Sporadic

This is the final stretch. Unfortunately my health hit the skids Sunday night-- woke up Monday and couldn't get out of bed. Slept 20 hours through to today and decided to give work a go. I gotta admit-- feeling a bit strange, not sick in any conventional sense. Lined up a doctor's appointment for tomorrow, gonna have some blood work done. I don't wanna say it, but Lyme disease could be a possibility. Ugh, ugh, ugh.

Otherwise, the weekend was great. Darlin came up to visit-- we met up with Gizzie and went to our friend's 30th birthday party. It was a riot of a time-- our friend packed an entire Elk's Lodge with friends and family. Darlin and I cooked up a big farm feast for Saturday dinner, and then took it easy.

This week is shaping up to be a mess. Rain tomorrow, rain/snow on Thursday. There isn't much to do inside anymore, so the boss is gonna call everyone if he needs us. Last Friday marked the beginning of field clean up-- we pruned back all the blackberries along the lower fields.


Today

Full sun all day through-- lots of cold winds blowing. The cold has settled in to stay-- temperature hardly inched above 52F.

Today was a straight work day. Gizzie and the daughter got the van all packed for the final big money market, then they took off. Newport, the foreman and I rolled up to the blackberry rows along the hilltop-- we pruned all day through. Finished up the final stretch just before closing.


Over the season the blackberry canes grow thick-- their root systems toss up tons of extra shoots and create a veritable wall of plant matter. While that's great for berry production, it's bad for weathering the plant through the winter. The jumbled canes offers an ideal nesting area for all types of rodents-- who will consume/kill the berry canes for sustenance. So we clear the drooping/dying/poorly positioned branches out of the rows-- leaving 3-4 good canes per root cluster. There's more blackberry plants butchered and tossed into the tractor rows now than there are still in the ground.

I chatted with the boss a long time before going home. Talk turned to next year-- many plans to do things better. Business has lurched to a complete stand still-- CSA is over, hardly two or three customers show at the store on a given day. Doesn't look like we'll have the money to plant a cover crop over winter-- can't afford the seed much less the labor to plant it. The state of things is clear-- once the clean up work is over Newport, Gizzie and I are all let go. But next year-- the boss has endless plans to do things better: fewer unnecessary summer helpers, more fully planted fields and, hopefully, better weather for growing.

The boss is really thinking about doing a block of barley/hops next year-- he wants to get a production license and brew beer. As a kick off/send off, the boss wants to take all of us (Newport, Gizzie, the foreman and me) to a local microbrewery-- to sample the goods, celebrate the year and get ideas for making beer next year. Sounds more than perfect to me.

Looks like I could have a few unwanted days off this week. If that's the case I'll still be here-- talking over some of the farm issues/accoutrements there hasn't been time to address.


Take it easy and here's hoping it's not lyme disease.