I definitely intend to write more about this experience. But the short story is - I did it! I pushed through some big blocks and did things that I didn't know I was capable of doing. It was very intense and I am very grateful.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Well...I did it!
Here's a picture of Jim and me taking a break from our work (Did what? You ask. Background is here - see "in other news".):
I definitely intend to write more about this experience. But the short story is - I did it! I pushed through some big blocks and did things that I didn't know I was capable of doing. It was very intense and I am very grateful.
I definitely intend to write more about this experience. But the short story is - I did it! I pushed through some big blocks and did things that I didn't know I was capable of doing. It was very intense and I am very grateful.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Tomorrow is the day!
I'm feeling quite a wide range of emotions, but primarily, oddly, excitement!
This feels like a really important step for me both personally and professionally and I'm honored that I get to be part of this "behind the scenes" farm experience.
I spoke with the farm manager today and he confirmed that Jim, a very nice community college teacher who I talked with for quite a while at last week's Solstice potluck, will be joining us. He, like myself, is a conflicted omnivore and he said he was inspired by his conversation with me (yay!) to come learn more about the food he is eating.
There are also several young farmhands (high school and college age) who will be part of the team -- though not for the first time like Jim and I.
I'm feeling a greater sense of peace knowing that this will be a multi-generational community experience!
This feels like a really important step for me both personally and professionally and I'm honored that I get to be part of this "behind the scenes" farm experience.
I spoke with the farm manager today and he confirmed that Jim, a very nice community college teacher who I talked with for quite a while at last week's Solstice potluck, will be joining us. He, like myself, is a conflicted omnivore and he said he was inspired by his conversation with me (yay!) to come learn more about the food he is eating.
There are also several young farmhands (high school and college age) who will be part of the team -- though not for the first time like Jim and I.
I'm feeling a greater sense of peace knowing that this will be a multi-generational community experience!
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
CSA - week two
Things were a little sparse at our CSA pick-up yesterday.
We got there towards the end of pick-up (which runs from 1-7 p.m.) and a few things (like broccoli rabe) had been cleaned out and there were (very) few peas to be found in the PYO field.
In the barn:
Green garlic
Beets
Spinach
Garlic scapes (I skipped them because I'm still not sure what to do with them and the green garlic seemed like enough garlic for one week)
Sunflower sprouts
Lettuce
In the fields, PYO:
Strawberries
Peas (though we didn't manage to find any)
No complaints though. We had a wonderful time picking TWO pints of strawberries (and probably eating close to that while we picked).
Yesterday morning I cleared out the fridge from last week's CSA left-overs (not that everything was "bad" but just because I'm wanting to stay ahead of the produce this summer). There was a bit more than I'd like to be in there at the end of the week, but the good thing about having chickens is that nothing really goes to waste. The chickens (and rooster, who is still here, but we hope, moving on to a new home soon) happily feasted on sunflower sprouts, spinach, chard, and lettuce, which we will absorb the benefits of via their eggs!
This morning we made pancakes with fresh strawberries - delicious!
In other news...
I have two "dates" set up in the coming weeks. During the first I will be helping to "process" chickens at our CSA farm and for the second I will be riding along with my friend Don, from whom we buy our grass-fed beef, when he brings three steer for "processing."
I sought out both of these experiences and crazy as it might sound, I am really looking forward to them.
But I am also find myself taking lots of deep breaths every time I think about it.
I was a vegetarian for over 17 years -- from sophomore year in high school until I was pregnant with our second child, while still nursing our first, and my body SCREAMED for red meat.
I tried to offer high-quality vegetable proteins and upped my intake of fresh eggs from our hens (as I had done during my first pregnancy) but the messages from my body were loud and clear -- it had to be red meat!
I tracked down a local source for grass-fed beef and we have been eating, and thoroughly enjoying, it ever since. (And incidentally learned that I was one of many former vegetarians who were now loyal grass-fed customers.)
I feel very much in alignment with eating (local compassionately raised) meat (more so in the winter or when I have extra demands on my body from pregnancy/nursing) but I am still not fully in alignment with the "process" by which a living animal becomes my food.
And so I've decided to lean into that discomfort and learn more about this process (I'm trying to type "slaughter" but my hands don't even want to type it).
I know, from talking extensively with local farmers every chance I get, that there are many gentle, peaceful, spiritual, loving people who raise animals for meat. I know some of them are former vegetarians themselves and so I want to talk to them more and learn from them and see if I can find peace around this subject.
Wish me luck...
We got there towards the end of pick-up (which runs from 1-7 p.m.) and a few things (like broccoli rabe) had been cleaned out and there were (very) few peas to be found in the PYO field.
In the barn:
Green garlic
Beets
Spinach
Garlic scapes (I skipped them because I'm still not sure what to do with them and the green garlic seemed like enough garlic for one week)
Sunflower sprouts
Lettuce
In the fields, PYO:
Strawberries
Peas (though we didn't manage to find any)
No complaints though. We had a wonderful time picking TWO pints of strawberries (and probably eating close to that while we picked).
Yesterday morning I cleared out the fridge from last week's CSA left-overs (not that everything was "bad" but just because I'm wanting to stay ahead of the produce this summer). There was a bit more than I'd like to be in there at the end of the week, but the good thing about having chickens is that nothing really goes to waste. The chickens (and rooster, who is still here, but we hope, moving on to a new home soon) happily feasted on sunflower sprouts, spinach, chard, and lettuce, which we will absorb the benefits of via their eggs!
This morning we made pancakes with fresh strawberries - delicious!
In other news...
I have two "dates" set up in the coming weeks. During the first I will be helping to "process" chickens at our CSA farm and for the second I will be riding along with my friend Don, from whom we buy our grass-fed beef, when he brings three steer for "processing."
I sought out both of these experiences and crazy as it might sound, I am really looking forward to them.
But I am also find myself taking lots of deep breaths every time I think about it.
I was a vegetarian for over 17 years -- from sophomore year in high school until I was pregnant with our second child, while still nursing our first, and my body SCREAMED for red meat.
I tried to offer high-quality vegetable proteins and upped my intake of fresh eggs from our hens (as I had done during my first pregnancy) but the messages from my body were loud and clear -- it had to be red meat!
I tracked down a local source for grass-fed beef and we have been eating, and thoroughly enjoying, it ever since. (And incidentally learned that I was one of many former vegetarians who were now loyal grass-fed customers.)
I feel very much in alignment with eating (local compassionately raised) meat (more so in the winter or when I have extra demands on my body from pregnancy/nursing) but I am still not fully in alignment with the "process" by which a living animal becomes my food.
And so I've decided to lean into that discomfort and learn more about this process (I'm trying to type "slaughter" but my hands don't even want to type it).
I know, from talking extensively with local farmers every chance I get, that there are many gentle, peaceful, spiritual, loving people who raise animals for meat. I know some of them are former vegetarians themselves and so I want to talk to them more and learn from them and see if I can find peace around this subject.
Wish me luck...
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Getting to know the "shuffle hoe"
Today was my first day working solo at our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm. My job, along with three other people, is to spend four hours a week weeding the cutting garden.
As I parked my car and walked over to the garden I felt a wave of discomfort realizing that I really don't actually know how to weed a garden. I mean I generally have an idea that involves picking out plants that you don't want to be growing in the garden so that the plants you do want to be growing in the garden have less competition for water and sunlight and nutrients.
But the flower fields are pretty large and the thought of hand-plucking stray grasses and other unwelcome shoots was pretty daunting.
After surveying the fields (and thinking that they really didn't look all that bad) I went over to the adjoining field where the farmer's market was taking shape. I located Pat, the farm manager, and told him I was there to work but not quite sure where to begin.
I actually felt really bad doing that. I really didn't want to bother him when he was obviously busy but I really wasn't sure what needed to be done.
But just like Rae, the assistant farm manager who I met two weeks ago, Pat seems to have a very deep well of patience for all the little questions farm-hands, volunteers, market customers, CSA members, field-tripping students and teachers, and visitors to the farm must throw at him every day.
He gave me a friendly welcome and noted that the weeds were already "getting pretty bad" (so much for my assessment). He asked me if I had ever used a "shuffle hoe", which I didn't know because I had no idea what a shuffle hoe was.
Once Megan, the other assistant farm manager, explained that it looks like the stirrup at the end of a long pole, I remembered one of my fellow weeders waxing poetic about the wonders of this hoe.
During a pre-season meeting where we set up a loose schedule of who would be weeding when, she told me that she loved this tool so much that last year she asked for one for Mother's Day.
So now that I knew what tool I was to use, I set off to find one in the tool barn, and returned to the market tent for a very quick tutorial.
Megan, who I was meeting for the first time, showed me the basic motion, which looks something like sweeping with a big push broom (the big institutional size ones).
Once I got back to the field and gave it a go, I learned that the shuffle hoe (which a later Google search told me is sometimes called a scuttle hoe, a scuffle hoe or a double edged action hoe) is a LOT of fun to use!
As I read on numerous blogs and gardening forums, the shuffle hoe really does glide through the dirt and as you move it back and forth the double edge blades chop the weeds at the roots.
Because the weeds were still pretty small, I was able to mostly just pull and occasionally push a little, which made it even easier, and I'm really not kidding, lots of fun!
Here's a before/after picture of the second field. The left side of the picture is before and the right side of the picture is after a once-over with the shuffle hoe.
As I parked my car and walked over to the garden I felt a wave of discomfort realizing that I really don't actually know how to weed a garden. I mean I generally have an idea that involves picking out plants that you don't want to be growing in the garden so that the plants you do want to be growing in the garden have less competition for water and sunlight and nutrients.
But the flower fields are pretty large and the thought of hand-plucking stray grasses and other unwelcome shoots was pretty daunting.
After surveying the fields (and thinking that they really didn't look all that bad) I went over to the adjoining field where the farmer's market was taking shape. I located Pat, the farm manager, and told him I was there to work but not quite sure where to begin.
I actually felt really bad doing that. I really didn't want to bother him when he was obviously busy but I really wasn't sure what needed to be done.
But just like Rae, the assistant farm manager who I met two weeks ago, Pat seems to have a very deep well of patience for all the little questions farm-hands, volunteers, market customers, CSA members, field-tripping students and teachers, and visitors to the farm must throw at him every day.
He gave me a friendly welcome and noted that the weeds were already "getting pretty bad" (so much for my assessment). He asked me if I had ever used a "shuffle hoe", which I didn't know because I had no idea what a shuffle hoe was.
Once Megan, the other assistant farm manager, explained that it looks like the stirrup at the end of a long pole, I remembered one of my fellow weeders waxing poetic about the wonders of this hoe.
During a pre-season meeting where we set up a loose schedule of who would be weeding when, she told me that she loved this tool so much that last year she asked for one for Mother's Day.
So now that I knew what tool I was to use, I set off to find one in the tool barn, and returned to the market tent for a very quick tutorial.
Megan, who I was meeting for the first time, showed me the basic motion, which looks something like sweeping with a big push broom (the big institutional size ones).
Once I got back to the field and gave it a go, I learned that the shuffle hoe (which a later Google search told me is sometimes called a scuttle hoe, a scuffle hoe or a double edged action hoe) is a LOT of fun to use!
As I read on numerous blogs and gardening forums, the shuffle hoe really does glide through the dirt and as you move it back and forth the double edge blades chop the weeds at the roots.
Because the weeds were still pretty small, I was able to mostly just pull and occasionally push a little, which made it even easier, and I'm really not kidding, lots of fun!
Here's a before/after picture of the second field. The left side of the picture is before and the right side of the picture is after a once-over with the shuffle hoe.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
CSA Week One
Today was the first pick-up at our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Farm.
It was HOT (mid-90's) today so we waited until the very end of the day to go.
While we waited for the heat to break we...
Planted flower seeds in little pop-up peat pots that John found while cleaning the basement.
And painted little buckets to use while picking strawberries.
I would just like to say, for the record, that I do not like painting with my kids. It gives me great anxiety because I know that at some point I'm going to leave the room for two minutes and come back to find this...
Actually, truth be told, I encouraged them to do that (but painting with a toddler and preschooler really does cause me stress and I try to avoid it as much as I can)!
I'm getting ready to paint that wall, which according to my many Feng Shui books, is our "angels, travel, and helpful people" corner and should be painted grey or silver. I went with "organic garden" in the new Fresh Aire Choice collection, which has no Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) and according to the nice man at Home Depot who put the pigment in and shook it up for me, it's "just like the other kind of paint but you can really enjoy it because there are no fumes. Your kids can even help you paint!"
I'm not sure how I feel about the kids helping me with any paint, but I'm glad to have an option that feels better for our family and better for our world!
And discovered that the "baby chicks" who are now about 10 weeks old (I think?) are bored with their little hog panel pen and had flown the coop! Guess it's time to come up with the next step of the plan for "Project Spring Peepers." (Below they are pictured later in the day roosting on the hog panel.)
______________________________________________
At the Farm
In the barn there were...
Sunflower sprouts
Green garlic
Mixed greens (we took spinach, chard and lettuce mix)
For Pick Your Own (PYO) it was...
Strawberries (Yum! Yum! Yum!)
We also got to choose three plants from several seedlings outside of the barn (we picked three different types of sunflowers).
________________________________________________
Back home
It's still hot here so it's hard to think about really anything, but especially cooking -- but it's the first week and I don't want to be wasting produce this early in the season!
This is our fourth summer in the CSA and I remember the first year (the summer Lily was born) feeling like I should just quit because I wasted SO much produce. One of our friends assured us that their first year was the same and that each year it gets easier and easier. Someone also recommended the cookbook From Asparagus to Zucchini, which has really been a HUGE help.
Each week when I pick up our veggies, I sit down with the book, which is organized alphabetically and includes nutritional information about the vegetable, how to serve it raw, how to preserve it and recipes that often pair the vegetable with another that is also in season.
For dinner tonight (we got home late so it was kind of a free-for-all) the kids had "yolky eggs" (over-easy) on toast. I'm not sure what John ate, or if he's even eaten at all.
For myself I made...
A whole wheat wrap filled with:
Scrambled eggs
Cheddar cheese
Sunflower sprouts
Chopped chard
And mashed avocado
It was really delicious. I'm looking forward to making another one tomorrow!
Speaking of things to make for tomorrow, the kids have requested a "breakfast ice-cream" (after I recently said no to chocolate ice-cream at 9:30 in the morning).
We buy fresh, raw cream at a nearby farm, and make the ice-cream ourselves, so I'm pretty convinced that we can come up with something that is both delicious and healthy enough to be served on top of our oatmeal.
I'm not quite sure what it is going to be but I'm thinking it will include cream, milk, maple syrup, egg yolks and some fresh strawberries.
And now back to tackling kitchen clean-up so I can get all this wonderful food we just brought home organized, rinsed, chopped and ready to eat!
It was HOT (mid-90's) today so we waited until the very end of the day to go.
While we waited for the heat to break we...
Planted flower seeds in little pop-up peat pots that John found while cleaning the basement.
And painted little buckets to use while picking strawberries.
I would just like to say, for the record, that I do not like painting with my kids. It gives me great anxiety because I know that at some point I'm going to leave the room for two minutes and come back to find this...
Actually, truth be told, I encouraged them to do that (but painting with a toddler and preschooler really does cause me stress and I try to avoid it as much as I can)!
I'm getting ready to paint that wall, which according to my many Feng Shui books, is our "angels, travel, and helpful people" corner and should be painted grey or silver. I went with "organic garden" in the new Fresh Aire Choice collection, which has no Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) and according to the nice man at Home Depot who put the pigment in and shook it up for me, it's "just like the other kind of paint but you can really enjoy it because there are no fumes. Your kids can even help you paint!"
I'm not sure how I feel about the kids helping me with any paint, but I'm glad to have an option that feels better for our family and better for our world!
And discovered that the "baby chicks" who are now about 10 weeks old (I think?) are bored with their little hog panel pen and had flown the coop! Guess it's time to come up with the next step of the plan for "Project Spring Peepers." (Below they are pictured later in the day roosting on the hog panel.)
______________________________________________
At the Farm
In the barn there were...
Sunflower sprouts
Green garlic
Mixed greens (we took spinach, chard and lettuce mix)
For Pick Your Own (PYO) it was...
Strawberries (Yum! Yum! Yum!)
We also got to choose three plants from several seedlings outside of the barn (we picked three different types of sunflowers).
________________________________________________
Back home
It's still hot here so it's hard to think about really anything, but especially cooking -- but it's the first week and I don't want to be wasting produce this early in the season!
This is our fourth summer in the CSA and I remember the first year (the summer Lily was born) feeling like I should just quit because I wasted SO much produce. One of our friends assured us that their first year was the same and that each year it gets easier and easier. Someone also recommended the cookbook From Asparagus to Zucchini, which has really been a HUGE help.
Each week when I pick up our veggies, I sit down with the book, which is organized alphabetically and includes nutritional information about the vegetable, how to serve it raw, how to preserve it and recipes that often pair the vegetable with another that is also in season.
For dinner tonight (we got home late so it was kind of a free-for-all) the kids had "yolky eggs" (over-easy) on toast. I'm not sure what John ate, or if he's even eaten at all.
For myself I made...
A whole wheat wrap filled with:
Scrambled eggs
Cheddar cheese
Sunflower sprouts
Chopped chard
And mashed avocado
It was really delicious. I'm looking forward to making another one tomorrow!
Speaking of things to make for tomorrow, the kids have requested a "breakfast ice-cream" (after I recently said no to chocolate ice-cream at 9:30 in the morning).
We buy fresh, raw cream at a nearby farm, and make the ice-cream ourselves, so I'm pretty convinced that we can come up with something that is both delicious and healthy enough to be served on top of our oatmeal.
I'm not quite sure what it is going to be but I'm thinking it will include cream, milk, maple syrup, egg yolks and some fresh strawberries.
And now back to tackling kitchen clean-up so I can get all this wonderful food we just brought home organized, rinsed, chopped and ready to eat!
Friday, June 6, 2008
We have a garden!!
It's been raining all week -- or at least enough that it feels like it's been raining all week and enough that I don't think I made it down to the garden more than once.
Wow! This afternoon when I got out there for a few minutes, I was delighted to find not just sprouts, but beautiful, deep-green, thriving seedlings growing in our garden -- the garden that I planted!!
I was so excited that I did a little dance of joy!
I very much intended to have a beautiful garden this year, but when I planted all the various seeds, I really wasn't convinced that it could actually happen.
I mean I know that's how it's supposed to work...
seeds + soil + water + sun = plants
...but I just didn't really believe that it was ever going to happen on my watch.
I have tried so many times over the years to grow various things from seed and so many times never made it past the sprout stage.
But today, in our garden, I saw healthy sunflower and morning glory seedlings, and lots of green onion shoots, and potato seedlings, tomato plants (though they are looking a little sad after weeks of neglect followed by transplant), wax been sprouts, and many white strawberries where blossoms were just a couple of weeks ago.
And speaking of blossoms...I had no idea that blackberries have beautiful blossoms and that they are in bloom right now.
I mean, yes, once again, I knew the natural progression from bud to berry but I have never seen blackberry blossoms before and had no idea that they are so beautiful!
It was really a treat to be in the garden alone today to soak up all that is happening.
I am very much creating our garden with our children in mind and I love sharing my love of gardening with them. But it is also SO nice to get into the garden without them once or twice a week.
John was home from work today to attend Lily's birthday party at school. It was so wonderful to have him with us. To know that he was inside while Quinn was napping and Lily was relaxing with her favorite shows, and that I could take my time and savor the silence and beauty of the garden.
It was in that silent space that I was hit with another wave of creative energy and ran up to the house to get pumpkin seeds to plant.
I'm not sure that the soil was properly prepared or that my "hills" were actually hills, but I feel very confident that at least a few pumpkin plants will sprout and grow and thrive and provide us wonderful fruit to savor at the end of the growing season!
I also thought of a fun art project to do with Lily - drawing pictures to label the various rows of seeds that we have planted, which we worked on later this afternoon.
She drew pictures and the first letter of the plant on index cards (R = Raspberries, pictured below), which we taped to wooden garden stakes that I had picked up at Agway a couple of weeks ago. Then we slid a plastic zip lock bag over the top of them to protect them from the rain.
When we finished that I made a quick sketch of the garden so Lily and John could match the correct pictures up with the correct rows and then John and Lil headed out to the garden!
I think Lily enjoyed her time in the garden this afternoon just as much as I did.
Wow! This afternoon when I got out there for a few minutes, I was delighted to find not just sprouts, but beautiful, deep-green, thriving seedlings growing in our garden -- the garden that I planted!!
I was so excited that I did a little dance of joy!
I very much intended to have a beautiful garden this year, but when I planted all the various seeds, I really wasn't convinced that it could actually happen.
I mean I know that's how it's supposed to work...
seeds + soil + water + sun = plants
...but I just didn't really believe that it was ever going to happen on my watch.
I have tried so many times over the years to grow various things from seed and so many times never made it past the sprout stage.
But today, in our garden, I saw healthy sunflower and morning glory seedlings, and lots of green onion shoots, and potato seedlings, tomato plants (though they are looking a little sad after weeks of neglect followed by transplant), wax been sprouts, and many white strawberries where blossoms were just a couple of weeks ago.
And speaking of blossoms...I had no idea that blackberries have beautiful blossoms and that they are in bloom right now.
I mean, yes, once again, I knew the natural progression from bud to berry but I have never seen blackberry blossoms before and had no idea that they are so beautiful!
It was really a treat to be in the garden alone today to soak up all that is happening.
I am very much creating our garden with our children in mind and I love sharing my love of gardening with them. But it is also SO nice to get into the garden without them once or twice a week.
John was home from work today to attend Lily's birthday party at school. It was so wonderful to have him with us. To know that he was inside while Quinn was napping and Lily was relaxing with her favorite shows, and that I could take my time and savor the silence and beauty of the garden.
It was in that silent space that I was hit with another wave of creative energy and ran up to the house to get pumpkin seeds to plant.
I'm not sure that the soil was properly prepared or that my "hills" were actually hills, but I feel very confident that at least a few pumpkin plants will sprout and grow and thrive and provide us wonderful fruit to savor at the end of the growing season!
I also thought of a fun art project to do with Lily - drawing pictures to label the various rows of seeds that we have planted, which we worked on later this afternoon.
She drew pictures and the first letter of the plant on index cards (R = Raspberries, pictured below), which we taped to wooden garden stakes that I had picked up at Agway a couple of weeks ago. Then we slid a plastic zip lock bag over the top of them to protect them from the rain.
When we finished that I made a quick sketch of the garden so Lily and John could match the correct pictures up with the correct rows and then John and Lil headed out to the garden!
I think Lily enjoyed her time in the garden this afternoon just as much as I did.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
The thing about roosters...
...is that they crow VERY early in the morning.I knew this before we got our rooster, Pretty...Susie...Roosty, last fall. And yet somehow I didn't quite get it.
It was not that big of a deal over the winter when all windows were tightly sealed and it was dark 'til 8 a.m.
But now, as we are entering "open window season" and dawn is somewhere around 4:30, we are seriously reconsidering our rooster acquisition.
I recently sent an e-mail to my adjoining neighbors to see how they feel about it and was surprised to learn they either a) sleep right through his crowing or b) like it.
I'm relieved to know the neighbor's were not secretly hating us (as we feared they might be) for disturbing their peace, but I guess I'm realizing that I'm not sure how much *I* like being awoken by his early morning crowing.
To be continued...
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Planting a community garden
Today was my second work day at our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm, where I have a working share (four hours of work per week in exchange for a single share of vegetables).The job at hand was planting flower seedlings in the beds that will become the cutting garden for our CSA, and in which I will work to help keep the weeds at bay throughout the growing season.
There were about a dozen people (and one farm dog) there to help with the process of popping seedlings out of trays, dropping them a foot a part and tucking them into the freshly-tilled soil.
Rae, the assistant farm manager laid the seedlings out at the top of each row before we got there. She also ran a seeder up and down the beds to create nice tracks in the soil for us to plant in.
It was a lot of fun to work with so many people, most of whom I had never met but happily chatted with as we planted.
Things got a little dicey when thunderstorms and driving rain barrelled through an hour into our planting.
I was not at all dressed for rain (nor was anyone else) and I expected us to all retreat into the barn or at least huddle under one of the tents set up for the Farmer's Market that happens every Saturday morning.
But everyone kept working. And I certainly didn't want to be the only wimp who left, so I kept working too.
It was cold and wet but actually still really fun. We started working faster. My digging partner decided to forgo his spade and dig with his hands and even in the driving rain we found a nice rhythm -- he would pull back the soil, I would drop the plant, and he would pat the soil down around the plant.
Everyone was so enthusiastic and happy to work. When we finished one row, we just made our way (carefully...in the tractor tire tracks -- not the planting rows, as we all had to be reminded a few times!) back to the top of the field and started another row.
Some people preferred planting. Others preferred dropping. Others liked to alternate so as not to stress one body part too much.
Occasionally we got a little over-zealous and simultaneously planted more rows than we had plants to fill.
Rae rolled with these little snafus very smoothly. Sometimes she asked us to pull the plants out and move them but mostly she just shrugged her shoulders and said, "Oh well. It's the cutting garden. It's fine."
In the end, after about two and half hours of planting, and several downpours, the gardens were full!
I'm so excited that I got to be part of the beginning of these gardens, which I know from past years will be absolutely splendid in the coming weeks!
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