Potatoes, Tomatoes, Sheep and Chickens

Another busy busy day on the farm...

It began with a Torah study session I lead on Parashat Pinchas; we discussed the amazing heroism of the daughters of Zelophechad-- what a way to begin the day (at 6:30 a.m.!)

I spent the first two hours of the morning harvesting potatoes with Dan. We have a few potato plants each year in our home garden, and it's always a treat to be able to find potatoes under those 9 or so plants-- whatever we find always seems a pleasant surprise. We usually bake them or nuke them or mash them (Lys's favorite choice). But when you've got hundreds of plants and 40 CSA shares to fill, the novelty pretty quickly wears off. You pull up the plants hoping that many many potatoes come up with the whole root system (I never had more than 4 come out of the ground in this easy manner), and then you go digging, mostly be hand (a shovel would work but it has the tendency to damage any potatoes it strikes) in the dirt that has been gradually mounded up around the plants. Repeat 40-50 times, and you hopefully get 25 pounds or so of potatoes. Fun digging in the dirt, not so fun the 40th time in a row. But we filled our quota!

Then after some breakfast, Yoni and I headed to the new field. You know those tomatoes I bragged about weeding single-handedly a couple of weeks ago? Well, now those plants are huge and droopy with branches and leaves and growing tomatoes, and they need to be trellised. That involves pounding posts into the ground every 10 feet or so (I love the post-pounder) and then tieing twine back and forth between the posts to get the tomato plants to stand up. It's tough but rewarding work to actually see the rows re-emerge from a bushy mess of plants.

This afternoon we finished our study of Tractate Peah, which speaks of the farmer's obligation to leave the corner of the field for the poor. Then we went off on a field trip to the Blackberry Field Farm, run by two Jewish women from Baltimore who raise sheep and chickens. We heard about the trials, tribulations, and rewards of running this farm, a project of 4-H in Baltimore.

Then back to the farm for dinner and the siyyum (summary session) of the week at the farm. A great and fulfilling day...

Can't wait for Shabbat, and I can't believe that it'll be my last one at the farm... :(