First Week As A Farmer

Monday Morning Before Work
Notice my shirt?  Farmers Kick Donkey Butt!
Hey, this is a PG blog people!

Monday Evening After Work
Still smiling! And surprisingly still clean!  But not for long!

On this brisk Sunday afternoon, I am writing my second blog post from the farm office.  I went from being joyfully unemployed for twelve days to joyfully working twelve days in a row!  So here I am, my seventh day as an official farmer and I couldn't be happier.  Last night on my way home from work, I stopped at the grocery store and I was wearing my super dirty Carhartt pants and feeling glorious as ever.  I wanted someone to ask me why I was so dirty so that I could throw my arms up in the air exuberantly and exclaim "I am a farmer!" on the top of my lungs!  But no one approached me and asked so I located a near-by target and made a plan.  The man in the bulk section was wearing a U.S. Postal Service uniform.  I would casually fill up a bag of cashews next to him and ask if he liked working for USPS in hopes of him asking me where I work.  But he wouldn't let me get close enough to spark up a conversation so my plan failed.  Maybe he thought I was homeless...Oh well.  That's why I have this blog, to write about how much I love my new career!

Greenhouse work table

My first five days of farming really flew by so much so that I'm pretty sure the saying really is "time flies when you're farming."  Every second of everyday, a farmer is doing something.  Whether it's checking the temperature in the greenhouse, answering e-mails, or planting seeds, every minute counts and must be utilized in a productive manner.  Here is the breakdown of how I spent my first 40 hours as a farmer:      
21.5 hours working in the greenhouse
15.5 hours trellising blackberries
1 hour taking a tour of the farm
1 hour doing office work
1/2 hour collecting soil samples
1/2 hour helping to spread compost


When I would get home from work each evening, Matt was super excited to hear about my day but the truth is, there is only so much description one can go into when explaining "I seeded thousands of onion plants."  The actual task may have taken an entire work day to complete but requires only ten seconds to answer the question "Honey, how was work?"  When farming, a huge chunk of time is usually spent doing the same thing over and over again for hours on end.  To some that may seem tedious and boring, but for me, it can become meditative and soothing.  I enjoy getting into a repetitive rhythm, whether watering the greenhouse or pruning the blackberries, and being able to notice a huge difference when I complete a labor intensive undertaking.  Here are some photo highlights from the week:

Greenhouse work on my first day.  The whole center table is full of onion seedlings!  Notice the white plastic curtain in the background which divides the greenhouse in half.  By Wednesday we had to remove the divide because we needed to utilize the back of the greenhouse!  The farm manager said it used to take him until April to fill the greenhouse and it was barely mid-March and we have two-thirds full already!

This is me trellising blackberries!  There are three levels of wire running horizontal between each wooden post.  The goal is to clip each blackberry vine to the wires either standing them up vertically or running them horizontally along a wire if they are super long.  And also pruning any dead vines.  This job was perfect for me because I love pruning and I also got great satisfaction of turning chaos into order.  Blackberries will taste extra sweet to me this season because of all the fruitful labor I put into this project.  Fruitful labor!  Get it?!  Because blackberries are a fruit and I said fruitful labor.  See what I did there?

Chaotic Vines

If you do not trellis blackberry vines,
they will strangle you!

Orderly vines

Teeny tiny onion seeds

This flat has 200 cells which I have to place one teeny tiny onion seed into each cell.

The middle of the greenhouse has 219 flats of onions.  With 200 cells each, that is 43,800 onion plants!

Baby onions popping through!

OMG!  I broke a nail!  That's it!  I QUIT!

Do not text people pictures of you enjoying a wonderful picnic lunch break outside on a beautiful day.
You will get responses such as "I am working in a basement in a building in NYC.
Now is not the time to be bragging about being outside."  Or "I am sweeping my floors like a slave.  You win." 

Twin lambs nursing while their tails wagged insanely quick!  These ones are about one week old.  We now have seven lambs on the farm.  And they are so cute to watch them, especially when they chase the chickens.