Finish Your Meal

                This title should more accurately be entitled “Finish your dinner!”, that is, if it were directed toward me. I know that I have brought this up before, but since all of… life’s events reoccur endlessly, I will bring this one up again as well. As for the decree for me to “finish my dinner!”… well, here it is… again…

                One of my most vivid memories as a child growing up on the property on which I currently organically farm, is one that involves vegetables, albeit NOT organically grown, and specifically one, by the name of kohlrabi, that I still cannot force myself to grow to this day! I cannot remember how old I was, but by my calculations, I must have been somewhere between 5 and 8 years old. The situation revolved around the kitchen table, which we actually used as a family dining center in those archaic days (circa 1974-1977). My parents had a couple of gardens on the property, which now are labeled Field 1 and Field 3 for organic certification purposes, and they admirably attempted to grow as much produce as possible to feed their family of six. (Not to mention free child labor.)

                Unfortunately, they decided one year to grow… kohlrabi. Now, I have to pause here, because kohlrabi is considered a delicacy in many parts of the world, in particular Europe, where the crop has been cultivated over the centuries. The problem was that my parents knew nothing about kohlrabi, and grew it to a large size. Bigger is better! In regards to kohlrabi, that is anything but the case. Instead of a delectable cole crop, my parents harvested what amounted to be the same texture as freshly hewn timber. It was that pulpy… and indigestible. But to proceed past this introductory story, I was provided a portion of that un-chewable fiber known otherwise as kohlrabi on my plate of food and was not allowed to leave the dinner table until I had finished my meal, er, dinner… To skip to the end of that horrid memory, the kohlrabi was not eaten, and I went straight to bed sometime long after dark.

                The preceding was just an introductory story to this entry. The point is… finish eating your meal! In regards to this entry, this is directed to, in particular, the many rabbits that have descended upon the farm this year. Again, I am fully aware that this gripe has been brought up before in the past, but since the situation has not changed, well, neither has this gripe! Hey, rabbits, finish your meal!!!

                I present exhibit A:

                The issue that I bring forward for display is how rabbits, for these are the foul critters on trial in this entry, will nibble on… a tomato, as displayed above, and then move along… Apparently, what the rabbit is not aware of is that once a tomato is “nibbled on” it is no longer of any use to a farmer, and the farmer, of course, is the most important entity here. Beyond this, the rabbit will, and this has been the case in all the crops “nibbled on” by rabbits, “nibble on” multiple other fruits as well. In the case of tomatoes, the rabbit cannot see a delicious, juicy, ripe… as in the picture above… Brandywine tomato and devour the entire thing to quell its appetite… most assuredly, for days. No, it will only nip at it here and there just enough to make it worthless in the realm of human commerce. AND THEN, they will do the same to the next tomato they encounter! And that is why I am so adamant when I state… FINISH YOUR MEAL!!! Seriously! If you ate the whole tomato, you would be satisfied for a month… rabbits!

                Ugh.  To top all this frustration off, I have a human inspired issue here as well. This one is a little more difficult to relate, but here goes… I have this symptom whereby music constantly… resonates in my brain. Usually, this music is something of my own creation as it would seem, but sometimes, a song from a recorded artist or artists will arise… and get locked into my thinking mechanism, if you will. So, now, every time I witness a “nipped” tomato, for example, a terrible old Van Halen song reverberates through my brain… “Come on, baby, finish what ya started…”

                Ugh. Again. What a terrible song that is! And I am not referring to musicianship at this point. Eddie Van Halen’s guitar work in particular is superb as usual. It is the lyrics! Egad! When I hear a song, lyrics are ALWAYS the most important part of the piece for me. That is why Bob Dylan ranks very high on my list of admirable musicians… (I guess poet fits more aptly). Here is a verse from Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Right Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”:  “Disillusioned words like bullets bark, as human gods aim for their marks, made everything from toy guns that spark, to flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark, it’s easy to see without looking too far that not much is really sacred.” Wow!

                Now to that annoying song that keeps reverberating In my head… “Come on, baby, finish what ya… “(Yes, “ya” is actually the lyric.)”…started, I’m incomplete, huh! That ain’t no way to treat the broken hearted. I need some sympathy…” I apologize for writing all this out… but I could not get that song out of my head! I kept wondering how it could linger in mind so long, when I don’t ever remember listening to it intentionally!

                So anyway, I would be in say, the carrot row…

                Exhibit B:

…and witness the rabbit damage… “Come on, baby, finish what ya started…”

Then I would be in the cantaloupe row…

Exhibit C:

…”Come on, baby, finish what ya started…”

And the purple bean row…

Exhbit D:

…”Come on…”

I will not type that line again. At least here, far removed from the fields and the rabbit damage I can turn that annoying song off! And one last thought on that song and its pathetic lyrics… I looked up who wrote the lyrics and the answer… Van Halen. Was that really a collective effort? If I was in that band and had nothing to do with the lyrics, I would assert, “No, really, you can take full credit for the lyrics,” to whoever penned those…

But back to the real issue of this entry. Hey, rabbits, if you would only finish your meal… well, we would not have an issue. The situation is something akin to Goldilocks and the three bears. Why do you have to try ALL of the porridge? (And porridge is a bad example, but I digress.)  Seriously, and I mean this, SERIOUSLY, if you would eat ONE tomato and devour it, you will be satisfied. If you eat ONE cantaloupe, you will be satisfied. If you eat ONE carrot, well, you will have to learn how to dig for that one… and ONE bean… surely won’t satisfy you… UGH!!!

Heat... Lightning

                What a day!

                It was in the AM… 90 something degrees… and humidity… I harvested purple beans, that is purple beans that had been pre-harvested by rabbits and Mexican bean beetles. There was not much left to pick through… but it was hot… damned hot! By the time that mere hour transpired, I perspired… I have no idea how much… It was hard to think… My shirt was drenched with sweat… A mere hour in the sun…

                Once I reached the shade of the back porch, I dwelled on the situation a bit. This was the third very hot day in a row, but today was extremely humid, or at least that was how it felt. Oh, it wears you down over the course of a summer! And I had so much more harvesting to do…Drenched completely merely from sweat… ah the joy of farming…

                I took a break to cool down on the front porch, the shaded front porch, as sweat dripped from my bent forward head to form puddles on the cement porch steps. How many more days of this are we in for? Then… a cloud blocked the sun! Perhaps there was a chance to get some work done without that blazing orb in the sky blazing one to… The cloud passed.

                The hours of the day began to diminish rapidly, there was still a harvest to gather… despite the heat. Potatoes needed to be dug! With pitchfork in hand potatoes were excavated from the deep dry organic earth… and sweat saturated my clothing… again… After the potatoes… then tomatoes…

                The sun was blocked by clouds, deep dark, ominous  clouds… a strong wind whipped through… all of which was completely soothing… Small droplets of rain actually began to fall from the sky… Ahh, the heat had been broken… at least temporarily…

                And I continued to attempt to dig potatoes from the ground… but my pitchfork had become misshapen. I do not know how to describe this, but one of the four prongs was bent backwards instead of forward. What this entails is that the pitchfork is useless so long as that one prong is bent in the wrong direction…

                So, I temporarily ceased my efforts on potato excavation and headed up to the garage area to straighten out the mis-aligned tine on the pitchfork. By the time I reached the garage and fixed the mis-aligned pitchfork, the rain had increased in intensity. It was raining steadily. A quick decision was made to harvest the tomatoes in the dry greenhouse while the rain fell.

                Four 5 gallon harvest buckets were grabbed along with the hand pruners, aka, the tomato de-horn wormer. Luckily there have been no horn worms thus far… The rain grew heavier as the Cosmonaut Volkovs were harvested, beautiful red tomatoes that actually have flavor… actually have a LOT of flavor. Thunder and lightning grew in intensity… and drew nearer. A flash of lightning was seen… the time between thunder was counted… 1001… 1002… CRACKLEBOOM!!! That one was close… northwest… maybe a little more west than north…

                At that point I had long ceased sweating and was starting to feel comfortable. The rain slowed. I was on to the Black Krim tomatoes… now that is a DELICIOUS and heirloom tomato… lots and lots hanging from the tied up tomato plants. Row three of five… more thunder and lightning up north……

                KABOOM!!!!! Lightning had struck at exactly the same time as the sound! It hit the old metal windmill tower next to the house! And I was crouched between two rows of heirloom tomatoes trembling with… excitement?... anxiety?...

                DAMN, BUT THAT WAS CLOSE!!! My skin tingled. Having never been in a military battle, I suspect I experienced only the most superficially similar situation. I was shell shocked. Despite standing inside a metal hooped greenhouse, (which means I was relatively protected), I could not stand up completely. I kept squatting near to the ground. I finished harvesting the Black Krim… Damn the house seemed to be much further away than the actual two hundred feet it was. The sky was still violent… Perhaps it was a good time to weed the butternut squash next to the Cosmonaut Volkov… Ugh, squash bug eggs all over the leaves…Sizzlecrackle… I looked to my right outside the greenhouse… KABOOM!!! Lightning struck the electric pole by the driveway. My path to the house lie directly between the two lightning strikes… Yeah, the back porch could wait… I hunched back down to the weeds in the butternut row… Somehow, my vigor for weeding had waned…

                And I waited… I counted the time between every lightning strike and the sound following it. With each bolt, I flinched and ducked. I was definitely shell shocked. I have spent the majority of my time alive on the farm, and the closest I ever witnessed lightning strike was the electric pole up on Hughes Shop Road, the one that still stands just north of the front field on the property. But to have two strike within a hundred feet of each other… and minutes apart… SHEESH!!! I focused back on the fading lightning strikes. After a while, there were at least ten seconds between strike and sound. I headed to the house.

                The rain and lightning passed and the harvest was completed. A few more lightning strikes from very far away still made me flinch. Ugh. From extremely hot and humid to wet from rain to ducking and hiding from an electrical storm to calm and relatively cool for the season… all within a few hours… and still more work to do. This farming thing… It’s not just a job… it’s INSANE!!!

Arthur and Finnegan (Part One)

                This entry is part one of a series to follow. I have meant to address this issue over the years, but alas, time elapses so quickly I have not been able to keep up with it! However, as things have developed in 2012, the issue has arisen, once again, and it seems appropriate to address it now…

                To begin, Nev-R-Dun Farm’s base is an old plot of land on which resides a pre-20^th century house, along with a barn and many other “out” buildings, such as a “summer kitchen” and a “wagon shed” to mention a few. While my farming efforts stretch back only over a decade or so, the buildings relay a much longer tenure than I can even really envision. That said, the indigenous creatures, especially those of diminutive size, have long foraged in the immediate area, and whereas the house is relatively vermin free, the outside area around the house is seemingly a plush resort for some of those aforementioned critters. After countless years of furrowing and foraging, there are tunnels just about everywhere around the outside buildings, and that leads to this entry…

                Most of the cleaning of the produce is currently accomplished on the back porch of the old farm house. It is outside, albeit shaded by the house addition above. It is a great place to spend a hot afternoon in the middle of summer, washing lettuce mix, for example. I have mentioned the cleaning of lettuce mix many years ago in these Tales, and it is not the issue to be addressed here, so the description of the process shall be brief.

                The cleaning of lettuce mix is a laborious process whereby lettuce leaves, which have been cut from lettuce plantings in whichever of the over one hundred rows of produce we grow, are brought to the back porch in five gallon buckets and submerged in water. Then, each leaf is sifted through in a three stage process to pick out weeds, bad leaves, etc. As the lettuce proceeds through the process, each stage has a fresh water bath, so that the leaves are at least triple washed by the time the mix is spun dry and bagged for the eventual consumer.

                This process takes hours, and during this time, many, many, many creatures hail their existence to the somewhat stationary salad washer. There are a horde of insects, from bees to beetles to flies that constantly flitter about the concentrated worker. Birds twitter and tweet and sing from nearby tree branches. Occasionally a deer snort can be heard, which immediately makes this salad washer determine the deer’s location, to make sure it is not in any field with, for example, salad mix growing in it! And then there is the general scurrying about of such small creatures as those that are the focus of this entry… chipmunks!

                Earlier this year, I was showing Stephanie the process of cleaning the salad, and those pesky chipmunks started darting about in their frenetic fashion causing me to react in my normal fashion… “Damned chipmunks!”… and Stephanie reacted with, “Aww, they’re so cute!!!” A description will follow of these “pests”. But to start, while some people might view certain creatures as “cute”, they are all out for… something, usually in the form of food, and whereby they may appear as “cute”, as in their movements, etc., the reality of the situation… over years… that is, to a frustrated farmer… they are nothing close to “cute”! Before moving on, however, as Stephanie watched the chipmunks scurry about, she became quickly endeared to them, and promptly named the two that currently seem to “own” the place. The two chipmunk’s names from here forth in this entry shall be “Arthur and Finnegan”, or as Stephanie has truncated their name’s, “Artie and Finnie”. But enough of that!

                As for the chipmunks’ actions thus far this year, they have not been incredibly harmful. Since they are so familiar with the back porch area, they scurry about at their frenetic pace like humans do on highways, only they do not adhere to lanes and such. They scamper wherever they want and whenever. As we wash the lettuce mix, those small, reddish-brown furry creatures with black and white stripes scurry on ground level all around the varying obstacles on the porch, from our cleaning station to the numerous rack trays to whatever else is standing about… including out feet! (Once, and this is absolutely true, while standing up and sorting lettuce mix, I shifted my right foot and stepped on one mid-scurry. If I had known I would step on a chipmunk… Alas, it got away unharmed…) But these rapid movements are part of what endeared Stephanie to those foul creatures. They were seemingly at play as they chased each other around the porch area. “They’re sooo cute!” Egad, it is time to relay one of their past sordid escapades to escape from these “cute” ramblings, and the fact, that the scurrying is most probably less due to play than… foreplay… which only leads to more chipmunks… egads, again…

                It was in 2010 that I finally recognized chipmunks for the malevolent miscreants that they are. Please forgive the human analysis of this, but I am, after all, attempting to earn enough off of my labors to make a living in the human world, as absurd as all that is, but I digress. Anyway, I have been attempting to save seeds from the crops that I grow for many years in order to, first, control the source, and second, to improve upon its regionality genetics. (I will not attempt to explain that here.) So, in 2010, I harvested a few pounds of pea seeds for seed saving. This entails allowing the pea plants to “dry up”, then picking the dried pea pods. I did this and put the dried pods in a five gallon bucket. The next step is to shell the pods to extract the dried pea seeds. There are many ways of accomplishing this task that are easier than the way I approached, but I chose the more difficult path in order to learn from it. (I always seem to choose the more difficult path in order to learn from it… and I am not sure that I have learned anything… I have digressed again.)

                Over a week or so, I worked through the bucket of dried pea pods and seeds, and put the shelled peas into a round plastic container that fit inside the five gallon bucket on the front porch of the farmhouse. I normally worked on this while eating a sandwich for lunch, so the process was in stages. About a pound or two of seeds had been extracted from the pods and placed in the plastic container, then the container was placed in the five gallon bucket on top of the remaining “to be shelled” dried pea pods. Once again, it was a slow process, but the effort was for next season anyway.

                Then, one day shortly thereafter, I walked by the five gallon bucket and looked inside to view my efforts of pea seed saving… AND THERE WERE NO PEA SEEDS IN THE PLASTIC CONTAINER! WHAT THE…? Oh, I know what the… “WHAT THE…?” was!!! It was those damned chipmunks!!! Every time you leave something out in the open for just a minute too long… (or a week)… those little, nefarious, “cute”, furry creatures will disparage ALL of your efforts! ARRGH!!! How frustrating they can be!!!

                I was not immediately aware of this at the time, BUT, I had that creature surrounded, if you will. You see, that furry culprit was actually still inside the five gallon bucket scavenging seeds from beneath the plastic container inside the bucket. Again, I was not aware of this immediately. I was so angered by the loss of my efforts that I did not analyze the situation clearly. It was only when I thought about moving the plastic container to see how many pea pods were left that I realized the culprit was… in the cookie jar, so to speak.

                What clued me in was that the empty plastic container actually moved, as in, something beneath it moved. And so, brilliantly, and quickly, I devised my attack. With my right hand, I reached into the bucket and snatched the plastic container, then, I attempted to thrust my size 11 boot into the five gallon bucket in order to smash the culprit. Unfortunately for me, and fortunately for the chipmunk, a size 11 boot does not fit very squarely into a five gallon bucket, or even roundly. After I had jammed my boot into the bucket, I had no idea as to whether I had harmed the culprit or not. There was only one way to find out. I removed my boot encased foot from the bucket.

                Perhaps a second elapsed, perhaps two… And I have to pause here. Have you ever heard the squeak of a chipmunk? It is more like an “eek”.  Years ago, I intended to write my first chipmunk entry entitled, “Eek, a human!” But that never happened, and as whereby I have digressed greatly once again… A very loud “EEK!!!” was let out by the trapped chipmunk, as it propelled itself like a rocket out of the five gallon bucket… And I mean this literally! I removed my boot… Then there was a loud “EEK!!!”… Then, a chipmunk shot out of the bucket as if propelled by a rocket engine! It landed a foot or so away from my side of the bucket and scurried off the front porch in extreme rapid fashion.

                Whether that chipmunk was Arthur or Finnegan, or even some past relative is not the issue. As mentioned above, there are more entries to follow on these “foul” creatures. As cute as they may appear to some, their actions quite resemble, at least in my opinion, the pernicious greed so prevalent in our current stage of global consumption in the United States of America. I know, I know, it is quite ludicrous to equate the “natural” activities of such cute, furry mammals to the activities of our voraciously idiotic furless species, but, once again, this is only part one of these chipmunk stories…