TL;DR

We harvested radishes, broccoli rabe, and eggplant, then installed irrigation in the high tunnel, and cleaned garlic before packing deliveries and the van for market. It was a very rainy day, but we managed to get a lot done.

When You Listen, You See Things

I spend a lot of the time at the farm listening to the sounds of my surroundings while I’m working. Sounds that are familiar give a sense of routine while sounds that are out of place or new keep me engaged and alert.

In the field we often hear Killdeer, a species of bird I grew up with in my big back yard, particularly when we’re harvesting something in a field they made their home. We hear an occasional hawk or crow, finches, sparrows, robins, and of course the chickens in their coop yard.

There is an ever-present hum of insects like peepers, cicadas, crickets, and bees. It is like the native song of the grass, without which would seem dull or eerie.

One day when there was a power outage on Argilla Road, the sound of a neighbor’s generator in the distance was the way we knew when the power was still out, and when it shut off a few hours later we knew there was no need to start up ours for the afternoon.

Side-note: ‘argilla’ is the Italian word for ‘clay’, which fits with most of the soil on properties along this road. Likely due to hundreds of thousands of years of erosion and deposition, including the more recent thousand years of human activity, the soil here is clay-loamy and often rich in minerals from the ocean inlets and marshes.

But it’s not just hearing things when you listen…you also see with your eyes better. Busy with my activity, I often wouldn’t know to look up or focus my eyes on something across the field if I did not also pay attention to the sounds around me. Besides, it’s always good to look up every so often and take in the beauty of the surroundings.

The Rent I Pay to Work Here

This job pays just over Massachusetts minimum wage and not the reduced rate of agricultural or service workers either, which is generous. Unfortunately, to raise my family in the area I live a few towns away, this just simply isn’t feasible without some other form of income. Anyone can bag tomatoes and I have technology experience and skills that should be worth far more to someone somewhere, but the current job market has been abysmal since early last year (or even since 2022 for some).

I work this job as an internship, learning as much as I can and demonstrating capture and synthesis as best as I can with 24-hour turnaround on new blog entries each day I work on the farm. What I haven’t yet approached is the notion of major milestone projects, though I’ve been incrementally building on the note making and summarization processes since March.

Something like a report, thesis, or macro-presentation of my experience and research areas this year…which I need to start thinking about now…should be a priority in December because at the end of November, the farm no longer needs help beyond very part-time activities like egg washing and chicken chores that Jamie the farm operator can handle on his own.

I hope I can find a job that pays what I need to make but if I can’t by March, I’m back to this farm stuff again next year. 25 years in high tech work and this is the state of life after 40.

The Complete Garlic Lifecycle

Last year on October 30th, we planted garlic cloves in the dry fields. As a part-time volunteer, I had no idea what kind of hard work I had in store coming the next year. You can tell I’m clueless because I was still taking selfies at that time.

I also fully realized how out of shape my body was when we rolled huge bails of hay out over the garlic rows as much for over the winter. I nearly collapsed from exhaustion because of the dust particles, heavy physical labor, lack of exercise, nothing to eat for breakfast and…and…the sun came out, making the temperature go from 58 to 75 degrees in less than an hour.

By June 23rd, we were harvesting the scapes of these garlics and on July 16th, we were done harvesting the garlic, which only took about a few hours over the course of two days. Then we bunched them and hung them up to dry in the shed where they onions also sit to cure.

Now, with a little bit of cleanup attention, the bulbs are ready for market. It’s an important thing to note that garlic should not be trimmed all the way down to the bulb, but rather have some stem left on it. This prevents the bulb from rotting and ensures that the garlic will last longer.

AI Summary from Field Notes

This weekend I plan to implement a more agentic approach to these summaries which will include external sources and reference materials from my own Karakeep bookmarking. I will preserve the original summaries somehow, maybe even provide a comparison option, as I’d like to show progress even on retroactive posts while still preserving the historical context.

For today, I’m still on version 0.8 of the summarization process, producing the outcomes below:

Summary