w.e.e.d.s.

today was the first day of my battle with weeds. after emily and i picked squash and cucumber this morning at 7, we zipped over to the pepper field with ivan to work on weeding. how could i possibly describe this task so as to fully convey its character? here goes:

a field is separated by a tractor into beds. a bed is basically a mound of dirt covered by a plastic sheet with holes poked in it. within each hole is where a transplant is planted. (see yesterday's post for info on transplants) a collection of these transplants is considered a "row". there are two rows in each bed. make sense? probably not. either way, the important tidbit of knowledge you should carry with you is that the rows are long. very, very long. (see photo)

the transplants are poking through just a little slice of the plastic, but since the sun hits the dirt around the plant, weeds inevitably grow as well. therefore, our job was to pull the weeds. makes sense. but it doesn't end there! oh no. THEN, we were to take a little square piece of newspaper, tear a slice into it, and tuck it around the plant so that no new weeds would grow. oh, organic farming, how i love thee.

yes, if this was a conventional farm, these weeds would be taken care of by spray. but we, on the other hand, crawl through the dirt on our hands and knees (ivan was even laying down at one point) pulling each weed out by hand and carefully encasing it in newspaper to avoid future weed growage. if that's not plant love, i don't know what is.

emily, ivan and i worked on this from 7:45 - 9:15, then from 9:30 - 11:45ish. nearly 4 hours. it wasn't exactly "tiring", but it involved a lot of constant, small movements and awkward physical positions, so we were all really happy when we were dismissed from this activity. now don't get me wrong -- we didn't nearly finish. in fact, we have to do it again tomorrow morning. sigh. but, i will say this: initially i was really resistant to the entire project. i had absolutely no desire to do it, and i was grumbling to myself about it for at least the first couple of hours. but somewhere around the 3rd hour, something inside of me gave way to the fact that this was the task at hand, and i needed to just stop resisting. this wasn't even a conscious thing that happened. it just sort of clicked. after awhile it occurred to me that my mind had totally been turned off for quite some time, and i was completely focused on pulling the weeds and covering them with the newspaper. i had entered into a different rhthym. it was zen-like. and although i of course was relieved when ivan said that we could stop, part of me felt a little disappointed. interesting.

after lunch, we did some more seed planting. we plant seeds in the shed where its cool, so it was nice to be out of the sun and to be sitting down. today we planted melons, lettuce and eggplant. then john let us leave early (2 pm), and i promptly took a nap. when i woke up at 3:30, my butt cheeks hurt more than i could possibly express. seriously. ouch.

another funny thing about today is that you need to walk one foot in front of the other while going up and down the rows because you're not supposed to step on the beds. i have horrible balance issues, but i noticed that if you tighten your abs, maintaining balance is so much easier. i know, i know...a no-brainer, michele...but for someone as unathletic as myself, it was pretty interesting. in my normal life of simply milling around new york, getting on subways and occasionally climbing a staircase, abs aren't all that important. so it was nice to actually learn why we have certain muscles in our body.

but i'm sore as heck, and looking forward to the end of the week. tomorrow night is the farmer's market and we're supposedly getting a ride there, so that should be fun and festive. apparently they have pupusas!