I did my first interval bike workout this morning through Belgrade Lakes
and into Rome . I was thankful that there aren’t any stop
lights or stop signs through town because my front breaks still don’t work
properly. As per the routine, I talked
to my Mom, ate breakfast (we had bananas!), and was out the door by 8. While watering both hoop houses, I needed to
kill more cucumber beetles on the cucumber plants in the lower hoop house. There were just as many as the day before, and
even more eggs to pick off and squish, too. My least favorite part of the day, I’d say, is
watering the melons in the lower hoop house. Melons are relatively fragile plants, so they
must be cared for delicately. They’re
covered with Remay in the hoop house and they must get sufficient water, so
instead of pouring water over the Remay, I must bend down and lift the staple holding
down the Remay to get to each melon plant – it’s hard on the knees. A new task for the day was to weed in between
the rows of the lower hoop house. I used
a stirrup hoe1 to cut out the very few weeds growing between the
black plastic rows.
Now off to do more squash planting for the day, I really
looked like real farmer, as Ellie told me. I used my mom’s big ol’ sun bonnet that
afternoon when it was sunny, and had my knee pads on to protect my knees from
the gritty ground and to give them some cushioning. My knees are killing me from all of the
kneeling I’ve been doing, I hope I won’t have to do this every day! I planted a whole row of squash before
lunch. Again, I cut holes in the plastic
(~8 in wide and 32 in between sides), dug up and loosened the dirt, made a hole
(~8 in deep), threw in a handful of compost, drowned the hole with water,
transplanted the seedling into the puddle, and covered everything with dirt
again.
For lunch, Ellie had set out turkey salad sandwiches and
chips, and I enjoyed my meal while rolling my foot on my frozen water bottle
(for my plantar fasciitis) and reading a 1995 National Geographic about Ndoki2.
Mary has a ton of National Geographic’s
sitting out from the 90’s, and it’s humorous to look at their technology and
car ads because their very outdated.
After lunch, I watered the seedlings in the upper hoop house
again and Katie and I headed down to plant another row of squash before the end
of the day. Especially on the Carnival
Squash today, I found a ton of Squash Bugs, the ones that resemble stink bugs
and smell like a sour Laffy Taffy. Many
of these bugs were mating, so again, it was easier to find them and squish
them, although these I try to squish with my gloved hands since they smell bad
and have a lot of guts. Because we
finished soon, I cut holes in the black plastic of the next row to prepare for
the next day’s planting. After showering
and a dinner of cheesy potatoes, ham, and buttery green beans, Ellie took us
out for ice cream (again!) at the original Maine Gifford’s ice cream shop on
the Gifford’s family farm. On our way
there and back, we drove through Oakland (where
Ellie’s parents retired), through Waterville ,
and through Colby
College
1 A stirrup hoe resembles a horse saddle stirrup
and has screws in it purposefully use so that it can be dragged it back and
forth on the ground to cut out any weeds and their roots underneath. Other hoes that we use are the collinear hoe
and the long-handled diamond hoe, although I’m not sure of their exact
purposes, as I haven’t used them yet.
3 4chan is a website that has categories you can
explore, but has no archive. People can
post whatever they like anonymously – completely anonymously. 4chan has been the founder of phenomena such
as LOLcats and Memes. (http://www.4chan.org/)
4 I’m still not quite exactly sure what Anonymous
is, but I understand that it’s a group
of people that are able to hack and stay one step ahead of government security,
it seems. They are the ones responsible
for the Wikileaks. A woman was able to
interview some of them and she wrote a book called, “We Are Anonymous,” and she
was interviewed on the Daily Show. (http://www.hulu.com/watch/
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