Who Did You Say You Were?

Because it's been over a month since you got a farmer on a tractor photo, here you go: Lorenz on his tractor. Notice anything different? That's right, it's not a John Deere tractor. Lorenz has changed his tractor preference to the little orange Kubota. That's worth a few tractor pictures right there.

And just in case you're interested in more than that the little tractor is orange... I'll tell you that it's his cultivating tractor. It's much smaller than the other ones, but its key feature is that the engine block is offset. With the engine on the side, you can sit on the seat and have a much better view of what's below. You know, like the crops you're not supposed to be driving or running a cultivating implement over... So, he drives over the crops, as in - the stuff he wants to keep goes under the tractor, with the tractor wheels on either side. Mounted on the back, on a bar, are these v-shaped things that get run through the soil just below the surface, therefore effectively shearing the roots off those pesky weeds.

Really, all of these entries could read the same, they could be all about the weeds up in the field. It seems like no matter how much weeding happens, there will always be more and more and more to do. You could get to the end of a row, and realize that the beginning has started to resemble a jungle again already. The cultivating tractor helps a lot - though you still have to get on it and actually do the weeding - but there are many, many crops that don't lend themselves to tractor cultivation (like, say, tomato plants, or a pumpkin patch, or anything not planted in the massively wide rows you need for tractor cultivation. The tomato plants don't just need weeding right now, they're in need of staking too). So the farm crew has been kept busy hand weeding. A current addition to the crew is Vanessa, who is volunteering her time on her vacation to squat in the dirt and pull up someone else's weeds. Nuts, I say. But then, I get to hang out here without obligatory dirt crawling - I suspect that if my choices were stay in the city or volunteer on a farm, and I had two magical months of summer off, well, I might just get over my distaste of weeding. One of those choices I'm glad I don't have to make.

(You know, like when you play that "would you rather..." game in the car. Would you rather eat worms for lunch or be poked with a pointed stick? would you rather give up your garden or your kayak? would you rather be stuck in the city or spend 8 hours a day volunteering your time weeding on a farm? None of the above! I would rather live on the farm, not weed anywhere except in my garden, which I will keep along with my kayak, leave the worms for the birds, and not be poked with any sticks, pointed or otherwise.)

But, yeah, back to the farm... the weeds are not the only challenge in the field. Despite the fact that it's raining as I type this, it was dry all last week. Dry enough that Lorenz, Vanessa and Markus moved the irrgation pipes on Saturday afternoon and got the water going. Moving the irrigation is a bit of a pain. Unlike the big rigs that you see on large operations, they're all these long aluminum pipes with spigots mounted at set intervals. To irrigate a different part of the field, you need to physically move these monster pipes and spigots, and connect to the main line at a different place. It also means that you have to be really, really careful to remember where the pipes are when you're driving around on the field. Usually, Lorenz marks the ends with upturned buckets.

What else? Well, this week, the crew has been harvesting the usual assortment of greens (there were many cases of chard loaded into the cooler on Monday) and, much more exciting, the garlic. I've helped with the garlic harvest before, I liked it. You have to go along the row and, using a fork, loosen the soil around the bulbs. Preferably without spearing the fork through the bulbs! Then you very gently pull the garlic out. You wouldn't think the gentle part was that important, would you, given how sturdy your average head of garlic is. But when you first harvest it, garlic is very tender. Lorenz's favourite saying is "treat it like a ripe peach". (Speaking of sayings, Vanessa is compiling a list of Lorenz-isms. My current favourite is that he refers to a physically strong and assertive woman as a "tomcat". H.P. has also been the source of a few good ones, as he's busy "practicizing" his English now that there is a non-German speaker in the house. Hilarity often ensues when you translate idioms word-for-word.) But back the garlic - it needs to dry a bit before it is sturdy, if you bruise it while it is still tender it will rot. It gets put upstairs in the heritage building to dry, which I think is very funny given the rumours that the heritage building is haunted. At least you know it's not haunted by vampires!

And as soon as I mention the heritage building, I must of course segue into talking about my garden, since it is right behind the heritage building. It is so frickin' lovely, all I want to do is sit there and gloat. Look at it! The secret garden has turned out to be a cottage garden. I'm figuring out the names of many of my perennials (spiderwort, hollyhock mallow, monk's hood, delphinium, cardinal flower, oriental poppy, bleeding heart, lupin, gladiolus, peony, shasta daisy, columbine, creeping bellflower, phlox, creeping phlox, sweet william, candytuft, honeysuckle, hosta, astilbe...), but there are still a few I haven't classified. I'm better on the annuals, I know I have petunias (including two wave petunias), impatiens, fuchsia, salvia, begonias, alyssum, nicotina, morning glory, California poppies, geraniums, and cosmos (though they're not ready to flower yet). There are two spots of stuff I've seeded that I can't remember the names of and won't figure out until they flower. And then I have dahlias, where I'm not sure if they're annuals or perennials - I think they're only perennial if I dig them out over the winter and put them in the basement?

But the list of plants aside, it really is a great place to sit. H.P. and I bought four more tiki torches on Saturday, to go with the two we had from Malcolm, and on Saturday night we had a party and ended up sitting in there by the light of the tiki torches. So very special.

Oh yes, H.P.! He's finally back from his West Coast motorcycle adventure, and has spent countless hours polishing the bike since then. He showed up Friday night, having swung by the beer store on his way home. Turns out, H.P. has become a poster boy, since his mug is gracing the current cover of Vitality magazine! Hee! First Lorenz is on the cover of Better Farming and now H.P. gets his turn. Tara should be next. I mean, really, look at this picture of her - can you get more wholesome and farm appropriate (not to mention pretty, and charmingly colour-coordinated)? No, they're not harvesting carrots yet, that picture is from last fall, but it's one of my favourites.

And Boris... seeing how he loves to get into every picture being taken, maybe he's got an inner cover-boy in him too? You'd think he was the only animal around the place! Not true, there is also Emma the blind donkey, and the chickens, and the horses. One of Ruth's horses, Hobo, jumped out of his paddock on Friday night. My response to that would have been panic, but Lorenz calmly asked for someone to stand in the driveway so Hobo wouldn't be able to bolt down there, and then he managed to get a halter onto him and take him to the barn. The barn is sort of like horse jail.

Are you getting confused by all the names yet? One of these days, I'll have to do a cast of characters for this page. Emma and Boris are donkey and dog. H.P., Lorenz, Tara, Justin, J.P. and Sean (the latter three are the triplets) live here, as do Lorenz's kids, Adrian and Malcolm. I live here too (but there are three dwellings on the farm, we don't all live under the same roof!). Then, there's people who come here to volunteer and stay for a few weeks, like Vanessa. And Ruth and Kim have horses in the barn. Ruth just has her own, and she trains them. Kim runs a horse boarding operation, Brookville Equine Centre, out of Greenfields. It's a handy setup, because Ruth and Kim both get hay from a nearby organic farmer (Ruth helps with the haying), and the horse manure gets thoroughly composted and then added to the fields as fertilizer. Going further in the cast of characters... there are many, many cats including Minou, Orangey, Bartsky, Lanky and a few whose names I don't know. Kim has boarders dropping by all the time (apparently, people who pay to board horses expect to come over and ride them, or something). And then there's Kim's partner, Piet, and her kids, Brooke, Luke and Ryan, who are here a lot. And then there are the various boyfriends and girlfriends of farm characters who drop by on weekends, and there's Gaille, who does the Wednesday market with Tara, and... it's no wonder people can't figure out who is who on the farm!

Ruth has been haying like a fiend, and on Sunday night she drove up with two huge wagon-loads of hay. H.P., Vanessa and I helped unload, and Vanessa very effectively demonstrated that, although she's tiny, she's strong. Afterwards, I got Ruth and Vanessa to give me their best power-women poses. There's tough girls at Greenfields, you know!

There's also a change to the Greenfields market - it's outside now, at the roadside stand, instead of in the red barn. The triplets built the new stand this spring, and Lorenz had a striped awning custom-made for it, and now Tara is setting up out there on Wednesdays. Much more visible, though more work for Tara, having to take everything out there.

One final comment... Markus came to the farm for the first time this past weekend, having known it only from this weblog. He was all shocked that it is not flat, that there is actually a big hill and rolling terrain, and my it's a lot prettier than your two-dimensional web-page makes it look, Johanna! Well then, to prove there is a hill, a picture of the path going up the hill (in the winter, you can toboggan down it, it's steep). And to illustrate pretty, two pictures taken in the morning light. And then I stole a bunch of his pictures for this entry, too.

Back from the Barrens

So, when you think about it, I must really like contrast. I go from here - from this lush, green, temperate farm which is all about growing things - to there, the tundra, with continuous permafrost and less than 5% vegetation cover (and none of this vegetation more than about 10 cm tall!). And back. It's a whole other world at 73 degrees north, and I'll get around to putting those pictures up sometime soon - but for now, I'm just really happy to be back at Greenfields.

It's phenomenal, how much a farm changes in a month when that month is from the summer solstice to now! My garden is a riot of colours and, until yesterday, weeds. They're harvesting all sorts of good things, including peas, lettuces, kale, chard, basil and I don't know what else (because I haven't been here!) up there. I did go for a walk up to the field, and saw lots of weeds too. I forgot to take the camera.

But then, really, all the pictures today should be gratuitous dog pictures. Is this not the best looking dog you've ever seen? Hard to believe that's Boris! He doesn't stink, he doesn't have dreadlocks, he doesn't look like he's a portly old dog. The difference a haircut makes - it's like the makeover pages of a pet magazine! This Boris, I love to touch (and I don't feel like I need to wash my hands after touching him!). If he only knew how much more likely he is to get belly rubs when he's this sleek, groomed dog, I'm sure Boris would have a frequent client discount card with the doggie stylist!

There is other animal news, too: Ruth has taken Fay and the baby (who now has a name, it's Finnegan) and Nemo to another farm. Instead, she has Barry keeping Odin company, and Nicos in with Hobo. I always laugh when I look at Odin, for one with such a large name, he's an awfully small horse. Oh, and those things at the right is what happened to those incredibly cute, fluffy yellow things that we saw pictures of in the spring! That's what happens to roosters: they grow. They also go through rooster puberty, in that their voices change. I'm not kidding, right now they sound like a kid playing with one of those blow toys you get in loot bags at birthday parties. Sort of like going "cock-a-doodle-doo" on helium. But those poor suckers, they have no idea what's going to happen... tomorrow morning, they get to go for a car ride. Tomorrow evening, the freezer will be full of - well, you can figure it out. Farm life.

And this week, there will be no Lorenz on a tractor photo (instead, just for fun, I give you one I took of Ruth on Lorenz's tractor back in June!). It's hard to take pictures of Lorenz on his tractor when he's whooping it up at the Stampede in Calgary. Of course, when the boss is away... the farm crew works even harder! There is a cast list on the office door - Tara has been declared "king pin" in his absence, Sean is the "weed scout", Justin the "scroll writer" and J.P. the "harvest manager". Boris got supervisor and Ruth was assigned disciplinarian, everybody gets a job! Except me! Because me, I get to loll in my bed when I hear them getting the van ready to go harvest before 6 a.m. in the morning. I get to roll over, look at the clock, and think "crazy farmers". For me, every day at Greenfields is like the boss is away, because Lorenz is not the boss of me! (it seems trolls get uppity if not kept in check...)

So, epic adventures behind me or not, I am glad to be my usual ornery self in the red barn. When Lorenz gets back, I'll revert to following him around and pointing at various implements and asking "what does that do?" and then acting all smart-like on these webpages. Does it not strike you as funny that the one person who bubbles on about this whole farming thing on-line is the one who doesn't actually farm? But then, I bring you a farmer on a tractor picture almost every week, and the only thing better than chicken pictures are tractor pictures... (with apologies to Fred Eaglesmith for bastardizing his one-liner: "and everybody knows the only thing better'n a chicken song is a tractor song!")

Ah, summer. Finally.