Saga of the Sleepy Farmers

Not long ago, someone asked us what time we farmers get up in the morning.

I looked at my fellow farmer, who seemed too sleepy to comprehend the question, and then I answered: “Well, in the beginning of the season, we’re working in the garden by 5 a.m. But this time of year? We feel like we’re doing pretty well to be out there by 6:30 in the morning.”

Yes, indeed, we get wearier and wearier as the season goes on, and we are hard-pressed to motivate ourselves to work until 9 p.m., as we also do earlier in the season. We are not sorry that the sunlight slowly starts decreasing at the June solstice. We are happy, and we are even happier, here in September, for the slowly increasing sleep-time. 

Now we’ve started compiling a sleepy farmer list:

Example One: As with most people, when we are tired, our brains slow down too. In fact, as I was trying to divide the number of tomatoes we’d harvested one September day by the number of CSA members who were coming, in order to figure out everyone’s share of the harvest, I came up with quite a number: 2,904.

“Wow!” I said to my fellow. “Every member gets 2,904 tomatoes today!”

“Wow!” he said back. “No wonder we’re so tired!” 

Then we had a big laugh, imagining 25 people putting 2,904 tomatoes in their baskets and bags, and stuffing them to their cars, and hauling them into their kitchens. 

Then we had an even bigger laugh, because I was doing my hard math with a calculator, not even with my brain, and still the tomatoes came out to 2,904. I tried again, really concentrating on those little buttons, and that time I got 17. 

Now that’s a reasonable number of tomatoes, especially if you are throwing them all in a big pot and making sauce, as we are this time of year, which is what we told our CSA members who thought 17 tomatoes, particularly when combined with the quarts of cherry and plum tomatoes for the day, was less reasonable than we did. Of course, the members had no idea how narrowly they missed 2,904 tomatoes.

Example Two: This year, in an effort to save our fall brassicas from flea beetles and woodchucks, we covered the plants with our fancy new bug netting, which worked wonderfully, with two exceptions.

Exception One: The woodchuck cleverly dug a tunnel that came up right under the beautifully protected-from-detection-and-predators bug netting. Thus, when we pulled off the cover to get at the weeds, we found: the weeds, the woodchuck hole, and the chewed-on broccoli and kale, which is enough to make a weary farmer cry, and which is not even the point of this story. 

The point of this story is Exception Two: we also found two plantings of lettuce, which we had totally forgotten were there, and which were not able to muscle their way past the weeds as the brassicas did.

“Did we plant these here?” I said, knowing full well that no one else plants anything here.

My fellow shook his head in disbelief. “If we did, I wish we had weeded them a lot sooner.” 

Oh, the poor tiny forgotten heads of lettuce. At least the woodchuck hadn’t chewed on them. (Plus the woodchuck only made a tunnel under the broccoli/kale lettuce netting and not the separate netting for the cabbage/Brussels sprouts next door. Wasn’t that thoughtful?)

Example Three: One September morning I woke up to find an unripe cherry tomato in my hair. It spent all night in bed with me, apparently.

“Look at this,” I said to my fellow farmer, untangling the hard little green tomato.

“Wow,” my fellow said, and fell back to sleep. Zzzz.
 

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Sept 21-27, 2022

Berries, Birds, and Woodchucks

Here it is August, and this vegetable farmer is stuck in July. I’m stuck in July because that’s where my fellow farmer and I always get stuck. What with harvesting, haying, planting the fall crops, and weeding, we don’t know which way to turn.

The real kicker in July is the raspberries. We love raspberries, but, wow, it’s a lot of picking. (29 quarts! Seven hours! On just one day!)

First our CSA members pick all their own quarts during CSA pick-up hours, working mostly along the edges of the patch. Afterward, I plow up the center, and try not to fall into the woodchuck hole, which we have filled in numerous times, and which the woodchuck gleefully clears out, hurling all the rocks and dirt right out again. 

In fact, once I was picking berries, and there was the woodchuck peering up out of the hole. “What are you going to do?” I said to this beautiful worried little critter. “Besides eat all my brassicas, I mean.” 

In and out the furry brown nose and bright eyes went, and finally, working up an enormous courage, the woodchuck darted out and ran. Goodness! It was exciting. I’m not sure why the chuckie didn’t turn around and go back down the tunnel to another exit, but clearly he or she had another idea in mind, probably involving the delicious broccoli.

I also spend some time in the center of the raspberry patch detaching myself from the blackberry canes. We keep chopping them out, and they keep growing gleefully back in. Those thorns are powerfully sharp. 

Of course, it is our own fault, as we were the ones who planted the canes next to the raspberries in the first place. It seemed like a great idea at the time, transplanting some vigorous wild blackberries into the garden. Our old-time Vermonter farmer friend said, “Oh, you’re going to be sorry you did that,” and oh, was he right.

Then there was the bird, hollering its head off at me in the raspberry patch.

“What’s the trouble?” I asked. But then I saw the trouble. It was a perfectly lovely little nest, with four perfectly lovely little speckled eggs. I carefully worked my way around the nest. The bird didn’t settle down until I was a good distance away. 

Three days later, I was picking again, and now two birds were hollering, and there were four naked little squirmers in the nest. In another few days there were four feathered squirmers in the nest, and I carefully showed the spot to my fellow farmer, who had come to join me in picking.

“What are they doing?” I whispered. I was worried because it had just been sprinkling. “What do chicks do when it’s raining?”

“They’re all tucked in,” my fellow said. “They’re taking a little nap. And the leaves are covering them. I can hardly see them.”

“Oh, good,” I said, but then on the next picking day I was even more worried, because I couldn’t see them at all: the nest was empty. The parents were still hollering around, carrying choice bits of chick-food, but there were no birdies in the nest. 

I went and worried to my fellow, about how maybe I should have put a little fence around the chicks. Maybe an overeager CSA member picking raspberries had accidentally dumped them out of the nest, too early. 

“No, no,” said my fellow, “If the parents are still feeding them, the chicks are around somewhere.”

So I did a little chipping sparrow research, and it seems like the chicks were right on schedule, with the parents carrying around snacks for the hidden fledglings. I was pretty pleased about that, and I was also pretty pleased that the raspberries had about finished. July was over, and it was time to fly like a bird, or run like a woodchuck, or at least gimp like a farmer, into August.

Originally published in The Monadnock Shopper News, Aug 24 -- Aug 30, 2022

Box of Buzz

My fellow farmer had a great idea this year for our poor cucurbits, which are always getting chewed on by the zippy little cucumber beetles, and the big hungry squash bugs.

Usually we protect the plants with hoops and floating row cover until they’re big enough to withstand the bug pressure. Once the plants are flowering, we remove the cover, so the pollinators can get busy, feeding themselves, and helping feed us.

This year, we invested in some bug netting, primarily because the row cover is effective but not durable, and we hate ripping it and we hate throwing it away. The new bug netting is more heavy duty, and saves us some work. Instead of covering each bed of plants individually, we attached the netting to the open sides and doors of the greenhouse.

Well, our cuke, zuke, and summer squish plants never looked better: vibrant green, chest high, and completely unbitten. Our bug netting was working great!

Except for one tiny detail. The bug netting keeps out the chompers, but it also keeps out the pollinators. Oh, we knew this, and over the winter, we had talked about getting a hive of bumblebees to release in the greenhouse as pollinators, which is a common practice. But somehow, in the unceasing rush of spring work, this little detail fell straight out of our minds.

But we sure did remember it when our plants produced beautiful flowers, but not much in the way of fruit, most of which was rotting, tiny, or deformed, not exactly ideal characteristics for produce.

My fellow quickly ordered a hive of bumblebees, but, alas, a hive of bumblebees does not arrive overnight. The bumblebee company needs at least a week, and if you miss the Wednesday noon ordering deadline that you didn’t know about by say, two hours, you will need even longer.

Thus our great idea turned into a sweltering hot, miserable period of hand pollinating, made more miserable by our giant plants and tight spacing in the greenhouse. To be truthful, it started out kind of fun – we had never hand pollinated before, and it is a fascinating process. First we identified and snapped off the male flower, and then rubbed the pollen onto a female flower. The flowers are beautiful! We are helping grow great cukes, zukes, and squish!

But wow, is it hot in the greenhouse. And wow, it takes a long time to hand pollinate three hundred-foot rows of squash. (We didn’t even bother with the cukes, as they seemed to be doing all right, perhaps being pollinated by some other nice little bugs.) 

Plus we were supposed to hand pollinate every day, and we couldn’t find the time, so every other day we would tackle the squash, and sweat, and whimper, and long for bumblebees. Oh, how we longed. Either that, or we longed for the days before the great idea of bug netting. 

“We could just take the netting down,” suggested my red-faced fellow, and then looked sad. “But our plants look so beautiful. Maybe the bees will get here soon? Can we wait just a few more days?”

“Uhhh,” I groaned, stooped over a squash flower. But we waited, and finally a cardboard box of buzz arrived, and we opened the box up in the greenhouse. 

In a few minutes a brave bumble emerged. And then another, and another. We cheered the bumbles on, and left them alone to acclimate.

The next morning, I was out early clipping the giant weeds out of the giant squash, and there was nary a bumble or a buzz. Oh, shucks. What had we done wrong? Did the bumbles (the $200 worth of bumbles, I might add) not like the accommodations? Had they all absconded, or died?

Downcast, I kept weeding and listening, and at last, once the sun hit the greenhouse, I heard that sweet buzzing sound. A bumble on the cukes! And then a bumble on the nasturtiums! And finally on the squash! Oh bumbles, we love you!
 

Originally published in The Monadnock Shopper News, July 27 -- Aug 2, 2022

The Farmer, the Urologist, and the Teacher

Twenty some years ago, when we farmers were young and foolish, our farm fantasies mainly revolved around finding a farm of our own. We had apprenticed for five years on several vegetable farms in the Northeast, and we had all kinds of opinions on how we would go about things on our own farm.

Our opinions were quickly humbled, pretty much the moment we stepped onto our new place. Not quite as easy as it looks, this vegetable farming.

Now, as older, humbler, if not less foolish farmers, we find that our farm fantasies are mainly about other people’s farms.

Wouldn’t it be fun, we say, to join someone else’s CSA garden? Imagine being a CSA member, and going once a week to pick up your freshly harvested and washed produce, and not having done a lick of work?

Oh hee, hee, hee. This kind of thinking helps us get through one of our most intense times of year, during the end of May and early June. Not only do we need to transplant every crop that is not yet in the ground, from winter squash to leeks to tomatillos, but the haying weather begins. Though we are not ready yet to hay, we worry steadily about not haying. Plus the weeds are coming on strong, and our lofty goal of having not a single weed in the garden by June 1st seems rather laughable. 

But the biggest effort is the start of CSA vegetable distribution. First there are the hours organizing pick-up schedules, and clearing out the vegetable distribution shed from a winter’s worth of projects. 

Then there is the actual harvest: suddenly it is as if two whole days have disappeared from our week. Instead of transplanting and weeding and worrying about not haying, we are swallowed up in harvesting for our CSA members, from 4:45 a.m. to 2 p.m., followed by warmly welcoming said members, from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m., two days a week.

Oh, those 14 hour days: fourteen hours of transplants languishing in their pots, wanting to be in the ground, and of weeds growing into trees, perfectly happy to stay in the ground, and of hay going to seed. All that work we’re not getting done!

But then there’s the bright side: oh, yes, the first harvests! Oh, right, this is what all this work is for: the delicious produce! Oh, the lettuce, oh, the bok choy, the salad turnips and salad greens, the beets and basil and kohlrabi! The kale! The chard! The peas! The strawberries! 

Wow, we say, we are lucky to have all these delicious strawberries coming so early out of the greenhouse. And wow, we say, the spinach! So very much spinach! In fact, it has been taking three farmers three hours (5 a.m. to 8 a.m., to be precise) to harvest, process, and wash all that spinach, which is a perfect time to indulge in farm fantasies.

Wouldn’t it be fun, we say, to join someone else’s CSA garden? Imagine being a CSA member, and going once a week to pick up your freshly harvested and washed produce, and not having done a lick of work? Doesn’t that sound great?

It must sound pretty good, at least, since when our CSA members come they say wow, too. The spinach! The strawberries! The everything else! 

So much work! they say. 

Then, “I feel kind of guilty!” one even says.

“No, no,” says another member, “The farmers don’t feel guilty about you being a urologist, or me being a teacher.”

“No, I sure don’t,” this farmer answers. I am delighted not to be a urologist; in fact, I am so delighted not to be a urologist that being a CSA farmer on my own farm seems like quite a fine thing. What could be nicer than growing good produce for all the good urologists and teachers of the world?

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, June 29th - July 5th, 2022