May 18, 2004
A Girl and her Goose
There's a new Romeo in Ruth's life. He's terribly cute, but his vocabulary consists entirely of "me me me me me!", and he's not housetrained. Her slightly pigeon-toed gosling was rescued from the side of the road - he'd been abandoned by his Canada goose family, most likely because he couldn't keep up. Now, he's got the life: he gets fussed over by a beautiful blonde who dotes on him. Romeo has imprinted on humans, and he will waddle faster than you'd think to keep you in his sights. If he can't see or hear you, his "me me me me ME!" cheeps get pretty insistent, so Ruth gets HP or me or one of the kids to babysit him when she's with her horses. Goose-sitting has, however, been banished outside by a not-entirely-amused Lorenz when he found a pooping goose keeping me company in the kitchen. Soon, Romeo will get too messy even for Ruth, at which point she plans to send him to her parents' farm to keep the other exiled goose company.
Of course, Lorenz's lack of amusement at the pooping goose could perhaps have been due to the flu that took over his body in the past week. Apparently, if you sit on the tractor for more hours than most of us realize a day actually has, and then get off the tractor only to show the interns what to do and then go and cut micro mix in the greenhouse but also spend time with the kids and do laundry and get the order in for the market and deal with the van that, once again, doesn't start and then deal with your email and and and... (you get the picture), it may just be possible that you get run down and sick. Fortunately for all of us, his good humour and general functioning are back to normal, even if his breathing isn't. Which means that there is even more activity for me to spy on!
In the greenhouse, there is the micro mix harvesting. Micro mix is halfway between sprouts and baby greens, at least that's my description. It is full of good and good for you things like amaranth, and I feel healthier just thinking about eating it. It is a bit on the labour-intensive side, though - there's the denser-than-usual seeding in the flats, the endless watering, the cutting by hand (with scissors, no less!), the mixing it for that aesthetically pleasing effect, and the packaging in clamshells.
Besides the micro mix, the greenhouse if full of lots and lots of transplants - tomatoes and peppers and eggplants and rosemary and basil and all sorts of other good stuff that is too tender to go out so far. There are also less mouth-watering things in there: this is compost tea. No, it doesn't go on the micro mix. Just watering the plugs and refilling the water barrels, opening and closing greenhouse doors, and letting the interior curtain down or putting it back up, rolling up the sides or unrolling them, and turning the heater on - all of this depending on temperature, which of course can change every time the sun pops behind a cloud - can keep one person tied to the farm already. This past weekend, given the flu situation, HP and I kept an eye on the greenhouse, and clearly I am not relaxed enough to do this: I stressed myself out thinking that the poor plants were too hot or too cold or too thirsty (and then too soggy!). I was much better at sitting on the couch watching Coronation Street and letting Lorenz say he really did feel better and he'd check on it in a minute...
After that, he dragged himself up to the field to cultivate, and then to seed some spinach. And then to Milton to get Malcolm a new bike, and then up to the field again, and then... see what I mean about getting run down? Except (cough, wheeze) he's fine, (cough cough) really. When I got home from work today, I wandered up to the field and found Lorenz in one of his two most consistent spots (there are two tractor seats, so he can be found on either one of those at most times...), preparing more seedbeds. Sean, Justin and J.P. were hand-transplanting onions further up the hill, and Lorenz stopped to check on them (and no doubt issue another task list) while I was up there. I didn't stick around to find out what they had to do next, because I got distracted by the asparagus (which needed cutting, but I didn't do it) and the rhubarb (which needs to be divided at some point, Lorenz says, but a more immediate need is to take the flowers off to keep it producing).
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Last week, the boys (aka the interns, or JP, Sean and Justin) worked away at the new roadside stand. They got a frame up and standing by the weekend, but of course they haven't had time to get back to that project. And they won't until it rains, Lorenz is saying words like transplanter and wheelhoe (hey, at least he's not saying stone picking, though I'm pretty sure he'd be fine if any and all who hang out here in whatever capacity were overcome by the urge to pick stones).
Not even HP, who wants nothing more than to be able to ride the motorcycle but is caught in the endless hoops that the MTO and insurance companies like to put out, has been bored enough to resort to stone picking. Not only does he have the usual assortment of farm chores, he's been putting time into the garden, and now he's got a whole new discovery: on Sunday he tried out horseback riding. What do you think of that cowboy? I think he needs a hat...
Being here, it's never dull. I still can't get over how lucky I am to live in the middle of all of this. And hanging out on a farm during the busy times serves to remind me just how cheap our food is. All this beauty and all the stuff I eat, it comes at a price - with conventional produce, I believe it's not without cost to the environment, health and society as a whole (pay me now or pay me later). With locally grown organic food, I can feel better about it - but nothing is a perfect world. I'd like to believe that we pay enough to give these farmers a decent wage, but when I see the hours they're putting in, I wonder if that's the case.