First Weekend at the Farm

Last night was my second night sleeping in the shed! Both nights went pretty well. Due to my heroic efforts (if I do say so myself) the bug population has decreased several fold. We (I) went from hundreds, maybe a thousand, live and dead bugs to about 20 maybe 30 bugs. They tend to want to keep me company during the day and then wander off (where?) in the evening. I can live with that. Well, I haven't been so kind to the spiders. I relocate the box elder and lady bugs. The spiders, well, Skype me and I'll show you what I do with those babies.

I didn't blog on Friday but I feel like I should have. So let's see,what did we do? We started by mulching the asparagus patch with hay. Eric and Rachel (the farm owners and cultivators) and their staff have found several First Nation relics over the years - arrowheads, ax heads, etc. So of course all of us interns are keeping a watchful eye out for treasures as we work. Several of us found beautiful quartz, no maybe diamonds, in the fields on friday! And then we remembered that Eric said asparagus are tolerant of salty conditions. He used chunks of (beautiful!) salt to discourage weeds from growing in this patch. The weeds are more of a nuisance since this field doesn't rotate to a different place every year and there's less of a chance to till. They tried to plant the asparagus low enough so that they can till the top soil for weeds and not disturb the crop. And that's also why were heavily mulching with hay...to discourage the weeds from competing. Luckily the asparagus are strong-willed enough to pop up through the hay. Rachel, one of my cofarmers, eyed two little spears coming up already. They were purple and proud. Exciting!

After mulching, Rachel came down with her son, Isaac, to teach us about soil sampling. They are sending it to two testing labs: one that is free and basic and one that is run by an past staffer who is starting up her own business. They borrowed a $400 cylindrical 1-inch in diameter tool that we pushed down into the soil about 6-8 inches throughout the field. It costs about $35 per sample, and I think I remember Rachel saying that they would send in about seven of these. We were careful to wear gloves and take samplings thoughout the field and then mix it all together for a balanced sample.
We then headed back to the spinach patch to hoe the rest of the row and then weed by hand. After weeding for over an hour, I realized that I had only made it about 15 feet down the row. Not sure what Eric would say about my efficiency? Hopefully I'll get faster.
We take lunch breaks from 12 to 2pm, the hottest part of the day. The weather has been gorgeous, but I am already thankful for this mid-day break as I think back to living in an attic in DC in the middle of summer. Ew. Hot, sweaty, almost unbearable. I'll be even more thankful for that break as the summer heats up.

In the afternoon we met at the greenhouse to do some more spotting. I spotted peppers again. Hot peppers, orange peppers, medium hot peppers, sweet peppers, pretty peppers, and so on. Between the team of us (Rachel, Anika, Miranda who worked here last year with her boyfriend, Nathan who volunteers once a week, and Eric, the farmer) we spotted hundreds of plants in one afternoon.






We then spotted (or plugged?) plugs. Eric and Rachel order plugs of plants that have seeds that are harder germinate. We put them into sales flats and then label them. Here is a picture of some Sage that we spotted and then labeled...


This weekend I continued to settle into the shed. I like to make my space homey, so I continued to move and organize the shed. My coworkers had a long weekend, so they took off in their cars for the city. While this is the time and space that I have been longing for, I think I felt a bit lonely as I settled in alone on Saturday. I taped the screens (not windows) shut, unpacked my clothes, set up some more crates to use as shelves, and pulled out my digital piano. I asked my parents if they thought I had it rough with my own space, electricity, digital piano, guitar, and laptop with printer and internet and the ability to video conference them?! OH, and the intern house - pictured left - a few feet away that has the shower, full kitchen, another computer and heck, Rachel and Eric even buy us our own copy of the Washington Post! They laughed. My dad told me that he worked on a farm for one summer (who again, dad?) and that he thinks he remembers a bed and a light by his bed...and he felt thankful for that. I guess times are a-changing.
I also drove into Culpepper , one of the nearby "big" towns, on Friday night after work. It took about half an hour, and I borrowed Anika's car to do so. Other things this weekend: I found the pigs that belong to Cliff, the landlord and neighboring farmer, over the hill and behind our farm. I went back to visit his calves, too, because my mom asked why I didn't take any pictures of those little ones! Here mama:

It's probably too small to see in these pictures, but there is a small white-faced calf sitting below the mama white-faced cow in the background of the right-side picture. Look closely! The pig pictures will come in an upcoming post.



Last, we pretty consistently all have Monday mornings off. So I had this morning to run to the post office in town (timed it: 5 minute bike ride, 15-20 minute walk) and TRY to balance my checkbook. Ugh! I also stopped by the only distillery in Virginia, so they say, to set up a tour for lunch break on Thursday. I am working this afternoon.
In 10 minutes, in fact. Time to go! Glad I don't have a long commute! I'm still in my pajamas!