I'm having one of those terribly frustrating days that never seems to start. It's the kind of day that makes you want to kick your dog, throw your cell phone out the window, get in your car and just drive and cry about nothing and everything.
It's this weird twisting frustration winding around inside me, wrapping up everything that is going on, sewing together little pieces of the minor daily tragedies to make a quilt of all the things I've done wrong. I fear my temper in the end might get the best of me, and recently this super emotional wave has engulfed pretty much all of my friends and washed away all sense of my self worth.
I'm at this point right now where everything is ending and I can't get my footing right for the next step. I've been angry and frustrated with everything; Jason, the band, my fam, the looming wedding, the ending job, the end of the growing season.
I keep having these fantasies, mostly about fleeing everything; working as a migrant laborer in South America or the vineyards in Europe... or having dreams about getting pregnant and then just jumping in my car and driving until I ran out of gas and money in some town where no one knows me and I could start clean with my new kid.
I don't know. I think I just need to slow down and breath. I have the sweetest little puppy that I really shouldn't feel like kicking. My big to do list for the week only has one thing crossed off. The rest involve more than one step...
Ok, just typing that made me call the butcher and set the pigs date. That was easy. Two things off the list now.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
sweet september rain
It's september already and I feel like I've totally dropped the ball on writing this season. It's been my first year doing the bountiful harvest csa and so much has been happening so fast, it's hard to keep up with it all.
Each week, we've been pulling everything out of the gardens and putting it in pretty baskets for members to coo over. It started out pretty rough as I didn't know what I was thinking but I said the season would start the first week in June. Um. Nothing is growing the first week in June. It was like three weeks of lettuce. What a pain in the ass. We had watercress too. And some broccoli eventually. I'm actually not sure exactly how we managed to put 30 baskets together of just lettuce and greens and radishes for a group who hates radishes. I write a little "cooking in season" thing each week with a recipe and what's going on in the garden. The first weeks were my woes of groundhogs mowing down my beans and peas and everything else. Then I wrote about my woes with squash bugs. Then we started supplimenting our baskets with other locally grown veggies.
Ok, so I know I'm going to forget this feeling that I have now, so i'm just going to write down regrets and what I would change... in no order. and i'm sure this is going to be pretty boring for most people reading this, but I have a terrible memory and if I don't tuck this away on the internet, I won't remember it at all.
- label all vegetables and seed starts.
-row covers for cukes and squash
-more potatoes
-reinforce back electric fence
-nothing outside the fence in front garden
-more of front garden... it's the only one we tend to
-more beans... and in rotation this time.
-more time in the garden in general. we really stopped trying around July, kinda disappointing and you can tell as productivity just dropped off.
-hot pepper spray on the plants.
-spinosad worked but washed off quickly, excellent for the beans. try it on the jap beetles on raspberries next year
-more mulch! less weeds!
-things that worked in intensive bedding squares: kale, lettuce, beets, chard, carrots (wet towel over them was wonderful!!!)
-things that would work better in rows: beans, toms-need staked in rows and off the ground!
-squash would have been better if we would have dedicated a whole section of garden for them to roam... as is, they took over and then got squash bugs and all died. more black plastic, spraying and row covers. don't need to till so much for them if we mulch heavy. Maybe put them towards the swamp part of the garden, planted as far away from the walnut as possible and train them to walk on mulch towards the walnut. need to be inside the fence!!! vermin eat one bite and then move on to the next
-toms: need staked badly. heirlooms produced well as long as bone meal was fed to them. more basil interplanting next year, almost equal parts of toms and basil would do well. loved the germans, didn't like great white taste or red zebra. orange toms always a big hit
-corn: takes up too much room for what it gives-takes lots of space in between rows too. maybe plant inside the fence with pole beans, which can justify the space taken
-peas: need to be planted very early in march, and kept up with successive plantings. everyone loves sugar snap and while they may be a pain in the ass, they were delicious fresh.
-garlic: harvest before seed heads form, before head splits open. plant early in spring. very early. does not do well in just sand, maybe mix for one section of the garden to be garlic and onions. does well in intensive plantings
(more notes to come)
The season is winding down now and all I can say is I'm glad. It's super stressful and each week I think I'm going to break, but I think that we've worked a lot of the kinks out and will be ready for next year, though it is painful to think that we would put ourselves through all this work and stress again next year.
The good thing about it is that demand is so high and all our people have been very nice and supportive. Jason and I both admitted a twinge of defeat when upon delivering our July baskets, so proud of the three cucumbers and small cups of beans, a total cost to the recipient of about $20, we would pass by farm stands on the side of the road selling three cukes for $1. Ouch.
Oh well, with mom's disease progressing, everything seems to be getting a bit harder around here. And right now, I'm in OU following up Pj's bout of bad luck, but I'm getting some pretty good food while here along with a ton of books and cd's to fuel the lack of culture coming out of akron. eek.
mmm... off to casa
Each week, we've been pulling everything out of the gardens and putting it in pretty baskets for members to coo over. It started out pretty rough as I didn't know what I was thinking but I said the season would start the first week in June. Um. Nothing is growing the first week in June. It was like three weeks of lettuce. What a pain in the ass. We had watercress too. And some broccoli eventually. I'm actually not sure exactly how we managed to put 30 baskets together of just lettuce and greens and radishes for a group who hates radishes. I write a little "cooking in season" thing each week with a recipe and what's going on in the garden. The first weeks were my woes of groundhogs mowing down my beans and peas and everything else. Then I wrote about my woes with squash bugs. Then we started supplimenting our baskets with other locally grown veggies.
Ok, so I know I'm going to forget this feeling that I have now, so i'm just going to write down regrets and what I would change... in no order. and i'm sure this is going to be pretty boring for most people reading this, but I have a terrible memory and if I don't tuck this away on the internet, I won't remember it at all.
- label all vegetables and seed starts.
-row covers for cukes and squash
-more potatoes
-reinforce back electric fence
-nothing outside the fence in front garden
-more of front garden... it's the only one we tend to
-more beans... and in rotation this time.
-more time in the garden in general. we really stopped trying around July, kinda disappointing and you can tell as productivity just dropped off.
-hot pepper spray on the plants.
-spinosad worked but washed off quickly, excellent for the beans. try it on the jap beetles on raspberries next year
-more mulch! less weeds!
-things that worked in intensive bedding squares: kale, lettuce, beets, chard, carrots (wet towel over them was wonderful!!!)
-things that would work better in rows: beans, toms-need staked in rows and off the ground!
-squash would have been better if we would have dedicated a whole section of garden for them to roam... as is, they took over and then got squash bugs and all died. more black plastic, spraying and row covers. don't need to till so much for them if we mulch heavy. Maybe put them towards the swamp part of the garden, planted as far away from the walnut as possible and train them to walk on mulch towards the walnut. need to be inside the fence!!! vermin eat one bite and then move on to the next
-toms: need staked badly. heirlooms produced well as long as bone meal was fed to them. more basil interplanting next year, almost equal parts of toms and basil would do well. loved the germans, didn't like great white taste or red zebra. orange toms always a big hit
-corn: takes up too much room for what it gives-takes lots of space in between rows too. maybe plant inside the fence with pole beans, which can justify the space taken
-peas: need to be planted very early in march, and kept up with successive plantings. everyone loves sugar snap and while they may be a pain in the ass, they were delicious fresh.
-garlic: harvest before seed heads form, before head splits open. plant early in spring. very early. does not do well in just sand, maybe mix for one section of the garden to be garlic and onions. does well in intensive plantings
(more notes to come)
The season is winding down now and all I can say is I'm glad. It's super stressful and each week I think I'm going to break, but I think that we've worked a lot of the kinks out and will be ready for next year, though it is painful to think that we would put ourselves through all this work and stress again next year.
The good thing about it is that demand is so high and all our people have been very nice and supportive. Jason and I both admitted a twinge of defeat when upon delivering our July baskets, so proud of the three cucumbers and small cups of beans, a total cost to the recipient of about $20, we would pass by farm stands on the side of the road selling three cukes for $1. Ouch.
Oh well, with mom's disease progressing, everything seems to be getting a bit harder around here. And right now, I'm in OU following up Pj's bout of bad luck, but I'm getting some pretty good food while here along with a ton of books and cd's to fuel the lack of culture coming out of akron. eek.
mmm... off to casa
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)