Raining in Paradise

Week one has finished and I'm into week two.  So far I have survived, though I was in bed by 8:30 last night and it takes me about half an hour to touch my toes these days.  It shouldn't be "Built Ford Tough," it should be "Built Farm-Girl Tough."

(Don't think I can't hear your little internal remarks at this point: Oh, GEE Merrill, you mean farming is HARD WORK, who would EVER have guessed THAT, Princess.  Ok, Reader, you just rein it in-- I'm in transition here.  Have some patience.)

I'm not complaining, mind you: it's wonderful here-- you wake up and start your day in the fields by 7, and spend all day watching herds of sheep walk by or discovering how beautiful eggplant is.  And I wouldn't say I'm there yet, but one day I'm GOING to be a badass with a shovel and a hammer and other tools of the trade.

However I think it's fair to say, despite this being the beginning of week 2, I really don't know what it's like on the farm yet, because it's been raining every day since I got here.  So here are things you can do on the farm, even though it's raining:

Okra are related to Hydrangea - see the flower?

1) HARVEST.  Did you know that Okra is the most beautiful plant ever?  My grandfather has been trying to get me to take okra seeds home and plant them for over a year now, and I always pictured that the resulting plants would look a little like his cute, tiny hot pepper bushes.  WRONG.  Okra gets to be so tall that I have to reach as high as I can and pull the stalk over, and reach as high as I can again to snap the okra off the top.




  They have these gorgeous flowers every day, and these big green leaves.

Yummmmm.....

  And there is red okra, that turns green when you cook it but the whole plant is this deep burgundy color; it's amazing! We have 2 rows of okra growing and going out there is like going in the jungle.  I love it.

There is a bad side to okra, however, which is that it has this weird stuff on the exterior that you can't see but feels slightly prickly and makes you itch.

 Like, ITCH.  And my dumb self was picking and not thinking and swatted a mosquito off my face, then rubbed where I got bit, then wondered how many mosquito bites I could possibly have gotten in so short a time frame, then rubbed my whole face including neck and ears wondering why I was suddenly so sensitive to mosquitoes, then realized I was rubbing nature's perfect itching powder into every piece of exposed skin I had.  Then I freaked out and had to do some serious woo-saa zen deep breathing exercises to just let the itch keep itching without my scratching any more, until it went away.  Lesson learned. Character built.  I still like okra.

2) MAKE WEED BROWNIES
Ok, they're not really weed brownies, but that got your attention, didn't it?  So let me describe this process and show you some pics and you tell me it doesn't look like double fudge brownies for plants (Hence the term WEED brownies.  Get it? I'm very clever, Reader.)

So you get the recipe and it's like, 1 bucket compost, 1 bucket peat moss, a quarter cup of bone marrow, a teaspoon of vanilla and a dash of salt.  You add some water and mix it all in this giaganto trough thing with a pitchfork at medium speed until all the lumps are gone.
Then you stamp this funny little metal thing in it and press out your brownies on a piece of wood or something, and they come out perfectly square with pre-indented little holes in the top, where you put your seeds.

Cover the seeds in, give them some light water, and presto!  You have helped create life, through brownies!

GIVE ME MY BABIES!

 So far I have learned that unpelleted (that is, uncoated) seeds are hard to work with because they are the size of a gnat's eyeball and my clumsy city fingers have trouble dropping only one seed at a time into the little teeny tiny holes.  Also kale seeds look like alien egg pods or something.




3) GET BITTEN BY EVIL, EVIL MOSQUITOES

We all know mosquitoes were invented by Satan to drive us into his embrace through thoughts (and eventual actions) of hatred, rage, and violence.  I know I'm at a big ole hippy organic farm now, and I've seen the Lion King just like everyone else, but I cannot figure out what purpose these wretches fill in the cycle of life.  If you google "irritating or contemptible" in the Oxford English Dictionary you'll see that the definition is Mosquito.  They're evil.  Evil!

Jerk-Face McSuckerson

The particular brand of devil that besets us on our otherwise idylic farm is called Asian Tiger mosquitoes, so at least we're being driven to distraction by a useless being with a name that sounds like a samurai.  That way we get to keep our self respect a little when something smaller than a mouse sneeze makes us want to kill ourselves and everyone else.

Iceman, Goose, and Maverick

This weekend I spent some time looking up what kills these minions of devilry. (Reader, I KNOW about bats-- but these are daytime creatures!  It's a no-go!)  The answer: Dragonflies.  They are tiny killing machines, turns out:  they can't even walk, their legs are for grabbing their unsuspecting prey out of the air during an extreme dive bomb maneuver, then snapping their necks and high five-ing their other dragonfly friends.  They are my new personal hero, and while we already have some at the farm, I WANT MORE.

I also looked up how to do that-- how to attract these heaven-sent killing machines to the mosquito-buffet that is my life.  Answers were a little dissatisfying: build a pond.  A pond?  A whole 20 foot wide pond?  Of varying depths but at least 2 feet deep, with no fish, and gently sloping sides, and little perching sticks sticking out of it so that the dragonflies have places to brag to the damsel flies about how big of a bug they caught or how wide their wingspan is?  All of this I'm supposed to do?  Hm.

Well, we already have a pond (more of a lake) on the property, and I could just fix that one up....EXCEPT FOR THE ALLIGATOR HANGING OUT IN IT.  He lives a tough life, waiting around trying to get big enough to eat all of our chickens.  He's not there yet, but

This guy is dumb.
But maybe he has dragonflies.

regardless, here is how I am NOT going to be spending my weekend: roaming around his lake putting perching sticks in and making sure the sides slope at the right angle.

This could be you, Reader!

I was sort of hoping there'd be some kind of mail order catalog I could just get a bunch of dried dragonfly eggs from and just...throw 'em in the lake?  Or maybe a box full of full grown flies, up and ready to conquer the fields.  So far no good.  Reader, if you come across any boxes of dragon flies, or catch any of your own, please send them my way.

In the mean time, I'm going to shower, see if I can touch my toes again (probably not..) and call my grandfather to tell him all about life on the farm.  Thanks for reading, Reader!

Bye!