Transplanting Aches

I started at 6 this morning. It’s transplanting day.

I had a nice plan worked out in my head but when I first inserted the fork into the earth this morning I had to rethink my strategy. The ground was as tough as ever. Even though I had extended the patch (remember I forked the area in preparation of the transplant), I had planned to put seedlings in areas that were not forked. The hard dry soil in those areas reminded me that it had not rained in 4 weeks. I had to revert to my pre-prepared area.

Weeds had taken it over and I had to spend time removing them, but it was much better than trying to do it in the other unprepared areas. Of course, I was now happy that I had extended the patch while it rained. I am almost sure that I would not have transplanted a single seedling had I procrastinated and now needed to contend with the tough earth. That led to my first lesson of the day – As a farmer, procrastination can mean the difference between having an income or not having one at all. Had I put off the extension of the patch, my posh farm would probably have  failed before it even began.

The pumpkin seedlings were moved first, and they were relocated to the extreme back of the yard. A friend has advised that they do not require constant watering after they ‘catch’ since we want to reap pumpkins that are dry and the dry soil (not parched) will help to make them more dry and flavourful. I’m not sure if there is any wisdom in that but we’ll see. Anyway, this was the easiest part of the process. The pumpkin seedlings are big and only required me to dig holes a few feet apart. The size of the seedlings led to my second lesson – pumpkin seedlings grow very quickly. They were towering over all the other seedlings. In the end, I am expecting to have more pumpkins than this family can eat. Of course I have no clue how much my posh farm will produce but only time will tell.

As pumpkin is a plant that creeps along the ground, I am a bit concern that the plants will go into the neighbour’s yard. I shared the concern with a friend who has advised me to turn the plants when they get too close to the fence. I do hope I remember.

My next task was to carefully replant the pigeon peas. I didn’t write about them much in previous posts because much of the seedlings were buried under the pumpkin sprouts and I really didn’t even know that they were surviving. Well, they made it, and if all goes well I should be having gungo rice and peas from my posh farm this Christmas.

The sorrels were moved next. This was harder than sewing the seeds in the first instance, because back then, it had rained and I didn’t have to treat the seeds delicately. I successfully relocated them into the sorrel section of the posh farm and so I’m expecting that I will not be short of sorrel when they start bearing.

By the time I was finished with the sorrel I had started using my machete for support when moving from a kneeling to a standing position. That was because my legs alone could no longer do the job. I still however had the tomatoes and the okras to do.

The tomatoes were relocated to an area just for them. They are the only seeds that I actually bought (everything else is from seeds from actual fruits or vegetables), and are the most fragile of the lot. It turns out that I really did put too many seeds in each hole and now they are struggling to survive (a woman carrying eight fetuses at once comes to mind).  Anyway, now we know better. Fellow posh farmers, put two to three seeds per hole, otherwise, the seedlings are stifled – my third lesson of the day. It’s better to have seeds left over for future planting.

My fourth lesson of the day had to do with just how many seedlings and ultimately produce we can get from a few seeds. I am amazed! The handful of sorrel seeds may just provide enough sorrel for a posh drink; a few watermelon seeds left over from the eaten fruit could produce enough to share, and so on. What this tells me is that if we are smart, we should never be hungry. If we replant the seeds from everything we eat which has a seed, no one in this country should be hungry. If you do not have the space at home, start with one thing in a pot. No matter what it is, I am realizing that it can start in a pot. That may just be all the posh farm you can have right now, but it’s a start and see how it feels to eat that which you grow. Look at this photo which is showing how you can grow watermelon on your patio.

Image from http://www.mybalconyjungle.com/watermelons.html

I will do some research on this and share it with you in a future post on small space posh farming.

Back to transplanting.

The watermelons and some of the cantaloupes remained in their original location. The rest of the cantaloupes went to the cantaloupe section of the posh farm. I have to make sure that when they start creeping, they move away from the tomatoes as I am thinking that the cantaloupes may choke them.

Anyway, by this time, every limb and joint in my body ached and I was out of prepared space. I decided to call it a day at this point; I’m thinking that I could make the okra a part of the garden by putting them to line the driveway. I will need to prepare the driveway next week to receive them because right now mi tiyad.

It’s been a long day but I survived.  I want to add sweetpepper, cucumber lettuce, cauliflower and broccoli to the farm but I will need some serious help to prepare the yard for those. My back feels twisted, my thighs feel like I swam the entire stretch of the Atlantic, my eyes feel like they have sand paper in them and my hands feel like sandpaper.

Of course, they were more lessons.

1. The sun wasn’t too hot today but the day was incredibly humid. I can honestly tell you that at times I felt like giving up. I kept drinking water but I still became dehydrated. This tells me that when you are a farmer, the eight 8 oz. glasses of water per day rule does not apply.I had over a gallon of water and I am still drinking water and I still feel dehydrated.
2. I ate breakfast at 10 a.m. and spent 8 hours transplanting. My breakfast was my usual fruit plate and protein, which in the case of this morning, was a hard boiled egg. I was alone at home until after 4, by which time I was lying on the floor of the back verandah, too tired to get up or to feed myself. My adorable husband came home and found me, and literally hand-fed me lunch. The thing is, I didn’t feel hungry; I was more thirsty than anything else so I kept drinking fluids. Anyway, I learnt that when you’re a farmer, you can’t eat like an office worker. A fruit plate was not enough to sustain a hard working posh farmer.  I was doing twice or thrice as much work  physically and so I needed strong food to restore my body.
3. After I ate, I immediately found new energy to go in and have a shower. Ideally, I wanted a bath but I just needed to get clean as quickly as possible…the dirt on my skin was itching me like crazy, which was my next lesson. Dirt on the skin itches.

 

As I sit here writing this, my body still aches all over. I have been kneeling and planting all day and now my back and thighs feel like they belong to someone else. I already knew that farming was hard work, but this whole experience is putting me at a different place when I think about the people who do this every day. Every week I find I gain a new level of respect for them. They have to do this level of physical labour every day of their adult life in order to make a living. I will never be able to go to the market and haggle again the way I used to. It’s been years since I went to a real market but I used to walk away thinking I’ve gotten a ‘bargain’ for myself  after I haggle.  Now I know that what I effectively did was deny the farmer a fair wage for his/her hard work. Trust me, this is hard work…..and I am only doing a small patch in my backyard.

The next time you want to haggle, think about the farmer.

 

Labour Day

May 23, 2014 was Labour day. I woke up at 5:15 a.m. and I was outside by 5:30. I took the usual tools from the garage – fork, spade (at least I think it is a spade), machete and gloves. I wanted to continue the extension of the ‘farm’ but what I saw I had not planned for. The ‘field’ needed to be cleared. Weeds were now growing and crowding my new shoots. I decided to remove the weeds before I extend the area. That was hard. Kneeling over the shoots and being careful not to step on them took some doing. I also realized that the gungo seeds were also now showing results. They too were a victim of ‘group planting’ and was now growing in the cantaloupe and pumpkin clusters.

I spent two hours kneeling and removing the weeds. As I did this, I learnt my fist lesson of the day….The rain is as good for the weeds as it is good for the seeds. In all the excitement about my growing shoots, I had never thought about the weeds. I somehow did not think this through and felt that once the seeds were planted and they started growing, I would just need to sit back and wait on the results. The weeds were a rude awakening as the shoots needed the right environment to survive. The rain was doing great things for the seedlings; they had grown another couple of inches and looked very healthy….and so had the weeds. It was also here that I received my second lesson for the day…Tilling the soil makes it easier to remove the weeds. In the areas which were not forked, attempts to remove weeds proved more difficult. It was only when I used the fork to turn over the soil that I was able to remove some of them, especially the roots.

I also worked on the planned expansion. By 8 a.m. I concluded that people who stole from farmers deserved no mercy. In my little patch in the comfort of my back yard, I suffered through mosquito bites and uncomfortable positioning in order to create an environment for my ‘farm’ to succeed. By the time I tried to straighten myself, I felt like I needed someone to stand on my back as I lay flat, just to remove the kinks. It was here that I learnt the third lesson of the day…Farming is back-breaking work. It made me think about the people who make their living from farming; daily they till the soil in the hot sun, bending their backs to do the planting. How then can we abuse the people who make such a sacrifice?

I had a wedding to attend later that day and when I looked at my hand at 9 a.m. I realized I was in trouble. I had come in for breakfast and tried washing my hands. The soup seemed to have cleaned it but it still looked dirty. My nails looked like I hadn’t cared for them in months. It was at that point that I learnt my fourth lesson for the day…Dirt stains your hands and nails. I had to soak my hands and brush them vigorously with soap and water before I saw any success. In the end, they were still a little yellow but they were presentable.