Today was the first day of spring at the farm. I don’t care what the calendar says. Here is how I determined that today was the first day of spring:

1) It smelled like onions in the cooler

2) I wore shorts

3) I forgot to drink enough water and got a headache

4) I was not able to drink my quart of milk at lunch

5) Im topless right now

6) It smelled like tomatoes in the greenhouse

On a non-farming related note, Michael (fennelfrondsforever) and I invented a new sandwich today. Cucumber sandwich with pan fried salami.

Cesar Chavez day is tomorrow. Im going to celebrate by farming and getting paid less than a McDonalds employee. I keep it real like that.

There are 2 types of people in the world. The first type of person is the normal person. The second type of person is the person who has spent significant periods of time weeding and thinning carrots by themselves.

Im the 2^nd type of person. Today I weeded and thinned 350 row feet of carrots. While this is not a personal record for me it was enough time to reacquaint myself with the weird shit that goes on in my mind.

Why am I doing this? What is Michael thinning? Friday Friday gonna get down on Friday FUN FUN FUN FUN! Maybe if I plugged half the scoops in the seeder I would only have to thin half as much. How long would it take me to get strong enough to be able to squat all of the carrots that we harvest out of this row? Why am I doing this? Fennel is gross.

There is something about thinning carrots that gives you mental diarrhea. There is something about pruning tomatoes with another person that makes the both of you completely unintelligible to innocent bystanders.

One time my friend Sean and I were pruning (aka suckering) tomatoes. We started joking about suckering assholes. This continued for months. To this day I refer to pruning tomatoes as suckering assholes. I also refer to firing people, weeding, thinning, and things of that nature as suckering assholes. No one has any idea what Im talking about.

The point here is that farming will take you on a mental journey. Ive spent significant amounts of time with roughly 20 fully legit farmers. All of them were weird, me included. I cant prove causation but correlation is undeniable.

Farming, much like the cross-section of the red cabbage, is filled with an unpredictable maze of twists and turns. As a farmer it is my duty to navigate this gauntlet with the courage and precision of a victorinox harvest knife. Not one of the dull ones once lost in the cauliflower, no, one of the sharp ones we have yet to destroy.

As I type this a glowing rainbow arcs through the sky above the greenhouse. A double rainbow? No. But still, what does it mean!? Should I laugh? Should I cry? This is the conundrum of the farmer.