9-5-10

DON'T MAKE ME CUT THIS SQUASH!!

PATTY PAN

DRIVIN' ALONG IN MY AUTOMOBILE

MEL PICKING HERBS

MEL'S HOUSE

Sunday is a work day here because Monday is a market day. It's strange, even when we've worked on weekends at other farms, usually we'd work Saturday and have Sunday off. Here, it's the opposite. To get ready for Monday's market, we have to harvest everything on Sunday. It feels nice and Jewish not to work on Saturday.

Today we harvested: peppers, eggplants. squash, zucchini, lettuce mix, broccoli, greenhouse tomatoes, spinach, and green beans. These will all go to market tomorrow, in addition to the beets, carrots, leeks, onions and potatoes we harvested the other day. When we first arrived at Juniper Hill, the produce growing all over these 15 acres was overwhelming and we had to walk around for a while just to find what we needed to harvest. But at this point, doing all that harvesting has become routine. We know where everything is, we know how much we need to harvest, we know just the right way to do it, and we know what to do with it once we've harvested it. For so long on this trip we did every chore possible besides harvesting. Due to the inclement weather we found nearly everywhere we stayed, we rarely harvested anything. Now, all we do is harvest. And it's great!

Being the patient, good teacher he is, Adam taught us to ride one of his tractors. After some lessons and seeing how parts worked, we tilled in the summer's finished crop of sweet corn. No matter what happens from here on out, Aaron can always say he drove an old, beat up, rusty Ford tractor wearing dirty overalls with gunk under his fingernails. He sure was a real farmer for at least a half an hour, and nobody can ever take that away from him! And no matter what, Jen can always say she has never once in her first 28 years been taught to drive any sort of stick shift vehicle. Maybe in the next 28 years...