On any given day, on any given farm, and probably in your day, too, there’s a list of things to do that just never quite seems to shorten. The curse of the list. You may be familiar with barreling from one task to the other, and getting nothing done well, or completed fully. I say “you” because here at the farm, we’ve checked off our to-do list and have our feet up on the porch railing, drink in hand, by 6 p.m. Ha! If you’ll buy that, I’ve got some oceanfront property in Arizona for you. (Hi there, fellow George Strait fans.)
On Thursday evening, after a round of CSA deliveries, we headed up to the farm to squeak in another hour or so of work. The tomatoes in the high tunnels were getting unruly, and while Jason was most certainly aware of this on his own, I made sure to repeatedly mention it in casual conversation. “Boy, those tomatoes. Really taking off. Whew.” “Have you seen those tomatoes? Wow.”
Jason is very good at graciously ignoring my annoying habit of stating the obvious of what needs done around the farm. So while he was working on the cucumbers in the Big Tunnel, he glanced over at the tomatoes and said, “I suppose you want me to prune those?”
“Oh, well, you know, if you’ve got time…”
While Jason has a farm to-do list that stretches from the tips of his fingers to his toes, he knew the time had come to push those things aside in his mind, and tend to the tomatoes. We’ve already invested hours and dollars into these rows, and with continued proper care, each plant should be worth a lot. So while he could go in a thousand directions, he needed to just sit in the tomato row with the clippers and a bucket. It can be so hard to remain relatively still on the farm, taking care of a task that’s so slow going. It feels like there’s a marathon going on all around you, and you’re just sitting in the middle of the pavement. But when he was done, the tomatoes looked healthy and cared for. The time he spends pruning will have a huge ROI.
We’re both learning to take the time to see tasks through. After weeding the high tunnel peppers the other night, my first impulse was to spring up and head to the other peppers in one of the caterpillar tunnels. Those are in need of serious care before it’s too late. But I stopped myself, literally, mid stride. Wait. You just crawled along on your hands and knees, weeding this whole bed. It wasn’t very fun. Take the time to get straw and lay it down on that row. Then walk away from it for good until you’re carrying a harvest bin and collecting peppers from it.
So, I did, and that meant I didn’t have time to get to those other peppers that night. But right now, one pepper row is fully cared for. I can check it off my mental list and truly move on to something else.
This is tomato tar. When you handle tomato greens a lot, it builds up on your fingers, arms, and clothes. Tomato tar is what makes a tomato plant smell like a tomato plant. The plants have hair-like structures called trichomes that secrete this oil. When you wash your hands, this black residue turns the sink yellow.
Silas and Jay, in the thick of it.
Clipping a tomato plant to the string.
One row pruned. This is in the Big Tunnel, June 17, 2021.
~ Stella