Sunday, March 25, 2012

Tunnels

This week, I began my integrated pest management rotation in earnest.  Right now, the focus is on gopher trapping.  The ambivalence I felt toward killing furry creatures before I began the rotation remains, but is now manifested in mixed emotions as I walk the fields setting and checking my traps. 

Gophers are a major predator on the farm, destroying plants primarily by eating their root systems from underground.  The basic approach to gopher trapping is to find areas of recent activity, set traps in the area, and return in 1-2 days to check the traps. 

Step 1: Find areas of recent activity.  Gophers live underground in an interconnected series of tunnels.  When digging their underground tunnels, the dirt they are pushing out of the way has to go somewhere, so they push it to the surface, creating a mound of fresh soil.  I think the freshly turned soil looks like coffee grounds.  Damp soil, which is darker in color than the surrounding ground, indicates a fresh mound.  Older mounds have dry soil.  Of course, gophers aren't the only burrowing creatures on our farm, so I also have to distinguish between mole and ground squirrel activity.  Ground squirrels don't create mounds--they just leave big holes in the ground marking the entrance to their burrows.  Moles do create mounds, but they tend to be volcano-shaped, unlike gopher tunnels, which are horseshoe-shaped.  So I walk the fields somewhat randomly, looking for horseshoe-shaped mounds of damp coffee grounds.

Horseshoe-shaped gopher mound
Step 2: Set traps.  Once I find a fresh gopher mound, the first step is to find the tunnel/s associated with the mound.  This requires probing the ground around the mound with a plastic stake, feeling for an area of intial resistance as the probe penetrates soil, then no resistance as the probe enters a tunnel.  Once I think I've found the tunnel, I slip a hori hori knife along the probe and create a pocket for my hand to enter the tunnel, pulling the knife out as I slide my hand in. 

Hori hori knife
Once my hand is in, I feel around to determine which direction the tunnel is heading in.  Often, there are 2-3 tunnels that converge into the pocket I'm in, and I can set a trap in each one.  The next step is excavation, the most time-consuming part of the process.  The traps we use are larger than the tunnel entrances for the most part, which means I have to widen and deepen the tunnel entrance to fit a trap inside.  Once I have a big enough hole, I set the trap's trigger mechanism above the ground.  We use Victor gopher traps. 

Victor gopher trap

Trap set in underground tunnel
Once the trap is set, I carefully place it at the entrance to the tunnel, then backfill the area I excavated with dirt.  To make sure I can find the trap the next day, I place a stake with a bright orange flag right next to the area.  The stakes are tied to the underground trap, making it easy to pull the trap out of the ground to see if you've caught a gopher.


Flag marking a set trap
I find steps 1 and 2 to be rather enjoyable.  I get to work on my own, exploring the farm, keeping my eyes open for signs of gopher acitivty.  I feel connected to what's happening in the fields.  It's satisfying to identify a mound, successfully probe for a tunnel, and excavate an area to set a trap.  If I don't think about what the traps are for (killing gophers), setting traps is a pleasant way to spend a day.  It's step 3 where the mixed emotions come in.

Step 3: Check the traps.  On Friday, I set 8 or so traps, in several areas of our main field.  On Saturday, I looked for my orange flags and checked each for a gopher.  As I grabbed the string and began pulling my first trap to the surface, half of me hoped the trap would be empty, while the other half wanted to be successful with this new task.  Much to my relief, the first trap was empty.  So was the second.  And the third.  And the fourth.  At this point, while relieved to have not killed anything, I was getting worried that I was doing something wrong.  As I pulled my fifth trap out of the ground, I fully expected it to be empty, too.  So as the trap reached the surface, I was startled to find a gopher on the end of the line.  My heart sunk as I jumped back at the sight of the lifeless gopher.  I never thought success could be so disappointing. 

My first day of trapping yielded two gophers, each of which was buried in its own tunnel.  When I reported my results to my supervisor, I was congratulated.  My heart soared momentarily--I had done my job well and been successful.  Yet that success meant the loss of a life, and I didn't feel comfortable celebrating that. 

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Doggie field trip

Author's note:  Today's blog will be guest written by Dakota.

I'm so excited that my mom is letting me take a stab at this blogging thing--I've been getting really bored with laying on the couch while she types every night.  I may not have opposable thumbs, but I can hunt and peck with the best of the canines!

Today started out like any other day--jump off the bed, stretch my back, get dressed in my favorite collar (the one with the blue bone-shaped tag on it), and head out for some exercise.  But today my mom cut our morning exercise short, which made me pretty mad at first, but then she invited me to hop in the car instead of her usual routine of telling me that I'm the best (Boy, do I like hearing that!) and to be good, and then leaving me to guard the house from intruders.  Field trip?!  Awesome!  I hopped up on the passenger seat, settling into my usual shotgun position.  I didn't know where we were going, but I hoped it was the place that the dirt on mom's clothes comes from--that tantalizing scent of fresh vegetables, wood chips, and pigs. 

When mom stopped the car, the tantalizing scent was everywhere around me.  I could hardly contain my excitement.  Okay, I didn't contain my excitement.  My tail started doing its thumping thing, I starting whining, and climbed all over mom in the driver's seat.  She put my harness on (too bad!), but I got over it pretty quickly, probably because of that amazing farm smell.  We went for a little walk, then met up with a group of people standing in a circle talking.  Mom let me run free while she joined the circle.  I greeted all the people with sniffs and a few leaps (mom keeps getting mad at me for those leaps--I don't think she understands that I just want to give people a proper face-lick greeting.)  While they talked about something called harvesting, I tried to track down the source of that amazing smell.  As luck would have it, I didn't have to go far.  Just a few feet from the circle, I found it--a set of three round, brown piles.  Even though I had already eaten breakfast, I just couldn't help myself--I ate one.  Mom made a funny face and told me no, and I heard someone else say, "Pig poop! Eww!"  Pig poop?!  My lucky day!  I went back for seconds, and when no one was looking, thirds. 

We headed into the fields after that, and I ran around, soaking up the fresh air laden with so many new smells while mom worked, filling boxes with vegetables.  What a life!  I even met another dog named Porter, but he wasn't too interested in running around with me--he just laid there in the grass and dirt, watching all the people.  How boring.

Mom and the circle people all gathered at one field and did some more talking while I ran around.  The field was really open, with nothing sticking up out of the ground, so it was a great place to stretch my legs out and race.  I heard mom yelling "No!" but it just didn't make sense--I wasn't doing anything wrong--I was just running.  I came back to mom to figure out what I had done wrong, and she put me on my leash.  Bummer.  After that, she kept saying, "Path! Path!" over and over again, and pulling me into a narrow trough.  "Path?"  What's that?  I know sit, and shake, and down, but path?  What was mom asking me to do?  I was so confused, but I wanted to make mom happy, so I kept trying to figure out this new word.  After a lot of short tugs on my leash, I finally realized mom wanted me to walk in the trough, apparently called a path.  I liked the wide, flat areas better, but mom wouldn't let me walk there, muttering something about a bed of seeds and the german nation (or was it germination?). 

All my running was catching up with me, and I decided to lie down and rest for a bit in the tall grass while mom played in the dirt. But then I smelled it--that tantalizing scent again.  I stood up, and turned to find the source, my sniffer in overdrive, when my nose bumped a piece of string and suddenly felt like it was on fire.  An intense buzzing feeling shot from my nose to my paws.  More surprised than hurt, I jumped up and back, leaping in the air, trying to get away from that string as fast as I could.  I learned my lesson right then and there--stay away from the string!

A little while later, one of the ladies from the morning circle came over with a tray of really small plants.  "Morning snack?," I wondered.  No such luck.  These plants weren't for eating--they were for burying.  I was disappointed.  I settled for a drink of water instead.  After another circle with lots of talking, mom wrapped my leash around a pipe and headed into the field to dig holes.  Without me.  How could she leave me behind, especially to go digging?  She knows digging is one of my favorite things to do.  Maybe she just forgot to take me.  I barked, hoping to remind her I was there.  But she didn't come get me--she just kept digging little holes and putting the little plants in them.  I barked again, but she still didn't come.  I know she heard me, because she told me to be quiet, and that got me even more worked up.  I wanted to be next to her, not tied to some piece of metal.  I lunged toward her, and realized that the pipe I was tied to was pretty light and I could drag it behind me.  Excellent!  I started toward mom, pipe trailing behind me, but somebody grabbed me before I could get very far.  Thwarted, I barked some more.  At last, my barks succeeded, and mom came over and stood by me.  "I think it's time for you to go home," she said.  Home? Already?  Sure enough, a few minutes later, Grandma Janice and Grandpa Niel showed up and took me back to guard my house.  I don't remember what happened next, but they tell me I fell asleep in the car.  I guess all that running around caught up with me.

When mom came home tonight, I heard her say something about half-day doggie kindergarten at the farm on Saturdays, so I hope that means I get to go back there soon.  I'll try harder next time to stay on the path and not bark so much.  Anything to get close to that tantalizing smell again!

Dakota

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Spring has sprung!

Happy Spring Equinox, everybody.  Today is officially the first day of spring!  A friend shared this picture with me recently, so I am re-sharing.  Presumably the sign is posted outside a nursery.


At the farm, we didn't wet our plants today, but we did have a spring equinox ritual and apprentice welcome lunch to celebrate spring's arrival.  During the event, we shared our intentions for the season--what we each hope to give and receive this year as part of the Soil Born Farms community.  We also each shared an inspirational quote.  I had a hard time deciding between two quotes that really spoke to me yesterday as I was scouring the internet for ideas.  The first:
"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."   --Helen Keller
This resonates with me because I have embarked upon what could rightly be called a daring adventure, having left a good-paying job and a career to pursue a dream of becoming a farmer. 

The second, which I ended up sharing with the group, was:
"Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each."   --Henry David Thoreau
 
To me, this quote is about living intentionally, and seizing the moment.  We only live once, and we should make sure life and time don't simply pass us by.

After the ceremony, we each placed an intention stick somewhere on the farm and scattered poppy seeds at the site we selected.  I chose a shady spot under an apricot tree, right next to the new orchard that I helped to plant last month.  I walk past this tree regularly, so the stick will serve as an ongoing reminder of why I am at the farm: to learn a lot, and to share my gifts and skills with others. 



After our first CSA harvest (71 boxes, much bigger than the 5 we did last week!) this morning, we turned to a task quite fitting for the first day of spring: weeding the asparagus patch.  As Barbara Kingsolver points out in her great book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (entire book highly recommended, but at least read the excerpt on asparagus here), the arrival of asparagus heralds the arrival of spring.  Our asparagus patch began the day unrecognizable, with weeds completely engulfing the asparagus stalks such that I had to get down on my hands and knees and stick my face practically in the dirt to find the asparagus needles in the weed haystack.  By the end of the afternoon, we had uncovered several rows of aspragus, transforming the patch into an orderly array of lined-up green spears.  The tangible result of our back-breaking work made it worth the time and energy we invested.  I didn't take a picture of the before or after (sorry!), but in looking for a picture of asparagus on Google images, I found this instead and couldn't resist sharing.


The description accompanying the original picture on the Green BEAN Delivery website reads:
"Aimee the Archer Asparagus grew up along a fence row at Melon Acres in Oaktown, Indiana. Standing by the fence is great for shade, but not for adventure. Aimee always wanted to take up archery and liked to practice on everything from big pumpkins to tiny grape tomatoes to pass the time; of course, she always asked first. Her steady “aim” and strong arms helped her always hit the target! Aimee prided herself in her sassy style and always had to have the latest boots for stomping around in muddy spring weather. Whenever she decided to practice, her friends would cheer and call her “hot shot” and tell her to watch out for the “bull’s eyes” which the cows much appreciated. Annie’s special talent is to practice hard to perfect her skills. Great work, Asparagus Aimee! Take a “bow”!"
Too funny!

Monday, March 19, 2012

Mark your calendars for Sunday, May 20


dof 2012 Enjoy ad
For those of you who are interested in coming out and visiting the farm (and me!), a great day to make your visit will be Sunday, May 20. From 10-4, we will be having an event called "A Day on the Farm." The farm stand will be open, so you can buy organic veggies. We'll also have a plant sale, where you can buy plants to grow your own organic vegetables. And, of course, there will be farm tours. I hope to see you all there!

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Eeek!

My 2-week rotation in integrated pest management (IPM) doesn't start until Tuesday, but this past week presented an informal introduction to some of the pests I will take part in managing.  Due to the rain, we spent much of last week cleaning and organizing in and around the barn.  While cleaning in the barn, I picked up a 5-gallon bucket and was surprised to see movement inside.  Running in circles at the bottom of the nearly empty bucket of seeds, trying futilely to escape, was a cute little field mouse.  It quickly realized it could not escape and instead froze, perhaps thinking it hadn't yet been seen.


Field mouse
No such luck.  We had the little mouse cornered, and knew that we should kill it, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.  I wondered, "How do you go about killing a mouse in a bucket, anyway?  Put a trap in the bucket?  Step on it?"  I don't have a problem trapping mice, probably because the trap itself does the dirty work--you don't even have to be there to watch.  But stepping on a mouse, feeling it crunch under my foot?  No way--I couldn't do it.  Wouldn't it be fine to just let it go outside the barn?

My coworker felt similarly, so we took mercy on the critter and let it go outside the barn.  Unfortunately, once free, he raced right back into the barn!  Didn't we feel stupid!  The expression "No good deed goes unpunished" comes to mind.  About an hour later, we spotted the mouse again, this time in the presence of our boss.  "You have to kill it!," he directed us without a moment's hesitation or indication of mercy, shovel in hand.  The little mouse was quick, though, and found another hiding place, living to see another day.  The next day, someone bought mouse traps at Home Depot, so his pardon is likely short-lived.

My next IPM encounter scared the sh*# out of me.  Yesterday morning, I was working in a team of apprentices and youth, clearing away scrap metal and wood from behind the barn.  I bent over and reached out to pick up a piece of metal when I saw movement, then a brown pattern, a diamond-shaped head, and a rattle.  "Aaaa!  Rattlesnake!," I screamed, jumping back from the snake.  My hand had been probably only a foot away from the snake before I saw it--way too close for comfort.  The snake was partially coiled, so I couldn't tell its full length, but I guessed a little less than 3 feet.  Having been instructed during orientation to alert a supervisor to rattlesnake sightings, we did as instructed, quickly fetching our boss to deal with the snake.  Typically, snakes are pardoned and simply escorted off the property.  This snake, however, was not shown mercy, given its location and possibility of return to care for unknown eggs or babies left behind.  This killing didn't bother me, perhaps because the rattlesnake was clearly dangerous, and perhaps because I didn't have to do the killing myself.  I don't know for sure, but had the shovel been handed to me, the finder of the snake and the one most in danger of being bit, I think I wouldn't have been too disturbed by killing it.

This looks pretty similar to the snake I found.
These are my conflicted thoughts as I embark upon my IPM rotation.  I don't take being responsible for the death of sentient beings lightly.  Gophers will be my primary targets over the next couple of weeks.  Of course, they're cute and furry, much like the mouse I couldn't bring myself to kill.  But they are also killed by trapping, so I won't actually be doing the killing myself.  Or is that just a rationalization?  If not a murderer, as the trap setter, aren't I at least an accomplice to murder?  Does the intent, to protect vegetables being grown to feed humans, justify the killing of mammalian pests?  As you can see, I have way more answers than questions at this point in time.  Hopefully, the answers make themselves apparent over the next 2 weeks.  Stay tuned.

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Surgery

This afternoon's propagation class presented me with two opportunities to practice my surgical skills.  The first opportunity was planned and involved bench grafting of a fruit tree, in this case grafting a 20th-Century Asian Pear onto EMLA 27 rootstock.  The rootstock was ordered by mail, but the asian pear scion I harvested myself from a one-year-old asian pear tree growing in one of the farm's orchards. 

Why graft?  Many fruit trees do not breed true; that is, if you plant their seeds, you may get a tree with fruit very different from the parent tree.  So if I have a 20th-Century Asian Pear tree and want another tree with the same delicious fruit, planting a seed from one of my pears won't get me what I want.  Instead, I need to graft.  Grafting, or what I'm calling tree surgery, involves transplanting a piece of the fruiting tree you want to propagate (called a scion) onto a rootstock with desirable characteristics.  The rootstock I used, EMLA 27, has the desirable characteristic of dwarfing trees, keeping them small (just right for backyards, which is where I'm planning to put mine!) 

There are several ways to do a graft, but the basic concept is to align the cambial layers (actively dividing layer of cells just inside the bark) of the scion and the rootstock.  To do this, you need the two ends you are joining to be of the same caliber.  For my graft, I simply made an angled cut on each piece and lined up the two cuts.  This is called a splice graft.  Then I taped the two pieces together with a stretchy grafting tape and wished my new tree good luck!

  
My grafted tree
My second surgery experience of the day was not planned, (and it wasn't actually surgery, but I did get to use the wound care skills I learned as a surgery intern, so I'm counting it!)  One of my fellow apprentices cut his hand with a grafting knife, and I provided first aid.  The cut was relatively superficial, so no stitches needed--just some cleaning, direct pressure, steri-strips, and gauze.  It felt good to use my doctor skills, and nice to know that those med school loans I'm still paying back didn't go to waste.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Seeding day

After one week of mostly watering, today I got to expand my greenhouse repertoire to planting some seeds. The preparation for planting takes nearly as long as the planting itself. We planted in 192-cell trays, wooden flats, 6-packs, and soil blocks on 3-sided trays. Most of the containers are filled with a potting mix that is 1/3 compost, 1/3 vermiculite, and 1/3 coconut "peat". The soil blocks, however, use a different recipe and have to be molded from wet soil. The wet soil mix gets packed into a mold, then pressed out onto a 3-sided tray. The mold makes 12 blocks at a time, each with a little depression for the seed.  Making the blocks is a good upper body workout and a nice way to warm up on a rainy day.

Filling tray with soil blocks
Making soil blocks

I never would have guessed that my day of seeding would start with a construction project.  We didn't have enough 4-sided trays for seeding our onions, so I had to convert 3-sided trays to 4-sided trays by scavenging parts from broken trays.  I also had to repair trays with loose slats to make sure the soil and plants won't fall out of their tray.  I was working in less than ideal conditions (rusty nails, wobbly table, and rain), but I made it work--that's what you have to do on the farm. 

Our team seeded tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, sunflowers, lettuce, and parsley today.  Seeding in the greenhouse is different from how I seed in my backyard garden.  Instead of poking a hole in the soil and dropping in a seed, we fill the cells nearly to the top with potting mix, place one seed in each cell, and then sprinkle soil on top to bury the seed at a depth that is approximately twice the seed's width.  After seeding, each tray has to be "watered in," gently of course, so as to not wash away the seeds.  The lettuce seeds are so shallowly seeded that they have to be watered with a special mister attachment on the hose.

After a delicious lunch (carrot and lentil soup, bread, hummus, cabbage with rutabaga, and pumpkin ginger bars), the afternoon was spent cleaning in the barn and packing area.  Sweeping the floor, stacking boxes, scrubbing tables, moving chairs, and scrubbing out buckets were all on the list.  It wasn't a bad way to spend a rainy afternoon--it's dry under the roof of the barn!  Since rain is forecast all week, we'll be spending lots of time in the barn, cleaning and organizing for the busy season ahead.  I've also been promised some lessons in tool care and sharpening, which I am looking forward to--I have no idea how to sharpen my pruners!

Monday, March 12, 2012

Greenhouse duty

My current apprenticeship rotation is the greenhouse.  So far, this has involved watering the germinating seeds and baby plants, along with mixing up a batch of tree potting mix.  Tomorrow, my role will expand to planting seeds, something I am very excited about.  Having the greenhouse as my first rotation feels right--what better place to start my farm life than the very place that many of the farm's plants start their own lives?

Kohlrabi with damping off
I've always thought of watering as an easy chore--just spray some water and you are good to go.  Not at Soil Born Farms!  Watering is almost a science.  If you water too much, the plants can be more susceptible to damping off, a fungal infection that attacks the base of the stem and causes plants to fall over.  Right now, we have some kohlrabi getting hit by damping off. :( 

If you don't water enough, the plants wilt.  Finding the "just right" point is tricky.  We check soil moisture before and after watering by feel and by visual inspection, carefully prying individual cells out of trays.  We overhead water everything using a hose with an adjustable spray nozzle.  The goal is to water evenly--no easy task.  You have to pay attention to many things as you water--how hard the water is flowing, which cells in each flat are getting watered with each pass of the nozzle, making sure the edges don't get skimped on, and keeping the angle of the water correct (the nozzle should point slightly upward so that the water arcs upward before falling, simulating a gentle spring rain). 

Lettuce ready for planting
  
Right now, our greenhouse is home to both winter and summer crops.  We are getting ready for a winter planting of brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kohlrabi, lettuce), as well as preparing warm-weather crops like tomatoes and peppers.  We also have a set of bare root fruit trees that were just potted up out in our hardening-off area, waiting to be adopted at an upcoming plant sale.   
   








Emerging onions

Onions are my favorite greenhouse "baby" so far.  They initial emerge from the soil bent over, forming an upside-down "U."  Then they spring upright, looking more like you expect onions to look.  I think it's quite playful, but perhaps this is a sign I've been spending  too much time around plants!
    
I was struck late last week by the tremendous responsibility I have as the greenhouse apprentice.  The farm's next crop planting depends on me.  If I forget to water, overwater, leave the greenhouse open at night, or forget to vent the greenhouse in the morning, the plants can die.  The good news is that our greenhouse manager is looking over my shoulder, making sure I don't make any major mistakes.  I really appreciate this oversight and ongoing feedback at this point in my training!
Upright onions





  
Goldfinch exploring the greenhouse


Thursday, March 8, 2012

Settling in

Day 2 on the farm was exhausting!  Lots of backfilling trenches, another version of "planting pipe."  Burying the base of the risers was nothing compared to this task, which involved refilling the trenches that were dug for the irrigation pipe with native soil.  The first few trenches were fun, as the task was novel and the physical activity helped warm me up after standing in the cold wind for a while.  After the first few, though, the reality of fairly monotonous strenuous activity set in.  Shovel, shovel, shovel, stomp, stomp, stomp.  Shovel, shovel, shovel, stomp, stomp, stomp.  The stomping?  My attempt at injury prevention.  If you don't pack down the soil into the trench, an unsuspecting person walking along may have the ground give way underfoot and sprain an ankle.

Other than lunch (wood-fired pizza with carrot rutabaga soup), another highlight of the day was working with the Green Corps, a group of at-risk teens who spend several hours each week working on the farm.  These kids have been working on the farm for a couple of months now and know way more than I do about how to do things.  It is very humbling to be trained by an 18-year-old on how to double-dig a raised bed, but at the same time, exciting to know that the next generation will include people who know how to care for the land and grow food.  I'm looking forward to the next time these "kids" come out.

When I got home, I felt old.  Not because I worked with young kids or because I am older than the other apprentices and my bosses, but because my entire body hurt.  My feet were the worst, but my back and hands were a close second on the aching scale.  A hot shower helped, but I felt ready for bed at 8 pm.  Only one problem--I had a soccer game at 8:45!  I debated flaking on my team and going to bed, but knew that they needed my warm body to field a full team, plus I really wanted to see some familiar faces.  I really like my new co-workers, but I'm just getting to know them, and I miss my CDPH buddies.  My soccer team lost, but I'm glad I went.  Keeping that connection to my "old life" makes the transition to my new farming life easier. 

First day

Today was my third day on the farm, and the first time that I've had enough time or energy to write a post.  For any of you out there who may have been worried, I am very much still alive, just a little pooped from long, hard days of manual labor.  Here is an account of my first day:

My first day on the farm started almost like a day at the office--walk the dog, take a shower, make breakfast, feed the dog, eat breakfast in the car...but that's about when the similarities stopped. Instead of driving to the light rail station, I headed to the farm. I was greeted by a cold wind and the smiling faces of the farm staff and my co-apprentices.  After brief intros, we headed out to the field for a harvest.  We had a very small order to fill--just 5 boxes for our own use this week.  We started with lettuce, since it is delicate and gets limp as the day goes on.  Who knew that there is a special knife just for harvesting lettuce?!  Next came collard greens, kale, cabbage, broccoli, rutabagas, and carrots.  Carrots were my favorite to harvest--you stick your pitch fork in the ground near the carrots and pry up several at a time--it's like digging for buried treasure!  We bunched the crops in the field, tying them together with metal twist ties, then carried them to the packing shed to be rinsed and packed into boxes, then stored in the walk-in cooler until needed.  (I took a box home at the end of the day, and could barely find room in the fridge for all the goodies.  Alison made a salad from the lettuce for dinner and it was amazing--fresh, crisp, and quite tasty!)

The best part of the first day was definitely lunch!  In previous years, the apprentices have taken turns cooking for the farm team, so I arrived fully expecting (and dreading) cooking duty.  But much to my delight, this year, our meals are being cooked by a rotating team of volunteers!  Lunch on day 1 was a huge spread--Italian soup, fried cabbage, kale, quinoa, sausage, and lemon tahini cookies.  After spending the morning in the field being whipped by a cold, gusty wind, to come inside to a hot lunch was quite a treat.  Many thanks to the volunteers--you rock!

After lunch came an orientation to the overall apprenticeship, with a few surprises, most of them good.
  • Good surprises: I get 5 days of vacation between now and the end of October (I didn't expect any); the apprenticeship is broken up into 2-4 week rotations so we get more in-depth exposure and ownership over various parts of the farm (feels like residency, in a good way); work days end at 5 pm (rather than when the work is done (on a farm, the work is never done)
  • 
  • Bad surprise: When I was told that my hours would be five days a week with one weekend a month, I assumed those five days would be Monday through Friday.  Well, you know what they say about assuming... It turns out that our standard week is Tuesday through Saturday, since there is a lot of farm stand and volunteer activity on Saturdays.  So my weekends will be Sunday and Monday.  This has its benefits (I can schedule that dentist appointment for a Monday so I don't have to use my precious two days of sick leave), but since Alison's weekends are usually Saturday and Sunday, me working Saturdays will cut into our time together. :(

We ended the first day by finishing installation of the irrigation system in the newly planted orchard, burying the base of the sprinkler risers under a few inches of topsoil to keep the risers vertical (I dubbed this activity "planting pipe" to make it sound more farmer-like), then gluing sprinkler heads on each riser.  The filling was hard work, but the satisfaction of turning on the water to the orchard for the first time ever made it all worth it!
Planting pipe

Friday, March 2, 2012

Plants are people, too!

I named this blog Doctor to Farmer, but the more I think about it, perhaps Doctor and Farmer is a more appropriate name.  I am, and always will be, a doctor.  I think like a doctor.  I can use words that only other doctors understand.  Even if I wanted to (and I don't), I couldn't stop being a doctor--it is part of who I am.

So how can I reconcile my "doctorness" with my choice to become a farmer?  Am I splitting my soul, like Voldemort making horcruxes?  I don't think so.  In my mind, being an organic farmer is completely consistent with being a doctor.  Doctors care about human health.  They treat people when they get sick, and many try to prevent people from getting sick in the first place.  Organic farmers care about health, human and environmental.  They grow fruits and vegetables that are critical in preventing chronic diseases in humans.  They create environments that support plant health to keep their plants and animals from getting sick in the first place, and treat the soil, plants, and animals when they do get sick.

Mitt Romney has gotten a lot of flack lately for his claim that corporations are people, too (listen to John McCutcheon's barbs for a good laugh), but at the risk of be similarly mocked, I present Exhibit A, Plant Man, in support of this post's title, "Plants are people, too!"  I do this more to convince myself than all of you that my decades of medical education and training aren't being wasted on tomatoes and broccoli.

Exhibit A
Gross Anatomy for Doctor-Farmers
Cabbage head
Kiwi hair
Potato eyes
Corn ears
Artichoke heart
Kidney beans
Rose hips
Tree trunk
Tree limbs
Fingerling potatoes


























All kidding aside, I really do feel that my adventure in farming is a continuation of my public health practice, and I have chosen to apprentice at a farm that shares this belief.  Soil Born Farms' mission statement,
"Our mission is to create an urban agriculture and education project that empowers youth and adults to discover and participate in a local food system that encourages healthy living, nurtures the environment and grows a sustainable community."
is a testament to everything I have been working for in my two years of leading the Health in All Policies Task Force, and I am excited to become a doctor and a farmer there.