farmin, farmin, farmin...

It has been a crazy season so far. June had (up through last week) only 1 day with a high over 80F, and TONS of rain. we have very wet fields, so this has led to Nate and I spending some afternoons staring at the growing weeds with dismay. We dream of days when we can see this instead: the lovely view looking down from one of the cubs to clean up the weeds in our beds. I cultivated the onions a couple times, he just cultivated the eggplants and peppers, so hopefully we've caught up a bit, but cultivation isn't very effective when the sun doesn't shine.

But the sun finally came out a bit Thursday and Friday. Thursday morning I did another squash and cuke planting (Nate was at the Belmont Farmers' Market with 2 of the students). And then once the dew had evaporated, we trellised tomatoes. (You shouldn't touch tomatoes when the leaves are wet because it will spread disease quickly). I had gotten help from all the Farm School staff to pound tomato stakes in several weeks ago and so this week the students and I strapped boxes of tomato twine to our belts and strung the first line of "basketweaving". you wrap the string around a stake, come along one side of the tomatoes, wrap it around the next stake. You go all the way to the end of the row and then you come back along the other side, which ultimately cinches the tomatoes into a straight, organized tower instead of a sprawling mess.

It has been really fun this season to have weekends off - I have gone to amazing weddings (Anim and Sarita, Naomi and Al), and gotten to go to Saturday farmers' markets, visit friends in Boston, and go back and visit folks at Caretaker. Last weekend I was in Williamstown for Caretaker's Summer Solstice party. It was raining, but we had a great turnout with amazing food (Spinach curry, rustic strawberry tart, Monique came with her 5 week old baby and box brownies...apologizing for them being from the box. I was floored. who has time to make brownies with a new baby?) The apprentices from Crabapple were there and since "Bye, Bye Love", Don and Gabriella did a number, and Katie, MK and Margaret got everyone singing "Clementine". I had no idea what a funny and raucous song it was! Then I drove out with Elise, another former Food Projecter, to Greg's going away party. It has been an amazing string of weekends getting to see huge collections of some of my favorite people. Tomorrow I'm off to a grain and scythe workshop at Crabapple, and hoping to go for a swim to round out my trathlon training. biking to work has been great, and the scenery on the runs in this area is beautiful, so I'm excited to check out Lake Whola or Tully pond for some swimming.