There's Adventure In It
The sun called me to sleep one evening this past week, but not before giving me twenty extra minutes of daylight by which I harvested cherry tomatoes. That's a daily task this time of the year: it's hide and seek with the tomatoes and me amidst their canopy. That twenty minutes of unexpected light was like a bone thrown by the sun who bears witness to our long days attending to the farm.
On this particular day, Rich and I had pushed to get a menagerie of fall crops transplanted into the field, others directly seeded. We were challenged with a tight planting window: seedlings grown to their fullest potential in the limited space of their trays, the field drying enough from the last soaker of a rain and another big storm due the next day. The soil only works with you once it has come up for air after two and a half inches of rain in an evening. On the other hand, it is inhospitable when the soil is dry and hot for plants, shocked by transplantation and attempting to find their footing. There is a sweet spot to be found.
The needle in the haystack showed itself in the forecast, and after Rich got his hands in the groud to judge the conditions, we suited up: floppy hats, gloves, a couple of waters and nearly all the members of the brassica family tucked into the bed of the truck. Even in the event of a smokey evening, dense enough to warrant an air quality alert, if you find the needle, you grab it before it's out of sight again.
The plants joined the fleet already growing in the field, the spent spring kale standing at attention in the plot next door: big shoes for the little ones to fill this fall. My achey breaky body didn't break, but it was worked like gluten pushed and pulled and pounded until tight, but stronger for it. My sweat-soaked shirt was exchanged for a fresh, dry one, with long sleeves to protect my skin from the tomato sap that I'm allergic to. Oddly enough, I am the tomato keeper here. I developed this allergy after I cultivated my tomato attachment. I love working with them, but if the tomato resin, or more appropriately, the tomato tar, gets on my skin, I itch and sometimes get the chills.
I donned my hooded shirt and almost like sensory deprivation or maybe more like a hug, I tuck into the canopy which is cooler than the surrounding air, under the shadecloth spanning the roof of the high tunnel. I can only see green all around, rising above my head. Here and there are peekaboo's of luminous jewels which hang in clusters from their vines...the clusters have an ombre ripening pattern: startling ripeness at the top of the cluster fading out to green at the end of each spray of fruits. The scent is solanaceous. The scent is that of the best caprese salad you've ever had, the BLT you remember because of its meaty slab of tomato : earthy, resinous, green, vegetal and rich. Stepping into the tomato tunnels, I fall down the rabbit hole to Wonderland. Sometimes May and Jack join me on my tomato safari, getting ahead to help themselves to the "best ones" before I pick them for market. There are more than enough "best ones" to serve various restaurants in Dayton, the good folks who come to our market booth, and our own healthy appetites.
After the sun granted me extra time that evening of the big planting, I got the tomatoes picked and packed, the four of us reconvened in the yard, worn from the day. We were out late enough to catch the start of the nightly show put on in the field. The fireflies. Whether you show up or not, they commence at dusk and the longer you give them, the more intricate the performance is against the darkening sky. I wish you could all join us for the show. The expanse of meadow plants that surround the cultivated field spaces provide the appropriately moist soil conditions necessary for firefly larvae to survive, so that they do not dry out and also have access to an excess of food sources. And so, in a great spectacle they burn brightly for each other, in search of mates.
May and Jack revelled in the late night we were allowing them and insisted on ball jars so that they might invite fireflies in for one night in the farmhouse as lanterns. We obliged and I found myself, in my exhausted state, stitching together the fabric of time: my little self with my four sisters delighted by the ease of capturing the leisurely lightning bugs in our hands in the suburbs of Dayton, our parents on the periphery, perhaps weaving their own memories of such nights as their little selves into our memories being made. And now onto the next generation to keep our little selves alive and make a very palpable memory for themselves.
The next day's rain situated the plants quite nicely. And during the rain, we allowed our bodies to stretch out and for those glutinous proteins to relax. Our minds too. The rain, especially a moderate, Goldilocks one which delivers just the right amount of hydration, eases the mind of a farmer and gives them a due break from irrigating and worrying. While my mind eased, I took stock of the last twenty-four hours. The adventure of it. That's a great part of why I was drawn to farming and to making a life out of it...there's much adventure in it. I was introduced to farming as a lifestyle and grand adventure by our first farming mentor who could often be found with a cheeky smile on his face. That look would appear when the pigs had broken free and were wandering the Rockefeller State Park Preserve...And also when a rain storm broke out while moving sheep across the farm, and we ,soaking wet shepherds, laughed and called the sheep, "G'Day!" and shook our buckets of alfalfa as their companion dogs lopped alongside us into fresh pasture. In the face of adversity on the farm we all worked together and chocked it up to another great story for the books. Farming, living, they're both a series of adventures or challenges. It depends on what you name them. And here we are, still hot on the heels of the next adventure on the land, conspiring with the sun to grow something for someone, and sometimes finding ourselves caught in the rain, which after all, makes the whole thing possible.
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