storms. brain- and rain-

Saturday.
7am.
Distribution day.
The air was heavy. Humid, but cool-ish. Before the morning ended, though, I must have lost a pound in sweat. Warmed up quickly. We met in the office to check the weather and talk through particulars. I, somehow, drew the lucky card. I got to MOW! Quite the oddity too as all "beautification" is usually taken care of Friday or earlier. However, D wanted a "path" mowed in the grass to the peas in Solar Lower field as we were letting members pick their own if they wanted. No argument from me.
Before I could dig in, though, we had to set up the distribution area in the barn. As E & I set up tables, scales, bags, etc., D usually draws up the master share sign for the day.



It shows the members what their "take" is for that particular week.
For example:

1 Head Bok Choi
2 Heads Broccoli
1 Head Chinese Cabbage
1 Bunch Turnips
1 1/2 lb Spinach
2 Heads Lettuce
5 Garlic Scapes
1/4 lb Snap Peas -or- Pick Your Own! (Sign are posted at the bottom of the beds to demarcate the picking area)

With set-up done (close to it, anyway), I dashed off to the mower and began carving my "paths." Amazingly, after I was done, D gave the green light for me to continue. Nice! Kid in a candy store... For real. I got about an hour in when D pointed me in the direction of the tomato, pepper, and eggplant beds. Cultivation. Muy necessito. With the help of the same 3 volunteers from the day before (Thanks! Again!) we weeded about 10 beds altogether by the end of distribution. All of the plants (and weeds too) have been thriving in this tropical weather. Quite a few peppers in view... Can't wait.

With distribution finished and everything cleaned and packed up, E motored me to the train station. My bi-monthly trip to the city. Whirlwind, but definitely needed.
A great time as always. H and I checked out the neighborhood gardens. Seems they're benefitting from the hot, humid weather as well. Sunday evening came quickly and I was back on the train upstate.
Spent my time brainstorming ideas for a pedal-powered (multi-person?) farmall. One whose basic purpose is harvesting, but could have implements added and be used for cultivation, seeding, towing, sidefilling, fertilizing, etc. The biggest obstacle is power. Horsepower, to be exact. With the best cyclists in the world being able to sustain little more than 1 hp for short periods, and, for example, a Farmall Cub sustaining about 14 hp at speed, one can see the limitations pretty readily. What to do? Employ a heavy flywheel/pto combo to up the torque? Design with only one "lightweight" application in mind, i.e. harvesting? Both? I believe any step away from fossil fuel is a positive step, but if the time is going to be taken to develop anything, then the goal(s) should be realistic. I've got some basic things mapped out in my head already. To be mulled over... Will update from time to time.

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Monday

To start the day/week, we made our rounds of the fields to see "what condition our condition was in..."

Pics from the tour-

3 Sisters Field



Beans sprouting (adjacent to the drip tape..)



Basil. Soon to be harvested.



Before(left) and after(right). Carrot seedling cultivation. Painstaking...



First picked garlic bulb of the year. Beautiful.
Looking to harvest around July 4th.



Potatoes in Z



Leafhoppers on potatoes (sorry, bad pic). Important though. D is rather skittish about these guys, and rightfully so, as an infestation could decimate the potato crop in no time. What to do? Hold on mowing down the rye/vetch area beside the potato field until the entire field can be reemayed. The leafhoppers have (more than likely) set up shop there and, if forced to move, will "hop" over to the potatoes.



Hay that was delivered on Friday.



Kohlrabi



Kale.



Rather than explain the consequent project list, here it is (well, most of it):



As you can see under "Cultivation," it was finally time to flame weed. And flame weed we did. Pretty easy. Aim a propane-fueled flame at a row as you walk the length of it. Singe weeds. Fun stuff.





From there it was straight to W1 to harvest Chinese Cabbage and Lettuce. The cabbage was ginormous.. and so was the lettuce. Crazy big.
While E & I harvested, D brought out the rototiller to turn used beds back under.
How wonderfully strange to witness/experience. The entire cycle in just 60 days.



From there we harvested the remaining garlic scapes and the next round of mature summer squash. Speaking of which... update:



Lunch was a luxurious 45 minutes.

As we opted out of the day's CRAFT visit (2+ hours away?? not so much), we set to work harvesting Bok Choi from W2. This Bok Choi was not as nice, in my opinion, as what we harvested the week before. Still, tasty as all get out.

The last part of the day saw E focus on weeding the aspargus bed while I removed a downed tree that fell on the fence around W and replaced my fiberglas fence support booboo of last week.



Evening came on, muggy and calling for severe thunderstorms. I dig me some storms, so I was excited when the rain really started to fall and the lightning and thunder punctuated it all. However, I was on the phone with H when a call from D came through. A tornado. Yep. One of those. 5 miles away in the next town. Coming this way. I thanked him, confirmed it online, hung up the phone and ran to tell E. We made our way to the basement underneath the office (brick building)... and listened.... It was all I could do to stand still. I was excited and a little frightened. I've always wanted to see/experience a tornado, but would rather it from a bit of a distance. I called H after about 20 minutes of waiting (and hearing nothing) and asked for her to go online to see if the threat had passed. Seems that it had. Good news all around. We were fine and so was the farm (all except two not-so-fortunate beds of spinach that got torn by hail. booo.). Yay!

Later in the evening I made (for the first time ever) Kimchi. Four jars of it.





I'll let you know in 2 days how it turns out.

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Today

3 words: Spinach, Broccoli, Distribution

Sooo straight forward.

We harvested the beat-up spinach first. 83 lbs of it.
And then, with the help of our friend, Johanna, we leveled almost 2 whole beds of Broccoli. 460 heads in all. The harvest process for broccoli is definitely enjoyable. Thwacking the stalks with a big knife and furiously pulling leaves from below the head only to chuck it underhand (or overhand) to a designated catcher who places it in waiting bins. Quite fun.

Before



During



Sneaking a bite



Post...



We took all of our goodies back to the barn where shares for remote distribution were put together. Would you like to see what today's share looked like?



Yeah. Pretty nice.

Today's pick up was relaxing. Everything flowed pretty smoothly. We even managed to get our 17 tee-shirt design entries hung up on a huge canvas just as distribution began. Members got to vote on their favorite design. The winning design will be used on the official 10th season shirts. Community. Definitely.

So, I think this could very well be my longest post yet.

I truly have nothing else to add at this point. Well, two things.
Thank you, as always, for reading this blog... and...

dig