It's 4:45am and I'm waking up on the sun porch at my friend's house in Northampton, MA. I'm most certainly awake hours before anyone will even think to get out of bed, but I also was falling, crawling into bed last night around 9pm while their 3 year old son was still tearing open birthday presents. I'm on farmer time now, waking hours aligned with daylight hours, and while it doesn't quite make me the life of the party, it suits me just fine.
I'm sunburned in funny places, rocking the classic farmer's tan t-shirt line. The tops of my ears are crispy red and I'm developing a very fine back patch of color, or "farmer's cummerbund" as I'm told it's called. I spent most of this sunny week on my hands and knees, dragging myself down 200 foot dirt beds to transplant onion seedlings into the field. With the help of two CSA workshare members, our crew put over 12,000 onions into the ground this week - ailsas, copras, shallots, cipollinis, redwings, and an heirloom wethersfield red onion. It's an astonishing number to me, and even more astonishing: we still have more to plant. I'm amazed at what our little industrious crew can get done in a day, in a week, and when I look at how the farm has evolved in just the three weeks I've been here I can't believe that the bulk of that work was done with just six hands and a few tools.
My favorite farm tool so far is called "The Dibbler." When I first saw the thing, I thought it looked like some kind of medieval torture device or something from a renaissance fair. I'm sure there are fancier pre-made models available for purchase, but this one appears to be a cobbled-together contraption of PVC pipe and wooden spikes, set six inches apart in three rows. The idea is this: Laura creates the bed in the field with her tractor, the tractor wheel treads becoming the aisles between where we will plant. Then she runs down the bed with a three pronged implement attached to her tractor to create the lines in the bed: most of our plants are in two or three rows per bed. Then, the dibbler gets attached to the tractor or we pull it down the length of the bed to create "dibbles", which are evenly spaced holes where we will drop and plant our seedlings.
Using the dibbler this week, I was reminded of a guy who I used to work with at summer camp in Montana. His name was Jacob Dibley, a super sweet, fun-loving dude that I've lost track of over the years. I'm sure he's kicking around somewhere having a great time doing his Dibley thing. But the association made me and Abi laugh as we were out in the field and we spawned a new creation: my imaginary boyfriend "Johnny Dibbles", who takes me to drive-in movies and rubs my feet and cracks a beer for me at the end of the day. Good old Johnny Dibbles, I'm sure he'll get me through the summer.
It's a nice break to get over to Western MA, to celebrate Arlo's third birthday, and Mother's Day weekend and catch up with my friends. My friend Nancy drove up from Brooklyn, and my 3 hour drive from Maine was easy and relaxed, and a great opportunity to see spring bursting forth: the trees are awakening in all array of chartreuse, yellow forsythia on display, and the azaleas are popping out in dazzling, showy magenta. But I realize that I've become very attached to Maine and the goings-on at Black Kettle Farm. And I know that when I cross back over the Maine state line later this afternoon, and drive past the fields that we've spent the week planting, and walk through the meadow to my little camper, I'll feel like I've come home.
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