But what do you DO all day?

As I learned when hiking the PCT, when you’re physically tired instead of mentally tired, there’s lots of room for your mind to run around. Whether I can actually put thoughts to words at the end of the day is another matter. This note though, is not about lofty thoughts, this is about brass tacks, the nitty gritty, the actual dirt slinging and bucket hefting that happens on the farm every day.

This week I helped harvest salad mix—tender baby lettuces, spicy arugula and mustard greens. Salad mix is best harvested early in the morning and plopped expeditiously into a cool bath. We use this greens harvester to essentially mow a thickly seeded bed of greens at an even height. Each plant will happily produce another round of leaves for you a few weeks later, like a little edible lawn.

The harvester, while it looks like a mechanical miracle, is an athletic feat. It requires you to bend at the waist and extend the full weight of the device out over the bed while pulling the trigger on the drill, hovering at perfect lettuce-mowing height, and pushing through the crop at the right speed for the reciprocating saw blade. It is sweaty, back-testing work. Also, the longer you take at this tricky task, the harder it will be. The greens begin to wilt. The greenhouses begin to approach steaming sun-sauna status. You begin to feel like you and your greens are melting into a limp, slimy mass from which you will not recover.

Little friend in the tomatoes. I think he’s quite enjoying the sauna.

But then you make it to the wash phase and get to plunge your tired arms into a bathtub full of greens and cold water in the shade and gently swish off the dirt. The greens are then spun dry in mesh bags in a converted washing machine and bagged up to take to market or give to CSA members or sell wholesale.

Lunch! Lunch is a very exciting time. Size of breakfast does not seem to affect the noon o’clock stomach alarm.

Lunch, made by me! Korean-style ground beef on rice with quick pickles, carrot soup, whole wheat sourdough and… salad mix.

Lunch is served family style, prepared by Chef (a professional!) and/or the intern on kitchen week. We’re often joined by the cowboys who work the adjacent ranch. After lunch there are dishes, a group effort. Afternoons, we siesta. Sometimes long, sometimes short—we let the heat of the day pass and then get back to it.

Soon enough the day is done. The sun is slanting out gently over the farm, and there’s a little cool breeze, and everyone makes their way toward dinner or a shower or whatever their evening might hold. 

Next time, I will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about taking a chicken from a live, fluttery, beady eyed squawker to meat in your freezer.