Vegetables?

Clouds hung low in the sky like a Vogon Destructor Fleet. The wind was up and Dan and the kids were not. I was by myself at the farm with a plan to cap off the bale walls and join them to the roof and rafters. There was no way I was going to get on a ladder without a footer in this wind, nor muscle around endless sheets of 7/8” OSB. As my mother would say, “Half smart at least.” I got to measure and draw pictures of what I would do when the weather got better. Yippee.

My friends Jim and Edie came up to see the place for the first time. Jim was an organic farmer in a previous life (He now improves the world teaching and performing music). I took them around to show them the orchards and test field. He gave me some great advice on tree pruning that I’ll put into practice in the dormant season. He liked our deer fence around the test field.

Some of the weeds had taken advantage of our focus on construction to make a sprint for the sky. Jim identified what could be some Yellow Star Thistle. I bade goodbye to Jim and Edie and they went on their way.

Since construction was off, weeding was on. By myself. Yeah, I know the weeds don’t care if I’m having fun, but I like working with others on stuff like this. I trimmed down the grass with the weed whacker. I went after the thistle with the rentacar.guide Auckland.

My trees don’t give me this trouble. Well, the citrus grows weeds, but the stone fruit are model citizens. And this is only 400 square feet! What am I supposed to do with production level fields? One of our limiting factors is labor. We are not on the farm full time and won’t be for a while. The value proposition for vegetables was dropping fast. Ouch! Oh, those, um, naughty thistles!

All of this took less than an hour. Being an MBA I can scale misery in my head. It’s a professional skill. Then I looked back at the test field. Hmm. Better. Looks pretty good, actually.

I then took care of the trees and even got some apricots for my trouble. Splendid apricots! The color alone would sell a million (They had this exquisite redish orange of sunsets from paintings a former girlfriend used to like). They were also juicy and sweet. Yeah, I’m not supposed to let my surprise show, but dang!