Organic Farming Reflections: Week 2.

Week One Reflections

Well you remember all of that talk about it all probably being a bit over-romanticized in my mind . . . well this week kicked my butt. My loins (which I didn’t know I had) ache. My back is tweaked. And I’m still trying to get the dirt out from under my fingernails.

As a tease to keep reading the rest of this . . . I’m a beet farmer like Dwight Schrute . . . scroll to the bottom if you just want to hear this story.
When I got there, Lynn had me help her cut up some old potatoes from last year. She planted 200 lbs the day before and I was going to help her plant the remaining potatoes (maybe a third to a half of that). Apparently, you cut up old potatoes and bury them to grow new ones. This probably seems like common sense to most of you, but to me it was revelatory. So we cut up the potatoes, being sure to leave an “eye” on each piece. This was the easy part. We then went to the back pasture and planted 3 100 foot rows. And each row had 2 furrows on it. So technically 600 feet of potatoes. Now that doesn’t sound like much. But when you consider it’s 2 football fields it gains a little more perspective. And when you consider you don’t just throw the potato on the ground and kick some dirt on it, you realize that it’s a good sized job.

You basically have to take a hoe with a longer end on it and run a deep line through the soil. Essentially creating a little ditch or canyon within the larger row. This sounded so easy and it even looked easy as I grabbed the hoe from Lynn’s hands. But after a few feet, I realized how freaking hard it was. After digging the first of 6 furrows, even with gloves on, I already had a blister on my left hand. Was dripping sweat despite it being 65 and was covered in dirt. I then dug the remaining 6 furrows. Dug a hole every 10-12 inches for a potato and buried it. Oh by the way, you bury it cut-side down. Then I had to go back with the hoe and cover every hole.

Then I got the meticulous job of clearing away weeds that had grown around the 3 rows of green onion. I quickly realized just exactly how hard it is to farm “organically”. On an industrial farm, you could just carpet bomb the row with pesticides and weed killers. Here I had to delicately scrape the weeds off the top of the soil that were surrounding every onion. Sounds easy, but you have to be careful or you chop off the top of the onion. The hoe was sharpened to a point and could have sliced down a tree had I gotten ambitious. So I couldn’t just hack away at it. I had to be slow and delicate.

I also realized just how much I loathe slow, meticulous work. If I have to be slow, discerning, and delicate I’m probably not having fun. At that time, I would have given anything to be hacking away at the dirt for the potatoes again. I think this says something about me and perhaps the larger culture in that we prefer doing things that we can see tangible results quickly. We like the sheer brute force of doing work sometimes. As opposed to the slow, steady process that seems trivial. Sorry to get pyscho-analytical but that’s what I was thinking about while I made my way down the rows.

We then moved into the beet farming section of the day. We planted 3 different types of beets: yellow, green, and purple. This was a pretty delicate process as we were transplanting them from trays into the ground. The day was overcast and it was supposed to rain during the night which is apparently the best time to transplant things for future reference. So we laid down some beets and then moved over to the cabbage. This went a little faster but not by much. We put down two rows of cabbage. They had made a little homemade contraption to dig the holes in the ground at the perfect interval and in a line that I’ll try to remember to take a picture of. It was basically a small barrel with some PVC piping that we got to pull/drag across the rows. Oh yeah . . . the tractor broke 2 days before so we to till all of these rows with a big rake. Which made for more back pain and tedious work.

All in all, it was a nice day with great weather. My back still feels like a little ninja drop kicked me. And the back of my legs ache from all the squatting and bending over. And for 3 foods that I can’t stand in cabbage, potatoes, and beets. So I’m not sure how much I’ll enjoy the “spoils” of my labor. But it did feel good to sweat and do labor and to be away from the stress of clients and computers. There is something quite freeing about breathing in fresh air with sweat dripping. It makes you feel human.

Here’s the map of my scooter ride out there. And the one below it is in front of the sheep pen where I park it.

Listening: Why Should The Fire Die by Nickel Creek