Tuesday, May 3
Dear Maine,
Listen, everybody has been saying we are crazy for moving north from New York, where it's already cold enough, but I've been singing your praises, talking up your incredible sunshine, despite your frosty mornings. Why are you making a liar out of me? When is the sun coming back? It's been so un-sunny that I've only got one photo for this letter. It's your own fault.
So, weather-wise, the last two days have been grey and dreary, in case that hasn't been obvious. But, on the upside, it hasn't been terribly cool, and that makes for great conditions for planting things outdoors.
Yesterday was a quiet day, since Nate and I didn't like each other yesterday. That happens. It's not easy to have two strong-willed people sharing a 12x15 foot cabin as well as working side by side almost all day long. I'm not sure about Nate, but I desperately need a certain amount of solitude, and I haven't been getting it, which makes me even more difficult to be around. And I'm moody to begin with. Nate gets credit for putting up with me. Although he could be a bit..nicer about it, sometimes.
We started by planting kale and strawberries outside. Strawberry plants aren't what I would have expected. They're tiny little things, with jellyfish-like roots and this tiny crown that must be kept above ground. That activity took up most of the morning, though I helped Rose plant for a little while, too. When the strawberries were finished, Nate went to do something else, and I helped Beth organize the pack house, which basically meant dressing up like a Despicable Me Minion with rubber gloves and rubber apron, and washing the 5-gallon buckets to "clean enough". Apparently Rose is the bucket-washing guru. Based on rumor, I am certain my buckets are not to Rose's standards, but they are "clean enough". Then I stacked the buckets into a giant pyramid.
We took a lunch break, and I took advantage of the opportunity for some alone time by driving to Hannaford. It's about 12 minutes away, which isn't too bad for the nearest grocery store. I just needed to pick up a few things, but most of all I just wanted to get away, and to be warm for a little while. I get excited about car rides because they mean heat, and I get excited about washing my hands in public restrooms (weird, I know), because I get to wash them in warm water. It's nice.
I mostly got stuff to combat the ladybugs (without hurting them). They seem to have holed up in our cabin over the winter, and now they are out by the hundreds. If there is a bug with which to be infested, I suppose ladybugs are probably the best ones, though no infestation at all would really be optimal. I read that they don't like bay leaves or whole cloves, so I set those out, but it doesn't seem to have made much difference. I also heard that orange oil is effective, so I went next door (to the Hannaford) to Rite Aid to get a spray bottle so I could mix up some Young Living orange essential oil with water and spray that around. Actually, as I sit here now, there seem to be fewer of the little buggers.
I got some solitude in the afternoon. I got to pot on two flats of parsley. Potting on means that they were originally planted in little tiny soil blocks so as not to take up much space, particularly since they tend to be picky about germinating. I made up eight trays of two-inch soil blocks that have a little indentation just the size of the blocks the parsley are already in. So, two trays of parsley became eight, and that took up most of my afternoon. I got to be by myself, playing in the mud (because that's what needs to be made so that soil blocks can be constructed. Did you know that mud-making is actually an art?), talking to the plants, and listening to NPR. It was exactly what I needed.
I had about half an hour left, so I spent it fertilizing and weeding the delphiniums and the sage. I tried to get out the dandelions, but some of them were just too deeply enmeshed, so they got to stay.
The smell of fertilizer is hard to get rid of, so a shower was in order. Just dinner - a very silent dinner - and a little Internet research rounded out my evening. (Let's face it; our "evenings" are, like, completely over by about 8:00 p.m. Once daylight wanes, we are pretty much done. Conversely, when the sun awakens, so do we. We are now getting up with first light, which comes a little after 5:00. I really love early mornings, so I don't mind a bit.) I got information about the local yoga studios and created an account... We will see what tomorrow brings, but there needs to be yoga in my life, and doing it here in the cabin by myself isn't working. I need the community and the camaraderie (and the space!). So we will see.
Let's talk about what this kind of work is doing to my body. Don't get me wrong; I'm going to survive. I am very stiff and sore in the mornings. Yes, I am in fantastic physical shape, but wow! These muscles don't seem to get used in these particular ways very often, at least before now. The worst are my hands. Skin-wise, they are sore and tender. They get put into a lot of drying things, like soil, water and Kaolin clay. The beauty of it is that on an organic farm, they are not exposed to any chemicals. So the skin on my hands doesn't feel very good. I'm hoping they'll toughen up. And then muscle-wise... Wow. Do you have any idea how many muscles are in your hands?? My hands are so sore I can barely make a fist (good thing I don't really need to). There again, I'm hoping that with time, they'll get into the routine. My back, of course, is sore from being used in new ways. I'm sure that anyone who's ever done any farming is laughing at me right now, but what can I say? I've grown soft after years of pencil-pushing, desk-driving, trivial, boring, inconsequential minutiae. And I've developed an entirely new respect for farmers and other manual laborers. This is way harder than anything I ever did as a lawyer. Oh, and way more rewarding, in case I haven't mentioned that. Nope, still not looking back.
Wednesday, May 4
Dear Maine,
Apparently a good night's sleep makes Nate and I like each other again. I wish all of life's problems had such a simple fix.
Today was another cloudy day (though the sun did make a five-minute cameo late in the morning), so it was another great day for planting things outdoors. Beth and Dennis had a thing with Jane this morning, so Nate and I were left unattended to plant the lettuce and the beets, if we got done with the lettuce before they got back. It's nice that after only a little over a week, they trust us not to break the farm. We started by planting a lot of lettuce. It really is much nicer to plant things when you and your partner are on speaking terms. One person drops the plants in their new homes, and the other person actually plants them. It's a pretty streamlined process. Then they need to be watered in, which is another two-person process. One person does the actual watering while the other monitors the hose to make sure it doesn't crush any plants. We had hoped to impress Beth and Dennis by getting the beets done, too, in their absence, but, alas, they got back just as we were finishing up the lettuce. That's okay, though, because it was great to have Beth's help with the beets. There were a ton of them, both red and golden. I love beets. In case anyone is not on the beet train, you should be, because beets are amazing for your kidneys, your liver and your heart. Who doesn't love that?!? (Shameless plug: Anyone who finds him- or herself near the Yoga Body Shop in Johnson City, New York, should definitely try the HeartBeet smoothie and the Beet The Blues juice. They are hands down my favorite YBS Juice Lounge creations, though I feel like Ryan will have some new and interesting things for me to try when I go back to visit. In the meantime, BEET THE BLUES and HEARTBEET. Got it?)
We got all those guys watered in, which was pretty arduous, truth be told, then we got the onions set up for transplant in the afternoon. We moved all the flats to the field and got the hose ready. We got to start our lunch break a little early because we are just so darned efficient, and that was greatly appreciated, because planting in the field is a pretty tiring activity. It involves a lot of stretching, bending, crouching, stooping, reaching, kneeling and contorting. I can only imagine how ridiculous we must look. If a completely ignorant anthropologist were to happen upon us in these circumstances, he or she would most certainly conclude that the plants are our rulers and we live to serve them, and that we were probably engaged in some strange sort of worship ceremony. On an organic vegetable farm, I guess that's kind of true. I love the plants. They have such great energy. They're soft and nurturing, and they seem to want to serve us. Maybe I'm weird (though some will certainly not think so one bit...you know who you are), but I think the plants love us. And I love them back.
I did something neat during our lunch break: I took a nap! And I didn't do too bad a job of it. Napping hasn't been my strong point since college, but maybe I can reawaken the skill. Oh. I almost forgot: my yogurt turned out really well. I had some for lunch (by itself, and I also put some into my carrot-ginger soup. Why do I find root vegetables to be so sweet?
I also managed to catch three jarfuls of ladybugs (which really means about seventy-five ladybugs) during lunch. I collected them all up then released them into the hoop house that has the spinach so that they could gobble up some aphids. I keep telling the ladybugs that they'll like it better there, but they still won't willingly enter my jar. Although there seem to be fewer of them in the cabin this evening, so maybe one of my transplanted ladybugs came back and told the others that the hoop house is where it's at.
After lunch, it was onion time. Lauren, Dennis, Nate and I planted six beds, plus a little bit of a seventh bed. That's a lot of onions. Definitely hundreds, and I'm debating whether or not I could call them thousands. I wouldn't be surprised if we planted over two thousand of those little guys. I'm still going to stick with hundreds, though, just for the sake of accuracy. Lauren and Dennis went off to spread compost while Nate and I watered the onions in. Incidentally, watering in looks like this (Nate snuck a photo whilst I was unaware):
We finished that up with about half an hour left to our day, so we spent it cutting trees that had fallen on the electric fence over the winter. Okay, that looked like this: Nate cut up the stuff with his chainsaw, and I stood there and watched.
Then there were chores, and now we are here. I know I need to do yoga; my body is screaming for it (and let's not talk about the mental health benefit I have been lacking in its absence). But I decided to try my first Maine yoga class tomorrow instead of tonight because tonight I'm tired, and tomorrow is our half day of work (which I'm super excited about, by the way; tomorrow is the day the sheep get sheared, and I can't wait. I'm kind of obsessed with the sheep and the goat.), because, well, that concern for looking good isn't the easiest thing to let go of, and I do feel I need to perform at a certain level... Oh, dear. It's always time to do the work.
Nate is presently creating something outside. I don't know what it is, but I know it involves a saw and a screw gun (or drill). And me? My biggest problem is that I cannot for the life of me seem to get a fire started in this wood stove tonight!!! I've tried and failed four times so far (it's really not that cold; I just enjoy it), but I hear things hissing in there, so I think I know the issue. Time to give it another shot if I want to enjoy its warmth and its soothing crackle.
But isn't that life? We just begin again, and again, and again...
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