An honest day's work

I spent the day yesterday on the farm. It was SO good to get out there in the sun and get my hands back into the soil. Farming is one of the most fulfilling things I have ever done. One of the reasons is that it is so visual. In a few hours of hard work you go from having soil to having long rows of seeds that have already started turning into a crop. It is incredibly rewarding work. As a Baha'i, one of my beliefs is that work is worship. There is not a day that I spend out on farmland that does not feel like worship.

Yesterday I prepared this bed to plant. This involved flattening out the bed until it was level, marking out my three rows using string with stakes at either end (you would be surprised how hard it is to make a straight row without the string guiding you!), and then creating a shallow trench in the soul with a hoe.

It took me a while to get my rows sorted out, but I was pleased with them.

 

Once I had my rows sorted, divided up my bed into five foot sections. Five feet is an incredibly small amount of space. Back in Canada our rows extended much longer distances. But this is a small garden surrounded by a larger farm, so everything is on a smaller scale.

 Once my bed was divided into sections, I got out my seeds. I planted beets, chard, turnips and mixed greens. When I was farming in Canada I learned that each beet seed actually has two seeds in it. Isn't that cool? In addition to being cool it means that beets have to be well-thinned once they get established to one of the two plants growing in any given spot a chance to really grow. Beets, chard and turnips get planted between 1 and 2 inches apart. Greens can go as much as three seeds per inch. I am enjoying learning US measurements. Having grown up in the Mediterranean, and living in Canada for the last six years, I measure in centimetres, and the folks on the farm here have been well amused by my blank facial expressions whenever they give me instructions that involve measurements. I was grateful that Guy gave me a measuring tape. It was a BIG help!

These are chard seeds. They look a lot like beet seeds though.

 

Can you see my row of seeds? They look kinda like popcorn from this distance. Isn't it incredible that tall green chard stalks are going to emerge from those tiny things? 

I planted the greens last. It is hard to plant these tiny seeds as they blend in with the soil, which made it difficult to see where I had planted the last seed. It is odd to be planting greens in September. In Canada they would not survive, but here, I am told, they will be just fine. There is so much to learn when you move from one climate to another and attempt to farm. There is much to to understand about the seasons, the soil, the elevation, frost and precipitation. It explains why families that own farms stay in one place, deepening their knowledge of the land over many generations.

I don't have a photo of it, but after I planted this bed Guy and I installed the drip tape. I have had to learn how to install and fix drip irrigation tape since arriving in California. In Canada there was so much precipitation that we did not ever need an irrigation system, but here in California, even sitting right next to a river, we need water. The sun is blisteringly hot even now in September (99 degrees yesterday), and the plants wither within hours without plentiful supply of water. Guy got out a huge wooden reel and I grabbed the end of the drip tape and ran to the opposite end of the bed where I hooked the tape up to the valves that run off of the main water pipe. You have to get the pressure in the main pipe perfectly set or the delicate drip tape explodes when the water starts surging through it. The trial and error of figuring out how far to turn the lever gives you plenty of opportunity to learn how to repair (or replace) the drip irrigation tape! Yesterday, in the process of getting the drip irrigation tape hooked up, I reached down to move some soil that was obstructing the valve and ended up finding myself cupping soil that was moving. After I recovered from the shock of having picked up an enormous, and amazingly well camouflaged bull frog that had been happily enjoying the coolness of the water dripping from the valve, I hooked up the tape and turned the water on. I love the sound of water surging down the lines, and the image my mind creates of the rows of seeds beginning their journey up out of the soil. 

Before I left I harvested some tomatoes for salad, and some gorgeous flowers for the kitchen table. The sunflowers in the garden are towering beauties right now. They are their own solar system. The sun in the sky pales in comparison to their bright yellow brilliance. 

The mighty ones that towered above me I couldn't bear to cut down. But I brought a few smaller ones home. They are shining warm light all over the kitchen. 

Aren't they pure joy?

And on that note, I will leave you with a tune from Luke Slot, called 'A few Honest Words.' 

I hope you all manage to get outside this weekend, and that the sun is shining brightly when you do! Have a great weekend, friends. See you here Monday!

I. Love. My. Life.

I really do. And since it is Friday and I think I might be getting sick despite only being on day 3 of my 19 day Baha'i fast, and am home on a Friday night, in bed, I think it is time for a list. I suggest you join me and make a list too, just for the hell of it. Random reasons why your world rocks. I will go first. But I would love to read your reasons if you feel like posting them here. Here goes. Random reasons my (currently delirious) world rocks:

1. I spent my entire day on Thursday on a farm in the sunshine harvesting vegetables, weeding an herb garden, and canvasing a local neighbourhood with some very cool high school students. We were trying to find out if people with fruit trees in their gardens wanted us to harvest their fruit through a program called Harvest Sacramento. The owner can keep as much of the harvested fruit as they want, and the rest is donated to the food bank.

The Youth Garden at Soil Born Farms

Waiting for the youth to arrive at Soil Born Farms

Youth cooking healthy meal at Soil Born Farms

One of my favourite activities is planting seeds in springtime, like these fancy mamas (a.k.a. Bachelor's Buttons):

and these beans, that are going to be mighty tasty in soup:

 

And not only do I get to plant seeds, but sometimes something miraculous happens from one Thursday to the next. Something that looks like this:

And if you knew me as my friends back in Canada do, you would know that when I see these little fellas pressing up through the earth, I am imagining something like this:

I am told that the seeds above in the foreground are Lupins. I have yet to see whether they grow quite as tall at the PEI variety! 

Oh. I almost forgot. If that was not enough to make me the happiest woman on the planet, I also got to see this yesterday above the farm:

I hope you can make them out here. There were huge flocks of Sandhill Cranes migrating north. They were beautiful!

2. I have amazing friends all over the world who make me laugh; who go running with me; pray with me, and are always there when I need to talk:

California friends

Three Canadian women whose friendship has changed my life

 

3. I am having my first tea descriptions printed on Lady Baker's Tea Trolley tea packages this week. Will post photos when I see the labels on the bags!

4. The round the world journal that I am working on with eleven of my amazing friends made it safely to New Zealand despite the earthquake and the fact that the house it was addressed to was so damaged by the earthquake that my dear friend Pascale had to abandon it. You can keep updated on the whereabouts of our journal, and see a few peeks of the beautiful and inspiring content at unconventionallyinspired12.wordpress.com

5. Tomorrow I am driving to the Bay Area to pick up a soulmate from BC, who will be spending the weekend with me. A fellow writer, we are going to take long walks, drink tea, and write together. I cannot wait to see her radiant face tomorrow!

Ahava, looking radiant on the organic farm she lives on in British Columbia, Canada

 6. I received a package in the mail today from Green & Black's organic chocolate containing a gift certificate for REI so that I can go and start purchasing the gear I need for my expedition at the end of the month. The days are passing so incredibly quickly! I cannot believe that I head to the Dominican Republic in only a few weeks! You can see the monthly updates from the five of us from the US that will be headed down to the organic cocoa farms at the end of the month here.

7. I got my Master's degree in island studies. And although people always look at me funny when I say that, the reality is that it means that I get to go to places like this, and call it work:

8. Spending so much of my time on islands means that I get to experience truly spectacular natural landscapes and wildlife on a regular basis. The natural world, and my relationship to it, is an integral part of what I value most about the world. I will finish up this entry with a video clip from one of my favourite places in the world -- a cape that I used to drive to often after long summer and fall days working on a farm on PEI, in Canada. I would lie in the tall grass and listen to and watch the cormorants. There are hundreds of them nesting in these cliffs on PEI. The ocean crashes up on the rocks. It is wild and spectacularly beautiful.

And with that, I wish you a wonderful Friday night, an excellent weekend, and an enjoyable list-making session! (I would love to read your lists here, if you would like to share). I will be out exploring the world with Ahava this weekend, but I will write a full post on Monday to share some of our adventures with you.