A busy week

Hoop House 2 getting greener
One thing I love about working on a farm is that so much gets packed into one day. I feel very productive after a day spent weeding garlic and sweet turnips, seeding tomatoes, moving trays of broccoli and kale outside to harden off and laying out row cover to stop marauding rabbits. There’s also the pleasure of simple things; the joy of seeing the corn that was seeded 6 days ago starting to pop up, feeling the sun on your face after a long dreary week of cold rain, and meeting the newest members of the farm, our two piglets!


The pink one is a Tamworth and the black and white one is a Poland China. They are cute now but pretty soon they’ll be big porkers. Which is good because they aren’t pets. One day they’ll be food.

In other exciting news, I got to participate in my first prairie burn! A few years ago people began to figure out that native prairie grasses had adapted to an occasional fire sweeping through. In fact some species need fire in order to drop their seeds (some trees are the same way). Thus was born the practice of prescribed burns. We have quite a bit of prairie grasses around the farm (and in the subdivision which the farm is located). This spring there have been quite a few burns (all organized of course!).

(I helped burn that!)
Tuesday afternoon we strapped on backpacks filled with water and followed our fearless leader to the designated area. He started the fire and we somewhat herded the fire where we wanted it to go with our backpacks and hoses. It was great. I definitely felt like I had a proton pack from Ghostbusters! There was one quite uncomfortable moment when another farmhand and I were waiting on the other side of a berm to make sure the fire didn’t get into some piles of equipment. The wind was blowing towards us and the smoke became so thick that if you could actually get your eye open you couldn’t see 2 feet in front of you. Naturally, it was hard to breathe. It got to the point where I was about to stumble off to a less smoky area so I could take a breath, but then the wind began to clear out the smoke. It was just enough that I could breathe and not choke. Other than that it was a great experience.

Just all in a days work at a farm!