Another Beautiful Day on the Farm

It was a quiet day on the farm today. Kji looked at the same weather forecast as I did and decided his luck might be better tomorrow. I forgot my ear buds so no pod casts or music. For some reason it seemed like there wasn't much traffic either.

I figured the forecast seemed like less rain this morning and if it did rain I had some greenhouse seeding to do so I could duck out of the rain. I was worried that if I put off working until tomorrow that it would rain tonight and soak the ground. In the end it drizzled a bit in the morning and misted slightly in the afternoon. The morning's drizzle wasn't even enough to soak in below the surface and I was able to cultivate all of the beds with the hoe with no sticky soil. In the afternoon I was so sick of the steamy rain gear that I ignored it when it started misting and I didn't even get wet. I got more wet from having to run irrigation than from anything else. It's always a bit crazy to think that even though it's "raining" that there's basically so little moisture coming from the sky that I still need to put down more water (the soil was actually dry just beneath the surface). As long as the plants are going to get wet, they might actually get watered.

The title of the post might sound a little ironic, and I guess it might be in some ways. This morning at 6 AM, it was so quiet and I really was thinking about how beautiful it is to be in an open field, surrounded by the sky and distant trees and all kinds of wildlife, and my work is to walk around with a hoe, cultivating between rows. There aren't a lot of financial rewards in this business, but there sure are a lot of other benefits.

There are a lot of stresses too. As I was walking around I couldn't help but notice the incredible number of slugs. I usually kill 10-20 a day. Today, more like 100, and there were lots I just ignored. The photo above is a gang of slugs that have been working their way down a line of lettuce. At the top of the photo you'll notice that they've completely stripped a few plants which would have been about as big as the one at the bottom of the frame if the slugs hadn't gotten them first. I'm hoping I got enough of them to halt their progress or we're going to have a little lettuce shortage in about four to five weeks.

On a more positive notes: the cucumbers and celeriac are now planted, and I picked up the Bullitt cargo bike from Splendid Cycles yesterday so this Thursday I'll be back in the bike delivery business!