2) Hornworms are huge.
The Manduca quinquemaculata, a/k/a the tomato hornworm, looks like a mystical creature plucked from the set of Pan’s Labyrinth. These bright green caterpillars — which turn into sizeable moths post-metamorphosis — feed on the stems and leaves of tomato (and eggplant and pepper) plants; in organic gardens, the most effective way of removing them is by hand, gripping their pleasingly plump bodies and gently peeling their suctioned feet off the plant. At Rippling Waters Farm, where you’ll recall I was briefly engaged in hornworm removal, the caterpillars are collected in a large plastic bucket and then unceremoniously fed to Julee’s chickens.
3) Other times farming is like showering.
Remember how it rained and rained for about three weeks straight this summer? Well, one of those days was the one I worked at Pleasant Valley Acres, a small operation in Cumberland. As it began to drizzle, I cut cucumbers and lugged buckets of them from the field to the house. As it rained harder, I moved into the greenhouse to weed, but my periodic trips to dump said weeds into the compost heap resulted in severe soakage. By the end of the day, it was as though I’d taken a (muddy) shower — completely shod, of course. Farming waits for no weather, you’ll learn.
4) If you say someone or something is “growing like weeds” you must mean that he/she/it is shooting up incessantly, impossible to curtail, and in constant need of tending-to.
One of the least romantic, and most ubiquitous, tasks on an organic farm is weeding. It seems obvious, but might bear repeating: Because organic farms can’t use harsh chemical herbicides, weeds proliferate at an amazing rate. Many of them, especially at smaller farms, have to be picked by hand or wiped out with garden hoes — a slow, tedious, occasionally backbreaking process. (But it’s a rewarding one too: Once the task is complete, the organic plants are healthier by virtue of not having to compete as vigorously for nutrients and resources.) In one greenhouse I visited, the weeds were so overgrown that they’d completely dwarfed some sad beet plants, left struggling for space. Most farmers describe weeds as the bane of their edible existence, but their eradication is a more difficult endeavor for organic workers.
5) Sometimes farming has nothing to do with working in the fields.
Bagging produce for food pantries (like the Root Cellar on Washington Street in Portland) and for senior citizen farm shares (such as the one at Franklin Towers) is a big part of working on a farm. So is cleaning and prepping vegetables for farmstand presentation. In other words, if you volunteer at a farm, don’t necessarily expect to work on your tan while channeling Laura Ingalls Wilder — you might be instructed to do less “farm-y” tasks that are just as important to helping the operation run smoothly. So many of New England’s organic farms are relatively small operations that have either for-profit or non-profit sideshow acts — educational, philanthropic, or retail. Take Green Meadows Farm in Hamilton, Massachusetts, a for-profit farm that welcomes its Community Supported Agriculture customers (those who pay in advance to receive shares of produce throughout the season) and regular customers, as well as school groups, as volunteers. Their offerings range from children’s programming to landscape painting classes to week-long cooking courses. Or Rippling Waters, a non-profit that received a federal grant this year to distribute bagged produce to food pantries; they also hand out recipes so recipients know what to do with that bunch of kale in their bag.
