Bold and Boulder (FLOOD PICTURES)

I'm back. To tell you the truth I'd just about given up on all this posting hassle-- but some friend's wishes you just can't refuse. Here's to you Moatse, across the seven seas. As for all you others, you may as well stick around too. Ehehehe.

It's been quite a week, here's the quick and thick of it.

I got back from a fine and furious seaside 3-day weekend of drink, porches and the good company of Darlin/many friends. It felt strange climbing back into the farm skin-- one long weekend was all it took for me to go soft. So I came back and got real sick. Maybe I smoked too many cigarettes or maybe it was just my time, but either way there's no rest for the sickly.

And these past few days have been the wettest so far-- heavy rain, then heavy mists followed by heavy rain. Doesn't help that the soil was over saturated to begin with. So, I steeled up and dragged my shivering deflated-muscle-bag of a self through the wet. Newport, Gizzie and I spent a long time shining/sorting tomatoes and washing/prepping/juicing/boiling tomatoes. Tuesday was a straight downpour-- Gizzie went off to the big money market with the boss, while Newport and I were left behind to slog 15 buckets of potatoes out of the mud. I slumped through Wednesday in a feverish zombie daze, can't really remember what happened but it must have been wet.

So on to today already! And onto the pictures already.

Thursday

Steady rain in the morning, weather broke at noon into an intermittent mist. Temperature started at 55F but rose to the low 60Fs.

I'm feeling much better today, the sick has peaked and I can think/talk straight again. Gizzie and I joined the Foreman/Newport down at the horse pond to check this out:

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The springs/streams had become torrents, the pond poured over the dam in a constant rapid-wave (see picture below). The tractor bridge was a good 3ft below the water. Half the cow pasture was submerged (ps. another calf born in the storm last night). What a mess.

Gizzie and I spent the morning in the kitchen quartering up/de-stemming tomatoes for sauce. Newport was outside, soaked to the bone, setting up the CSA and market boxes. Out of pity we ran out too. We were drenched in seconds. Double market was today, but one canceled-- Gizzie prayed his would be too, but no luck. He shipped out with the boss after lunch, he would prove to be the lucky one.


After lunch Newport and I piled onto the tractor, and with the foreman, we forded across the water-bridge up to the hilltop to cut broccoli in the rain. The soil up top was water-logged and soft, every step sunk us mid-way up our calves in mud-- we used hoes to drag ourselves up and forward step-by-step. One bed of broccoli was on firm ground, but in bad shape (overdeveloped bunches/started flowering)-- the other bed was in fantastic shape (enormous/perfectly developed), but surrounded in swamp-mire. We filled 10 bushel boxes-- and then piled up mounds of broccoli on top of little beds made from the plant's broad leaves. We packed the tractor's front loader and cab full-- it was a slow and painful ride back.

Next, we rolled out to the lower fields to pick the first pumpkins. It's still a bit early, but the foreman wants to start building up our store supply ahead of the fall season. We couldn't find too many( ~20+).

Back to the kitchen and more tomato prepping. A major haul/delivery came in today packing the cooler full to scary new heights.  Delivered: 12 boxes of loose leaf lettuce, 4 boxes red leaf lettuce, 10 boxes romaine, 5 boxes of spinach. Picked/washed/boxed: 16 big boxes of bull nose red peppers, 11 big boxes of red bell peppers, 3 boxes of fairytale, 1 box big & oriental eggplant. Between all that-- the 15 boxes of potatoes we pulled, the cantaloupe, cukes and squashes-- its packed in towers to the ceiling.

The crew has been out all week on account of the weather-- needing the money, they begged to come in today. Bah looked like he was wearing a tent and Old Rudopho was dressed in full lobster-fisherman regalia.

Today was the foreman's birthday-- he wasn't too thrilled. Newport wanted to take him out for a drink and asked me to come along-- I said, of course-- but the foreman just wanted to go home. So as a birthday gift, I took his late shift today and stayed late. I sat around chatting with the boss a long time-- he's taking his first days off since May this weekend and I'm gonna watch the farm. And he wants me in the tractor-- I have finally arrived! He wished that he'd spent some time training me, but figures we might try a tractor crash course tomorrow. The boss had a doctor's appointment this morning and it went okay-- just okay. He looked and walked a lot older this evening. We picked up Gizzie and packed in the market load/CSA.
Home and Dry.


More Rambling:
There's been a lot going on and to be frank-- it's hard to bring it all together coherently. Gizzie and I have been meeting up for late-night-weekday drinks. We go to a place far behind the train yard (far away from the noise/college drunks), it has pink neon signs in the window that say "This is It" and "The End." It is nice. No loud music is played, there's no scrambling to catch the bartender's eye, the back porch is secluded/ encased with trees. We sit, talk, have a few beers and smoke. At closing, we help the waitress clean out the ashtrays and then go home. We talk about the farm and about people in general. There's a lot to be said/learned about both.


But maybe that's for tomorrow.
Take it easy.