Wednesday

My time at the farm is at least a quarter of the way over and yet I've never written about what I've actually been DOING here. Without daily (sometimes even weekly) internet use, it's been hard to keep up. When I do get to it, there always seems to be a time crunch; right now, I'm squeezing it in before heading to work in twenty minutes. Ah, well. 

Now that it's getting towards summertime (which supposedly doesn't really start until July!), things have been picking up on both farms- plants need to get into the ground, there's more to harvest, and the weeds are growing more quickly. Last week when I worked with Betsey, we planted a few more rows of brassicas- broccoli, cabbage, and romanesco. We laid down irrigation in the potatoes that we planted a few weeks ago (not by seed or transplants, but by 'seed potatoes'... basically just old potatoes that are starting to sprout). Shoot thinning in the vineyard has been another priority, which is pretty fun to do once you feel confident that you (mostly) know what you're doing. Usually we work Tuesday-Saturday because we have the farmer's market on Saturday, but I put in an extra half day of work on Sunday for Betsey: hoed in the onions and brassicas, shoveled manure, and pulled grass and shoot pruned in the vineyard. I ended up working on Monday for Brian, too, in exchange to take Tuesday off to drive to Sequim for some one-on-one time with John Erskine (draft horse/people trainer extraordinaire). 

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, work with Brian always entails at least half a day of harvesting and prepping produce for his CSA, usually followed by planting or fiddling with irrigation, plastic, or greenhouses. Prep is my least favorite task, so I enjoy working Mondays instead- one Monday, we mostly just cleaned eggs and weeded. This one past, we planted zucchini for almost the entire day, followed by peas. 

Ah, shit- time to go to work. So let me take this last second to say that I got to drive a team of horses for the first time yesterday and it was totally rad!! (Up to now, had only driven singles)

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