Knee Deep and Deeper

A Faux Real Story

If you thought I was done with the Faux Real Stories, think again! It’s still the Holiday Season and I think I can manage to provide a few more gifts that I hope you will all enjoy.

Once again, these stories aren't fictional, but I've been told they are, nonetheless, mildly entertaining. So, sip on some hot chocolate, reach your hands out to warm them by the fire... and enjoy.

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The Genuine Faux Farm has beautiful, healthy soil. But, that soil is pretty heavy and it can take a while for it to dry out. That means our easiest farming years are typically those where we get average or below average rainfall (which has been mostly true the last few years). On top of that, our farm is pretty flat - so if we get excessive rain it doesn't go anywhere - it just stays until it either evaporates or seeps into the ground.

Don't get me wrong. I feel that our soil health has improved over the years and I believe that it is a good thing to have water naturally filtering through the soil (and eventually into the ground water). The difficulty has been that the number of exceptionally high rainfall periods became much more numerous since we scaled up our farm in 2007 than they were for all recorded weather in our area up to that point.

Images like the one above, from September 2018, have been more common for us than I would like to admit. The irony of the image above is that there is a drip line for irrigation even while the lettuce struggles to keep their heads above water. The other part you do not see is that I had the foresight to slightly hill the rows. These plants are on high ground, so to speak.

Playing “catch the pepper”

If we were growing crops that grew all summer and were harvested once in the fall, that would be one thing. We could stay out of the field when things are very wet. But, we grew a wide range of vegetables and marketed them multiple times a week. We were forced to get out there - even when things were damp.

Oh, what am I saying? We had to get out there even when we could have used Tammy’s kayak to get from here to there. It doesn't matter whether it was sort of wet or extremely wet, we still had work to do.

Several years ago we had a very heavy rainfall in August during the morning of a CSA (farm share) delivery day. We had already harvested most of the produce, but there was more to do before we could say we were ready. The bell peppers needed harvesting and they were on the schedule to be a featured item.

Denis was working on the farm with us at that time, so I asked him to come out to the pepper field with me. We grabbed some harvest totes and squelched our way to the field. The plan was that I would harvest and Denis would remain on the grass path to catch whatever I tossed his way. I had the foresight to take my shoes and socks off before stepping off the path and almost immediately sank up to mid-calf in the mud.

Now, before some readers react with disapproval that I was doing bad things to my soil, let me remind you that this is MY story and not yours. Also, I was planning on keeping the traffic to a minimum. We had a commitment to fulfill, but I was going to meet it by doing the least damage possible.

Things got a little crazy as I picked each, beautiful bell pepper and tossed it to Denis, who waited patiently (and gave periodic encouragement). We kept a careful count so we would know when to stop -and only had to subtract a pepper a couple of times when the throw and catch didn't quite happen as planned. At one point, I sank up to my knees. But, once I got past the first few steps, it was actually kind of fun.

I got to do my job and play in the mud. How many of you can say that?

So... I told you that story so I could tell you this one.

Our watermelons went into the ground late one year, which meant they weren't ready to harvest until September. So, of course, two things happened. We had an early frost AND we had a wet Fall.

Things were on the dry side when the frost came, so I used the technique of running an overhead sprinkler on the watermelon rows to keep them from freezing. Of course, that got the ground wet AND the fruit needed about a week to ten days more to be consistently ripe. So, I had to wait for the harvest.

By now, you know how these stories go.

One week later, after a long day doing everything but harvesting watermelons, I stopped by the patch and determined they were as ready as they were going to be. I also knew there was some rain in the forecast. So, I put “harvest watermelon” onto our VAP (Very Ambitious Plan) for early the next day.

But the rain showed up that night. And it rained harder than the forecast called for. And it rained longer than expected. And then… the forecast called for even MORE rain followed by freezing temperatures.

Ugh. Now I had no choice. I had to harvest in the mud.

The first task was to simply get the watermelons out of the patch and onto the pathways. So, in I went, picking up as many watermelons as I could each time.

For those of you who have picked up one 10 to 15 pound watermelon, you might be able to picture what it might be like to pick up one and then pick up a second one. The second fruit required me to cradle the first like a football so I could (sort of) use that hand to help. After taking two out at a time, I realized how much work it was to walk. Each step had me sinking up to my calf muscles in cold mud - and it was starting to rain some more. And it was cold!

I needed to do something to speed up the process.

Tammy was at school and I had no workers on the farm in September. So, there wasn't an option to toss watermelons to someone on the path - not that I recommend that option even in the best of times. The successful throw / catch ratio is bound to be disappointing.

I tried picking up three at a time. the process for two was the same, but the third required that I hold on to the first two with one arm while I retrieved the third. I achieved that by bending at the knees and sort of rolling the watermelon up my leg until I could cradle the new one. Having succeeded with that, I tried to adapt that process for a fourth watermelon in one trip.

Now, let me remind you again. It was wet. It was cold. This was not the only thing I had to do that day and I was in a hurry. And the watermelons were muddy and slippery.

As soon as I managed to get a fourth watermelon into my arms another one (or two) would slip out of my grasp. Sometimes, they would slip out when I tried to do a third watermelon. The word "frustrating" does not quite cover how I felt at the time. Perhaps “exasperated” and a bit “discombobulated” along with a dash of “desperate” thrown in for taste would be more accurate. After one particularly nice watermelon slipped, fell, and split open, words like “razzenfrazzenrackenfracken” began to escape my lips.

I resigned myself to the slow slog with two large or three smaller watermelons each trip.

The mud and water filled my boots and my feet were cold, muddy and wet. I was cold, muddy and wet. The watermelons were cold, muddy and wet. The words “miserable” and “untolerable” began to make their meanings clearly known to me. But, I kept my head down, looking for the next watermelon to harvest. That's when I walked by an odd lump of mud that was shaped a bit like a foot.

That got my attention.

I looked down at my own feet. They were both big globs of mud that vaguely reassured me that, even though I couldn't feel them very well any more, I still had TWO of them. That was a relief, but one of those feet was suspiciously smaller than the other.

To this day, I do not know exactly when the boot came off my foot. I have no idea how long I was trudging around with a boot on one foot and only a sock that was now halfway off of the other.

The good news, if there was any, is that I learned some lessons AND I got a story out of it.

And I still have both feet.