Take a look at these hands.

These are the hands of someone who has been playing in dirt all day, but are they the hands of a farmer? The short answer is I’m not sure dog. The long answer is below.

With most jobs you can be pretty good at what you do and enjoy a modestly successful career. Now with farming you can be pretty good at what you do and still be a miserable failure. I was thinking about this because last week I made a few minor mistakes. First I accidentally tilled in about 30 feet of tomatillos thinking it was a grass strip. Sure they were overrun with weeds and hard to discern, but I still should have been more careful. Thank Jah that I didn’t turn under the whole row. Who eats tomatillos anyway? Then when I was tilling in some broccoli (which did need to be) I got tangled on some irrigation tape and the spinning blades of the tiller ate about 100 feet of it in half a second. I spent the next 15 minutes trying to extricate it from the blades of the tiller. Four dollars went into the swear jar after that experience. Other folks on the farm make similar mistakes, but when you run your own farm these little mishaps could add up toe be quite a problem.

I guess I was having a bad day, but it made me really think for the first time about what I’m getting into. I love every aspect of what I’m doing, but working on a farm and running your own are completely different. Probably a good interim step would be to be a farm manager for a year or two and see if I really have the skills to strike out on my own.

Within the next few months I have to decide whether or not I want to come back to Vermont next year as I am supposed to be in a two year program. I could apprentice again next year, but eventually I will have to make a big leap of some kind. Either to find some land or take on a position with a lot more responsibility. Part of me is thinking that if I am destined to make it then it doesn’t really matter how many years I apprentice. And if I am destined to fail then years of this won’t make a difference. Not sure that this makes sense, but it feels good to write down.

Last weekend Brooke and I went up to Quebec for the wedding of my friends Paul and Nathalie. My only other trip to Canada was to see a Dead show in 1990. All I saw then was the inside of a stadium and a motel room. Quebec has a very foreign feel to it. Hard to place my finger on why, but it just seems like it’s in a completely different country. For example, in Quebec Sponge Bob Square Pants is called Bob L’eponge. In Guatemala he was called Bob Esponja.

Paul is one of my oldest friends from SF and I discovered during the ceremony, that he and Nathalie are moving back to Quebec next year. Another friend, Carrie is going to grad school next fall in Seattle and my friend Mike is leaving for Vancouver next month. All of a sudden the tug that is San Francisco is getting a little weaker. I guess after I left most people found they no longer had a reason to stay.

We drove up on Friday and camped in Mont Orford national park. We hiked up a mountain, ate gourmet food and swam in a lake twice. The highlight of the camping trip, however, was the offer of the complimentary s’mores roasting sticks from the park ranger. We didn’t have a fire but they will be used one day.

The wedding took place at Nathalie’s family home in the country and was attended by about a hundred people. The food was unbelievable and the live band was fantastic. The ceremony was great too, although I am a little saddened that my perviest friend is now hitched up.

On a completely different note, I just finished another research project. It focuses on the dark side of farming, the part which has been pushed under the rug for far too long. In an attempt to address this serious issue I have compiled some information which will enable the appropriate authorities to focus their efforts on the places that need the most help. So here is another list.

Top ten countries for sheep shagging (in no particular order except for the first one).

1. Greece
2. Wales
3. New Zealand
4. Argentina
5. Kazakhstan
6. Latvia
7. Australia
8. Mongolia
9. Chile
10. France
    

Farmer Simon

The Bug Catcher.

So I’ve been on the farm for three months now and farm work is starting to become routine. Not boring, but now we have planted most of the years crops we are left with basically two tasks to occupy our days. Harvesting and Weeding.

My work day starts at 7am and begins with harvesting. I hate getting up early which probably doesn’t make me a good candidate for being a farmer, but my body has finally adjusted to this early morning shock. In order to adequately caffeinate myself I have to get up at 6:30 am!!

Every day we have a pick sheet which is basically a wish list of what we need to harvest for the farm stand, farmers’ market (Thursday and Saturday) and the CSA (Tuesday and Wednesday). The field crew (usually 5 or 6 of us) then set out to all corners of the farm to harvest the veggies. It can take anywhere between 1 and 3 hours depending on the day and what is on the pick list. Harvesting is actually great fun and quite gratifying. Last week we harvested parsley, basil, squash, collards, chard, kale, lettuce, broccoli, radishes, beets, cucumbers, spinach and strawberries. Pick your own strawberries are one of the main attractions on the farm and every morning carloads of people file into the fields to load up on the sweet red goodies.

After harvesting is finished we then begin the arduous task of weeding the many acres of crops we have in production. First and foremost are next year’s strawberries which just got planted a few weeks ago. We have four acres (about 38,000 plants) which will be weeded until the fall when they will be covered in a nice winter blanket of straw. We also have many acres of vegetables to deal with. Some are pretty easy to control, pumpkins, squash, tomatoes, peppers and eggplant. But others are a pain in the ass, carrots, leeks, and onions are top of that list. The idea is to get on top of the weeds right away so your crop gets a good head start and you can rely mostly on tractor cultivation. Of course this never happens as like most farms we are constantly playing catch up. It’s rained a lot here this summer too which means that we can’t always use the tractors because they compact the soil.

As part of my apprenticeship I have just recently begun a very special project. I am now training to be Cedar Circle’s resident entomologist. Last week I got a beginner’s insect preservation kit in the mail from UC Davis and I am now busy at work building an insect collection so the staff can identify insects and problems before they get out of control.

It goes something like this. I run around the field with my bug catcher’s net swiping it back and forth across the plants. I then empty whatever unfortunate critters I have happened to catch into a small glass jar containing alcohol. This part is painful to watch as the insects flail about wildly in the toxic environment. I tried putting in more alcohol but it still takes a few minutes for them to die. The jar is then emptied out and they are mounted on pins, identified and labeled. The mounting part is pretty easy, but identification is quite difficult. I ordered a huge textbook which should be coming any day as the insect books I currently have are not that good. The project is going well so far but the other day I looked at the pinned up insects and noticed that one of them was still alive and wiggling it’s legs madly a day after it had been crucified. My most heartfelt apologies to that poor Japanese Beetle.

Compared to the weeds, insects are a minor problem, but some do have the potential to ruin entire crops. Flea beetles like brassicas (cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage etc) and we control them by using row covers to keep them off the plants. Aphids like pretty much everything and we buy in masses of ladybugs who love to eat them. Public enemy number one, however is the Colorado Potato Beetle. When they’re not eating potato and eggplant leaves they like to fuck each other and make more of themselves. For the potato beetle we spray Spinosad, an organically approved insecticide derived from soil bacterium.

On a non work related note I would like to announce a personal boycott of Wal-Mart. I ended up going there twice (after three unsuccessful visits to local hardware stores) but have now discovered the joys of Big K-mart. Big K still has the same sweatshop low prices and it’s just as good for mullet spotting. Out here the local mullet variety is called the Vermullet. I hope you (if anyone ever reads this blog) will join me in this bold political statement.

Farmer Simon

Driving Trac.

When I signed up for this farming thing I had no idea it would involve so much manly manly stuff. If you called in someone every time something went wrong on the farm you’d go broke real fast. So you actually have to learn how to repair and build things yourself. The last time I did anything like this was in 8^th grade when I made a napkin holder for my parents. I fucked up the holes that I drilled in it and I still remember how silly it looked on our dining table. So not only do I have to learn how to grow shit I also have to learn how to fix shit also. And put seventy-five cents in the swear jar.

Today I helped change the oil and hydraulic fluid on one of the big tractors. First we drained the oil, but it came out so quickly that in my hurry to move a bucket underneath the gush I dropped a nut in the bucket. So then I had to fish around in the bucket and when I pulled my hand out it looked like one of those dead seabirds you see washed up on a beach after an oil spill. We also had to use half a bag of kitty litter to soak up all the oil I spilled on the floor. So over the next several months I’ll be learning a lot more about things like carpentry, irrigation and tractor repair. We may even buy a junky tractor and fix it up as a project.

Although most of my time is spent doing manual labor such as seeding, weeding, and harvesting, I’ve also been spent quite a bit of time driving trac. That’s short for driving tractor. Sometimes things get so busy that throwing in an abbreviation like this can really save time. Cedar Circle is a much bigger farm than I would ever want to run but even on small farms tractors can really help. There’s a trade off when you use the tractors, but it seems to pay off. With more tractor work you have bigger distances between rows (to accommodate the trac getting through) and sacrifice how much you can produce per unit of land. But you rely a lot less on human labor which can be an expensive part of farming.

Not only do you need to drive straight to drive trac well, but you also have to be paying attention to height of your cultivation tools. Too high off the ground and you don’t get any weeds. Too low and you cover up the precious veggies with soil. When driving trac goes well it’s a beautiful site to see and you save a whole of hand weeding. I’m getting better, but on Wednesday I bagged my first tractor trophy. I ran into a sprinkler and snapped it right off. I’m going to mount it and when I’m a famous farmer it will be worth a whole lot of money.

This week was the first week that I really missed San Francisco. I miss the place, but I mostly miss my friends. I’m around a lot of people, but most are quite a bit younger. I ran into someone I met in Madison, Wisconsin fifteen years ago at the farmers’ market and I met up with him for Indian food and a talk on Bhangra music at Dartmouth last week. So now I’ve been out an average of almost once per month and I have a new friend. I new what i was getting into when I moved out here, but it's still tough. Might have to get a mail order bride if i stay here through the winter.

How can you help the loneliness and desolation? Come visit me. All the fresh organic food you can eat, kayaking, awesome bike riding (you get on your bike and it’s like you’re already across the bridge in Marin!) and my fantastic company all await you. My friend Brooke who lives in New York has already visited twice, but I need people to come every week.

I forgot to do a list last time, but here’s one for nostalgia’s sake and in no particular order.

Ten things I miss about San Francisco

1. Cancun
2. All of my awesome friends
3. Being able to go a whole week without driving my car
4. Watching footie with my friend Mike
5. DSL
   
6. Amoeba
7. Rides out to the beach
8. Used book stores
9. Cute girlies walking down Valencia
10. Cute girlies riding their bikes down Valencia

Farmer Simon

PS - For anyone reading my blog who is perhaps yearning for a little more you can gain access to all areas of my website www.farmhunk.com for only $9.95 per month . You will get weekly updated pictures of my farm muscles and much more. Send me an email if you are interested.