Back again, and this time for good. I can go a couple days without writing-- but I've been getting a little crazy without the outlet for brain exhaust. So, it's back to the Monday-Friday.
I planned on writing something up for my Saturday as farm king-- unfortunately, things went a bit for the worse.
I got in at daybreak, beating Bah and Old Rudolpho for once. I cleaned up the back and got the CSA all set up, then tidied up/stocked the store. Viking arrived and the day went fine until an hour before closing. It all started in the tomato fields-- the van got swamped in the mud. I loaded up the days picking and after some 'creative' steering maneuvers, I managed to wiggle the van back to the road. The store/cooler was running low on eggplant, so I swung by the forest field to cut a few quick buckets-- when I found 18 buckets full of red peppers sitting in the sun. It was clear they'd been there a long while, over a day, the boss/foreman must have forgotten 'em. I squeezed the buckets alongside the tomatoes and fresh eggplant-- it was time to straighten out the mess. I unloaded the tomatoes into the barn, handed off the eggplant to Viking and then started sifting through the pepper buckets for the keepers. I managed to salvage 2 boxes worth, but the rest were rotted to paste (into the compost with 'em). It was past closing with only one job to go-- I drove up around the hilltop and loaded in the last trays of raspberries from Bah.
As I walked into the store with the trays I caught Viking retching beside one of the freezers. She'd been sifting through the raspberries from earlier this morning and found them seething with maggots. I nearly had a heart attack-- I pulled all the berries and locked them up in the walk-in cooler: not another pint would be sold until the boss came back from vacation. I peeked into the buckets of mashed-raspberries-for-jam, it was even worse. The maggots covered the entire bucket over in a writhing mass. It seems luck isn't with us. The boss had told me last week-- he'd been talking with other local farmers at a bureau meeting and their orchards/berry fields/fruit had been completely infested. The hurricanes and storms had blown fruit fly populations up from the south-- and they've burrowed into everything to lay their maggot-eggs.
I was real down on myself. Of course, shit had to hit the fan under my watch. Worse still, I felt bad for the boss-- his first time leaving the farm since May and hell boiled over. It took a long number of beers at "The End" bar with Gizzie for us to drown out the sorrows.
But onward. On to today.
Monday
Full sun all day, there was talk of isolated thunderstorms blowing through but we were spared. The temperature made it to the low 80Fs.
I got the boss up to speed on the weekend's happenings. In a moment of inspiration on Saturday, I took a few hours to scrub clean the CSA wagons/power wash the back deck/organize the shipping boxes, pick crates & the trash/reorganized the cooler and the barn. The boss was nearly pleased, but the berry-blight put a damper on his mood. We sifted through the pints and pitched out a large number of infested berries. Fortunately, one of the fields seems to have been miraculously spared-- at least some berries are still clean.
Gizzie and I went through the cooler tossing out the bad lettuce and re-hydrating the heads good enough to keep. We washed a small haul of zucchini, summer squash, cucumbers and pickling cukes-- the main fields are rapidly dying back. The second round fields of summer squash/zukes/cukes are small and will hardly cover the store, much less the CSA-- but what can you do. We ran around getting the kitchen stocked up for Newport-- he had a day full of salsa/tomato sauce making ahead of him. The foreman and I rode the tractor down to the lower fields and cut 1 crate worth of chard/1 crate of Dinosaur and Red Boar kale.
The boss was itching to get around and check the state of the farm since he'd been gone (even 2 days absence is too much for him)-- so he brought Gizzie, the foreman and I up to the forest field. The foreman hunted around for stray cantaloupe (not many to be found).The boss filled a few buckets worth of eggplant, while Gizzie and I tried to fill a case with some sad looking basil. The 2 1/2 basil rows are real stressed-- most of the leaves have turned yellow and some plants have sprinted into early maturity. A good number of the leaves have started to blacken-- almost like they'd been hit with a frost. The boss wasn't sure what to do about it-- we'll just have to let the ground dry out and see what happens.
Back at the store, Gizzie and the foreman marched out to hunt more cantaloupe in the rows alongside the tomatoes. I let the basil soak and stuffed the lettuce back in the cooler.
Another minor heart attack this morning. When we walked into the cooler it was mysteriously warm. After some investigating we found that the fans had stopped turning. Over the course of a few panicked hours-- the boss flipped the fuses a couple times and the problem sorted itself out. Whew.
Lunch time. Trouble's all behind.
Gizzie and I had a leisurely lunch out on the wagon in the grass field. After a few smokes it was back to work. The boss's daughter was covering the store today, but she fell-ill so Gizzie stepped in to man the register. Poor guy, he missed all the fun.
The boss hitched up the tractor to the flat wagon, the foreman and I followed behind-- we headed out to the lower fields to pull out the irrigation pipes from the strawberries/former bean rows/chard & kale rows. The boss is planning on renting a heavy-duty commercial mower tomorrow to clear down the weeds/dead crops (so the pipes had to get outta there). We had a 5ft pile of pipes by the time we ditched the wagon along the stonewall. Next up, we sauntered over to the pumpkin fields to start the weekly hunt. We have 2 large blocks planted on the far side of the lower fields. The block near the woods edge was severely chewed over by the deers and vermin--the other block was in perfect shape. We hunted out the perfect pumpkins-- all orange, with as little green veining/stripes as possible. We use heavy duty shears to slice through the stems-- people like their stems long and hearty, so that's how we cut 'em. We easily filled the front loader before turning back to store to arrange the pumpkins out front.
I chatted around with Gizzie, while the boss sorted out his business. Gizzie had gone up to the hilltop with the boss this morning and they rode around checking the state of things-- the winter squash is nearly set to go. The butternut is fully formed, ready to pick today, but the boss says the taste improves greatly the longer you allow it ripen on the vine-- we'll start grabbing it up next week. The acorn and buttercup squash seemed to be doing well too. I horsed around with Gizzie for a good amount of time, but then it was back to the fields. I hitched the sprayer up to the tractor for the foreman and went on my way.
We'd run clean out of cherry tomatoes, so I hiked down with some buckets and picked away the rest of the day. I managed to get 3 full buckets of goldens and another 2 tall buckets worth of the reds. Somewhere along the line I went a little crazy-- out in the sun too long. Time must have passed in my tomato madness. Newport strolled down to tell me closing time had come and gone. Over some long tired cigarettes we kicked stones back and forth, going over today's jobs aloud-- it was a hell of a full day. I waved Newport off, paid my sad respects to Gizzie (who had a late night at the store ahead of him-- beers at The End may be necessary again), and then I headed home.
Feels good getting back into the writing swing. I want a picture day this week, badly. These early weeks of September are the teetering days-- I like to call it high summer. The last gasps of warm days and late sun, right before the pitch into changing leaves and cold winds. I'd say it's one of the top perks of this job: being outside to watch day by day as Winter goes to Spring goes to Summer goes to Fall. And it doesn't get any better than high summer. Winter will be around too soon and everything will be dead again.
Drink it while it lasts.
Take it easy.
At The End which one is Cliff and which one is Norm I need to know?
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