Call me "The Salad Spinner"

I've decided that that is going to be my professional wrestling name, should I decide to pursue that endeavor as a career. I have spun approximately 45 pounds of lettuce in the past 9 days; I think I've earned the title!

Today I had the privilege of watering the entire new field by with a hose-- 500 tomato plants, and a similar number of squash and melon plants. It was pretty amazing, actually; Sonia and I made a good team moving the hose across 5 fields, each 200 yards or more long. Then when we returned to the greenhouse, I got to water all the plants there.

I'm always amazed by the softness of a baby's feet-- uncalloused and smooth. My feet, on the other hand, are lumpy and bumpy and calloused-- no fun at all. But lest I think my feet are hard as a rock, another strange bit of perspective I gained today: I still have the feet of a baby.
Many of the folks who work on the farm have a habit of walking barefoot all over the place. This skill also came in handy on the pilgrimage, when we walked through streams and those same folks could simply take their shoes off and walk across the rocky stream bed; when I tried that then, I ended up walking like a gorilla with my hands on the ground because the rocks hurt my feet so much.

I decided that today was the day I was going to get my "farm feet" going. We were mulching tomato plants with hay, and I joined some others in taking my shoes and socks off. It was glorious to walk through the rich and soft soil as we lay the bales of hay out bit by bit to keep the weeds away. And walking through the grass was wonderful, too. But the wood chips, the rocks, the hot cement in the greenhouse-- oy, vey! Dan (my tent mate) and others are walking around like its nothing, and my feet feel like I'm walking on hot coals!

Just when I began to feel hopeless, I asked Dan how long it took before his feet stopped hurting. "Actually, they still do, sometimes," he said. "It's mostly a mental thing, getting used to the idea not everything you walk on will be smooth." Well, then.

Tomorrow, "The Salad Spinner" begins his mental preparations to walk on hot coals!