So much has happened these past couple of days. There were smaller changes, like the food for
example. Mary is now investing in
natural peanut butter instead of Skippy; there will be bread and fruit every
day; and we get paella for dinner almost every night. She feels better feeding the apprentices and
her family organic foods. We also plan on using Associated Buyers once
our account is set up to buy organic foods in bulk. Another change is a new oven. Mary’s commercial oven in the farmstand went berserk
and the oven in the house has the door completely detached, so we finally got a
used oven for the farmstand today.
Yesterday I did a lot of weeding and Claire and I
practically knocked out an entire row in Field 7 together. The stirrup hoe’s blade is getting
dangerously thin from all of its use. While suckering and wrapping the tomato
plants, I found a 2” hornworm, the biggest I’ve seen up close. It snapped at my poking finger so quickly, I
yelped. This morning I spent much of my
time harvesting broccoli, summer squash, zucchinis, patty pans, cucumbers, and
green peppers. I even found one
zucchini-patty-pan hybrid that we’ll save for ourselves. After almost 3 weeks of no rain, we finally
got precipitation last night and this morning. Although it watered the thirsty plants and
cooled us down while we worked, the rain caused some of my shelling pea seeds
to pop out of the ground, so I had to go back through and shove them back into
the ground.
The biggest changes were Katie and Claire both leaving
today. Katie had been stressed out for
weeks because of her aunt’s recent diagnosis of cancer. Her Aunt Sharon is from ‘the county’ in
northern Maine
where many of the potato farmers have contracts with large companies, for
example Lay’s. Some chemical used in
growing the potatoes has caused a surge of cancer development throughout the
population up there. Her aunt moved in
with her parents to be closer to the hospital for chemotherapy. Both of Katie’s parents work full time and
Aunt Sharon is starting to need constant attention in her weakening state. Katie was put into a difficult place when she
had a family crisis to deal with but had also made a commitment to the farm. At the end of the day though, we all know that
family comes first and Katie needs to be at home to care for her aunt, taker
her to her appointments, and keep up the house. Claire also had to return home for family
reasons, although WWOOFers are able to come and go with more ease than
apprentices. I’m so happy to have met
Claire, and I loved picking her mind about Crew and what it’s like to live in
NYC. The dinner table has gone from 8
people on Saturday night to 5 now that Gil is at camp this week, too. Jillian, Katie ,
Kenya
Jillian, Kenya ,
and I found ourselves jamming out to more Beatles tunes on our road trip out to
Freeport this
evening. Freeport
is a town near Portland
with many shops, and most importantly, the L.L. Bean ‘headquarters.’ I’ve been to Freeport before with my family and it always
amazes me how large the L.L. Bean stores are – yes stores plural. The store is divided into different buildings,
including an outlet. Thanks to Bean’s
lifetime warranty, we were able to exchange our 6-person camping dome that was
leaking with a new one. Not only that,
but the price has been hiked up significantly since the tent was bought and
they didn’t even charge the difference – I love my Bean. The highlight of the trip was going to Ben
& Jerry’s, but we couldn’t find it and all the stores were closing, so we
just stopped off at Friendly’s on our way home. I’m so mad that I missed out on B&J’s new
frozen greek yogurt. Jillian had never
heard of Friendly’s. At least we were
able to finish our sad day with a sweet end. We’ll miss Katie and Claire dearly.
Patty Pan
Zucchini Hybrid?
Zucchini
WoW! What a big change!! I hope the rest of you can keep up with the farming. Just think - in a little over a week we will be on our way to Maine and in about 1.5 weeks we will be able to give you hugs and kisses and massage your feet:)
ReplyDeleteLove,
mom