It began raining on Saturday, the same day we had to move our bed to the new place in Hillsboro.  We dutifully wrapped everything in plastic and began.  It has been 10 days since then and every single one of them has been rainy.  The day we moved our mattress and box spring it drizzled.  On the day we moved ourselves it was a fine, misty rain that made the road slick and the visibility zero.  The day I started work on the farm it was on and off rain, big fat drops that would send you scurrying for cover each time it started.  Friday night it poured and we got thunder and lightening and Saturday morning it rained on and off while the sun shined.  We found this so confusing that we even tried to eat outside and were forced to race in when the rain returned.

 

The reason I’m harping on the weather so much is because of the many things I have learned this week one of them is that rain is very hard to work in.  To quote Richard, “You can farm when it’s cold and you can farm when it’s hot, but it’s hard to farm when it’s raining.”  The reason for this is not just that rain will make you cold and damp and exceedingly muddy (I come home most days looking like I just suffered a very bad experience with a sunless tanner due to our orangey-brown clay-filled soil), but that if you work with the soil when it’s wet you’ll wreck things.  You can’t till wet soil, you can’t plant in wet soil, and it’s very hard to weed in wet soil.

Despite the insistent rain we’ve been trying our best to get things done.  I managed to weed the garlic patch, which was so full of fescue that it was hard to tell what we were really trying to grow in there.  I learned to gather eggs (our chickens are laying ten dozen eggs a day and we’re hoping for more as the weather heats up) and somehow earned the eternal enmity of the rooster who lives on the farm.  Every time I climb into the chicken pen he edges over to me and then, one he’s sure he’s close enough that I’m watching carefully, begins displaying himself.  I’m not sure if he wants to scare me off or have me lay his eggs.  In any case, he never does it to anyone else.

 

We’re harvesting lettuce, spinach, braising greens, kale, and African collard greens at the moment and I’ve seen the arugala growing fast.  It might sound silly, but it’s very exciting to have so much fresh food at your fingertips.  The other day I wanted a salad to go with dinner so I just cut some lettuce.  Then I walked over to the onion patch and dug up two spring onions and then sauntered to the radishes and pulled up four of the little red radishes.  Ta-da!  Instant salad, just add olive oil and vinegar and serve with a smile.  I don’t think I’ve had food that fresh in my entire life.

 

My other uber-fresh food experience is breakfast. I eat Coon Rock Farm eggs that I gathered myself a day or two before with a side of Coon Rock Farm mild sage pork sausage from Coon Rock pigs that got processed less than two weeks ago.  You know, I bet the African collard greens could be fried up with some garlic and would go really well with that.  Maybe I’ll try that tomorrow.