The Farm

Farming is hard

I've been working on a farm.

I have started volunteering at a farm in Hastings, Ontario. Just half an hour outside Peterborough. This week was my first farming experience. It's a lot of work.

We weeded a spring onion crop. The farm is organic and biodynamic. That means they practice old school farming - everything is done by hand, crops are rotated, no pesticides or fertilizers, planting is dictated by the lunar cycle. It's a very involved and interesting practice, biodynamics, and unfortunately I don't know too much about it. But check out this website for more info: http://www.biodynamics.on.ca/

So we weeded the onions, which were over-run with the suckers. There we were. On all fours. Pulling weeds from the crop of onions. A crop of onions is a lot more than a garden patch of onions. I can't believe that this is something they do nearly every day on the farm. If they aren't planning, transplanting or harvesting by hand, they are weeding. We pulled weeds from aisles of onions. So many weeds....

I found I had much more patience for weeding at the farm than I normally do in my own garden. No distractions (like the TV, the paper or a magazine) to remind me that I'm outside weeding - arguably the least attractive garden chore. It was a little relaxing actually - although it was four hours on my hands and knees pulling grass, dandelions and other unidentifiable (to me) weeds from between neat rows of scallions. This particular farm sells their produce at the Saturday Peterborough Farmer's Market. Can't wait for the scallions - you can be sure I'll pay whatever they are worth after the small effort I put into their growth. Farming is hard.

My own garden is at a standstill. It's been raining a lot, and I haven't been doing much planting. I don't know how many veggies I'm actually going to get into the ground this year, but at least we've got our tomaters.

Today at the market I bought so rainbow chard. I'll let you know if I come up with a creative way to prepare it...