Work 'Till You Can't

I'm too tired to work anymore today.  There's plenty more to do...and it's all mine.

I'm planting and cultivating and weeding as fast as I can.  And it's hard work.  This city boy is finding his limits and the clock is ticking.  We do most of our tilling and some cultivating by small tractor.  But now I'm down to hand work in the rows.  Transplanting, cultivating, weeding.  I just don't have short cuts for that.  Partly because we don't have the tools/technique down and partly because we can't spray away our problems.

I walk the ground.  I hand weed and cultivate the rows and I learn what's going on in the field.  The potato bugs have made an arrival.  They are eating leaves and laying their bright orange eggs on the new plants. We beat the bugs last year by moving rows and scattering plantings, then staying on top of their cycle by hand picking them off and squishing the eggs. But they're onto our plants now and I've got to stay on them.

The weeds are coming in too.  Cultivating the rows loosens and aerates the soil around plants and tears up the small weeds.  It's important to get them before they overtake the corn, beans and greens.  I'm on that too.

I walk the farm every day and check the trees and the plants and the ground.  I learned to do that from one of our mentors. You see what's really happening that way - with weeds, with plants, with fertility, with soil moisture and texture.  And it reminded me of something...about me, about human nature and about machines.

When I was a lot younger I worked on a cattle ranch.  I mention that once in a while because I learned a lot from the men who ran cattle on 2400 acres of grass covered hills - the old way.  Some days I worked with the experienced men, moving the herd out of the foothills on horse back...just like in the cowboy movies.  And I learned that cowboys don't do ground work if they can help it.  They trained their horses so they could do almost any task in the saddle. The only ground work we liked was on the dirt in the corral during spring roundup.  Branding was done with an iron on a wood fire, with the sorting, and vaccinations. Even then the head man stayed on his cutting horse and sorted the cows and calves at the gate. That's the way it was done for 150 years and it was something to be part of. 

I watch the men here drive the big rigs that plant grain and potatoes and spray for bugs and till fields.  Big fields.  And they know their business.  I'm as impressed watching some of these tractor jockeys move through a field as I was watching an old cowman sidle his bridle horse up to a gate to open the fence for the herd, without touching the ground. 

So there it is.  Cowboys and tractor jockeys don't like to do ground work.  And I guess I know why.
But I don't have the luxury of being mounted for my work because I cant afford to skip the lessons I'm learning on the dirt.

There's a retired fellow down the road who puts in a beautiful garden every spring.  I watch his work because I like what he does - a clever mixture of traditional farming with a lot of good common sense use of  found materials.  He's shy about it, but he has a master's touch. And I'm pretty sure that skills like his come from the ground up. 

The Worm Forgives the Plough

This picture is for Katie in Montreal who wrote a kind note to say that I made her miss her island home!


Katie can probably tell you what that picture means better than I. And I expect she could even tell you how it smells. Really! There's something about opening the earth on the island in the early spring. The scent that rises after a long winter rest says, "I'm ready - let's get growing!" It's a mixture of mossy wetness, the final breath of last summer's grasses, the meaty tang of worms at work and just a hint of diesel from our little tractor.

I took my old plow out behind the tractor yesterday and made the sods turn over across the two acre field we started working several years ago now. Island farmers , the real ones in their big rigs, like to see the bright red island soil come up to greet them as they pass over the land. I like the intimacy of the open air atop my little John Deere and I've learned to read the soil as I pass over. I know now that when the sods turn from grass green to the rich color and texture of chocolate cake that I have a healthy field full of life.

A man who encourages low till farming once was asked, "Why do farmers plow?" He said, "Because they like to." He's right. And as eager as we are to reduce the need for tillage and to preserve soil structure, this field is in need of some help to repair my earlier mistakes. And so to get the ground ready for the effort to control weeds and feed the soil for another season, I chose the plow to prepare the ground for the green manure and cover crop that will hold down the soil and feed it until our next experiment.

Katie in Montreal noticed that I'm from the US and wondered how I found my way here. Well Katie, the answer is my wife and her, "kindred spirit", Lucy Maud Montgomery. As a fan of, "Anne of Green Gables" she cam to PEI with her grown daughter and they fell in love with the island. The next year we came back up from California and had the notion that we could find a little place for not too much money. Perhaps a cottage near the shore. We found this farm and after much discussion about how impractical it would be - we bought it.

Neither Susan nor I had any kind real experience that would lend itself to taking on a farm. Susan grew up in Wisconsin, and I fell in love with the country life as a part time hand on a cattle ranch in California. So starting with very little practical know-how, we jumped in. And here we are. Now our plans are to graduate our oldest boy from High School in Santa Barbara and then move our family full time to PEI.

It's an interesting life we've chosen. The challenges are many. We know we're fortunate to have the chance and so we're determined to make the most of it.

Well, that's all I have time for tonight. I have a green house waiting for me to plant full of seedlings and time won't wait. I'll post more as time allows. Till then, best wishes from Dunn Creek Farm, PEI.