The joys of soil sampling

I just had the best little 4-minute bicycle ride to Rite Aid. And the best day at work even-while-fighting-a-cold.

I think it is because I had full maneuverability over my fingers and did not bemoan the existence of ears--basically: because I was not cold today! Thank you, Weather.

One of the last work days on the research farm today; I was sent out to sample soil for pH. I worked alone all day, no music, no company, but was quite incorrigibly at peace. The skies were like a theatre, the blasting wind shifting scene changes by the minute, the sun an intriguing spotlight on it all. There were moments I just had to spread my arms wide and gaze in happy awe at all the sky's activities. Piles of clouds. Swatches of blue. There was nothing homogeneous about looking up at all today. A double rainbow, so bright the colors were smartly distinguishable, stretched in a complete arc. I could even see the farm house from across the lake, where the end of it touched to earth.

Oh but I do love working outside.

It was so windy though--from the south--that I needed rubber bands around my clipboard to keep all that in place, and my plastic mixing cup skittered in circles; the pencil blew out of reach, my coat flapped in my face. I felt like I was working in outer space, where you set objects down and they just won't stay where they were.

I had the RTV to drive around the field, bearing me and my equipment zippily. This brought back memories of my soil sampling days as a graduate student--which were in sharp contrast to anything zippy. I'd schlep my Field Bike out to the plots, somehow balancing all my equipment along too. Then I would tread from plot to plot, juggling buckets, soil probe, clipboard, water bottle, screwdriver: clanking along like a one-man band.

At least my soil sampling style has increased a bit... 

Ergg, Traugg, and Swoob

"Seasonal worker" was the job title I adopted during my tenure at the Vegetable Trial and Demonstration farm. Although I never called myself that--I felt too much like a migrant worker that way; I chose to call it my Seasonal Field Experience--yesterday my coworker remarked dryly that we sure were experiencing all seasons in this job.

We were stamping around a stubbly wasteland of a cornfield, hefting around iron tamping bars and shovels, in the blurry gray slant of incoming snow.

Iron bars are unforgivingly cold on wet snowy hands.

But I had one of those moments, where I could grow a little taller on a platform of perspective, gazing snowily out over that corn stubble, and hold for a moment all the time and all the seasons I had spent at this farm. There was the spring: the rain, my personal turmoils of leaving a mountain and a man out west, the seeding, the minuscule hopes of minuscule plant babies sliding tremulously through the roofs of their tiny potting soil rooms. Then was Summer I: the rich long days of light, the exuberant growth of teenage plants, the laughably insurmountable task of fighting back weeds. The expectant first tomato eaten with a happy hop, the squash blossoms like so many suns, eagerly anticipating the onslaught of food to come. And then later Summer II, the glut of too many zucchini, parties at the farm, the joyful aroma of basil, hoeing, watering, sweating, eating melons in the field. I wanted to have tee-shirts made, complements of the sunshine, all the vegetables consumed, and the constant physical work: "We Are Not Fat and Pale Here." Then Fall I, the golden glow of trees turning, harvesting pumpkin seeds, needing a scarf to bicycle to work, the abundant freedom to harvest anything and everything because everybody was ready. And now, Fall II, which is beginning to think it is winter: pulling out dead plants, scraping rotten tomatoes out of the beds, putting away the decorate planters.

So I stood there damply in the blowing snow and surprised myself by not feeling resentful of it (I have a history of dreading winter and the dark and cold and sickness) and was grateful for the beautiful diversity of all the earth had shown me over my time here.

Someday I will stay in one place longer than 8 months and will truly feel the cyclical nature of it, in a way that has not been possible recently. I've only had a single full winter in the snowy north since 2008, all of the others I escaped to Australia, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Seattle, and Thailand. We'll see about this coming one.

Back to the iron bars and snowy stubble. Why? What could we possibly be doing out there?

Putting in a hop yard, of course.

Hops, a member of the same family as marijuana (I have my probably unlikely theory as to why an IPA gives you an extra delicious buzz), are becoming increasingly in demand in NY state due to the emphasis on local beer from local ingredients, and the farm decided to jump on the band-wheelbarrow (as it were). The hops enjoy climbing--really climbing--and so a hop yard is really a climbing gym for them: a series of phone poles in the ground with cables strung across their tops.

Installing a hop yard is serious work: the sort of work requiring a crew of strapping Mexicans, tractors with augers, and tasteful grunting and swearing. Our work with the iron tamping bars was to fill in the holes after the phone poles had been inserted (that's where the strapping Mexicans come in). It felt a little bizarre and diminishing to be out there in a barren field with all those poles looming above us, panting slightly as we shoveled soil into the holes around their bases and used the heavy iron bars to pack it in.

Not all jobs can be done with tractors and I realized we were working like humans have been working since soil was new, how the pyramids and ancient temples were constructed. With the power of arms and backs.

"This feels rather prehistoric" I said to Coworker Eric as we whacked and tamped iron bars into the dirt, then added after our implements accidentally knocked together, sending a shock wave of sound and vibrations through my arms: "sorry about that, would you like to come over to my cave for some mastodon later?" Then I decided that Coworkers Eric and Traci both needed prehistoric names. "Ergg" I decided for Eric, and Traci became "Traugg."  Ergg then decided I would be dubbed "Swoob." 

Looking up at the looming wood above us, I added: "I'm Pole-ish."

Here's Things From My Journal

The end of Daylight Savings Time. The period of evening light up until this point fading gradually, a loved one dying of a terminal illness. But today and pushing those clocks back: quick death by guillotine. Oh light, oh summer, how I miss you.

Now comes the time of Fat and Pale, of Unsociable and Sleepy.

(don't worry, not really)

So to combat this I went bicycling (and then made hot chocolate and pumpkin-raspberry-chocolate-chip muffins). At least it was sunny, although still sharply cold, all prickly from the wind. I put on ear-warmers, arm-warmers, a neck-warmer, a torso-warmer, and feet-only-luke-warmers. I flapped off into the wind, the colors, the slanted golden sun. Biking 17 miles in the cold feels about as wearying as bicycling 50 miles in the delicious heat. Oh well.

So now from my ensconce of blankets I shall write a bit, entitled perhaps: Here's Things From My Journal.


Family Road Trip
A visit to Little Sister living in Virginia. Last week my parents and I climbed into my Dad's spotless car and drove south through Pennsylvania (gee, even width-wise that state is massive), Maryland (just the fingernail of it), and into Virginia.

We drove through a backdrop of golden and orange trees, rolling hills, white picket fences. Then we were 5 with my sister and boyfriend, all us tall people folding ourselves into the car to visit Monticello, Jefferson's home. "Well. If there were a carpool lane we'd qualify for it," my Dad observed. We were squished in the backseat like paper dolls folder too many times to fit in their envelope.

Lunch in the car: Dad is driving and eating a sandwich. He hands it, half-consumed and rather ragged, to my mother. "Dear. Will you rearrange this for me?"

~~~

I think one of the sweetest moments of this little family trip occurred on the Monticello lawn (see backdrop of colored trees and sweeping views), when we'd finished the Standing For a Long Time Tour rather wearied and I'd asked if anyone was carrying any snacks. Nope: snacks were all in the car.

In just a few minutes, though, Dad appears on the horizon with a bag of nuts, not inexpensive nuts either, that he'd charged off and bought at the Monticello gift shop. My parents, as a general rule, all calculated and moderate, do not buy food not from the bulk order or the cheapest price-per-pound. "You remember when you were a little girl and in the middle of the night, Daddy I'm hungry, and I'd take pity on you and get up and fix you a fried egg sandwich?" he said.  Now overpriced gift shop nuts. I was indeed touched. And they were actually really delicious nuts too.



On Being Kale
I haven't had a happy Halloween in many years. I was either being miserable with an illness, attending an academic conference, or wearied by too many college Sexy Bunnies or Slutty Kitties or Hoebag Weevils or whatever.

But this Halloween was an excellent one. I went as: Kale.

I brought a kale plant home from the farm, and fashioned myself a pair of leaf earrings and two breast-plates from leaves woven into my shirt. I wore neon green pants, a leaf-like shirt, and--predictable--sprayed my hair green as well. I played the piano at the local brew-pub that night (made a wad of cash), perched on the bench all greenly, with a bouquet of kale lying on the case.

Most everyone else, in their store-bought costumes, the cowboys, the nuns, the Elvis, regarded me dubiously as they walked in the door and saw what was playing the piano. "DUDE," I overheard one construction worker say to a cowboy, "that girl is covered in lettuce."  The rock-star ladies had a cuter way of putting it, "Well, gee! You're so healthy!"  The owner of the pub strode in bright-eyed, "Of course," he said (he knows my penchant for vegetables), "just let me get the salad dressing."

Ha.

Later, after the piano time, I can attest that kale is most excellent to shake on the dance floor. And also to simply dance waving around a leaf of it. Although I did keep dropping earring leaves. I threw a leaf at the DJ and hit him square in the face with a leafy thwap; he threw it back at me all grinny, but on it's repeat return flight it hit a guy in the wig.

I was happy when people would yell "Kale!" across the place and I could be the one to answer.