back on the farm, and it turns out we left it alone a wee too long. got to work weeding: everything not shaded by buffalo gourd was choked with bindweed, and everything else was coated in very disturbing tiny grey flies. but a hula hoe makes short work of most everything, and it wasn't too hot, which is a blessing.
at this point, whose plot is doing well depends mostly on what you planted: the beans are up almost without exception and thriving, the sunflowers are fine where they haven't been eaten, the corn got blown over and dried out, and exactly six squashes sprouted out of the entire field. not everyone has bindweed, which will probably mean more later on in the season, when it has its roots better established. that picture, by the way, is a good argument for perennial crops. so we thinned the beans and said prayers to the corn, reseeded the sunflowers and decided to wait and see if the squashes are slow or unviable.
this week i am kahuna at the farm. this means that in addition to what ever we're doing on a given day, i also have kahuna duties to perform: feeding and watering the chickens and collecting eggs (and fending off the rooster who likes to bite), recording temp and precip for the day, sweeping the solar panels, checking the gopher traps, watering the garden and the greenhouse, and, most importantly, emptying the poop bucket. also, checking for black widows in the toilet. today, when i watered the chickens at the end of the day, there were three eggs. i had already gotten eggs so i didn't expect any and had ridden a bike over to the coop (the farm is pretty big, so we bike between fields and buildings most of the time. the kahuna gets the best bike.) so i put the eggs under my new farm hat, which we found outside the donut shop today, put the hat on my head as snugly as possible, and biked very carefully back to the classroom, hoping that a) the wind wouldn't blow my hat off, as it had already twice today, and b) that i wouldn't eat shit on the bike, as i had already once today. fortunately, this story is anticlimatic, and i got to impress everyone by taking my hat of and pulling three eggs out of it. then we had a long, long class about water cycling and irrigation efficiency, which i'll not go into here because it's boring as hell.
scrambled eggs for dinner!
at this point, whose plot is doing well depends mostly on what you planted: the beans are up almost without exception and thriving, the sunflowers are fine where they haven't been eaten, the corn got blown over and dried out, and exactly six squashes sprouted out of the entire field. not everyone has bindweed, which will probably mean more later on in the season, when it has its roots better established. that picture, by the way, is a good argument for perennial crops. so we thinned the beans and said prayers to the corn, reseeded the sunflowers and decided to wait and see if the squashes are slow or unviable.
this week i am kahuna at the farm. this means that in addition to what ever we're doing on a given day, i also have kahuna duties to perform: feeding and watering the chickens and collecting eggs (and fending off the rooster who likes to bite), recording temp and precip for the day, sweeping the solar panels, checking the gopher traps, watering the garden and the greenhouse, and, most importantly, emptying the poop bucket. also, checking for black widows in the toilet. today, when i watered the chickens at the end of the day, there were three eggs. i had already gotten eggs so i didn't expect any and had ridden a bike over to the coop (the farm is pretty big, so we bike between fields and buildings most of the time. the kahuna gets the best bike.) so i put the eggs under my new farm hat, which we found outside the donut shop today, put the hat on my head as snugly as possible, and biked very carefully back to the classroom, hoping that a) the wind wouldn't blow my hat off, as it had already twice today, and b) that i wouldn't eat shit on the bike, as i had already once today. fortunately, this story is anticlimatic, and i got to impress everyone by taking my hat of and pulling three eggs out of it. then we had a long, long class about water cycling and irrigation efficiency, which i'll not go into here because it's boring as hell.
scrambled eggs for dinner!
