TL;DR

We planted 3000 onion seedlings in one of the dry fields covered in biodegradable mulch film and then covered 4 field rows with floating row cover, shoveled in on the sides to protect from flea beetles.

New Gear

The days are hotter and sunnier now, today was 75°F by noon though the ocean breezes were helpful. Also helpful, after getting a bit sunburnt especially on the back of the neck, I got wise and ordered a few long-sleeve breathable hooded fishing shirts which worked out great today. I also ordered the makings of a toiletries kit such as a nail brush and two small sealable travel bottles to hold orange soap and hand lotion (half lotion, half aloe vera). Notwithstanding the shirts, I wasn’t too sweaty but need to dig out my sports-fit undies because boxer shorts are chaif-inducing in the long term.

Onion Planting

After watering the greenhouse from 8-9am, I joined up with the other 2 on the crew to drop and plant 30 98-cell trays of onions that have been growing and being trimmed for a a few weeks. We planted them in to the two (and a half) dry fields that were covered with the black biodegradable mulch film last week. This was next to last year’s garlic which is coming up nicely and that we spot-mulched with hay last week too.

This took about 3 hours and 3 people to plant around 3000 onion starts. The dropping process is more like placing since the onions are easy to lose their plug potting soil and the film has grid lines in 5 inch squares to make spacing easier. The spacing for these onions were 6-8 inches between rows of 3 also similarly spaced.

After this, my knees and leg muscles as well as my lower back were ready for a break. Lots of bending and stretching to get it done.

Lunch

Ice cubes in my water bottle are a winner. Also I plan to add a box of Crystal Light powder packets because I went through about 4 liters of water today just sipping between tasks and plain water seems to just leave me sloshy in the belly unlike flavored waters.

Tomorrow I bring a loaf of hearth bread for tuna salad sandwiches so I was planning to get to making that as soon as I got home. But when I get back from soccer chaufer duties at 6:30pm, the dough was already on its first rise thanks to my lovely partner who did me a kindness by starting it because I had taken the soccer drop-off and pick-up. So long as I remember to actually bring it this time…which I forgot last week.

Side Note: Remembering Things to Take

Today I was keeping a mental list of things that I could add to the things that travel with my car to the farm. I already have:

• a complete change of all clothing items (socks, undies, long pants, short sleeve shirt, bandana)
• field boots
• a thin rain coat
• toiletries kit

What I still need to bring:

• A wide-brim hat
• A box of Crystal Light packets
• Some small caribeners
• My DJI drone and charging options (stays in the car now that the weather is good)

What I need to buy more of or find in my house:

• Some extra sports-fit undies
• Multi-purpose utility knive (the kind that butterflies out to become a set of pliers)

Okay, back to the afternoon tasks…

Floating Row Cover

After lunch, we took 20 foot rolls of floating row cover and spread them out over 4 rows in fields on the main part of the property. Some of the crops we planted the past few weeks were seeing flea beetle damage and high wind gusts familiar to April in New England had taken some of the leftover row cover we had spread the past few weeks.

The process goes as such:

1. Position the row cover row at one end of the row
2. Grab some over your shoulder and start walking the length of the row (in this case, mostly 200-300 feet)
3. Depending on the direction of the wind, pin down a corner on the end of the row, then the other
4. Pin one edge the long direction with garden staples, fabric spikes, field rocks, or rock bags
5. Pin down the other long edge so that the row cover is mostly tight across the soil or metal hoops
6. For flat soil rows, shovel dirt from the 2 foot walk-space between planting rows onto row cover edges
7. For flat soil rows sibling to other field space not yet planted, use tractor and discs to spare shoveling
8. For hooped rows, ensure that gaps between staples and/or spikes are weighed down by rocks or rock bags
9. Similarly pin down the short open ends so that gusts don’t take up what you did the whole row down

I had to leave at 4pm to handle kid sports transit things on a Tuesday, but the rest of the crew also closed out on row cover duties then too.

AI Takes The Easy (Information Worker) Jobs

I think much of the current tech hiring freezes and layoffs have many determining factors. Like every farm, every tech company makes decisions in their own…unique…way. Unfortunately, many of the hard tasks are still left and information workers aren’t used to really hard intellectual or physical work…except for those that are like my friend Muyiwa.

Olumuyiwa Kolayemi used to be a farmer in Nigeria and now is now a DevOps and AWS Engineer in Boston. He presented a lightning talk in 2023 on the parallels between farming and DevOps. I sat and listened, later I produced the video, and then spent time talking to him about how he went through the Per Scholas Boston IT program to get where he is today. I am doing a bit of the reverse…re-balancing too much tech career with farming.

“AI” can’t make this kind of story up because it doesn’t live in the real world. It doesn’t actually produce the food we eat. It doesn’t go to school to gain skills for you. It doesn’t write from your heart. All it really does is skim the pond of obvious automatable tasks and acts as a buzzword to attract moron funding.

Here’s what my personal LLM thought I did today:

Main Themes:

1. Farm work and daily tasks
2. Planting onions (and other crops) and spreading row cover
3. Pest management (flea beetles)
4. Physical labor and challenging tasks

Activities performed by the intern:

1. Watered the greenhouse and loaded onions into trucks
2. Planted 98 cell trays of onions in a dry field with biodegradable plastic mulch
3. Spreading row cover over multiple fields (at least 4-5) to protect against flea beetles
4. Dug up pathways and added soil along the edges of the rows to prevent flea beetle entry
5. Replaced black fabric tarp on a hill bed with fresh new fabric

New things not yet encountered:

1. Flea beetles as a pest in the garden (not mentioned previously)
2. Biodegradable plastic mulch
3. Row cover sheets with metal hoops installed

Questions and future areas of research:

1. “Almost got a picture of one flea beetle” - This suggests that the intern wants to learn more about flea beetles and how to effectively manage them.
2. “How does row cover get much more difficult if there’s even the slightest wind?” - The intern is curious about the impact of wind on row cover application.

Suggestions:

1. Consider using a different type of mulch that is less prone to damage from flea beetles.
2. Investigate alternative methods for managing flea beetles, such as introducing beneficial insects or using organic pesticides.
3. Develop strategies for applying row cover in windy conditions, such as anchoring the fabric more securely or using specialized equipment.