I have been very busy lately. Because we raised the number of CSA shares? Nope. Spring planting? Nope.  Because we are understaffed? Wrong again.

I have been busy because we have to do a lot of things that are not farming at my farm. The most recent such thing is an earth day party. We are expecting 3000 people over the course of 5 hours. This is a complete guess.

Since I need 3000 people to show up I have been walking around to houses in the area and putting fliers on their doormats. This has given me a unique opportunity to view/judge the gardens in the area.

Highlights:

- A house with a haggard garden with every plant labeled with its scientific name

- A house with a moat containing the worlds largest koi fish

- A house with an orange tree when I was hungry

- An entire neighborhood with homemade truck themed mailboxes

Lets talk about footwear.

People come to our farm wearing funny things on their feet all the time.

A few days ago I saw a volunteer wearing shape ups. In case you live under a rock or something, shape ups are the most absurd thing to happen to footwear ever. They have a big bouncy bump in the mid-sole. According to the commercials this big bouncy bump helps eliminate big bouncy butts. Its supposed to keep you off balance so you have to flex your butt so you don’t fall over. The general public is already not good at walking. Add in farm terrain and shape ups and someone is going to fall down and get a trowel shaped bruise on their hip. Also, they look dumb and I may or may not laugh at you inside of my head when I see you wearing them.

My coworker recently got some vibrams (the shoes with the individual toes). He doesn’t use them for farming right now, just for normal life. Another coworker’s kids saw him in his new shoes and realized that his toes were now capable of being attacked. So, don’t wear vibrams around violent children.

Not long ago a group of frat brothers showed up to volunteer and they were all wearing fancy sneakers. They were hesitant about going into the field because it was muddy. If you know that its rained recently, and you know that a farm is made out of dirt, and you know that dirt and water make mud, and you don’t want to get mud on your fancy sneakers…

Also, one time a person dropped a pair of felcos on their foot and got cut. They were probably wearing sandals.

Here is a short list of acceptable farm footwear:

work boots, rubber boots, cowboy boots, hiking boots, worn out sneakers, trail running shoes

Exercise your common sense.

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.