Tasks: trellis beans, empty turnip beds for a new crop, weed, mow a clover carpet between blackberries, mow around raised beds, trellis more beans and the eggplants too.
Learning this week:
1. In the office, I sorted out who had paid on the evening of our recent event (Hoedown!) as opposed to registering beforehand. This involved navigating through the database, paying attention to spelling and pronouns. Along with this, I wished there were a gender neutral pronoun to address people on envelopes when their names don't indicate whether they'd prefer Ms. or Mr.
2. It seems as though time passes more quickly, urgently, on the office days than farm days. Not that the work on the farm is less important--not at all. Maybe it comes from
3. These urban farmers talk about a lot of important things. This week particularly charter schools vs. public schools in Philadelphia. What a learning zone for me! Points that surfaced: if we funnel money (private and still some state) into charter schools for some students we still don't fix the public-only kids' education--but public schools have so little room, across the board, for teachers to be innovative, isn't this a good "meantime" idea?--do charter schools allow similar opportunities for students to learn in diverse environments? not as much as public schools--if the parents are engaged in their students' educations wherever they are, why don't they stick it out in the public districts and supplement at home? Among other ideas.
4. You can trellis beans with a net and stakes and some zip ties, instead of string.
5. I don't mind eating a cold or room-temp lunch anymore. This time it was a stir fry (thank you, Aaron), before it was curry, then leftover fish and rice and salsa.
6. Sunshine comes to feel more delicious and impressive after I spend a day among the leaves that truly use it better than I ever have. They're snatching their meals out of the sunbeams and humidity. Holy poo, that's still cool. Never not going to be cool.
7. "To farm" is like the verb of food. I know cooking kind of works for this, too, but hear me out. You're germinating, planting, fertilising, bug-squashing, shading/sunning, irrigating, weeding, weeding again, still weeding, and then you're harvesting and eating. I came home with unexpected goods: broccoli and some lettuce, as well as Cole Robbie. He's my pet kohlrabi, for the time being. He had dinner with us.
- shalom -