The week that was…of gas, weeds and a funeral

Image from http://www.goodgarageschemeblog.com

On Wednesday I went to Mandeville to give a presentation. It went well…but on my way back on the Melrose bypass, and approximately 80 kilometres from Kingston, I realized that I was low on petrol….the fuel light on the dashboard was my clue 😮

The next town with a petrol station is Porus which is some distance away (not sure exactly how far). Anyway, I decided to proceed optimistically to this destination. I must tell you, I have a fault…I do not carry cash, unless I know I am going to need it. On going to Mandeville I used the toll road. I was very busy making my way to the toll when it occurred to me that I had no cash… and once you are on the toll road, you can’t exit without paying the toll. Fortunately, a colleague was also on route to Mandeville and some distance behind. I waited for her at the toll booth and was fortunate to get J$1,000 on loan. So back to my driving on fumes.

As I entered Porus, I was relieved that I succeeded in making the trip. I proudly drove up to the gas pump with the intention of purchasing petrol with my credit card…only to be advised that in this day and age, the petrol station did not accept cards – CASH ONLY. I checked the change from my $J1,000 loan and deducted what I would need to pay the toll back into Kingston. Coupled with the coins in the car, I calculated that I could spare J$300 for fuel. At J$142 per litre, I was being overly optimistic but I figured I could take the chance on J$300 petrol until I got to the next petrol station.

I got to the next station and again proceeded to the pump…only to be told, they do not accept cards…and there was no ATM in sight. I prayed over my car, held my head high and proceeded to subsequent petrol stations, only to be told the same thing. In desperation, I proceeded to what would be the final petrol station before entering the toll road and was again advised that they do not accept cards, and they did not have an ATM.

Thankfully, the 2 litres that I had topped up with was enough to get rid of the warning light so I proceeded to the toll road. I remembered watching a 60 Minutes programme once where they looked into what it meant when the gas warning light came on. I prayed that they were correct and drove at a steady speed of 80 km/hour even though the limit was 110 km/hr. They advised that a steady pace made for a more efficient use of fuel.

I am happy to report that I made it into Kingston on J$300 petrol and prayer, and successfully purchased petrol at a station that accepted cards. It was a nerve-wracking journey though, and there was indeed a lesson there – Always keep some cash on my person. It doesn’t have to be a lot, just enough to pay the toll, fix a punctured tire or two and buy petrol.

Weeds….and a Funeral 😦

On Saturday, I spent some time posh farming. This week it was more for therapy than anything else. My friend was to be buried on Sunday and I really wasn’t sure I could survive it. I think I’m actually still in denial since I refuse to believe he is dead. I went to the funeral hoping to see someone else’s photo on the programme. I am seeing his photo, so I didn’t look in the casket. To do so would make it too real and I am not ready for this to be real. So I focus on my posh farm.

Despite the drought the weeds keep coming. I know my watering the farm, does not allow me to only water the seedlings, I water the entire bed, which then cause the weeds to grow. What I noticed though was that the weeds were doing better than the seedlings. My Rastafarian neighbour says that I disturbed the roots of the seedlings when I transplanted them and as such they are having to reestablish themselves. Nevertheless, they are doing well. So I had to weed some of the patch. I must tell you that I had no energy to do this but I pushed and did a part of the sorrel section. It looked much better and I will need to do some more next weekend. I am happy to report that they are all surviving well but I have to make sure I water them each evening. The water from the washing machine and kitchen sink is very handy for this. In a drought, we need to recycle and re-purpose as much as possible.

The weeding process had me thinking about the word ‘weed’. I am using it a lot these days but what does it really mean? I never thought about it before, but it is both a noun and a verb. Where we refer to Marijuana as weed, do the growers weed the weed?

What I found when I went looking was quite interesting?

As a noun, dictionary.com defines it as a:

• a valueless plant growing wild, especially one that grows on cultivated ground to the exclusion or injury of the desired crop.
• a cigarette or cigar.
• a thin, ungainly person or animal.

As a verb, it is defined as

• to remove as being undesirable, inefficient, or superfluous
• to rid (something) of undesirable or superfluous elements.

Freedictionary.com also had this definition for weed as a noun:

• A token of mourning, as a black band worn on a man’s hat or sleeve.
• The black mourning clothes of a widow.
• An article of clothing; a garment. Often used in the plural.

I was shocked however by the definition for weeding as put forward by the urban dictionary. It is plucking the hairs from your girl’s vagina, especially while high 😮.

Anyway, this blog is about posh farming…so keep farming.

 

 

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.