Days 52-53 (8/16-17/12): It's Raining Men and Cats and Dogs

 

I knew it'd be a good day on Thursday because we woke up to rain.  I harvested squash, tomatoes, and cucumbers.  We're starting to harvest certain produce for CSA (on Friday) a little earlier in the week so that our early Friday mornings aren't as hectic.  The drizzle turned into a pour, so I had to resort to getting my rain jacket and rain pants from the top floor of the house.  I felt silly watering the hoop house while it was raining so outside.  It was so wet and cold.  I'm still sick, so hanging out outside in the pouring rain certainly wasn't helping my case.  I came in for a hot shower and hot tea before I left for market.  Because Mary needed her car to go back to Fiddle Camp Thursday afternoon, she had a friend and CSA member take me to market.  Since I know how to work everything at market, Mary felt most comfortable for me to go this week.  Janet is an older woman from Connecticut who is now retired in her Great Pond lake house.  Janet helped on the farm last summer when the family was short of labor, and she helps out with transportation, working the shop, or working events.  We got along just lovely.  She knew what Williams was, and we talked at length about colleges and careers and how her daughter just started a post-doc program at Yale.
The rain was no better at market.  We rushed to bag the pies and breads to keep them dry while our tent malfunctioned and kept pooling up with water.  The showers kept customers away from the market today, so sales were at a record low.  Janet was generous enough to run over to get us each some hot green tea (perfect for the cold and my cold) and we even hid in the car to warm up since neither of us had dressed for the weather.  On our way home we also stopped off at Wal-Mart to pick up Kenya's wallet that had been found and returned without money missing.  The fact that people would return the wallet in good faith without stealing anything reaffirms my faith in mankind.
Jillian and Annie had ridden their bikes to the store to get ingredients for dinner.  They then prepared falafel and tomatoes in wild rice - what a feast.   The family got home late from Fiddle Camp and it was lovely to be reunited with the kids again, Kenya even teared up a little when she saw me.  She then went on to tell me every detail of Fiddle Camp, oh my.l
Every day I've woken up, my cold has felt and sounded a little better.  We had an early start this morning for CSA harvesting: lettuce, mezclun, slicing cucumbers.  The slicing cucumbers were huge, some close to a foot long.  Mary started explaining how to harvest autumn gords - the fall season is upon us, starting even in August.  I finished the morning with helping Mary and Kenya set up the CSA section and count/weigh and distribute the produce into 1/2 and full shares.  We've started organizing the CSA section a few days in advance, so Jillian already had many of the veggies counted and organized.  Organizing went smoother and took less time than the time I helped out 2 weeks ago.
Mary explained that Field 7 would not be used next year.  The potatoes, squash, pumpkins, peppers, and cucumbers growing in there are nothing impressive, so this means the field has lost many of its nutrients.  Mary will 'retire' it for a year so it can recharge its nutrients.  She had me start pulling black plastic off of 3 rows in Field 5 today.  It's amazing how the growing season can be coming to an end so soon.  I feel like it was just yesterday that everything was in full swing.... I guess that's true too though.
I watched the shop this afternoon.  To keep busy, I sliced pace tomatoes and put them in the dehydrator, cleaned dishes, and prepared tomatoes for salsa.  I used a pot and its strainer, filling the pot 3/4 with water and bringing to a boil and filling the strainer 1/2 way with tomatoes.  The tomatoes were placed in the hot water for 1 minute and were ready to be skinned and then diced for salsa.  We fed the scraps to the chickens.  The shop was busy today, which was good since Mary's farmer's market was not, and I got the chance to sell yarn, a garlic braid, and almost all of the chocolate chip cookies that I'd made the other day and though I'd messed up on.
We were going to spend our last night together (the family leaves on vacation tomorrow) roller blading at an old-fashioned rink nearby, but the pizzas took too long, so we settled on watching the Ferris Bueller's Day Off DVD that I'd brought while it rained and stormed more outside.  Hey, I'm not complaining.  Jillian and I skyped Katie tonight to figure out possible dinner plans for next week, and Gil kept eavesdropping on us.  He refused to come over and say hi and instead locked us inside the room we were in by tying some fisherman's knot on the door.  12-year-old boys are so silly sometimes.

Jillian working in lower hoop house

Days 50-51 (8/14-15/12): Back on the Farm

Madison, me, and Caroline (trying to) striking a pose.

Me, Shelby, and Kelly after our cabin activity at Camp Varisty.  

 I left the farm on Friday, August 3 in a 9-seater airplane (smallest plane and airport I've ever seen).  I was heading to Virginia for several days to visit with friends from home and to be a counselor at a running camp.  Camp Varsity was full of craziness, per the usual: doin' the dew, date night for table dress-up theme, fried and packaged camp food (seriously, yum), Parlor Rugby, Lip Syncs (One Thing by One Direction), CaMp DaNcE, and too much more to list.  CV is a high school running camp in the mountains of Madison, VA that I've gone to for 6 years now.  Even as a second-year counselor, I got to stay in the same cabin as my high school girl's cross country team.  I'd like to thank the campers and my fellow staff for an amazingly exciting yet sentimental week at camp.  I'm counting down the days until next year.  I also had an amazing time catching up with friends from high school and home.  After braving the 'wilderness' at camp, I got to go to the movie theatre (Prometheus was awesome), buy a dress (thrift stores rock), and drink diet coke (it's been too long), all luxuries for me.  I'd like to thank Georgia and her sisters, Hannah and Lydia, and the Rose family for hosting me in Richmond - they give so much!

I returned on the evening of Monday, August 13 on the same 9-seater plane with the same Australian pilot.  Sage and Mary were there to greet me with open arms and a fresh peach (the taste and texture were divine).  The family is at Maine Fiddle Camp this week, with Mary and Sage coming home during the day, so Kenya and Gil weren't home when I returned.  However, it was lovely to see Jillian and Annie again.  It felt as if nothing had changed.  Little had except the farm had its final and concrete appraisal (the price was set for the easement), the corn had doubled in height, and Piccalilli had been slaughtered since it had attacked Sage (please note that more elaborate reasoning was considered in this decision).   Yesterday, the 14th, I tended to regular chores of watering the lower hoop house, harvesting squash and cucumbers, hoe-weeding field 4, and feeding the animals in the evening.  I was less productive than I wished in the hoe-weeding because I felt fatigued.  I've been feeling sick from something I probably picked up from Caroline (she was feeling feverish on Saturday) and from lack of sleep.  Nestor is staying out in the pasture at night time because his stall is being used for storing extra shavings right now.  Until all the extra bedding shavings are used, we will switch Nestor into Ginger's stall for the days that Ginger and Ladybug go out to the pasture.  Mary had me spray the herb garden's kale plants for fleas.  We use an organic spray made from chrysanthemum.  This spray kills bugs on contact and stays traced on the plant for up to 2 hours.  It's not something one should go out of their way to inhale, but it's rather unharmful for humans.  This is the first time all summer that I've used spray on plants - our produce is 100% organic with arguably no chemicals.  Before returning to Fiddle Camp for the night, Mary and Sage joined us for dinner: kale and tomato salad, eggplant parmesan, and peach and blackberry pie with crumble and whipped cream - what a feast!

I spent much of today in the shop.  I fed the animals, cleaned their stalls (Red, the steer, insisted on lying down and made it extremely difficult to clean his stall), and put Nestor into Ginger's stall and Ginger and Ladybug into the pasture.  I watched the shop all day and made batches of chocolate chip cookies for the shop and blueberry bread for market.  When Mary returned for the day, I canned haricot vert beans .  I clipped the stems off of a bucket of beans and jammed them as much as I could into mason jars, sprinkling in 2-3 tbsp of canning & baking salt  and filling each with boiling water.  The jars are placed in a special canning pot that is filled with 3/4 boiling water and 1/4 vinegar (to prevent staining the pot).  The special canning pot is heated to seal the mason jars for preservation.  Mary also had me make 'tussy mussy's'.  Think of London in the industrial revolution with waste in its streets.  Women would have fragrant bouquets of flowers called Tussy Mussy's slid up their sleeves so they could smell the perfume easily.  Mary had me harvest dry flower (aka straw flowers) and a couple of other flowers that dry nicely.  I cut the stems short, wrapped the bouquets tightly, and artistically hung the bouquets from the farmstand ceiling by hay bale twine at varying heights from the ceiling.  I thought this was a creative way of using space and putting the bouquets on display for sale while they dry.  

Haricot Vert Beans: long and thin 'fancy' string beans

Day 49 (8/2/12): C’est La Vie

It wasn’t the best day in a lot of ways, but what can you do?  I’m traveling to Virginia next week, so I’d miss my day to go to market, so I was excited when Jillian agreed to flip-flop weeks with me.  Before I could get to market, however, I worked in the fields for the morning.  I was bug-checking for squash bugs in Field 7 when I found an ‘adolescent’ squash bug (right before its adult stage), squished it, and its trajectory was straight for my eye.  It felt like a burn of a thousand suns.  I yelped to nearby Annie to run to get my water to flush out my eye.  Through cringing and tears, I eventually made my way up to the house to flush my left eye out in the sink.  Much to my despair, my eye had swelled.  The swelling had mostly gone down with some icing by the time we left for market, but there was still a dull burn, and Mary suggested that Kenya and I stop by the emergency room on our way home if it still hurt at the end of the day.  This would be my last farmer’s market with Kenya since she would be at Maine Fiddle Camp and then on vacation in Pemaquid, ME for the last 2 weeks that I’ll be on the farm.  We enjoyed our time together and got a fair amount of business (selling out of honey) since it was a beautiful and sunny day.  We did errands on our way home, including stopping at Walmart.  It is there that we lost Kenya’s wallet.  We backtracked our trail 4 or 5 times and had an employee help us, but it was no use.  Kenya was extremely hard on herself and incredibly distraught that she’d lost the money from market, several gift cards, and her tip money from Open Farm Day.  There’s no greater punishment for Kenya, I’d say, than Kenya being mad at herself.  We got home and ate dinner at 10:30, beat from the high emotions of the day.  Mom had me call Poison Control to check in about my eye – surprisingly I could find no suggestions online for what happens when you squirt squash bug guts in your eye (it has to have happened to someone else before!).  The dull burn had stayed throughout the day, but they affirmed that I would not go blind.  I told Kenya that all we can say at the end of a day like this is: C’est la vie. Worse things could have happened and life will go on.  

Days 47-48 (7/31/12-8/1/12): Back to Normal

Things have finally calmed down this week since Open Farm Day, being at the lake house, Dinner on the Farm, and seeing my family.  It was a blast going to Boothbay and Wiscasset and getting to watch the Olympics.  I was sad to see my family go, but I know time will fly until going home. 

On Tuesday I fed the animals in the morning, which includes scooping the poop and wet bedding out of their stalls.  I suckered the tomatoes, checked for horn worms, and broke off all branches below the bottom set of tomatoes on each plant – this aerates the plants and takes off dead weight to focus the nutrients on growing the tomatoes.  The tomatoes are huge (about the size of 2 softballs sometimes, maybe even a football) and they’re finally getting ripe enough to pick – a few each day.  The garlic has been drying in the barn for a couple of weeks now, layed on a drying rack with a fan blowing on them.  I trimmed their roots, cleaned the heads, and cut the stems off to a 2-inch stub.  I organized the garlic into hard-stemmed garlic, soft-stemmed garlic, and small-headed garlic (to be used for planting).  I was supposed to leave the soft-stemmed garlic stems on for Mary to use in garlic braids.  

While Mary and the kids were gone for errands tonight, Jillian and I went on a bike ride and a run, respectively, through the dark.  Kenya returned home tonight.  She had spent Monday and Tuesday with Sharon, Eli’s mother, for Sharon’s birthday.  Along with helping out in the gardens, Kenya worked on building her solar dryer with Sharon.  Kenya will use this and a giant solar dryer she’s making in the roof of the hoop house to dry fruit and veggies for fruit leathers and soup mixes.  She will sell her products at the Youth Entrepreneur Station at Maine’s Common Ground Fair in September to fundraise for her expedition next year.  

Wednesday morning was filled with harvesting.  Many plants are in season now, so harvesting takes a long time.  Along with pickling cucumbers, I now harvest slicing cucumbers, and squash and green peppers are still coming in.  Eggplants are ready, so we first pick them a little small to encourage the plant to produce more fruit.  I found one today larger than a football – beautiful.  Provider Beans (green) and Yellow Wax Beans are also plentiful. I finished composting Field 7 with Jillian and was supposed to heavy hoe-weed Field 7 for the rest of the day, but Mary called me up to help her with making Turkery Pot Pies.  You’d be surprised at the demand for this product in the hot summer season.  We pull pieces of turkey and add potatoes, carrots and onions, and gravy and pop this in the freezer.  

I got all spiffied up and read to Sage before we went out for dinner tonight.  Because I didn’t get a share of the tips earned for Open Farm Day tours, the family treated me to a dinner at a Thai restaurant (that also serves sushi).  I enjoyed some yummy eel sushi and Pad-Khing (rice dish with tofu, ginger, mushrooms, vegetables).

Pickling cukes (left) are shorter and fatter than slicing cukes (right) and are a lighter shade of green. They're both prickly on the vine though.