms woke me early this morning. Rained until noon-- then a heavy heat sunk in. It actually dried up for a few hours until the monsoon rains swept up from the southwest. Temperature was in the upper 60Fs with the rain-- during the dry spell it rose to 82F.
No time for the greenhouse this morning, jogged out and over to hitch a wagon full of pipes up with the boss's tractor. NYU and Stretch hopped into the van and I drove us up to the hilltop to meet the boss. We hid from the rain in the van until the tractor made it up the hill. We unloaded/organized the pipes in the meadow where the foreman mowed over some turkey nests. The boss took the empty wagon back down to the greenhouse to get started on the real work-- we followed in the van.
Today's rain caught the boss off guard. None of the weather services predicted anything of this sort until it was already pouring. There isn't much you can pick in the rain-- wet berries mold like lightning once separated from the plant, and everything else goes much slower to the point its just not worth picking. But so long as the soil isn't flooded (it wasn't), rain is the perfect time to transplant as the sun wont dry out the delicate plants' roots. So we started loading up the wagon with the late summer/fall tomatoes with Bah and Old Rudolpho's crew. Put up the Rose, Purple Cherokees, Moskvich, Purple Prudence, Striped German, Red Pear and a few others I've forgotten. We left the Sugar Gold cherries in the greenhouse-- the boss wants to set up some proper rows for them.
Our super crew (Bah, Old Rudolpho, Daughter-in-law #1, Daughter-in-law #2, Stretch, NYU and myself) marched up the hill to the empty section beside the late season corn recently planted. The foreman quickly drove out a travel lane with the old tractor, then lowered a trenching tool he'd hitched up to drag out 10 tomato rows. With the surprise weather we didn't have the opportunity to wrap the fields in plastic or anything, but the boss didn't seem concerned. Sometimes you just got to do what the weather says, whether you're ready or not.
We planted in the mud and rain. We spaced the plants 2ft apart, along the foreman's trenches. The daughter-in-laws are extremely wary of us-- they speak a small bit of english (only with the boss), but keep to spanish otherwise. They're heavy set women-- dressed in jean pants and jean jackets, with their hair up in red bandannas or tucked under straw conical hats (like Bah's). They talk very loud and constantly, shooting the breeze and arguing-- occasionally Old Rudolpho drawls in a sentence or a short story. Except when one of my idiot boys (or me) come around. Then the daughter-in-laws stop talking and stare them down. Our crew hasn't worked with them much this season.
As we progressed down the field, things got a little difficult-- NYU grilled the women over their tomato placement/spacing/how many plants left in their trays. Rather than him fixing anything, the crew (Bah, Old Rudolpho and the daughter-in-laws) started getting really confused. Confused means slow-- and it was raining too hard for slow. So I went to the wagon and bunched up all the tomatoes in their planting order, cut a length of rope to the proper plant spacing, took my trowel-- then settled the matter myself. I got out in front of the crew and started digging. Figured they could deal with taking the plants from the trays and planting them in the holes I made. I worked at a lunatic's pace-- measure, dig, measure, dig. All the way down the line as they followed in with the plants behind. Things started moving much faster. The daughter-in-laws must have found me hilarious, as they laughed their heads off and called after me-- como gato (or something similar).
We planted through 8 long rows quick. By lunch time all but 2 tomato varieties were in the ground. Bah called the time, and we all sloshed down the hill.
Over lunch the boss took NYU home to change out of his mud-soaked clothes so he could run the CSA clean and comfortable. The Bah and Old Rudolpho's gang headed up hill to finish off the tomato planting. Stretch and I seeded 4 of the unplanted plastic wrapped rows by the greenhouse with squash (2 rows summer squash, 2 rows zucchini). We finished the summer squash rows fine, but we ran out of seeds (eventually there will be 5 rows of zucchini planted here). The rain had died down over lunch, so things were getting a bit dryer as we helped NYU set up for the CSA. Today we had: last strawberries, raspberries, romaine lettuce, rabe, chard, red boar and dinosaur kale, snap peas, sweet shelling peas, zucchini (from friend's farm), bok choi, spinach (also from friend's farm) and arugula.
Things got dry enough that the boss sent me and Stretch up to pick the first raspberries from the rows at the far slope of the hilltop (where NYU and I spent a long time weeding/pounding trellises/tying wire). The boss came with us to sample the berries-- every one of the 6 raspberry fields are different varieties, but the the berries in this field are the boss's favorite. They have a much sweeter/stronger taste. (We do the different raspberry varieties as a means of balancing the risks of growing/pests/weather on the berry crop.) The rows were as red as they were green-- the wires were bent beneath the berries' weight. Stretch and I picked along for a while before Bah, Old Rudolpho and company came to join us. The picking was fast and easy, we filled several trays quickly.
As we worked the southern skies started to turn real dark. I called up the boss to give him fair warning-- I've already mentioned how bad water is for fresh picked berries. We picked faster and faster-- it was a shame to leave these raspberries to the weather. Some were so big, ripe and swollen that they'd nearly popped themselves from their stems. When the rain hit, it built up real quick. I ran down the row and threw my rain slick over the tower of full berry trays. In a miracle of timing, the boss roared up in the van seconds before the deluge. We stowed the berries just in time. Stretch and I laid down in the back of the van with the berries, and watched the wall of rain through the open sliding door as the boss drove us back. The crew decided to walk back to the farm store on their own.
We hurried the berries onto a couple shelves in the cooler. Stretch and I set up the market tent over the sink to wash up/bundle a bunch of carrots and beets for the farm store (once again, produce from a friend's farm). Finished up quickly, but closing time was near. The boss told us to sign out for a full day's work and go home.
Before going home I sat down to talk to the boss. Since I'm not going to the city this weekend, I figured that I might as well work. So I asked about coming in tomorrow. He needs me in the morning to help set up the early day CSA pick up. I'm pretty exhausted and I don't think he expects me to show-- all the same, I'll be there tomorrow. Just a sucker for punishment I guess.
So there maybe a farm post for tomorrow too.
Take it easy.
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